2018 Unsung Heroes: Steve and Mary Bryan

Steve and Mary Bryan
Executive DIrector, Director of Operations
Child Bridge

After learning of Montana’s deteriorating child welfare system, Steve and Mary Bryan founded Child Bridge, an organization that finds foster and adoptive families for children in need and gives those families the resources and knowledge they need to be successful in caring for a child who comes from severe trauma. Steve and Mary believed that if they presented the need for more foster families in faith communities, they would be successful in recruiting families for those children in need—and in eight years, that’s exactly what they did. In those short years, 584 children have been cared for.

Particularly, in 2017, over 10,000 instances of adults and children were served at one of a total nine Child Bridge’s resource groups, which provides ongoing education and relationships to families who are caring for children in the foster system. With no support for foster and adoptive families in rural Montana communities prior to Child Bridge, this was a massive accomplishment.

“The majority of their foster an adoptive families would never have come forward to care for these children if not for Steve and Mary’s vision to present the need. The families could have never cared for these children with such extreme trauma backgrounds if it were not for the ongoing equipping that Steve and Mary knew someone had to provide… so they do so through Child Bridge. Steve and Mary would say that having a family changes a child’s life—and it does.”