Welcome to

Members of a Department of Children and Families taskforce said if a child has to be sent to foster care, the agency has already failed. The taskforce met Thursday to discuss ways to keep parents and children together. It’s recommending “wrap-around” services to treat symptoms of abuse such as drug use or mental illness.

“A lot of individuals, it’s not necessarily that they don’t love their children, they love their children but they don’t have the parenting skills. They may have a substance abuse problem or they may have a mental health problem,” said George Sheldon of the Department of Children and Families. “So if you deal with some of those root causes, it’s a lot better than placing a child in foster care where he might be in five, six, seven, eight, ten different placements.”

The taskforce will continue to look at the issue for at least another year.