US: Kids Awaiting Foster Care Placement Are Being “Housed” in Jails and Offices
Truthout – July 12, 2023
By age 17, more than half of youth who are removed from their homes will have an encounter with the legal system through arrest, conviction or detention. Critics describe this process as the foster-care-to-prison-pipeline. But for many foster children, the pipeline is activated the moment they enter care. This is because child welfare authorities in several states are placing kids in juvenile detention facilities – as well as in hotels, casinos and offices – due to a shortage of foster homes. They literally have not found other places to send them. According to National Public Radio, more than half of U.S. states have seen a decline in the number of licensed foster homes since 2021. Child welfare advocates blame several factors for the decline: people’s reluctance to take strangers into their homes due to COVID, and the 2019 passage of the Family First Prevention Services Act, a bill that was meant to boost the number of kinship placements with relatives and family friends and phase out congregate care settings, including group homes, that warehouse youth and have been rife with reported abuse.
https://truthout.org/articles/kids-awaiting-foster-care-placement-are-being-housed-in-jails-and-offices/