SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- ABC57's Sidney Moore sat down with Mike Sheaffer, CEO of Welcome Home, a non-profit that works to support children and families in foster care to learn more about what the foster care rates look like in the Northern Indiana Counties.
Sheaffer says, "Indiana, for population, is the fourth highest rated kids in foster care in the nation, which surprises a lot of people. Out of the 92 counties in our state, Elkhart has the eighth highest rate, and St. Joe has the fifth highest rate.”
Sheaffer was in the foster care system himself, being placed in multiple different homes, and separated from his siblings at a young age. Sheaffer says there is a huge gap between foster kids and homes. He says lots of kids in our area are left sleeping in DCS offices or even juvenile detention centers simply because there is no other place to go.
On top of the uneven numbers of children, and places for them to call home, there is newer legislation in the mix making this a faster but more difficult process. Indiana House Bill 1605 puts a bit of a time strain on this process.
Karissa Tinkey, Foster Care Manager at Josiah White’s says, “The main consensus of that goal is to ensure that children are achieving permanency timely, because a lot of cases kids are sitting and waiting, and parents might make progress, or they might backtrack, and it's that constant move forward, two step back kind of deal.”
For resources to help navigate foster care visit: