The Scheer family isn’t bound by blood, but by shared experience. Rob Scheer and his five kids each made their own journey through the foster care system with a trash bag in tow.
Rob was 12 the first time a case worker told him to shove his belongings in a trash bag to escape an abusive home — a pattern that would repeat until he turned 18. Years later, when Rob and his husband Reece adopted through foster care, they were surprised at how little had changed.
“When my children arrived and each one of them had a trash bag, I knew we as a society failed,” Scheer said.
That moment drove him to start Comfort Cases, a nonprofit that replaces trash bags with luggage for kids in foster care. To date, more than 250,000 cases have been delivered to children across the U.S. Each child also gets a brand new pair of pajamas with a ribbon on top to make sure they “know that this is a gift,” Scheer said.
“The one most important thing that every child who comes into our foster care system deserves is dignity and hope. And how do you do that? Don’t give them a trash bag,” Scheer said.
Ashley Baker grew up in more than a dozen Pennsylvania foster homes and attended seven high schools.
“To carry your stuff in a trash bag, it makes you feel like this is your fault, you’re worth nothing, none of this stuff is worth anything to anyone else,” Baker said.
Just like Rob, she was also given a trash bag each time she moved. But things are slowly shifting.
In the past two years, Maryland, Texas and Oregon have all banned the use of trash bags in foster care. Similar legislation was recently introduced in New York City.
“I thought, ‘Oh I’ll grow up to be the change maker.’ But to find out there’s others who want to make that change, it does feel it’s so heartwarming to know,” Baker said.
The goal is to get similar laws passed in all 50 states so that all foster kids get a backpack, a duffel bag or anything that tells them — they matter.
