Q&A
Placement options for unaccompanied minors in foster care
2:48:18
·
81 sec
Council Member Stevens inquires about the placement options for unaccompanied minors in foster care. Stephanie Gendell explains that ACS uses various placement types and aims for the most appropriate placement for each child.
- Placement options include group homes, traditional foster care, and kinship care.
- ACS prioritizes placing young people with kin (family or friends) when possible.
- The agency doesn't track placement data specifically for immigrant youth, but overall, about 8% are in group homes, over half in kinship care, and the rest in non-kinship foster homes.
- Council Member Stevens emphasizes the need to track this data for immigrant youth due to their specific needs and services required.
Althea Stevens
2:48:18
Okay.
2:48:19
Do you have a breakdown of where the unaccompanied minors are being placed?
2:48:22
Are they proud to go into group homes, traditional pharmacy care, or other types of placements?
Stephanie Gendell
2:48:27
All of the above.
2:48:29
So we're whenever a young person or child is coming into foster care, we're looking for the best and most appropriate placement.
2:48:37
We try really hard to place young people with kin who can be family or friends.
2:48:42
We have found that Do
Althea Stevens
2:48:43
you have, like, a breakdown of numbers of, like, where that might be or, like, percentage of, like, are are percentage of going done with kinship and faucet, like
Stephanie Gendell
2:48:52
So I do for the total for the total system.
2:48:56
I know, but we don't we don't track young people differently based on their immigration status.
2:49:02
So I know about 8% of young people are in group homes and over half go to kinship and the rest are in non kinship foster homes, but we don't break it down by their immigration status.
Althea Stevens
2:49:15
Okay.
2:49:15
Because I know it's and this is, again, like, I think that the same thing outside of the US City, I think at, you know, we know that these young people need, like, additional services.
2:49:23
And so I think that we are at a point where we kinda needs to take note of, like, who these young people are because they have specific needs and they have specific things that they need.
2:49:32
And so that helps us be able to fight to make sure that the additional services that's needed are going to where they need to
Stephanie Gendell
2:49:39
be.