There are about 800 children who are ready for adoption in Virginia. They are ready to find a permanent and loving forever family. 10 News is highlighting one child who needs a home every day in November during 30 Days of Hope. We are also telling some of the stories of the success and challenges the foster care system faces. The children are of all ages and races and were put into foster care due to no fault of their own. 2024 marks the eighth year 10 News is doing this series.
Parents, voluntarily giving up their kids as they get older, close to the kids being teens, or in their teen years. It’s a huge problem in Virginia, specifically in our part of the Commonwealth.
“It is shocking, and creates an additional burden on our foster care system,” said Renee Brown, the CEO & President of DePaul Community Resources.
It’s called ‘relief of custody’. Hundreds of the petitions have been filed in just the past five years.
“To think of a parent being faced with a decision of, ‘How do I keep my younger kids safe? How do I keep myself safe? How do I keep the child, the teenager that I love, safe?’ And feeling like they’re failing at that? What a feeling that must be. They feel like they have no choice,” said Brown.
But that’s the choice parents are faced with. There’s an increase of parents filing for relief of custody. When a parent decides they’re unable to take care of their child, they ask the court to relieve them of custody. Typically, the child would then go into foster care.
Brown is part of an advisory group for the Virginia Commission on Youth to try and solve the issue.
“They’re usually in crisis mode. They have usually tried a lot of different things. They feel like they have no choice. Usually there’s a safety issue. They are either afraid of their child, afraid of the choices their child is making,” said Brown.
It’s happening in all kinds of families. Families with limited resources to upper middle class families who have a lot of resources and insurance and nothing seems to be working.
But people don’t realize how big of a problem this is, especially here.
“In the western part of the state, we have about 20% of the population, but we have probably close to 50% of the relief of custody petitions filed,” said Brown.
Eric Reynolds is the Director of the Office of Children’s Ombudsman and he is also looking for solutions.
“What parent would want to be relieved of custody of their own kid? It’s highly unusual. But when you look at the situations, when it’s grandma, when it’s an adoptive family that doesn’t have the history of that child, and the foreign adoptions, when they don’t have the medical or trauma history of that child, and all of a sudden, things start happening, so you can understand the predicament they’re in,” said Reynolds.
Some of the solutions being discussed include:
- Getting connected to parents earlier.
- Providing training for parents who adopt because once kids hit their teens, it can be hard on families as the teens try to figure out who they are and their biological families. That’s when the most relief of custody happens for adoptive families.
- Getting the courts and police resources to share with families.
- Changes to the Code of Virginia.
“When the police realize that they’re going back to the home several times, how do we give our officers the resources to share with the family? To say, ‘Here are some things you can do to support your family, to strengthen your family, to prevent this crisis from continuing’” said Brown.
In Northern Virginia, Fairfax put in a lot of prevention efforts and it’s been successful, with only three petitions going through in the past few years.
“They’ve got the mentality of the communities involved, the private providers, the CSBs, they’re all involved in this,” said Reynolds, who acknowledged the same partnerships are not happening in our region. “It’s not happening. It goes back to the collaboration, in the silos. We all got to be working together, playing well in the sandbox together.”
While the group is currently looking at changes to Virginia policy and legislation, Brown stresses it has to work everywhere -- even in places that don’t have a lot of resources like southwest Virginia. She says the staff has to be there to be able to carry it out, which can be a challenge.
“We need to figure it out. The children deserve it. Our families deserve it. Our foster care system that is overstretched deserves our best effort,” said Brown.
The Virginia Commission on Youth is accepting public comment on the 2024 Draft Recommendations (which you can see here) for: The Use and Impact of Relief of Custody on Care and Support of Youth
Public comment must be received by 5 p.m. November 21. Public comments received by the deadline will be provided to the Commission for consideration at the November 25th, Commission meeting. In person public comment will be received at this meeting as well.
Ready to take the next step for foster care or adoption?
Frequently asked questions about foster care and adoption in Virginia can be found here.
If you have questions about foster care/adoption or are interested in starting the process, contact VDSS Division of Family Services Adoption Recruitment Coordinator at adoptioninquiries@dss.virginia.gov.
To see all the 30 Days of Hope stories and children we are featuring, visit us here.