Faced with dwindling numbers of foster parents to meet a growing demand for their services, local and state agencies nationwide are coming up with new programs to ease the financial and emotional strains of the job.
Focusing on getting children out of group homes and institutions and into their communities, the programs promise to give officials tools they need to bolster the ranks of foster parents.
"It's one of those things that can't be solved just by doing a better recruitment campaign," said John Mattingly, a senior associate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, a national children's welfare research and funding group.
"If they still treat foster parents as if they were paid help and not really partners in the work, you'll still have a problem," Mattingly said.
The number of children placed in foster homes nationwide, and particularly in California, has nearly doubled in 15 years, but the corps of foster parents volunteering to take them on has dwindled, he said.
California accounted for one-fifth of the 500,000 children in foster care nationwide in 1997, the latest year for which figures are available, according to the Casey Foundation.
"Every research study has [found] that the [government] agencies have been unable to provide the training and the support that the families need to take care of the youngsters, many of whom have special needs," Mattingly said.
Foster parents need financial aid, response from government bureaucracies, crisis resources and respect, said Carole Shauffer, director of the Youth Law Center in San Francisco.
County and other local agencies are eager to provide needed support and attract more foster parents.
Orange County recently allocated funds to reimburse foster parents for child care, provide occasional relief from the rigors of the work and send in helpers on a spot basis for anything from tutoring to transportation to the doctor's office.
Los Angeles County has found homes for some of its hardest-to-place kids by calling on churches in a program that has attracted national attention. San Diego County is mining untapped groups to find potential foster parents and is operating the Options for Recovery program, which helps foster parents caring for drug-exposed or HIV-infected babies.
