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On Point | Podcast

Inside America's critical shortage of foster care homes

On Point | Podcast

WBUR

Talk Show, Daily News, News, Npr, On Point, Daily

4.23.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In some places in the U.S., available foster care homes have been cut as much as 60%. Why is this happening and can it be fixed?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is on point. I'm Megna Chakrabardi. The U.S. foster care system is broken. The number

0:17.0

of licensed foster homes dropped last year in more than half of states, and in some states

0:24.3

the drop was profound. For example, South Carolina lost more than 61 percent of its available

0:32.1

foster homes last year. Meanwhile, more children continue to enter the child welfare system.

0:39.9

The shortages have forced several states to seek temporary shelter for children wherever

0:44.8

it's available, including casino hotels, emergency rooms, retirement homes, and even former

0:52.8

juvenile detention facilities. The COVID pandemic pushed the crisis out into the open, but it has

1:00.3

been brewing for years. Jewel Harris is 24 and lives in Ohio. She's been in and out of the

1:09.1

foster care system since she was three years old. She aged out. Enrique lives in California.

1:15.9

He went into foster care when he was 11. He's 25 now and has also aged out of the system.

1:22.4

Glenda Wright is in Kentucky. She's 27 and first entered the foster care system when she was

1:29.5

two. She often received kinship care from her grandmother, but her grandmother died when

1:35.2

Glenda was 13. She's also aged out of the system. This is what they experienced.

1:41.7

Rose from like 13 years old and we'd spend hours upon hours inside of the actual children's

1:49.5

services agency. So in that lobby, you'd see a bunch of different kids with a bunch of trash

1:54.9

bags just sitting there and waiting and waiting. Then you get out of school and it's like, Oh,

1:59.7

no, you can't go back there. You have some the case workers there to pick you up and you have

2:03.6

to go to the agency. They have completely packed up all your things and trash bags. You don't

2:07.5

know what they left, what they missed, or what they decided to disregard or discard. And that

2:13.2

in itself was very demeaning. You lose your sense of autonomy. You feel like you don't have

2:17.7

any control over your life. There was times where I've had to stay at the command post,

2:24.2

which is in downtown LA. And it's like a big DCFS office kind of where when you're unhoused,

...

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