CHARLOTTE — There are major changes underway across North Carolina to help children avoid being shifted around the foster care system.
Mecklenburg County is working to create stable, safe homes for hundreds of kids by providing therapy sessions to finding families members to help.
[ALSO READ: 4 siblings separated in foster care system find forever home thanks to Charlotte mom]
Andrew Phillips, of Charlotte, is raising his three grandchildren aged eight, six and five, which he said brought some anxiety in the beginning.
“I felt fear and dread just of knowing what it would take,” Phillips said. “I had never been a part of anything like this in my entire life.”
Phillips’ commitment to care for his grandchildren kept them out of the foster system.
Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services agencies statewide are focusing on finding more kinship families, blood relatives of children like Phillips to help.
The effort is part of the Family First Prevention Services Act passed by lawmakers back in 2018.
“The push on this legislation is that children should be with family,” said Dr. Jacqueline McKnight, the director at Mecklenburg County DSS.
[ALSO READ: Rowan County in desperate need of foster parents]
DSS is helping to keep them together by using tested and proven therapies, she said.
“Two we have introduced already in Mecklenburg County is child and parent psychotherapy and parent-child interaction therapy,” McKnight said. “When you really look at injuries to children, the most vulnerable children are in those age groups of infancy to five.”
Phillips said the resources he’s used were crucial.
“I’m able to adapt more than I thought I could,” he said. “It’s not as impossible as it seems.”
Phillips said being a grandfather is now the most important title of his life.
“It’s your legacy,” he said. “And it’s the greatest joy of my life to be involved in my grandkids lives.”
Mecklenburg County DSS plans to launch a campaign in the next few months to try to recruit kinship families to get involved so their relatives don’t end up in the foster system.
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DSS has also partnered with three churches to help connect families with resources that ease the burden.
(Watch the video below: Woman donates suitcases to foster kids who kept their belongings in trash bags)
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