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Study: Arkansas' foster care system fails some children Wednesday, Mar 5, 2008 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - The state is not doing all it can to find permanent homes for children in foster care, a study released Tuesday concluded. Over the past five years, nearly 1,000 children in foster care reached the age of 18 and left the system without ever being adopted into a permanent home, the study by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families found. The number of children "aging out" of the system in fiscal year 2006 was 216, up from 180 five years earlier, the study showed. The number of children aging out of the system in any given year is small compared to the total number of children in the system - nearly 9,000 were in foster care in 2006 - but every year more names are added to the list of children who have slipped through the cracks, said Jennifer Ferguson, legal director for the advocacy group and author of the study, titled "Finding a Family for a Lifetime: Aging Out of the Foster Care System." "As for the problems that these kids face, research shows that they're much more likely to become parents at a young age, be homeless, they lack a high school education and they are more likely to engage in criminal activities," Ferguson said in a conference call with reporters. The study found that black children are disproportionately represented among those who never get adopted. Black children make up about 21 percent of Arkansas children, according to 2000 census data, but made up about 35 percent of children who aged out of the foster care system in 2006. That year, of the 216 children who left the system, just 57 had their caregivers' rights terminated, which is a necessary legal step before a child can be adopted. The system also should do more to ensure that when children in state custody turn 18 they have the basic skills they need to live independently, such as applying for jobs and balancing a checkbook, Ferguson said. The Division of Children and Family Services currently offers a program to train children 14 and older in basic life skills, but the study found that some eligible children are not participating in the program. The study also found fault with the state's record-keeping, noting that the state keeps track of the number of assessments conducted in a year but not the number of children assessed, even though some children may be assessed more than once in a year. Also, some children in the system are eligible for federal assistance for post-secondary education but do not receive the assistance, the study found. The study noted that although states have had the option since 1999 to extend Medicaid to former foster children until they turn 21, Arkansas has not done so. Julie Munsell, spokesman for the state Department of Human Services, which oversees the foster care program, said Tuesday the study makes many good points, and she said DHS is already working on some fixes. "One of the things that we really appreciate about the advocates' report is the fact that it does help diagnose some of these systemic issues so that we can spend less time trying to diagnose them ourselves and more time looking for some solutions to them," Munsell said. But she said the state faces several challenges, including limited resources, the reluctance of some prospective parents to adopt older children and the fact that some foster children are not interested in being adopted, developing their skills or furthering their education. Ferguson acknowledged there would always be some children who do not get adopted. "If you can't find homes, then the child welfare system needs to help them find adults that can serve as mentors to them, to provide advice and guidance along the way as they enter adulthood," she said. Ferguson said a proposed initiated act by the Family Council to ban unmarried couples from adopting or serving as foster parents in Arkansas would exacerbate problems highlighted in the study. "We don't have enough homes for children, whether they're foster care homes or adoptive homes, and to ban another group of people without letting DCFS make that decision of who's capable of being foster care and adoptive parents just takes away more homes that we desperately need in this state," she said. Jerry Cox, executive director of the Family Council, said the state already does not place children in foster homes with unmarried couples. As for adoptive homes, Cox said his organization is working to spread the word about the need for more adoptive parents. "We believe that the increased awareness that this act will raise will cause there to be more adoptive parents here in Arkansas than we've had before," he said. |
