At any given time, around 6,000 Nevada children are in what the state calls “substitute placement.” This can mean foster care or some kind of shelter; for a lucky few, it is a temporary status while they wait for their adoption to be finalized. Most of these children were taken from their parents because they were neglected, whether due to the parents’ substance abuse, poverty, criminal activity or just an inability to cope with the demands of a child. Through no fault of their own, these innocent children are thrown into an overburdened system. Although they want nothing more than a “forever” home, they are often sent from one foster home to another until they reach the age of 18 and the state has fulfilled its legal duties.
Ideally, children in foster care would either be reunited with their birth parents or be adopted by a loving family within a short time. In fact, infants in foster care do stand a good chance of being adopted by their foster parents. Fostering a baby is a good way for a family considering adoption to avoid many of the legal hurdles involved with adoption. However, it’s a different story with school-age children. Once a child is past the age of five, there’s a good chance that he or she will never be adopted.
Some of the children in the foster care system are considered to have “special needs.” These may be physical conditions, developmental delays or psychological problems due to abuse or neglect. Some children are put in this category just because they are part of a sibling group, and it can be an overwhelming financial burden for a family to adopt more than one child at the same time. Washoe County Department of Social Services (WCDSS) recently estimated that 90 percent of children entering the foster care system in Washoe County are part of sibling groups and 60 percent are under six years old.
WCDSS recently started a campaign called “Have a Heart” that is aimed at raising awareness of foster care and adoption programs, and encouraging people in the community to become involved in helping these children. What can we do? We can donate money or volunteer to help at the county shelters for children; in Reno, it’s Kids Cottage, in Las Vegas, it’s Child Haven, and they could certainly use our help. However, a long-term solution to the foster care system is to make it easier for people to adopt children in foster care.
Most foster parents receive a stipend of about $700 a month per child, which amounts to more than $8,000 a year. If a child stays in the system from age 5 to 18, the cost to the state totals more than $109,000, and that doesn’t include the salaries for case workers or the substantial costs for administering the system. Yet the state still charges people who want to adopt these children.
Clark County reimburses adoption fees up to $250, but that’s just a drop in the bucket. If the child is considered “Special Needs” other aid is available for medical care, counseling or other expenses. Anyone with children knows that it’s expensive to feed, clothe, educate, and entertain them. The US Department of Agriculture estimates it costs anywhere from $118,000 to $250,000 to raise a child from birth to age 18, depending on the family’s income and lifestyle. We need to make sure that every qualified person who wants to adopt a child from the foster care system is able to do so.
We all wish the underlying causes of the foster care crisis would disappear – that every child would be born into a loving, supportive family, that parents wouldn’t get into trouble with drugs, crime or abuse, that caring relatives would always be there to take in a child if the parents couldn’t cope. Unfortunately, that’s not the real world, and we have to deal with the situation we have now, and try to keep it from getting worse.
We can do that by helping families adopt children. Children who need a permanent home with a loving family shouldn’t have to spend years in the foster care system because no one can afford to adopt them. During the next legislative session, Nevada lawmakers should investigate financial incentives to encourage people to adopt children currently in foster care. It makes economic sense for the state to subsidize these adoptions, and it’s also an investment in our future.
For information about adoption in Nevada, go to:
www.dcfs.state.nv.us/DCFS_Adoption.htm
For more information on Washoe County’s “Have A Heart campaign,” go to:
www.haveaheartnv.org.
For information on adopting in Clark County, go to:
www.accessclarkcounty.com/depts/family_services/