Sebastian County officials discuss foster care situation

Oct. 01--Though Sebastian County's foster care statistics have improved, officials are focused on lessening the issue further.

City and Department of Human Services officials on Friday discussed ways to lessen the number of foster children in Sebastian County. They framed the problem as one that is stimulated by the cycle of crime and incarceration.

"This is one of these situations we cannot become complacent about, because the problem will not go away," said Fort Smith mayor-elect and state Rep. George McGill.

Children are placed into foster care because they are "unsafe, abused or neglected" when around their families, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Parents who are put in jail contribute to this problem, McGill said Friday.

Restore Hope executive director Paul Chapman in August estimated about 800 former inmates return to the Fort Smith area each year from prison. Chapman said Restore Hope officials used this number and the number of foster children in the Fort Smith area, which was more than 800 in October 2017, as reasons to try to reduce recidivism in the area.

"Foster care sucks," said Cheryl Deaton of DHS. "There's nothing worse than having to remove a child from their parent, knowing that we're taking them from their home, from their family, from their school, from everything they know, because they've done nothing wrong, but they're the ones who get punished."

Deaton said 95 percent of children placed in foster care in Sebastian County are not from physical or sexual abuse, but from opioid and methamphetamine abuse.

"Parents can't parent when they're on meth," she said. "Kids can parent their siblings and their parents when their parents are on meth, but children are not built to thrive in that kind of environment."

The number of children from Sebastian County in foster care doesn't only affect the families, either. Arkansas legislation requires siblings in foster care to be reunited once a month, which presents a challenge for DHS caseworkers since many of the foster children in Sebastian County are placed outside of the Fort Smith region, McGill said.

The number of cases was also a burden on DHS caseworkers, McGill said.

"We were losing caseworkers just daily," McGill said. "We were taking in young college graduates that had a tremendous drive and thirst to work with children, and we would overload them almost immediately with more cases than they can handle."

McGill said the state House passed legislation to provide funding for more than 100 DHS caseworkers.

Though the number of foster children in Sebastian County leads Arkansas, it has dropped by more than 25 percent since fall 2017, McGill said. Deaton said Friday that there were more than 500 children from Sebastian County in the system.

Mayor Sandy Sanders said keeping the numbers down -- or lowering the numbers -- requires addressing recidivism in the area as well.

"We need to make sure that as they come back to our community, we don't enable them to do the things that will put them back into the incarcerated population of our state," he said.

Deaton said change is needed.

"It takes a community wanting to make a change," she said. "It takes churches being willing to step up. It takes community providers. It takes us having all of the services in our community."

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