While the COVID pandemic was largely marked by disruption and suffering, the enforced pause also gave rise to new shoots of hope and vision. This was certainly true for Heulwen, whose eyes were opened to the needs facing children in care in Wales.

During lockdown, Heulwen read an article about children and young people in the Welsh care system. The article led her on a search through other blogs, articles and videos. As she cradled her new-born baby and thought about the children who were lacking quality care, Heulwen felt her heart breaking. As she wept and prayed for these children, she asked God to intervene and to deploy His angels to help. She felt God answer, “I’m deploying you.”

“This isn’t my background, this isn’t my field,” says Heulwen. “I’ve been a pastor in a local church for a decade. I had a great family growing up: this really wasn’t my experience. Nevertheless, I hold a deep conviction that I’ve signed up to a faith that says, like the prophet Isaiah, ‘Here I am, send me’. So, when I felt the call, I had to act.”

Heulwen did what we all seemed to do in the pandemic: she held Zoom calls! She reached out to people in her world, recognising that others held expertise and experience that she lacked: a police officer, social workers, teachers, a detective, care-experienced adults… Heulwen asked each of them, “Is it really as bad as I’m reading? Is this really happening?” The clear, consistent response was “yes” and some of the stories were harrowing. Heulwen felt compelled to respond.

“This was happening on my doorstep. It was happening on my watch. Yes, we were in the middle of a pandemic and I was limited in what I could do, but I could do something. So I started to upskill. I read all that I could get my hands on: stats, blogs, websites, legislation, the Home for Good website. I wept a lot! My daily walks were filled with prayer as I called on God to act, as I asked him for clarity: in the enormity of the problem, what could I do?

“Then I learnt that many children who are taken into care have to carry their belongings in a black bin liner or simply don’t have the basic things that they need. A care-experienced friend of mine told me, ‘When my belongings were in bin liners, it made me feel like I was rubbish’. I realised, this is something I can do, I can help with this!

“I felt God give me Romans 8:17: ‘Now if we are children, then we are heirs - heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ…’ To children who may feel they have limited worth or value, to children whose experience of family may be painful, to young people struggling with their sense of belonging and identity, God says ‘you have value beyond measure, you are the handiwork of heaven, you are heirs.’

“In 2021, we launched our charity, Heirs – so named because these children were made to be heirs, not orphans; sons and daughters, not statistics “In 2021, we launched our charity: Heirs, because these children were made to be heirs, not to be forgotten. As COVID restrictions began to ease, we started with a backpack scheme - giving bags full of carefully chosen gifts and practical items to children entering care.

“Our backpacks have been thoughtfully and prayerfully designed. We’ve spoken with care leavers, professionals, children and young people, to help create what’s been coined ‘love in a bag’. Our hope is that these bags would provide some small piece of comfort and dignity at an extremely traumatic time and that this love in a bag would show them something of how truly loved they are.

“Along the way we also learned about children who were removed from homes in emergency situations and were spending hours in police stations while foster placements were being found. We put together Kit Boxes containing Lego, blankets, teddy bears, play dough, story and colouring books – all designed to occupy anxious hands as children waited to learn where they’d be going.

“Early on in my journey I read John C. Maxwell’s ‘How to change your world’, in which he writes, ‘Even the smallest action is better than the greatest intention.’ These resources, bags and gifts feel far too small in the enormity of the problem, but I am spurred on in the knowledge that our God can do a lot with a little: He can take a backpack and change lives.”

Heulwen Davies is a Home for Good Champion and a member of our Wales Advisory Group.