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Good Samaritan provides home to reunite family in Houston.

HOUSTON—A KHOU 11 News viewer donated a house to a married couple who lived in a northeast Houston storage shed with six children.

The donation came just days after the couple was featured on KHOU 11 News because Child Protective Services had taken custody of their kids. The parents said they believed they were being punished because they’re poor.　

"You shouldn’t take our kids because we’ve fallen on hard times," said Prince Leonard.

The Leonards moved in three years ago after the father, an unemployed welder, was hired as a maintenance worker.

Click here to read the full article and view the story on KHOU.

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Grant helps foster children stay in homes

Families, young adults eligible for housing vouchers

By Shelley Widhalm Reporter-Herald Staff Writer

Posted: 07/06/2011 11:21:48 PM MDT

 

The Fort Collins Housing Authority is providing the ruby red slippers that foster care youths need to find a place to call home.

For the first time, the housing authority is administering 50 federally funded housing choice vouchers with the aim of providing stable housing for youths receiving foster care. Their purpose is to reunite foster children with their families and to prevent young adults ages 18-21 who are "aging out" of the foster care system from becoming homeless. Click here to read the full story.

Closings of youth shelters worries providers

06:59 AM EST on Tuesday, December 7, 2010

By Lynn Arditi

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island’s private foster-care agencies say the state lacks a plan to find 35 to 45 more foster homes to care for about 200 children a year who may need emergency housing once the state shuts down its three children’s shelters on Jan. 15.

The state Department of Children, Youth and Families has said the closings are expected to save $1 million.

“This is a request of you to see if you can do it,” DCYF administrator Fred Aurelio told about 60 people from provider agencies around the state who gathered at the DaVinci Center on Monday morning. “I hope it can be done and [that] you can be ready on time.”

But some providers say there’s not enough time.

“This system is not in place, yet the action to close the shelters is in place,” said Bill Reardon, executive director of Boys Town New England, based in Portsmouth.

Paul Fitzgerald, president and chief executive officer of AIDS Care Ocean State of Providence, which cares for children infected with HIV, said the DCYF has “made a decision to close the [shelters], yet we don’t have a fully vetted plan.”

Shelters which are asked to house children have “no right of refusal,” Fitzgerald said, while foster families can simply say they don’t want to take the child.

The three children’s shelters — Washington Park Shelter in Providence; Children’s Shelter of Blackstone Valley in Pawtucket; and Boys Town New England — currently house 21 children, though 208 children cycled in and out of the beds during fiscal 2010, according to Janet Anderson, the DCYF’s assistant director of children’s behavior health.

Providers had received letters from Anderson last week asking them to come to an “urgent” meeting to develop a plan for providing emergency housing for children when the state closes its three children’s shelters.

Once the shelters close, foster-care provider agencies could be asked on a moment’s notice — sometimes in the middle of the night — to find a foster home to house one or more children (if they have siblings) who have been removed from their homes due to neglect, abuse or because the home is deemed unsafe.

The placement could last for up to 30 days — until the children’s needs can be assessed, they can return home, or a permanent placement is found, Anderson said. The providers also would be expected to make arrangements to transport the children to school and to work with the children’s families to provide counseling or other services as needed.

“We may sound like we’re not sure what we’re doing,” the DCYF Executive Director Patricia Martinez told the group, but moving children out of shelters “is a conversation we had maybe five years ago.” Martinez said there are enough resources and beds to care for the children outside of shelters.

But Philip Keefe, president, Rhode Island Alliance of Social Service Employees and a DCYF supervisor, said in a phone interview that members are worried that the state simply isn’t prepared to find beds for the children who have been staying in shelters.

“They don’t have a plan in place, and now it’s a mad scramble to get a safety net in place to replace the shelters,” Keefe said.

If there are not enough foster families to provide emergency housing once the shelters close, Keefe said, he fears the state could wind up in the same situation it was years ago, when caseworkers had to take children to motels overnight because they had no beds for them. The state largely did away with these night-to-night placements years ago after a public outcry.

Keefe also disputed the agency’s claim that it would save $1 million by closing the shelters, saying internal figures put the savings at about $600,000.

larditi@projo.com

Too Old for Foster Care, and Facing the Recession
By JULIE BOSMAN
The recession has made the challenges of life after foster care even more formidable, especially for those seeking federal housing vouchers, which are contingent on having an income. Read the entire article by clicking here.