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Ohio's Foster Care Crisis Worsens

A photo of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine
KAREN KASLER
/
STATEHOUSE NEWS BUREAU

The number of children in Ohio who are placed in foster care continues to increase as the opioid crisis worsens. There’s a shortage of foster care families to meet the need.

More than 15,000 children are in Ohio’s foster care system but only 7,200 families are available to take them in. In some counties, more than half of the kids in protective custody are placed outside the county due to a lack of families. Attorney General Mike DeWine blames the opioid epidemic.

“We have today in Ohio a foster care crisis of immense proportions,” he said.

DeWine says $1 million from the crime-victim fund will be put into programs in 10 counties to help existing foster and kinship care families, but not to recruit new ones.

But there’s a new webpage on the attorney general’s site with information on how to become foster parents.

Jo Ingles is a professional journalist who covers politics and Ohio government for the Ohio Public Radio and Television for the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau. She reports on issues of importance to Ohioans including education, legislation, politics, and life and death issues such as capital punishment. Jo started her career in Louisville, Kentucky in the mid 80’s when she helped produce a televised presidential debate for ABC News, worked for a creative services company and served as a general assignment report for a commercial radio station. In 1989, she returned back to her native Ohio to work at the WOSU Stations in Columbus where she began a long resume in public radio.