Arizona is in need of people to be foster parents.
While there are many foster parents in the state’s metropolitan areas in Maricopa and Pinal counties, there still aren’t enough, particularly in this part of the Grand Canyon State.
That often means that children who end up in foster care from here have to end up relocating. Sometimes, that means going to another state depending on the situation, although Arizona receives many foster children from states like Texas and New Mexico.
It’s a difficult prospect, particularly for a child and particularly when the goal is to eventually reunite the child with his or her actual family.
Foster adoption is often coordinated between various groups, Catholic Charities for instance, and the Arizona Department of Child Safety.
The agency used to be called Child Protective Services but had its named changed during a reorganization after serious issues were uncovered about its effectiveness.
Chris Hileman is a foster care program coordinator with Intermountain Centers for Human Development, a Tucson-based agency that works with foster children.
Hileman was in Cottonwood last week in an effort to give the basics about what potential foster parents can expect and to hopefully get more people who are competent to sign up for the job.
It’s not always easy.
“Nobody gets into this for the money,” Hileman said.
It’s true that foster parents do receive money from taking in children but with state budgets what they are, Hileman said that amounts to about $18 a day in Arizona.
Children with special needs can see more money to help support them but with that comes a need for more specialized training to care for the child, Hileman said.
Of course, needs are relative. Every child is going to experience emotional trauma when they are forcibly separated from their families, regardless of how bad their situation was, Hileman said.
That can have an impact on child’s behavior.
There’s also the fact that people willing to be foster parents have to let the state come into their homes, Hileman said, with checklists, background checks and paperwork.
“That’s not fun,” Hileman said.
Not to undercut the need for foster parents, Hileman wanted to drive the point home that this kind of work is something someone really has to want to do.
Hileman said his agency started up 42 years ago, initially working primarily with American Indian children. The scope has since grown, he said.
There are more than 100,000 kids removed from their homes across the country at any given time, Hileman said.
Arizona accounts for around 17,000 of those children.
“The number is really rising quickly,” Hileman said.
Ideally, when a situation arises where a child must be taken from a home, the foster care system would like to see them put in what’s called a kinship home, with a relative or someone like a good family friend. After that, the state and the agencies working in this field look to foster parents.
As a last resort, the children are put into group homes, Hileman said.
Hileman said that as of 2014, there were nearly 1,600 kids in group homes in Arizona.
Ultimately, Hileman said that just over half of foster children end up back with their families.
If they don’t Hileman said sometime foster parents look at adoption, although that’s not a requirement of being a foster parent.
