AMARILLO, Texas (KVII) \u2014 For more than a decade, children served by Amarillo Area CASA received something many could carry with them no matter where they were placed: a handmade blanket knitted by Harriet Dunlap.<\/p>\n
CASA estimates Dunlap donated more than 600 blankets, each made by hand. Her daughter, Becky Elizabeth Dunlap, said the blankets offered a kind of comfort that went beyond typical donations.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody gives things like toiletries and stuffed animals and such, but a blanket or a quilt or stitching is something entirely different because this is something that they can wrap around them,\u201d Becky Elizabeth Dunlap said. \u201cMaybe they don’t have somebody’s arms to put around them, but they can put that blanket around them and keep them warm and keep them safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jarah Mendoza, executive director of Amarillo Area CASA, said the blankets often became one of the few consistent belongings children could keep as they moved through the foster care system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen children get placed into foster care sometimes, or when they move to a different foster home or somewhere else, a lot of times they don’t have a lot of belongings,\u201d Mendoza said. \u201cAnd so these blankets are one piece of home that they take with them wherever they go. And it’s just such a blessing to the children that we serve to have that comfort when things aren’t always happy, comfortable, sometimes they’re scary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Becky Dunlap said her mother made the blankets colorful and unique so children would have something that felt like it belonged to them. She said that when children were moved unexpectedly, items sometimes got left behind \u2014 including, in some cases, the blankets.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd in a couple of cases, it was some of the blankets. And those kids specifically asked for a Harriet blanket,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Harriet Dunlap died in December, but her daughter said knitting remained part of her life until the end.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe continued to do until that was one of the last things that she was doing, which was knitting. Her hands were always moving,\u201d Becky Elizabeth Dunlap said.<\/p>\n
Mendoza encouraged others in the community to continue that kind of support for children and families involved in the foster care system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether that’s making comfort blankets for children in foster care, doing whatever they can to support foster families, biological families, whatever we can do to just really help the system as a whole,\u201d Mendoza said.<\/p>\n
Harriet Dunlap’s hand-knit blankets comforted Texas children in need for a decade (KVII)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AMARILLO, Texas (KVII) \u2014 For more than a decade, children served by Amarillo Area CASA received something many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-291967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}