All children deserve a comforting and welcoming home in which they feel safe. But unfortunately, the face care system has not been doing too well this year due to Covid-19. The number of children without homes are increasing very quickly.
“Covid has changed quite a bit how we do our regular operation,” says Chad Slagle, Children’s services supervisor.
There are many protocols the workers take such as asking questions about recent illness or if they have been diagnosed with Covid-19. Other protocols include wearing masks for in-home visits, and interviews that are face to face occur outside.
Some of the children talk to the social worker virtually, but this can be tricky at times because the social worker is the only consistent person they see. Because of Covid, the children in group care are quarantining to prevent the spread of the virus throughout campus.
Unfortunately, these children in group care have only been able to see their parents twice since March. This is so hard to imagine, being away from families for so long and only being able to see the same few people every day.
Ever since March, there have been quite a few foster parents who have tested positive for Covid-19. Many social workers have been exposed, leaving the workers and staff shorthanded.
“We currently receive nearly 400 reports of neglect and abuse each year that we have to respond to within a specified time based on the type of report,” says Slagle.
The number of abuse and neglect cases per year is jaw-dropping. The staff is currently providing services for two families in their home where abuse has been found. The other issue is that with foster care there are about 80 children in the system. Every child gets a face-to-face visit with their social worker every month. The children also get a visit with their parents for about an hour under the supervision of their social worker. With all the transportation and communication, it gets very difficult, especially when the workers are out for roughly two weeks, due to Covid-19.
The hardest part for the children is going for long periods of time without getting to see their parents while they are in foster care.
“It is even more difficult for children in foster care because they’ve all been through a traumatic experience whether it’s from abuse or neglect they’ve experienced in their home originally and the trauma that comes from their home,” Slagle says.
These children go through so much. They shouldn’t worry about whether they have a place to sleep and whether or not they will have food when they wake up in the morning. With all the stress and anxiety they get with just being a foster child, multiplying that by 10 with all the craziness of the pandemic is very stressful. All children deserve to have time running around getting dirty in the yard, not worrying about seeing their parents.
The community does an amazing job with helping with foster care, or even just doing simple things, such as the canned food drive and Toys for Tots, and many others.
Watauga students can get involved and support children in foster care. To learn more about Toys for Tots, go to https://www.toysfortots.org/
Written by: Skylar Moss
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