Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

State To Improve Child Welfare

from State Sen. Mike Ross

The number of children in foster care has grown rapidly over the past year, straining the state's ability to adequately care for them.

The legislative committees on Children and Youth last week heard a report from state officials in charge of the child welfare system. The committee also heard from foster parents and a juvenile judge.

The state is under a court order to improve child welfare. Members of the legislative committee are closely monitoring the system to ensure that the state responds to the needs of foster children. The state agency that oversees the child welfare system is the Division of Children and Family Services, which is in the state Human Services Department.

According to a quarterly report issued by the division, there were 3,185 children in foster care in March. Of those, 821 were placed in the system because of neglect by their parents or guardians and 783 were in the system because they had suffered physical abuse.

The remaining children were in the system for a variety of reasons - their parents had been incarecerated or had died, they had severe behavioral disorders, they abused drugs, they had been abandoned or they had been sexually abused.

For 76 percent of the foster children, the state's goal is reunification with their families. For nine percent, the state's goal is for the children to be adopted. The state has other goals for the remainder of the children, such as placing them in residential homes, placing them with relatives or teaching the older children to live independently. In the three-month period that ended in March, 28 adoptions were finalized and 31 children were placed with adoptive families.

A lack of properly trained foster parents is a concern, not only in Arkansas, but throughout the United States. This problem is made worse by turnover in the Human Services Department of employees who work with foster families.

After the state was sued by advocacy groups for children, it agreed to make improvements in the foster care system. One required improvement is to shorten the length of time for assessments of children's needs. Another requirement is for the state to recruit more foster parents and to provide training and support to foster families.

One of the most difficult duties of the child care system is finding foster homes for teenagers, because they often have behavior problems. Some legislators suggested that the state may need more group homes for problem teenagers.

Also, the state tries to keep siblings together, and to avoid what is called "foster care drift." That occurs when children languish in foster care, bouncing from one temporary home to another and never being place in an appropriate home or residential setting.

According to the director of the Children and Family Services Division the agency spends about $23 million a year on foster care. One reason for the growth in the number of foster children in Arkansas is that schools and state employees are doing a more thorough job of reporting abuse and neglect. So, caring for foster children is another use or taxpayers' dollars as officials struggle to help youngsters in need.

PSC Creates Telephone Fund

The state Public Service Commission has created a new Universal Service Fund to help local telephone companies provide service in rural areas, where costs are highest. According to the PSC order, all telecommunications companies in all state will pay into the fund. The amounts will be based on company revenues.