MERIDIAN, Idaho — Volunteers from Healthy Blue of Idaho and Comfort Cases packed 250 backpacks for children entering foster care at a packing event in Meridian.

Each backpack is filled with essentials like pajamas, hygiene items, blankets, books and comfort items — things organizers said can make a difficult transition a little easier.

Amber Stiles of A New Beginning Adoption Agency said the moment a child enters foster care is often sudden and frightening.

“This is usually an emergency situation,” Stiles said. “They’re taken out of the home without knowing that’s what’s happening and a lot of the time it comes not only with trauma, but without any of the things they’re used to in their home.”

Comfort Cases founder and CEO Rob Scheer grew up in foster care and experienced that transition firsthand.

“I actually arrived with a trash bag,” Scheer said.

Years later, Scheer adopted children out of the system. He said they arrived with the same thing.

“Most people don’t realize that when kids enter foster care, this is what we’ve been handing them,” Scheer said.

That experience is what led Scheer to start Comfort Cases to give children something they can call their own.

Volunteer Kathryn Seebold said the items inside each backpack carry more weight than their size suggests.

“These are simple things that some of us take for granted, but they mean so much. It’s what childhoods were made of,” Seebold said. “You know, you had all your favorite stuffed animal or your favorite book, and they don’t have that.”

Seebold said those small items can help a child hold onto something familiar when everything else has changed. She drew on her own experience of feeling out of place as a child.

“I was really kind of that odd little girl going to school with an older lady on the bus and not speaking the language where everyone else was coming with mom or dad and their siblings, so I felt a little awkward for sure,” Seebold said.

For the volunteers packing the bags, the work is personal. Social worker Dayle Allen said the effort reflects something every child deserves.

“It means a lot, I think. I grew up in a difficult situation and so being able to provide kids with an opportunity to have something that’s their own and something that means so much,” Allen said. “It’s just a basic necessity. It’s shampoo, it’s soap, it’s blankets. Every kid deserves that.”

Stiles said the items inside the backpacks can stay with a child through multiple transitions.

“That stuffed animal is going to follow them if they have to transfer homes, if they go into an adoptive home,” Stiles said.

Since its founding 15 years ago, Comfort Cases has packed more than 325,000 cases across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.

“Children need to know that we see them, we love them and that we care about them,” Scheer said.

Organizers said they are already planning a second event in Eastern Idaho and plan to continue support for foster children across the state.

Learn more here.