thecommunitywewill.org

Back in the early to mid-1990s we saw a huge influx of children being placed in out of home care nationally.  The overriding belief at that time was in order to ensure that children were safe, we must place them in foster care and away from their biological family.   The problem we began to run into in the late 1990s was that these children, became adults and they began to emancipate from the foster care system with no adult to guide them or support them.  They had no family and no sense of permanence.  These children, now adults became homeless involved in the adult corrections and mental health systems and unemployed at rates much higher than young adults who had not become involved in the child welfare system or who had achieved permanence through adoption or guardianship. 

When we as a social work profession looked back at many of those families we had removed the children from we found that many parents were no longer a threat to the youth or there were family members willing and able to care for the children that we never contacted.  We also found that many of these young adults had experienced multiple foster care placements and had never known stability or felt any sense of permanence as a child.  Foster care was never meant to be permanent but somehow we as a nation had allowed an entire generation of children to grow up in temporary foster homes where at a moment's notice or after making a typical adolescent mistake they could be moved to another home. 

Over the past few years this trend has begun to change nationally and the number of children in foster care has dropped significantly as children remain safely in their homes or are moved along to adoption or guardianship more quickly.  However, this safe reduction has not occurred in Nevada. In fact the number of children in care has risen over the past few years.  Although in some cases children can never be left safely with their parents, in the majority of situations providing various services and resources to families can ensure safety for children and avoid out of home placements in foster care.  Providing prevention services to families has significantly increased and the number of children in care has continued to decrease throughout the nation without compromising safety. 

Finally, in these difficult economic times funding prevention services has become increasingly difficult and a real risk exists that without prevention services the numbers of children in temporary homes may again increase.  That is why a concerted effort is needed to ensure families are kept together and that children who do need to be placed in temporary foster care find permanent homes through adoption and guardianship quickly and safely.  Nationally, many states and counties have worked with their Community Based Organizations and private Foundations to develop a seamless prevention service array that aims to keep families together or help children find that one permanent adult in their lives.  Through the Community We Will project it is clear that Clark county is on that same path.

Paul Buehler, MSW, LCSW

Casey Family Programs