Christian Bale has spent nearly two decades on a project with no red carpet and no box office: a foster care village in Palmdale, California, designed to keep siblings together. Together California opened Friday with 12 furnished single-family homes and an 11,000-square-foot community center. The model places each sibling group in its own home with a full-time, professionally trained foster parent, instead of splitting brothers and sisters across placements or group homes. The campus also includes two studio apartments for birth parents and young people aging out of the system.
Bale co-founded the project with his wife Sibi and Dr. Eric Esrailian. It broke ground in February 2024 after 16 years of planning and fundraising, all powered by donations. The urgency is real: California has over 60,000 children in foster care, more than any other state, and sibling separation remains one of the most painful parts of the system. The first families move in next month.
Bale has said the mission is to turn heartbreak and pain into love, hope, and a sense of future. If the village works the way it’s designed to, it could become a blueprint for other states. Would you want to see a foster care village model like this in your community?
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Local Lawton
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