The Bones always knew they’d have a big family, but their whole outlook was changed when their first child, Griffin, was born with a heart condition.

“We spent a lot of time at Vanderbilt,” Ruchala continued. “He needed open heart surgery when he was 3 months old.”

While there, the Bones learned there are many children with complicated medical situations in the foster care system. They decided to do something about it. At the time of this 2022 visit, they’d just adopted a child named Maurice, who needed a kidney transplant.

Flash forward to today, Maurice has had that transplant and is healthy and happy. The Bones have now either fostered or adopted four children with complicated medical situations. Finding families like them is so important to Suzanne Jones of Youth Villages.

“We have a lot of children who end up coming to us out of hospitals,” she explained. “Foster parents have to go through training at the hospital, so sometimes that can be daunting. They have to go through the full medical training to know how to care for their medically needy child.”