Drake Bassett, the president of Palmer Children’s Home in Columbus, is looking for a few good foster parents.
Palmer Home, a faith-based non-profit, provides residential homes for 112 children, about half of whom are in the organization’s custody, according to Bassett.
He hopes to keep that number growing, but he also has been working with Gov. Phil Bryant and David Chandler, executive director of the Division of Family and Children’s Services, to begin recruiting families to foster one or more of Mississippi’s thousands of vulnerable children.
The state has custody of around 5,000 children, officials said. Combined with the estimated numbers of children the state does not know about makes the number of children needing a new home likely closer to 7,500, according to Bassett.
That is a much higher number than 25 years ago, Bassett said.
“The landscape has changed and state systems are not nimble enough to keep up,” he said. “But they’re not alone. Agencies like ours have to catch up. And other organizations have to catch up to this influx of children.”
As this influx has been happening, there has not been good coordination between state agencies like the state’s DFCS and private organizations like Palmer Home. That’s why Bassett is working with Bryant and Chandler to set up a private foster network through Palmer Home.
“We have had some discussions with Palmer Home recently,” said Ginger Gibson, senior attorney for DFCS. “(The Department of Human Services) already works with a large number of faith-based organizations…we have not worked extensively with Palmer Home but…we’re moving forward with seeing what it would take for them to help us license some of these (foster) homes, particularly relatives who want to become licensed for children in care that they’re related to.”
Jonah’s Journey
Palmer Home’s foster care initiative is called Jonah’s Journey, which began several years ago in Tennessee as a way of helping incarcerated mothers and their children. Foster families who came forward to care for the children affected not only the children but helped mothers dealing with drug abuse get sober and back on their feet knowing their children were being taken care of.
This network would be privately funded and it would work on recruiting families to take in foster children. These families would go through a similar process that families fostering through the state would go through, but would not expect compensation, Bassett said.
Their process would also be more streamlined than the state’s currently is. Families in Palmer Home’s network would go through the same background check as the state’s foster homes, but some of their training would be online, rather than in person, making it easier for two-parent households to complete their training in a timely manner.
Another benefit to Palmer Home’s foster network is that Palmer Home also has residential facilities. This means that children who are hard to place, such as sibling groups, or who need extra care because of emotional or physical trauma, can stay at Palmer Home’s facilities until they can be taken in.
Bassett plans to recruit from churches, civic clubs and other community organizations. His goal is to have 50 families come forward by the end of the year and begin to get certified and trained.
“Mississippians are the most giving people in the United States,” Bassett said.
Bassett believes that families will come forward with their time and resources to help the state’s most vulnerable kids.
“Let’s ask families, across the state of Mississippi, to join us and to make the commitment … (to) help us by joining this movement to reverse the story and to make it possible for the state to get on top of the problem but over time for the state to get out of the business,” he said.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 30 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 30 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
