The number of children in foster care in Santa Barbara County increased in 2019 after four years of steady declines.
In 2015, there were 433 children in the county’s foster care system, but this dropped to 327 three years later, before increasing to 396 in 2019, according to a presentation from the Jan. 14 county Board of Supervisors meeting. Amy Krueger, deputy director with the county’s Department of Social Services, presented these numbers to the board as part of the county’s Child Welfare Services annual update.
The department has also experienced an increase in the number of in-person child welfare investigations that social workers have completed over the last two years. Social workers completed 2,812 investigations in 2017 and more than 4,000 in 2019.
Krueger said part of the increase in investigations is due to changes the department has made in its screening process, but it also can be attributed to an increase in referrals. Outside of normal factors, she said the department hasn’t been able to identify a specific reason for this increase in referrals and the rise in the number of children within the foster care system.
“General neglect is certainly our largest referral source—which includes substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence—and we continue to see those primary drivers for children entering care, but there’s not one particular thing we can point to and say, ‘This is what’s happening,’” Krueger said.
The department plans to begin a community-level data analysis this year that will help it develop prevention strategies to address some of these increases. Krueger said the department wants to initially focus this assessment on Lompoc, because of the increase in child abuse reports and children entering the foster care system from the area.
“We have noticed that Lompoc seems to be the biggest area of increase, so that’s why we’re focusing there to see if we can figure out what might be behind that,” Krueger said.
In December 2019, Kim Davis, executive director of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Santa Barbara County, told the Sun about the nonprofit’s struggle to keep up with the number of children the court system has referred to the organization.
CASA consists of a network of volunteers who advocate on behalf of a child a court has removed from his or her home for protection, Davis said. These children often end up in foster care or in a relative’s household. In 2018, volunteers were able to serve all 510 children the court referred to the nonprofit, but at various times in 2019 the organization had more than 100 children on its waitlist.
“I see this as a tremendous crisis in the community that goes unseen,” Davis said. “We’re assigning more cases than we ever have before, but we can’t keep up.” m
This article appears in Jan 23-30, 2020.