In-Home Services Seeking Funds For Foster Care

Fifteen Tennessee counties account for half of all kids in the foster care system, a data point that is prompting child welfare officials to seek $6 million in state funding in order to geographically target intensive in-home services to keep kids with their families.

The funding request is part of an overall $189 million budget increase sought by leaders of the Department of Children’s Services which has seen historic investments by the state over the past two years in response to a cascade of reports of children mistreated while in its custody.

DCS Commissioner Margie Quin laid out the agency’s needs for a budget boost, which also includes $8 million for additional privately-contracted social workers, $41 million for residential care for kids with medical and psychiatric needs and $1.5 million for nurses.

The agency, which currently has an annual budget of $1.2 billion, has since reduced caseworker turnover and lowered caseloads once as high as 90 at a time for individual social workers to fewer than 20.

In Tennessee, it’s rural counties that experience the highest rates of kids being removed from their families. In Lawrence County, which shares the state’s southern border with Alabama, more than seven in every 1,000 children are in foster care, a rate more than three times as high as the state’s most populous counties.