More Needed for Foster Children, Supervisors Told

With county caseworkers overwhelmed by monitoring more than 3,700 foster children, the best step the Social Services Agency can take is to increase its ranks, a foster-care task force said in a report released Tuesday.

In fact, the task force recommended that the Board of Supervisors spend $2.7 million to hire 68 new caseworkers and create a marketing plan to help recruit and retain foster parents.

“There are only 300 foster families in the county,” said Jim Palmer, Orange County Rescue Mission president and task force member.

“So recruitment is a big thing that we have to address.”

One of the report’s suggestions is that the county develop a public relations campaign to recruit more potential foster parents, including single adults, said Jill Arthur, another task force member.

The idea is to have successful foster parents share their experiences, which task force members believe could result in more children being placed in foster homes and, possibly, being adopted.

“Each year, about 428 children are adopted,” Arthur said. “Could it be possible to increase that to 600 a year with a marketing push?”

The task force also recommended setting aside $500,000 for a grant pool to help pay for special, unbudgeted needs like insurance for foster children and transportation.

Another suggestion was to budget $100,000 to help young adults, ages 18 to 21, who have left foster care with housing, transportation, medical care and employment training.

The recommendations were received favorably by the board.

But the supervisors said they could not approve the allocations because they are not part of the county’s strategic financial plan.

They did, however, give the county Executive Office 60 days to implement some of the program recommendations and told staff to consider the financial requests at the next strategic financial meeting in October.