Why are children placed in foster homes?
Office of Community Services is committed to child protection and family preservation. Every child is entitled to grow up in a permanent family. The primary and preferred way of achieving this goal is to provide families experiencing turmoil with services to prevent the need to place children outside their homes. When a child must be separated from the family the Office of Community Services will provide a healthy and safe environment and will make appropriate and timely efforts to provide services to reunite the family. The Office of Community Services will provide appropriate homes for children who cannot be reunited with their families.
Children are placed in foster homes when they have been removed from their birth home because of abuse or neglect or other family issues that endanger their safety. Children visit their birth family until they can be reunited or parental rights are terminated. If parental rights have been terminated, the children live in foster homes while waiting for an adoptive home. Sometimes the foster family becomes the adoptive family.
