© 2024 Public Radio Tulsa
800 South Tucker Drive
Tulsa, OK 74104
(918) 631-2577

A listener-supported service of The University of Tulsa
classical 88.7 | public radio 89.5
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Oklahoma Fosters Initiative Reaches Goal

Gov. Mary Fallin’s Oklahoma Fosters recruitment initiative appears to have reached its goal.

The Department of Human Services certified nearly 1,100 new families from November through June. The initiative’s goal was 1,000.

Tom Bates is Fallin’s child welfare adviser. He said a key piece of foster care reform is having enough families in the system.

"That's what allows you to, when kids are brought into care, to put them in a place where they can receive the care that they need, the compassion that they need, the stability that they need," Bates said.

This is the first time DHS reached a foster care recruitment goal since reforms began under the Pinnacle Plan settlement in 2012. The recruiting work, however, isn’t over.

"We need more ethnic diversity in our foster system," Bates said. "We need foster parents that are willing to take kids that have medical issues, have issues with trauma and need counseling. We need foster parents that are willing to take sibling sets," Bates said.

DHS spokeswoman Sheree Powell said retaining all the new families will be an important task, too.

"There's a lot of things that we are working on now with foster families to make sure that they have the communication they need about the kids they're serving, they have the support they need for the kids they're serving," Powell said.

DHS has also announced there are fewer than 10,000 children in state custody now, the lowest number in three years.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.