CCKids Chief reviews a year of ups & downs

December 27, 2018

Our community relations director likes to share a story about a young boy who drew a picture of what home and family meant to him. He drew a beautiful house with bold, black lines, a chimney piping smoke into the sky and colorful flowers out front.

But the picture was missing something: People. When she asked the boy where they were, he said in that matter-of-fact voice that young children have down so well, “There aren’t any people, because “They” came and took them all away.”

I think about that story often this time of year, marked for most of us by the traditions and comfort of family. It gives me pause to stop and reflect on the job that Communities Connected for Kids and the entire child-welfare system in Okeechobee and the Treasure Coast has done in keeping families together, reconnecting them after a removal or finding another forever home through adoption.

These past few years have been exceptionally challenging for us as the Child Welfare Lead Agency as it has for all the other 16 Lead Agencies that serve Florida. The opioid crisis has impacted the children and families in our four-county area in a major way. In the past, we could keep children at home and provide services. Due to the severity of the opioid crisis, more children have been removed then in almost twenty years.

There is an upside.

About 55 percent of the children in our care were reunified with their parents thanks to the excellent services delivered by our provider community. We also found a record number of relatives and family friends to serve as caretakers this year – a 20 percent increase from 2017. When relatives were unavailable, we placed children in foster or group homes, while keeping siblings together at a rate exceeding 75 percent.

Almost 150 foster homes were added to our system over the past few years thanks to our partners; Camelot, 4Kids, Mount Bethel, and Place of Hope. This past year 186 children found adoptive homes thanks to the impressive work of our adoption’s services provider, Children’s Home Society. That measure itself was a whopping 38 percent increase over the previous year, and we expect the trend to continue upward.

This past year we served over 1100 children (from a low in the 800s in 2016), more than half were placed in licensed care, foster and group care. Our continued need for families to foster children who need the nurturing and stability is paramount. Literally we have seen miracles occur in the direction a child’s life can take when love, support and stability is provided.

So what does home and family mean? To me, and I imagine to most of us, it means a safe and stable place where people love us. It’s a concept that sometimes eludes our system of care. But we can get there through adoption, through foster care and by reconnecting children, when safe, to their healing parents.

That has always been the challenge and privilege of child welfare. And it will be our work in the New Year.