Irene Clements (center, in blue) with her adopted children, some of the 127 kids she and her husband have fostered over the years.
Each day for the next two weeks, we’ll count down 10 of the biggest stories The Imprint published in 2018. In each, we’ll connect readers with a few links to our coverage of this issue.
Today, we begin with the recruitment of foster parents. Last year, The Imprint published a white paper on how states were faring in the area of non-relative foster homes amidst a continued surge in the overall number of foster youth. This year, we widened out the project to include a full view of state foster care capacity, which also includes the use of kinship placements and group homes.
In successive years, we have found that states are continuing to struggle in the area of recruiting and retaining foster homes, which has driven up the reliance on kin and group settings in many places.
Lead Read
Who Cares: A National Count of Foster Homes and Families is the web home of our research and reporting project on foster care capacity. Visit this site for loads of data, and stories, on the recent trends in foster care.
Other Reads
Jeremy Loudenback on the unforeseen challenges to re-licensing every foster parent in California.
Irene Clements, op-ed: We Have to Stop Losing Half of Foster Parents in The First Year.
Christie Renick on how recruitment of Native American foster homes in Minnesota has been stymied by “lifetime prohibitions.”
Denise Goodman on how to crack the foster parent recruitment code.
John Kelly on new research showing that five years after opening, most foster homes are long gone.
Without your support, stories like these go untold.
And thanks to NewsMatch, your donation will be doubled.
