Oklahoma has reached a milestone in child welfare. In 2015, Oklahoma’s daily count of children in foster care peaked at approximately 11,500 children in the foster care system. As of June 1st, 2024, this number had dropped below 6,000 for the first time in over 20+ years and has remained below 6,000 since. As of October 1, 2024, there are 5,865 children in care. 111Project would like to celebrate this benchmark and are looking forward to seeing that number continue to decline as long as children can be supported safely in their families of origin.  More churches involved can continue to lead to better outcomes for children and families throughout the state.

There are three major factors, and many improvements made that have helped lower the number of children in foster care since 2015.

1. Prevention Services

Family Centered Services (FCS) is an example of this. FCS is the OKDHS Child Welfare Service’s prevention program that allows for a family to be stabilized so that children can remain in the care of their biological family. This program’s entire goal is to work with families to determine what services are necessary, while simultaneously working to ensure the children remain safe in their own homes. FCS exists so that preventative efforts and action steps can be taken to keep a biological family together and prevent the removal of children from their homes. Though it is not successful 100% of the time, it has had a great impact on the number of children in care across Oklahoma. 

2. Additional Family Finding Initiatives Within Foster Care

These added initiatives have created new pathways for foster families to join the work. Some of these initiatives include the following:

• Partial privatization efforts, which have allowed there to be more advocates for foster homes.  The Oklahoma Fosters campaign in 2015 was a great example of the collective efforts that led to over 1,000 foster families being recruited in one year. 
• There has been an increase in efforts to find kinship placements for children. 
• Specific programs, such as Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, focus on advocating for adoptive placements for children based on pre-existing relationships. 
• Preventative, voluntary placement programs like Safe Families have helped provide families more options to responsibly care for their biological children.

3. CarePortal: A Community Based Resource for Families

CarePortal is a connecting technology that helps provide needs for both foster and bio families. It has successfully removed barriers for many families seeking reunification or in efforts to prevent removal. In many cases, the barrier standing in the way of a biological family being reunified or the thing necessary to prevent a child from being removed is a tangible need being met. Due to both relational and physical poverty, these needed changes can feel impossible and removal inevitable. What CarePortal has paved the way for is an expansive, resourced network of care that can respond to requests when led, standing in the gap for families in poverty and without support. The movement of CarePortal across Oklahoma has made an undeniable impact on the numbers of children in care decreasing so drastically over the last several years. Out of the 6,248 requests to “Strengthening a Bio Family” submitted to CarePortal since it launched in Oklahoma in 2016, 4,128 were met.

The landscape of child welfare across the state of Oklahoma has seen remarkable progress and change. However, the work is far from done. There is still a great need for more foster families. Although the number of children in care has decreased, so has the number of foster families. 111Project has the goal of seeing 1,000 new foster families a year and believes this would provide enough homes for children who come into the foster care system throughout the year.

111Project’s initial goal is to mobilize 1,000 churches across Oklahoma that can serve at least one family a month on CarePortal and recruit and support one foster family every year. That effort will move the state closer to having more than enough help for children and families in crisis. Practically speaking, this would mean that there would be foster families waiting on children to enter the foster care system rather than the current reality, where children are sleeping in cars and offices because of a deficit in open foster homes.

CarePortal has opened doors for meaningful support from churches to families in need throughout the state. Any churches or individuals interested in learning more or getting involved can visit our website at the link below.