By Rick Abercrombie
The January 16 speakers at the St. Andrews Optimists’ breakfast meeting were two representatives of South Carolina Youth Advocacy Program (SCYAP). The speakers were Shayla Howell and Majd Abdallah. Both bear the title of Regional Recruiter/Family Recruiter.
The job of the recruiters is both simple and complex at the same time. They receive referrals of youth who deserve and seek foster homes. They also actively search for and find future fostering families.
Youth who experience abuse, neglect, and/or abandonment, in the words of the presenters, “face uncertainty, fear, and a lack of stability, often moving from home to home without a sense of belonging.”
Although there is some overlap in the backgrounds of the fostering candidates, the three primary factors are: neglect (72 percent), physical abuse (24 percent), and sexual abuse (7 percent).
The possible outcomes of entering the foster program are:
Reunification with their original family.
Kinship: where they are housed by either relatives or family friends.
Remaining with the Foster parents.
Legal adoption by a family member or relative.
Group homes.
Night-to-night placements.
Some facts relating to youth who qualify for fostering:
1. 15,000 South Carolina children age out when they turn 18 without ever having been fostered.
2. 20 percent are instantly homeless.
3. 25 percent suffer from PTSD.
4. 70 percent of the females are pregnant before age 21
5. If the youth endure five or more placements, 90 percent will ultimately face incarceration.
On a national basis — and South Carolina’s numbers reflect the trend — the speakers reported that there are an estimated 391,000 children in foster care, but there are only 210,000 foster homes available. Finding new foster homes, then, is job one for the recruiters.
Picture left to right are Shayla Howell, speaker sponsor Buck Williams, Majd Abdallah, and Optimist Club President David Kafitz, who presented a copy of the Optimist Creed to each speaker.
