Fla. foster care system under strain amid opioid crisis
Florida’s foster care system is under siege from an unexpected, unrelenting enemy: the opioid crisis.
As a result, child welfare agencies statewide are grappling with a looming crisis of their own. Palm Beach County alone has seen a 115 percent increase in the number of children removed from homes in the last three months.
“The amount of kids coming into the (foster care) system as a result of parental substance abuse is unconscionable,” Larry Rein, president and CEO of ChildNet of Palm Beach and Broward counties, told The Post Editorial Board.
Rein said substance abuse, historically the top reason for child removals, has steadily grown the past couple of years. And, according to data captured by the state Department of Children and Families (DCF), the spike is owed exclusively to the unyielding opioid epidemic.
Drug abuse doesn’t happen in a vacuum. ChildNet and other agencies that provide foster care services to about 7,500 kids in Florida have sounded the alarm since last year that focusing resources solely on addicts or would-be users is only a partial solution.
There is also the cost that the family endures. That’s true especially for the most vulnerable: children 5 years old and younger. Statewide, there’s been a 38 percent increase in the number of children under the age of 5 who have been removed from homes because of substance abuse in the past four years. In Palm Beach County, that number is closer to 50 percent; creating a strain on demand for more foster homes.
“We’d managed to get it to where we had no kids under the age of 5 in group (home) care,” Rein lamented. “But now, at any given time, we have several.”
The bottom line, says Rein: “We’ve got to find a way to stem this tide of removals.”
Bluntly put, these vulnerable children are part of the ongoing collateral damage in the opioid epidemic that is ravaging our communities. They join the ranks of young paramedics suffering from post-traumatic stress, babies born to opioid-addicted mothers and hospitals straining under the increased financial burden.
We need to get better at addressing this. Children’s lives are at stake. And the overburdened system meant to help them is faltering as it runs out of foster care beds.
According to Rein, about 30 percent of child removals in Palm Beach were for substance abuse in 2014. Last year, that climbed to more than 43 percent. And in the first two months of this year, removals for substance abuse had already jumped to 46 percent.
Rein compiled the figures ahead of a March meeting with U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, R-Boca Raton, to discuss the opioid epidemic’s impact on the foster care system.
This is not just a Florida issue, of course. Two new multi-state reports from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show definitively that rates of overdose deaths and drug-related hospitalizations have increased child-welfare caseloads. The authors find that a 10 percent increase in drug-related hospitalizations is correlated with a 3.3 percent increase in foster-care entry rates.
Red flags should be flying because these increases are being seen most with younger children who are dependent on others to provide basic necessities, like preparing meals or bathing or having clean clothes to wear.
Yes, Florida lawmakers have responded to advocates’ requests for better funding in recent years, providing for about 5,300 foster families to be licensed.
But, as Rein notes, it’s going to take time for some of that new funding to work its way into the system. Meanwhile, “we’re running out of individual foster homes to place children,” he said. It costs roughly $17,000 annually to place a child in a foster home, but $57,000 to place that same child in a group home for a year because of added costs, like round-theclock professional staffing.
An easy fix presents itself in the form of more foster care recruiters. So if there was ever a time to become a foster parent, this is it.
But the goal must include repairing the family so that the child can go back to a stable home, Rein says. But it is common for addicts to try to kick their habits multiple times. And many never succeed.
This we do know. Opioid addiction claims hundreds of overdose victims daily. A 5-year-old whose parents care less about their child than finding the next fix shouldn’t be among them.
Palm Beach County has seen a 115 percent increase in the number of children removed from homes and placed in foster care in the last three months.