Virginia should do more to help foster kids find homes with family, advocates say

April 02-- Apr. 2--Virginia is full of grandparents and other relatives eager to take care of children otherwise headed for foster care, but the state lags the rest of the nation when it comes to making this common-sense idea happen, new data show.

The problem, advocates for children say, is money.

When a relative wants to take in a child, they don't receive the payments that foster care parents or group homes do.

"If you're going to be a foster parent for my kid, you'd get $700 a month; if my brother does, he gets nothing," said state Sen. Monty Mason, D-Williamsburg.

"Real world case: I had a couple come in, he works at the ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control department) warehouse ... his sister's not not doing well, and they've got two hours to decide what to do about her kids. If they don't help, the boy goes to Virginia Beach, the girl to Roanoke," Mason said. "So of course they take the kids. Now they've got five and debt's piling up and they're struggling."

Only 7 percent of Virginia children in foster care have a place with a relative, the Annie E. Casey Foundation's latest analysis of federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System data show.

That percentage hasn't changed in 10 years, and is a fraction of the national average of 32 percent.

Mason says the figures miss an important trend -- the overall number of children in foster care in Virginia is down, in part because of a stepped-up effort to find alternatives. Often, that's an informal agreement for a relative to care for a child.

"But there's no help for them ... and you know, you bring a 13-year-old boy into your home, your grocery bill is going to soar," Mason said.

That kind of informal diversion doesn't count as kinship care, but even when a child formally enters the foster care system and is placed with relatives, there's no stipend, Mason said.

Tackling that needs to be a top priority, said Allison Gilbreath, a policy analyst with Voices for Virginia's Children, a non-profit advocacy group.

"All the data show children do much better with kinship placement," she said. "They usually know the child better. They're more likely to stick with them, too."

Children in kinship care are more likely to be adopted, or to end up back with their birth parents, which is supposed to be the system's top goal, Gilbreath said.

Last year, the General Assembly authorized the state to tap into a federal program that pays some kinship guardians. But only about 100 kids are eligible for this, Gilbreath said.

The reason is that to get the assistance, the child must have lived with the relative for six months, and the relative must have completed state training to become a certified foster parent. In addition, the federal program says it won't pay unless the child is never going to return to his or her birth parents -- a decision children can make only after they've turned 14.

Gilbreath said she hopes Virginia will expand access by creating a separate funding stream for kinship care, as other states have.

Virginia foster care kids are far less likely than young people elsewhere in the nation to find a permanent placement -- only 24 percent of Virginia children do, compared to 43 percent for the nation as a whole, according to the data compiled by the Casey Foundation.

Since many kids in foster care got there because of trauma at home, they often need help that other children don't -- and making sure they have access to those services ought to be another state priority, Gilbreath said.

"You may have taken in a child and suddenly you have to figure out, 'How do I sign them up for school? Where's the other help they need?' " Gilbreath said.

She's hoping the new federal Family First Prevention Services Act will bring money and evidence-based services to help kids. Mason, meanwhile, sponsored the legislation this year that aims at getting Virginia on a fast track to tap those federal resources.

Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com

___

(c)2019 the Daily Press (Newport News, Va.)

Visit the Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) at www.dailypress.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.