NCCPR Executive Director Richard Wexler released this statement concerning the data.
The ongoing increase in the number of children in foster care on any given day is not due to the opioid epidemic. Rather, it’s due to child welfare’s typical failed knee-jerk take-the-child-and-run response to the opioid epidemic. It is a response that lives at the intersectionof ignorance and arrogance.
The research is clear – even when substance abuse is the issue,
in the typical cases seen by child protective services workers children do
better when left in their own homes even than comparably maltreated children
placed in foster care. That’s why the first response should be drug
treatment for the parents, not foster care for the children – not for the sake of the parents, but for the sake
of the children.
The small decline in the number of children entering foster
care gives hope that child welfare finally might be learning that lesson.
