The past year saw many new challenges confront foster care in Georgia, and the nation, due to COVID-19. Here are some ways to fix foster care.
1. Understand how COVID affects foster care
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to keep children and families inside during this time of self-isolation, more children face the risk of abuse and neglect while at home. Child welfare workers have had to suspend monthly visits with foster care families. Foster parents are faced with the difficulty of getting the services they need.
2. Online training and support for foster parents
Foster families always rely on community support, but they need it more than ever now. With COVID, foster parents have found it increasingly difficult in regards to attaining their required training hours. Foster parents also need more online support services, including online orientations, social media support groups, and more virtual training opportunities.
3. Online visitations
COVID has disrupted visitations between the child and the birth family. Foster parents need a stronger support system in place with virtual conferencing and better supervision when it comes to online visitations between the child and the birth family.
4. Rules, policies and paperwork
COVID has led to many agencies being understaffed, there have been delays in new foster parents being trained and licensed, birth parents have met difficulties in attaining the requirements for reunification, and the adoption process for those children who are unable to be reunified has slowed as well. There needs to be less paperwork, less “red tape” and more action on behalf of the child.
Credit: contributed
Credit: contributed
5. Reunification reform
While the end goal of foster care is reunification between the child and the birth family, premature reunification often leads to a child’s reentry into the foster care system or even death. Furthermore, current law allows uprooting and placing the child with an unemployed relative who has ongoing domestic violence, anger issues, and a substance abuse addiction simply because they’re blood relatives, even if the child has never met that relative.
6. Therapy
Many times, children placed into foster care suffer from mental health issues. COVID has only exasperated this, and triggered deeper issues of anxiety as well. Issues from anxiety can manifest themselves in a number of ways. Professional therapy and counseling is essential for the well-being of the child.
7. Become a foster parent
With roughly 425,000 foster children in the United States alone, the need is strong for good foster homes and foster parents. Indeed, the need has become even stronger since COVID began affecting families. By becoming a foster family, you can provide stability, safety and hope for a child in foster care.
8. Helping those who age out
Each year, around 20,000 foster children age out of the system and attempt to begin life on their own.
For most young adults leaving home for the first time, they have someone to rely on when facing challenges, difficulties, and trials. Whether the problems are financial, emotional, school-oriented, or simply a flat tire that needs to be fixed, most young adults can pick up a phone and call an adult who is quick to help. Youth in foster care who age out of the system many times do not have this type of support; no one to call, no one who can come to their aid. Youth who age out of the system face an array of problems and challenges.
To be sure, these challenges and difficulties have only been exasperated during COVID.
9 Kinship care
When possible, kinship care should be considered. Kinship foster care is an out-of-home arrangement for full-time care by relatives, including grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and sometimes even older siblings. Kinship care allows families to stay together, and studies indicate it helps improve mental health, stability, and behavior.
10. Co-parenting
For many children in foster care, they come from a long cycle of family members placed in foster care before them. By showing compassion, by reaching out, and by helping birth parents of children in foster care, we not only help them, we also help their children as well. Co-parenting sees the foster parent working alongside the biological parents of the child.
11. Child sex trafficking
COVID is not only resulting in an increase in child abuse and neglect, there are also fears that the pandemic will also result in a future increase in child pornography and child sex trafficking. More advocates are needed to bring an end to this form of modern-day slavery for children.
12. Provide relief and support for caseworkers
Agencies need to ensure that their caseworkers are safe and not at risk. In addition, our caseworkers need to be given more time, more funding, more resources, and more understanding from the public, from the courts, and from foster parents during this time of COVID.
13. Faith-based help
Today’s faith-based organizations have an opportunity to truly impact the foster care system in a positive way. Faith-based groups can provide a safe, consistent, warm, and inviting atmosphere for children and birth family members to meet during visitation sessions.
While there have been steps to improve foster care in Georgia, and across the nation, during this time of COVID, there is still much to do. Indeed, foster care is ever in need of reforming. We need to reshape the conversation about foster care, educating others about foster parenting, the challenges the children face, and how others can help without being a foster parent.
Dr. John DeGarmo is founder and director of The Foster Care Institute in Monticello. He and his wife have had more than 60 children come through their home in Jasper County. He is a consultant to foster care agencies, child welfare organizations, and legal firms.
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