Photo: Comfort Cases Website
When Rob Scheer was 12 walking into the foster care system in the 1970s, he carried everything he owned in a trash bag. His case worker told him to shove his belongings into a trash bag to quickly escape an abusive home; the pattern repeated over and over until he was an adult. When he aged out of the system at 18, he packed a trash bag for the final time. The five children he adopted with his husband, Reece, each had similar stories, navigating the foster care system with just a trash bag full of items to their names. “When my children arrived and each one of them had a trash bag, I knew we as a society failed,” Scheer said. This is what spurred him to create Comfort Cases, a nonprofit that provides foster youth with their very own backpacks and luggage — instead of a plastic bag. Since its founding in 2013, the organization has donated more than 250,000 cases to children across the United States. “Children in foster care are the responsibility of the entire community,” Scheer told the Silicon Valley Voice. “Investing in their future is essential for the betterment of society.” At least 3 states have now banned the use of trash bags in foster care.
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