Monitors overseeing improvements of Oklahoma’s foster care system tied to a 2012 settlement report the Department of Human Services is making "discernible progress."
The child welfare experts referred to as "co-neutrals" took notice of the reduction in cases of abuse and neglect of kids in DHS care, which spokeswoman Sheree Powell said exceeded their starting baseline for the first time.
"Our kids need to be safe, particularly when they’re in our care, and reducing the chances of them experience abuse or neglect while in our care was critical to our reform efforts," Powell said.
DHS has also added case workers, decreasing each worker's case load.
One area DHS will focus on going forward is making sure foster kids don’t end up going from home to home.
"We’ve put together some new initiatives to make sure that kids are placed with families first when they come into our system, and we want that first placement to be their only placement, if possible," Powell said.
Those initiatives include heightened efforts at kinship placements, so kids are cared for by relatives.
The co-neutrals note in their latest report that state budget problems are threatening progress on the overall foster care reform effort.
The state's budget crisis has led to cuts across DHS, including a 5 percent decrease in assistance paid to foster and adoptive parents.
"That’s not the direction we want to go, and we certainly hope that the budget will turn around statewide and we will be able to increase that rate back to where it needs to be," Powell said.
There are about 8,700 kids in state care as of December, down from a peak of more than 11,000 in October 2014.
