When children enter South Carolina’s Department of Social Services system, the hardest part is often waiting to see what happens next. Waiting for a call back. Waiting for placement. Waiting for court decisions. Waiting through long hours in conference rooms or cramped office spaces. That waiting space matters and should be curated to make children feel safe, says Cara Grubb, creative director and designer of the Lily Pad spaces.
Jennifer Tice, alongside her husband, Benjamin Tice, helped create Lily Pad: A Soft Place to Land — a child-centered, safe space placed in DSS offices — based on stories she lived through as an adoptive parent and foster parent, including the experience of one of her now-nieces. Tice recalled how adoption was always on her heart. She and Benjamin adopted some of their children, and their journey didn’t stop at adoption. They became foster parents in 2013, and after years of serving children and families, they realized that even when DSS staff are doing everything they can, children can still end up waiting in environments that cause stress instead of relieving it.
Tice describes how children can be in DSS offices sometimes for hours and at times overnight. Lily Pad became a “bridge” and a “home-like, carefully designed space” where children can calm their bodies and minds while adults complete the work of safety planning, placement, reunification if deemed safe, or adoption.
Lily Pad: A Soft Place to Land is a nonprofit organization that transitions institutional spaces into safe, welcoming, trauma-informed environments for children and other vulnerable individuals experiencing crisis.
Before Lily Pad’s formation, a seed was planted in the Tice family long before fostering became top of mind. It started with lived experiences in their careers since both of them had career paths that interacted with the community daily. Jennifer worked at Greenville Memorial Hospital as a labor and delivery nurse, and Benjamin worked in law enforcement. While working at the hospital, Tice shared how a series of events led her and her husband to pursue fostering, adoption and also the start of Lily Pad
“One night, I had a patient who was homeless and having her third baby. Her aunt and sister had to take care of her other two children, and were going to raise the third child,” she shared — reminiscing how in her line of work, she was able to connect with her patients on a deeper level, and this teenager opened up about life’s difficulties while she was trying to finish college. After hearing this patient’s story, Tice went home to her husband, and they discussed how they could help her. Later, it sparked a conversation about foster care versus adoption.
“My husband, being in law enforcement, was concerned about overall security and safety,” she explained – offering examples of what some families consider during the foster care or adoption process, such as navigating unexpected confrontations with biological family members that ensures safety of all involved.
They inquired about the process, asked all the questions they needed to and had the mindset of being a secure home for a child who needs one. “We told (them) that we want to give a child a home that needs one. We don’t need to know the history, and it doesn’t matter if they are the same race or gender,” she said. They discussed with an attorney about the different routes pertaining to fostering or adopting. Later, they adopted their two boys, who are biological brothers, and the Tice family fostered them for years to follow.
When asked about the major differences between fostering and adopting, Tice explained it clearly. “Adoption can happen through foster care, but that’s not the goal. When you become a foster parent, your mindset should be: stepping into another family’s time of need and brokenness, and loving the children for the time they need you. The ultimate goal is to see that family made whole again and reunified.”
She went on further to explain that there are times where courts can terminate parental rights if deemed necessary, therefore making the child legally free for adoption under the state, and foster parents can have first right to say they’d like to adopt the child. On the other hand, private adoption is a different process where parents can decide whether it’s open or closed and can specify exactly what they’re looking for in a new addition to the family. As foster parents, they can decide to engage with biological parents if it’s deemed safe for the children. Having been foster parents for over a decade, Tice shared a story about a little girl, Lily, who was placed under their care before the Covid-19 pandemic. “She was about 5 pounds, had been abandoned at the hospital, and needed withdrawal medications,” Tice explained. The Tice family agreed to take care of the child for temporary placement until reunification was possible and/or if an adoptive family was able to adopt her.
Then Covid-19 happened and everyone was on lockdown. Court dates were rescheduled several times, and before they knew it, she was part of their family for longer than any of them anticipated. Six months in, and Tice was already picturing a life with Lily as their daughter. After 18-20 months of going back and forth in court, with potential termination of parental rights, to weekend visits with Lily’s biological family, a hard reality came crashing down. “As foster parents for so long, we let our guard down by loving this child day to day to now allowing ourselves to think of a future with her,” she shared – acknowledging how they knew reunification was possible and that placement was temporary, but they didn’t expect to fall in love with Lily and weren’t prepared for the earth-shattering reality that she was not going to be another addition to their family permanently after the legal yo-yo-ing.
When Lily was visiting her biological family over the weekends before reunification became permanent, her room was empty. Eventually, another girl was placed with Tice, and her name was Ashlyn. Ashlyn was 15 years old and had been in and out of foster care since she was three years old. She was a sibling set of four, with two brothers and her younger sister. Ashlyn and her sister were adopted in the same family, and her two brothers were adopted into different families. “Ashlyn said goodbye to her brothers in a conference room,” Tice said.
She was being abused in the home that her and her sister were living in. Ashlyn didn’t want to risk her younger sister’s home and in her mind, wanted to protect her sister. After hearing the traumatic experiences that the girls went through, Tice welcomed both girls into their home. Fast forward to 2021, Tice knew that both girls needed a permanent home. Tice’s sister, who wasn’t married then and didn't have biological children, worked in the public school system and later adopted both Ashlyn and her sister. After Tice heard Ashlyn’s story, it made her think of how many more children have endured such tragedies, have said their goodbyes to the people they’ve known in sterile conference rooms.
“They’re in DSS offices for hours, if not overnight. They were sleeping under case managers’ desks, on air mattresses. I went to an office where they had boys in the back of the conference room and girls in the front while the case manager stayed in the middle,” Tice shared, clarifying that there isn’t blame to be placed on the Department of Social Services. “This is a nationwide issue, not just South Carolina. We’ve been contacted by 20 other states and 200 countries since we started Lily Pad in 2022,” she explained.
Tice explained that the idea of Lily Pad sharpened when Ashlyn shared what it was like to be processed through DSS after reporting abuse. She fell asleep in a cubicle chair out of exhaustion. She overheard conversations involving other children’s cases and her own story being retold countless times while trying to understand where she belonged. She felt the sting of rejection after hearing others say they couldn't “take her,” and the fear that she would be separated from her sister or placed in a setting that would add more trauma.
Tice describes her “light bulb moment” which is a child’s fear that doesn't stop when adults begin tackling the process. Sometimes, the environment itself becomes another layer of stress. Lily Pad: A Soft Place to Land’s purpose became clear: create a space designed for the child’s nervous system and offering comfort, privacy, and dignity. Give them a soft place to land instead of waiting in silence and uncertainty. The Lily Pad rooms are built to be more than a chair and a TV, Tice shared. The goal was to make the environment safe enough for kids to regulate while waiting for decisions to be made.
Grubb, the creative director and designer of the Lily Pad spaces, who is also a family friend, along with Tice’s ideas made intentional design choices that include:
Privacy (using cubicle-style walls to create a separate area rather than an open office holding space)
A bed and comfort elements like a rocking chair
A familiar distraction (like a TV) to reduce fear and agitation
A home-like environment, including color choices, and calming elements influenced by interior design experience
Emphasis on clean floors - because the founders believe that children deserve a safe, and dignified environment to sleep, not something makeshift.
Every small detail matters to Tice. She recounts how a young man who was approaching adulthood wanted a floor because he never slept in a bed – reinforcing her conviction that Lily Pad should offer children that they may have had before: normal comfort and safety.
The South Carolina Department of Social Services provides resources and additional information regarding the needs across the system on their website (dss.sc.gov) – especially in foster care and child protection, where children can experience frequent transitions.
In Calendar Year 2025:
Foster Care: 6,194 children and youth served during the year
CPS (intakes/referrals): 69,154 abuse/neglect intakes/referrals
Adoptions finalized: 508
Adoption subsidies paid: $53,990,232.
In 2026, there are 3,300 children and teens in care. 29 percent of South Carolina’s foster care placements are kinship placements – meaning children are placed with relatives or close family friends.
Raquel McCloud, the author of The ABCs of Foster and Kinship Care, shares her experience and educates her viewers about the intricacies of foster care and kinship care. As someone who was raised in kinship care through her paternal grandparents at 2 years old, got pregnant at 14 years old and placed her baby up for adoption, to someone who has adopted her biological sister, McCloud describes kinship care as “being more concentrated in the South,” with the mindset that “blood is thicker than water.” She explained that her friends and cousins at the time were also being taken care of by biological family members, so the idea never felt strange to her since that was what she saw.
“At 14, I became pregnant, and (my grandparents) didn’t really know how to handle it,” she shared, explaining that she was later placed with different guardianship approximately 600-700 miles away from her paternal grandparents’ home. With the new guardianship, McCloud’s environment was “not safe or a healthy environment,” which prompted her to run away at 17 years old and later emancipating herself. Looking back, McCloud shares the complexities of foster care and kinship from her perspective.
“My grandparents gained legal guardianship of me at 2 years old because I was severely neglected ... the biggest downfalls of kinship care is that there’s not enough resources to teach these families how to balance the safety of the child and their relationship with the family,” she explained. McCloud shared that her paternal grandparents took care of her, and her father was always caring toward her, but the bigger issue for her was “[her] grandparents did not understand how to set proper boundaries with (my father).” Her father, “had a good heart, but addiction robbed him of being the father he needed to be.”
When McCloud became pregnant, it didn’t feel like a “choice” to place her firstborn for adoption because she was a pregnant teen who was also homeless. After years of surviving abuse, following the emancipation process and getting back on her feet, McCloud recalls meeting her firstborn daughter, Abigail for the first time when she was 9 years old.
“We did a one-year visit, and then I was told I would have to wait until she was 18 years old for her to find me if she wanted to,” she said. Years later, the adoptive family located McCloud through a local agency to let her know that Abigail was interested in meeting her and her little sister. “I was ecstatic, and said yes. I was married at that point, and we were parenting our first daughter together. We had just taken guardianship of my biological sister, so I became a kinship caregiver to my newborn sister,” she said, explaining that she was grateful to know Lily Pad existed – wishing she met Abigail for the first time in a Lily Pad space versus a conference room.
The advice McCloud would give to kinship caregivers and foster parents is raw: “Face and heal your own shortcomings, so you can show up healthy for the kids. Calm the storm.”
Betsy Tanner, founder of Betsy Tanner Law, presented a unique perspective on kinship care, adoptions, and the foster care system as someone who was a licensed foster parent for over 10 years and is an adoptive mother herself as well as a lawyer.
Betsy Tanner Law focuses on adoption law, estate probate law, estate planning, and legal changes. Tanner shared the biggest misconception that relative caretakers such as grandparents, aunts, and uncles, have about their legal rights compared to traditional parents.
“They don’t necessarily always understand that if someone takes in a relative, like a kinship caregiver, or a relative placement, that they actually have the right to become what we call a licensed kinship caregiver,” she said. Tanner explained that some people may not understand its importance and how being a licensed kinship caregiver can open resources for them to help them support the child or children. With licensing, kinship caregivers have ongoing support unlike cases where DSS grants custody to relatives if the biological parents are unable to complete the treatment plan to retain custody of their children.
As a foster parent and an adoptive mother, Tanner’s experiences have given her more empathy for her clients. “I know what they are going through in (many) ways.” Aside from fostering and adopting, she understands how parenting a child who has experienced trauma can be a different experience.
When asked what courts look for when determining the best interest of the child and what prospective adoptive parents “get wrong,” Tanner said that most people miss the point. It’s not comparing the biological parents’ homes to the adoptive parents’ homes. It goes beyond materialistic factors.
“Biological families ... only have to meet very minimum standards, and they have the right to raise their children the way they want to, as long as it’s not neglect or abuse,” she said, and further explained that the standard is based on whether the biological parents “completed a treatment plan and whether it’s in the child’s best interest to be reunified with the biological parents.” In most cases, the courts will give the parent an opportunity to do a treatment plan to remedy the issues that caused the child to come into care to begin with.
“The treatment plan is supposed to be the step that (biological parents) need to take to fix the issue that brought the child into care to begin with,” Tanner said, later providing examples. For example, if a child has been in foster care for a year or 18 months, and the parents have not done the treatment plan, the case shifts. If parents haven’t completed the treatment plan, the courts will consider various options including termination of parental rights if the parents did not take appropriate action. Tanner also noted that even if a parent does complete the court-ordered treatment plan, there are cases where the parents return to the same pattern as before, and the child is then returned to DSS custody.
If the plan has changed, meaning that the biological parents have not taken appropriate action to complete their court-ordered treatment plan, the process can shift from reunification to termination of parental rights. Tanner explained that it takes time to terminate parental rights and can be a slower process in comparison to adoption because there are hearings scheduled, etc. “The misconception is the time from when the plan changes and until the child is legally free,” she shared. When a child is legally free, the child is legally free to be adopted. Tanner estimated three to six months for the adoption process once a child is considered legally free.
Even with great casework, this volume means that DSS offices are repeatedly managing highly sensitive moments when children may need to wait, be assessed, or transition, which is exactly where Lily Pad can extend support while waiting.
With Grubb’s creative direction and designs, along with her husband’s law enforcement expertise, board members contributions and community partners support, the first DSS office to install a Lily Pad space was Greenville County DSS in May 2022 and to follow was the Upstate adoption office.
Lily Pad currently serves 47 offices across South Carolina and Michigan, with 86 spaces designed and installed and 83 active spaces.
In 2026, Charleston is currently scheduled for October, with two additional law enforcement spaces tentatively planned. In 2027, Lily Pad plans to complete the remaining South Carolina DSS locations, including Jasper, Colleton, Dorchester, Orangeburg, Berkeley, and Allendale, as well as the Orangeburg and Lowcountry Regional Permanency Offices. Lily Pad plans to complete the remaining South Carolina DSS locations in 2027.
The Lily Pad space locations are listed below:
South Carolina DSS
Greenville County DSS
Upstate Adoptions Office
Spartanburg County DSS
Pickens County DSS
Greenwood County DSS
Abbeville County DSS
Newberry County DSS
Anderson County DSS
Rock Hill Adoptions Office (York)
York County DSS
Fairfield County DSS
McCormick County DSS
Lexington County DSS
Edgefield County DSS
Midlands Adoptions Office (Richland)
Saluda County DSS
Chesterfield County DSS
Barnwell County DSS
Orangeburg County DSS
Cherokee County DSS
Florence County DSS
Pee Dee Region Adoption Office
Chester County DSS
Richland County DSS
Aiken County DSS
Kershaw County DSS
Lancaster County DSS
Darlington County DSS
Lee County DSS
Laurens County DSS
Bamberg County DSS
Hampton County DSS
Horry County DSS
Horry County Regional Office
Marlboro County
Dillon County
Marion County DSS
Oconee County DSS
Beaufort County DSS
Williamsburg County DSS
Georgetown County DSS
Clarendon County DSS
Calhoun County DSS
Sumter County DSS
For law enforcement, Lily Pad has a space in Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office – LE along with a private House of Providence location in Michigan.
Lily Pad isn’t a shortcut around the system. Tice’s message is that the system must include child-centered humanity in the spaces where kids wait. Safety isn’t only what adults decide after court. Safety is also the room where a child rests while adults do the work.
Jennifer and Benjamin Tice created Lily Pad: A Soft Place to Land because of Ashlyn’s experience – and years of foster care and adoption – taught her the same lesson clearly: children deserve a soft place to land, even if the world is moving too fast around them.
For those interested in getting involved with Lily Pad, please visit their website https://www.lilypadinc.org/ Click on the “How You Can Help” tab with various options, and a “Contact Us” button to directly contact the team.
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