{"id":395538,"date":"2025-11-21T22:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T22:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/395538\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T22:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T22:06:11","slug":"council-has-concerns-about-foster-care-in-philly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/395538\/","title":{"rendered":"Council has concerns about foster care in Philly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\">Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>Between 13,000 and 15,000 children are currently in Pennsylvania\u2019s foster care system at any given time, many of whom live in Philadelphia.\n<\/p>\n<p>Even though a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phila.gov\/media\/20250807113944\/FY24_Foster_Care_Report_Final.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">report released earlier this year by the city\u2019s Department of Human Services<\/a> showed nearly all foster care provider agencies received \u201coptimal\u201d ratings, some city officials say the system can still be improved. They say changes need to be made to better support young people who age out of the system.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s one of our biggest priorities,\u201d Councilmember Nina Ahmad said. \u201cTo make sure they\u2019re not housing insecure, make sure they\u2019re ready for job training, making sure that they have that bridge, and I think there\u2019s work that\u2019s underway to look at that.\u201d\n  <\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.phila.gov\/media\/20250107132546\/Quarterly-Indicators-Report-FY24.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">report released by the city in January<\/a> found that there was a 13% decline in the number of children who\u2019ve been placed in dependent care in 2024 compared to 2023, from 3,333 children in June 2023 to 2,891 children in June 2024.\n<\/p>\n<p>Dependent care includes both traditional foster care and what\u2019s known as kinship care, when a relative or others who are considered family provide full-time care.\n<\/p>\n<p>According to numbers from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 43% of Pennsylvania\u2019s foster youth remain in the system until they age out. That also has Ahmad concerned.\n<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s hopeful Mayor Cherelle Parker\u2019s Housing Opportunities Made Easy, or H.O.M.E., initiative could help those young people get into securing housing as they age out of foster care. The H.O.M.E. initiative is a <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/philadelphia-city-council-proposal-housing-units\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">comprehensive strategy to create and preserve 30,000 units of housing<\/a> over four years using $800 million in bonds.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the things I want to amend in the H.O.M.E. bill is to actually have a set aside of resources specifically for housing and security for both families in the child welfare system and children aging out of foster care. I just want to codify it so it\u2019s clear and there\u2019s no ambiguity about it,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n<p>Councilmember Cindy Bass summed up the city\u2019s foster care system in one word: trouble.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think that we\u2019re doing nearly enough for foster youth in our city. There\u2019s so much more that can be done,\u201d Bass said. \u201cThere are endless stories where people have had interactions with DHS. And those interactions have been troubling, and in some places just neglectful.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":395539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,38261,1448,2830,1311,10325,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-395538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-foster-care","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-city-council","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115589964600912499","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}