Opioid crisis strains foster care

CHILD PROTECTION

A thousand more Ohio children are in foster care this Christmas than last, and advocates say the epidemic of opioid addiction is on track to overwhelm the state’s county-based system of child protection.

“If this pattern continues, what is our system going to look like? We could have 20,000 children in custody by 2020, and we could be spending more than half a billion dollars in placement costs,” said Scott Britton, assistant director of the Public Children Services Association of Ohio. “Those numbers are simply unsupportable.”

The association released a report Thursday that showed the number of children in agency custody increased 23 percent from July 2013 to October 2017,

to 15,510. “We need help,” Britton said.

The surge is a sad reversal in foster-care trends for Ohio. From 2002 to 2010, the association says, the state led the nation in reducing outof-home placements with a 42 percent decline.

Now, the system’s trajectory is mirroring the wave of drug abuse that also has led to record numbers of overdose deaths. The federal government said this week that 4,329 Ohioans died of overdoses in 2016, an increase of 24 percent from the previous year. The toll makes Ohio’s rate of drug-overdose deaths second-highest in the nation at 39.1 for every 100,000 people, behind West Virginia’s rate of 52 per 100,000.

Many of those who struggle with addiction are parents who no longer provide adequate care for their children.

“Many of these kids watched their parents overdose or die,” said Angela Sausser, executive director of the Public Children Services Association of Ohio. “They are missing milestones with their families such as The number of Ohio children in foster care has risen alarmingly since 2013. Officials blame the opioid epidemic. birthday parties and ringing in the new year, and many are staying in care longer due to their parents’ relapsing.”

Sausser said the association is “sounding the alarm” and calling for more resources and new approaches to keep children safe. Ohio, unlike most other states, relies on its 88 counties to raise local funds, contributing a relatively modest amount of state money for child-protective services.

Ohio legislators did add $15 million this year to the $45 million that the state kicks in to match federal and local funding each year. But, the

association said, foster-care costs alone have risen by an estimated $45 million since last year. Even if Ohio were to double the state allotment, it still would rank among the bottom dwellers in childprotection funding.

“We really need some visionary leadership to design a better system,” Britton said.

Children also are entering care at younger ages and staying longer. Few counties have the number of foster parents needed to keep up with demand. And the increases reflected in the report don’t even take into account all the kids who are being cared for by grandparents and other relatives.

“Ohio needs a long-term solution to this crisis — and leadership to get us there before agency budgets collapse and our workforce jumps ship,” Sausser said. “With the projected increases, we will have children sleeping in countyagency lobbies with no available foster family to take them in.”