This article from the Child Law Practice Today July/August 2017 Issue on Kinship Care outlines policy and practice tips for supporting grandparents raising grandchildren due to the current opioid and heroin epidemic in the US.
After years of decline, the overall number of children in foster care is on the rise. From state to state, experts say the current opioid and heroin epidemic is the reason. With this increase, the foster care system is relying more and more on relatives to care for children. Since 2008, the percentage of children in foster care with relatives has gone up from 24 to 30 percent. Simultaneous with this increase, the number of children placed in group homes and nonrelated foster homes has gone down. Relatives are coming to the rescue and raising these children whose parents are unable to parent due to heroin and other opioid use or treatment, incarceration, or overdose death. In some parts of the country, the growing reliance on relatives is even more dramatic. In Ohio, which is one of the states hardest hit by this epidemic, the number of children in foster care placed with relatives has gone up 62 percent since 2010.
Although the child welfare system relies heavily on relatives, there are many more children outside the foster care system in the care of relatives. In fact, for every one child in foster care with a relative, there are 20 children outside of foster care in the care of relatives. Compelling data is lacking on how the opioid epidemic is also causing these numbers of children to increase, but anecdotally we know they are.