Jim Asbury is doing what no other person in Napa County has been able to do in recent memory: organizing the community to begin to meet the needs of local foster care children and foster parents.

The Napa businessman's emerging group, Foster Care Advocates, aims to take on some of the most intractable problems in foster care, from the often overlooked needs of foster children and parents to some regulations seemed more designed to keep the state out of court than to help children.

So far, Foster Care Advocates has garnered the attention of 57 members of the community representing various nonprofits, volunteer groups and community interests, from Catholic Charities to the Napa Valley Vintners and the state Assembly Health and Human Services Committee.

All this before the group even has elected its officers.

The world of foster care is often wrapped in mystery, partly because of the confidentiality needed to protect the privacy of foster care children, but also because of community perceptions about foster families.

Adopting his grandson through the state foster care system, and promoting the nonprofit Court Appointed Special Advocates to help monitor foster care children, Asbury has learned a lot about the foster care system in the last few years. He hasn't liked what he's found.

"I had an interest in it earlier, but I didn't realize how big the problem was," he said.

There are an estimated 84,000 children in foster care in the state and more than 100 in Napa County. Foster Care advocates say despite the government's best efforts, the state skimps on financial support for foster kids and leaves them in the cold when they age out of the system.

Randy Snowden, director of the Napa County Department Health and Human Services, says government can't do everything to raise a child, and supports Foster Care Advocates by providing an ear for their ideas and a place for them to meet each month.

"Anything at all we can do complementary with the need (of foster families)," Snowden said. "There are just some things where the government can't do everything. The community has to do some things."

Snowden said other counties have groups much like Foster Care Advocates. He called Foster Care Advocates "a missing piece" in the county's foster care efforts.

At a meeting Thursday, members of Foster Care Advocates worked out plans to give new clothes to foster children, especially school clothes. Another plan was to set up foster child sleepovers so foster parents could take a break. State law requires any baby-sitter to a foster care child to undergo a criminal background check and to be fingerprinted -- not an easy sitter to find, so many foster care parents don't get a night away from the kids.

"Children don't end up in the foster care system as a result of any fault of the child," Snowden said. "Most of us take so much for granted and the things that (Foster Care Advocates) is talking about trying to do is way below what all of us take for granted. For a foster kid to have new clothes on the first day of school is huge."

Asbury, owner of Bell Products in Napa, has proved that despite the shroud surrounding the foster care system, there's a wealth of people in Napa County and beyond who are willing to help out.

His group also pushes to change many of the laws that govern foster care, especially those regarding the adoption of foster children. Adoption is an arduous process even when the prospective parent is related to the child. Asbury said it took him more than a year -- and intense scrutiny from the state -- to adopt his grandson.

He said by easing the red tape involved in the adoption process, eventually fewer children will need foster parents. Often would-be adoptive parents avoid the bureaucracy of the state system by adopting children from overseas.

"Ultimately our goal is to have less children in the foster care system," he said.