The children in foster care in Lowndes County are in desperate need of more homes to take them in.
This according to Iris Joiner, regional director for Region IV North of the Mississippi Department of Human Services. Joiner and Kessle Hughes, the region’s resources home supervisor, say Lowndes County needs 40 to 50 more homes to open doors to children who, for whatever reason, cannot live with their own families.
It is not just a problem with Lowndes County — every county in the state could use more families and individuals willing to take in one or more of the state’s 5,000 foster children.
“We are constantly recruiting for foster homes as we speak,” Joiner told The Dispatch last week.
In October 2014, there were approximately 190 foster children in Region IV North, which serves 10 counties, including the Golden Triangle. Now, there are more than 233.
During the same time period, the number of foster homes in the region dropped from 88 to 80.
The number of foster children has been growing due to increasing drug use — particularly meth — among both parents and children in the area, according to Latoya Taylor, the area social work supervisor for Lowndes County. These increasing numbers, combined with the difficulty in placing large sibling groups, teens and children with special needs, mean that the Division of Family and Children’s Services is stretched thin trying to place children in safe homes.
When there is not an appropriate home available in a child’s community, they are sent to a home outside the county, according to Joiner. Away from their teachers, coaches, friends, church families. Sometimes even away from their siblings.
That is why counties need more foster homes. Even if the homes do not have children placed with them right away, it is important that they be available for future children, according to officials.
Recruiting efforts
Jessica Michael, division director with the Special Projects Unit in DFCS, works on recruiting foster homes for children throughout Mississippi.
Under a five-year federal grant that ended last September, social workers with DFCS went into communities around the state and worked to recruit foster parents. They went into doctor’s offices. They worked with teachers and coaches. And they enlisted preachers and churches to help publicize the need for foster homes.
“I don’t know that people realize,” Michael said, “that it’s not just a big city problem or a poor people problem, that there are children in their own communities that are in foster care and that it’s really all of our problem. It’s Mississippi’s children.”
DFCS is now working on a new recruitment plan which will begin in June.
Now that social workers have seen what works and does not work with community-based recruiting, Michael said, they can fine tune the plan to work better and roll it out throughout all of Mississippi, rather than just the handful of communities it reached in the years prior. The efforts are still in the planning stages, but Michael predicts they will involve a lot of the same community-based recruiting DFCS did under the federal grant.
Goals
The families needed for the children not only need to treat them like their own children, but they need to be willing to work with the families of the children, as well, if necessary, according to Taylor and Ryakko Hickman, an area social work supervisor.
Retired couples are in an ideal circumstance to foster kids because they have more time on their hands, according to Joiner. But single people can also foster. Joiner would like to see more nurses and police officers, teachers and social workers — anyone willing to provide a safe, stable home for children in the system.
Becoming a foster parent
To become a licensed foster parent, individuals and couples must fill out an application, be fingerprinted and undergo a background check. They also undergo the Safe Home Study, during which social workers visit the home. They spend at least an hour and a half there, interviewing the potential parents and any children that already reside in the home.
“You can’t just go into a home and say, ‘Oh, this looks appropriate,’ ” Joiner said.
Potential parents also take a six-week training course that prepares them for the problems they may deal with as a foster parents. It is hard for children to be separated from their parents and sometimes their siblings, and new foster parents may face issues as complicated as dealing with a traumatized teenager, to as seemingly simple as figuring out what kinds of food a small child likes. Many children enter foster homes with behavioral issues due to being suddenly taken from their home and put in a new environment, according to Hickman.
“Sometimes we may get phone calls from the teachers and other school professionals in regards to their behavior, but we also try to make them understand that they’re going through a lot,” Joiner said. “I couldn’t imagine someone taking me out of my home. I think I would act out a little bit as well … We have to be really, really sensitive and…have a lot of empathy and compassion for the kids we’re working with. As well as their parents. It’s a lot.”
Children often build a lasting relationship with their foster families, Hickman said. They become part of the child’s emotional support system and often become someone a child can call after they grow up.
“It builds a lasting relationship,” Hickman said.
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