Despite Pandemic Holdups, Christians Keep Shifting Foster Care Approach

Advocates address COVID-19 fallout and focus on family unity.

For tens of thousands of vulnerable children whose lives and families were already unstable before COVID-19 hit, the pandemic brought further disruption, unpredictability, and loss.

Prior to 2020, the child welfare system in America had begun to adjust its approach. The focus among Christian ministries, advocates, and government programs had increasingly turned to prevention and early intervention for at-risk families to get the support they need.

There’s been a “huge shift” recently, according to Cheri Williams, senior vice president of domestic programs at Bethany Christian Services, as systems work to find ways to “keep kids safe and protected with their [biological] families.”

The Families First legislation, passed in 2018, addressed strains in the foster care system by promoting ways to keep children being removed unnecessarily from their parents. The law offered more help for kinship guardians—relatives who could care for children in need—while aiming to reduce the need for fostering and limit group home options to the most difficult situations.

The coronavirus derailed some of those plans, as everything from funding to placements to preventative programs slowed to a halt amid government lockdowns and insufficient, makeshift virtual solutions. Agencies and advocates are now attempting to move forward with pre-pandemic plans, but the consequences of the past couple of years still linger.

Foster care entrances were down by 14 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to data released late last year, but not for lack of need. Rather, there were fewer opportunities to see and report abuse or neglect.

The Administration for Children and Families found that parental terminations were down by ...

Continue reading...

from Christianity Today Magazine
Umn ministry