NORFOLK, Va. — I started tracking a concerning trend in Virginia a couple of years ago.
Back in 2022, the folks at The Up Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children and families, reached out to me with a problem. The number of adults willing to open their homes to a foster child was shrinking fast. When I followed up this week, I learned the issue has gotten worse.
"We're still in the thick of a crisis" warns Sabrina Carr, an outreach coordinator at the center. "We've turned away hundreds and hundreds of children," she adds.
Watch: Foster Care Awareness Month with The Up Center
Carr estimates around 700 children here at home need a safe place to live. In the meantime, these kids live in hotels with caseworkers, or in other temporary shelter.
"It's a big transition for them to leave the only home that they've ever known to go to a stranger's home" Carr explained to me when I visited her office. "That foster parent is really going to give them that nurturing that they're going to need to help them with that," she added.
It's a sad truth across Virginia — and the nation. There is a dire need for foster parents everywhere.
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"We are probably in a worse crisis than we were a couple of years ago," warns Sharon Reams, The Up Center's Director of Youth Services.
Reams is optimistic, however, recent action in Richmond could help. The Parental Child Safety Placement Program becomes law in July. It creates guidelines to help children living with vetted relatives after being removed from their homes.
"This will afford biological family members and kinship, maybe friends of the family, the same opportunities and supports that traditional foster parents receive," Reams explains.
Watch: Need for foster care families rises sharply post pandemic
"This will afford biological family members and kinship, maybe friends of the family, the same opportunities and supports that traditional foster parents receive," Reams explains.
That support includes financial assistance and case management help. It could also reduce the strain on the foster care system by cutting the need for outside parents to step in. The goal of the legislation, according to both Democrats and Republicans who supported it, is to keep families together.
"Family issues are family issues," says State Senator Angelia Williams Graves of Norfolk, one of the bill's co-sponsors. "Whether you're Republican, Democrat, black, white, pink, green, purple, it doesn't matter," she adds.
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Over the years, Virginia has lagged when it comes to placing children in foster care with relatives. On average, that happens in about 35 percent of cases nationally. Virginia's rate is closer to 15 percent.
"To keep families together, especially if you have family members who are willing to take on that additional responsibility, (...) I thought it was a good thing," Graves adds.
Back at The Up Center, I asked Sharon Reams if the new law could be one of the keys to addressing the shortage of foster parents. She told me she thinks it will.
"I hope it will," she adds.
To learn more about how to become a foster parent, contact The Up Center here.
