There’s no overstating the difference that having a loving home makes in a child’s life.
A safe and caring home provides stability. It provides comfort and security and enables children to explore and develop, giving them the best chance to grow into happy, successful adults.
Every child deserves to grow up in a home like this. But for too long, Arizona was failing its responsibility to help our most at-risk children find their forever homes. Not anymore.
Thanks to the dedication of our child safety workers, combined with support from nonprofit organizations and the faith-based community, Arizona now leads the nation in safely lowering its foster care population, and the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) has become a model of reform and improving outcomes for kids.
We still have more work to do. More children who need loving homes and more improvements to be made. That’s why today we are working to build on our progress, while ensuring at-risk families have the resources and opportunities they need to thrive.
To understand how far we’ve come in such a short period of time, consider it was only two years ago that our child safety system was facing crisis.
The number of children in foster care had reached an all-time high, at over 19,000. Caseworkers were overburdened and unable to keep up with caseloads. The system was broken, and we made fixing it one of our top priorities.
Today, the number of children in foster care has been safely decreased by 20 percent, and is dropping faster than anywhere in the country.
The number of open reports exceeding the 60-day closure deadline, known as inactive cases, have been reduced from over 16,000 to 178 — an all-time low, and well below the legislative-set benchmark of 1,000 cases.
People calling into the Child Abuse Hotline now wait on average less than 30 seconds — down from 10 minutes — to talk to a representative.
And in the past year, Arizona has found safety and permanency for nearly 11,000 at-risk children.
This dramatic turnaround did not happen by accident. With new leadership at DCS, Arizona deliberately set to work identifying and reforming failing processes, establishing partnerships with community and faith-based organizations, improving policy, and, most importantly, focusing on providing better results for kids in need.
For example, in 2015, Arizona helped keep families together by launching the CarePortal, a public-private partnership connecting families in crisis with local faith-based organizations. The way it works is when a family has a need, such as a crib or home repair, CarePortal connects DCS caseworkers with local churches to help fill that need. To date, over 60 churches have participated in the program, helping over 700 at-risk families.
Assistance also has been expanded through the “grandmother stipend.” The policy, which took effect in July 2017, expands relief for family members who care for children in the absence of a parent, commonly referred to as kinship care. With the additional expanded assistance in place, the number of children receiving it and being cared for by family and loved ones has tripled from 708 to 2,146 children.
A welcome result of safely reducing the number of children in the state’s care is an increase in the adoption rate of these kids. Whereas in past years, dollars went to fixing a broken system, this year, we are investing an additional $16 million in adoption services.
But supporting kids who come into the state’s care is only one part of the equation. We also must continue to support at-risk families with the resources and opportunities they need to achieve economic security. That’s why we are also focused on efforts like treating addiction; providing real second chances to those who have served their time; waiving licensing fees for those in poverty; expanding economic assistance with reforms that incentivize work; protecting and expanding health insurance for kids; and much more.
We will never rest on the progress we’ve made or stop fighting for better outcomes for kids.
All children deserve a safe, loving, and permanent home. That’s our goal. And we won’t stop until it’s a reality for every child in Arizona.
