SUMTER, S.C. — Right now, South Carolina needs more foster parents, specifically for teenagers. On Friday, News 19 reported on kids sleeping in the Sumter County Department of Social Services (DSS) office waiting on placement in the foster care system. The Sumter Fire Department tells us that it performed two more inspections over the weekend and didn’t find any children in the building.
But, the problem persists. Now, we’re diving deeper into the need for those family or group home settings.
“It’s the state's children. It's South Carolina's children. It is South Carolina's responsibility to figure out how to make this work,” Crosswell Home for Children Executive Director Jerry Allred said. “I'm in my 34th year of this type of work. The need is greater than it's ever been. I think we need foster homes that can take large sibling groups…We need folks that can take kids with more behavior issues or mental health issues. Teens. That 13 to 17 year old age group is an area where there's a big need right now, and a lot of times, folks that are thinking about fostering or also maybe thinking about adoption, so your mind goes to those younger kids. But there's really a need for older kids right now.”
When it comes to the cause of this need, Allred says he thinks mental health issues and access to social media is contributing to the problem.
“It's getting rougher out there,” Allred said. “So if kids have more needs, then we, you know, foster parents, group care providers, teachers, counselors, we have to keep up with our training. We have to make sure that we're able to meet the needs of the kids that we see.”
At Crosswell Home, Allred says the goal is to meet this need while also hoping to reunify families in the end. The organization has room for 35 children, and Allred says Crosswell specializes in sibling groups, which is an area that DSS Chief External Affairs Officer Connelly-Anne Ragley says needs more volunteers.
“Those who are looking are interested in fostering, it really is a mission,” Ragley shared. “It's a calling. It is someone who is really willing to open their heart and open their home.”
Ragley says there’s also a particular need for group homes and foster parents to take in teenagers. Currently, Ragley says there are 3,475 youth in foster care with 33% — a little over 1,100 kids — who are 13 to 17 years old. As Ragley explains it, there are homes available, but the parents are open to housing children rather than teens, so “the issue is that they're not the right type of placement,” Ragley said.
“For example, I could have 100 people who are willing to take only infants, they only want infants, they only want toddlers, but I could have maybe five or six teenagers that are looking for a foster placement as foster homes,” Ragley elaborated.
“That's probably the largest dilemma that we have with DSS is finding families that will foster teens,” South Carolina Youth Advocate Program (SCYAP) Special Projects Coordinator John Connery detailed.
SCYAP partners with DSS to help foster parents get registered and matched with youth.
“There are foster parent needs in every county and that we’ll be with them,” Connery explained. “It's not that they do this alone. We’re with them every step of the way from the first day to start the licensing process, the training, the ongoing training, the support anytime night or day, seven days a week.”
“Children do come into care at 3 a.m. in the morning, and you know there are going to be times where a kid is going to have to come into the office and wait while we try to secure placement,” Ragley explained. “Foster care doesn't turn off at five o'clock. We have some incredible professionals that work around the clock to secure placement. And there are times where placement, it may take a couple of hours for placement to happen. And we do have some providers that we reach out to that are willing to work with us and try to find placement. It may be a temporary respite placement or a night to night situation, but our ultimate goal is to always try to find placement for that youth.”
Ragley says DSS is asking for more funding in this year’s state budget to help incentivize more people to become foster parents and to increase foster parent board rates.
“We know the cost of caring for these children is going up just like everything else with inflation. And so the agency is really taking steps and has been taking steps for quite some time to try to incentivize not only foster homes but also our group care providers or congregate care providers to take some of these children with higher needs,” Ragley shared. “In this current budget year that we're in, the General Assembly gave us additional funds to raise group care provider rates. It's actually the first time that they had been raised since 2014. We have a long way to go. But we also asked the General Assembly for this current year we received the funds and then this next budget cycle, we’ve asked for additional funds to raise provider rates as well.”
“That is not necessarily a DSS problem, it's a statewide problem,” Allred said. “We’ve got to have funding to pay for those services. We’ve got to have services to pay for. And so it's really a system issue, not a specific agency.”
Anyone interested in learning more about becoming a foster parent and the qualifications to do so are encouraged to visit HeartfeltCalling.org and submit an interest form.
In addition to legal qualifications, such as passing an FBI fingerprint background check, Ragley says there are characteristics that can help determine whether a person might be a good fit to become a foster parent.
“They need to be compassionate, they need to be a listening ear,” Ragley explained. “[Teenagers in foster care] need someone to be a caring adult in their life. They need someone to help them plant seeds of confidence and as they prepare to become a young adult and eventually go out on their own, they really need that person to care for them, to help them get on the path and to be a reinforcement of positive behavior. And that's really what we need when we're looking at foster parents, especially those looking to care for teenagers and sibling groups.”
“It really has to come from the heart; this is not something that people just on a whim do,” Connery added. “This is a partnership. We're not just going to get your license and drop the child off and, ‘See ya!’ We're with you every step of the way.”
To learn more about getting involved with SCYAP, you can visit SCYAP.org.