Ventura to Offer Finder Fees for Foster Parents

Faced with a shortage of licensed foster parents, the Ventura County Human Services Agency is pitching a plan that would pay existing foster parents to recruit new ones.

The strategy, part of a broad recruitment effort, would reward foster parents with $200 for each parent they bring into the system. Half the money would be paid to the headhunter when his or her recruit is licensed and the other half paid after the recruit accepts a foster child.

The recruiting effort also would include television, radio and newspaper announcements urging adults to become licensed as foster parents and a push to get state legislators to increase the monthly allowances foster parents are paid.

Social workers hope the plan could lead to the licensing of 25 new foster families per year. Since 1991, the number of licensed foster homes has dropped from 363 to 152, while the number of children in the system has slowly increased.

There are about 700 children in the county’s foster care system.