Phoenix-The
news coming out of Arizona’s Department of Child Safety remains alarming. The
state’s foster care system is being pushed to capacity. There
are more children in the system than ever before and the number of staff
available to help them continues to decline.
Recent reports show that there
are still 19,000
kids in foster care, and nearly 3,000
of those children have to live in shelters, group homes or other forms of
congregate care because there aren’t enough foster homes.
We
are still seeing too many gruesome
headlines of kids
falling victim to tragedies. And we are still seeing too many kids entering the
system – recent reports are again showing that more
children are coming into the foster system than are exiting.
House Democrats have long
called for more accountability and better leadership from the governor and DCS
Director Greg McKay. We have to stop these crises before they occur by investing
in preventative services, providing training and support for family-member
caregivers and curbing
high rates of staff turnover at DCS. Democrats will keep working
for this as long as the #CrisisContinues because Arizona kids deserve
better.
