It can be a long road to finding permanent homes for kids in the New York State foster care system, but many find it worthwhile.

Megan Battista is a Wendy's Wonderful Kids recruiter who saw this in Merriah, a child in a temporary foster home that wasn't on the path to permanency.

Battista said she knew Merriah was longing to settle past traumas and knew finding her a mentor was the best thing to do. The hope was to have someone who could work with Merriah on her goals and guide her in navigating certain challenges.

She found a mentor in fellow Wendy's Wonderful Kids Recruiter, Emilie Kenneally. After awhile, Kenneally decided to adopt Merriah.

Battista said this wasn't always the plan, but she had an idea it might happen.

"I think that you can tell when a resource is ready to be permanency when they start to be, like, really concerned about wherever that kid is," said Battista. "So, I think there were some things that came up where she was like, 'I'm just really worried. I want to make sure that Merriah's getting the best', when she was not going to be a placement for them."

Kenneally went from mentor to mother. She and her husband John became certified foster parents to do respite for Merriah, and adopted her after a placement fell apart.

Battista said she feels that while Merriah is unique, her circumstances aren't. She said it can be easy to not want to rock the boat when placing an older kid, especially when they're not eager to be in a certain placement.

It was an interesting experience for Kenneally to be on a different end of the foster-care spectrum. Although she's worked in child welfare for many years, this was quite a different experience.

But, after getting to know - and later adopting her - Kenneally noted that Merriah has changed for the better since they first met.

"After being adopted, she can finally dream of the future," said Kenneally. "She knows that she has a safety net and people who care about her and that she can lean on, no matter what. And, so I think having that has really given her the opportunity to think of what her life could be and to have dreams, and not have to focus on just making it through the day."

One piece of advice Kenneally has for others is to manage your expectations. She said acknowledging what foster kids come from and have been through can be helpful to potential foster parents.

She's learned that things may not go the way a parent plans, but it still is likely to turn out all right.

Republican-sponsored bills and amendments in the Legislature would eliminate the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth. More than 1.5-million children live in Tennessee. TCCY said it is a critical component of keeping children's issues front and center.

Kylie Graves, policy specialist for the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, said it was never consulted about the legislation, and the text in the amendment would remove any mention of the agency from the state code. She added that dismantling the commission will cause Tennessee to lose the only entity that works to address the well-being of children.

"So very short turnaround there, kind of a mix of trying to wrap our heads around what the amendment does, what it would mean for us to be completely deleted from code, it would mean that we would no longer exist, and all of our programs would have to go elsewhere if they were to continue, " she said.

Graves added the commission is reaching out to legislators who will be voting on the bills, explaining the value the panel brings as an independent consolidated state agency. Two measures are in play in the legislature. House Bill 330 will be presented before the House Children and Family Affairs Subcommittee today and Senate Bill 282 will go before the Senate Health and Welfare Committee tomorrow.

Graves said the commission has partnered with the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Kids Count for more than 30 years and they set up the infrastructure and collect data for reports. She noted the foundation will not partner with another non-independent state agency to do this work because of trust and reliability.

"To us, that's just another clear example of how we were not consulted on this legislation or where programs will move because the Kids Count work, including the State of the Child, the county profiles, our data center, all of that cannot go to another state agency. And so nonprofits will have to pick up that work," she added.

Graves said the commission is the only state agency tasked with looking at issues across the childhood spectrum and making recommendations to improve those systems, and added the 21-person board is made up of members appointed by the governor and can serve up to nine years. At least one member is appointed from each of Tennessee's nine development districts.

A recent report on the child welfare workforce shortage looks at how worker turnover, recruitment, and retention are impacting children and families in the care system.

The Philadelphia Child Welfare Workforce Taskforce made recommendations to the City's human services department to improve it.

Samea Kim - Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs for the Pennsylvania Council of Children, Youth, and Family Services - said they surveyed 281 workers in Philadelphia's child welfare system and found that a lack of funding was the number one issue.

"In our survey," said Kim, "when we asked participants what the top five factors are that would cause them to leave this field, over 80% of respondents noted that salary was probably the number one factor for them in sort of determining their future in this field."

Kim said they found the average salaries of foster care providers and community caseworkers was thousands of dollars less than a Philadelphia DHS employee, and added that 44% of child welfare workers had a second job to supplement their income.

Kim explained that they also studied the employee turnover rate in foster care.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the child welfare workforce struggled with recruitment and retention, and Kim said average turnover rates of 20% to 40% were not uncommon.

"When we looked at the Philadelphia community umbrella agencies, most recently, their average turnover rate was 45%, which is a pretty high departure from pre-pandemic levels," said Kim. "It's also really far from what is seen as a manageable or sort of good turnover rate of 10%."

Kim emphasized that the report found high turnover rates led to workload increases for remaining caseworkers, making them reconsider their future in these jobs.

Kim said the task force also recommended additional funding to reduce the workload for new caseworkers, and allow agencies to hire a bullpen of providers who can be on standby when the caseload spikes.

Knowing how to hold space for the grief of children can be complex, but learning how to do it is vital for their well-being.

A death in the family is always traumatic, but deaths due to overdose bring their own unique pain and are on the rise. The National Institutes of Health reports U.S. overdose deaths reached a record of more than 106,000 in 2021, a near 20% increase from the year prior.

With those statistics in mind, the nonprofit National Alliance for Children's Grief will be focusing on the aftermath of overdose deaths as it holds its national conference and webcast in Baltimore March 21.

Vicki Jay, CEO of the alliance, said grief stays with people as they age, and we owe it to kids to address their grief head on.

"The cost of inaction affects the health of our kids, the emotional health, their academic performance, their relationships, all of the above," Jay explained. "It's so much easier in my opinion, to address grief when it affects a child rather than waiting 'til they are a broken adult and try to fix that."

Estimates indicate one in 12 children in Maryland will experience the death of a sibling or parent by age 18.

Family members and children of those who die as a result of a substance-use disorder have often experienced a complex and unreliable relationship with the person. Jay explained the inconsistency can affect the sense of trust in a child.

"If you live in an environment where people are not themselves much of the time, who do you trust and who do you turn to and what is real and what is not real?" Jay emphasized. "Those kinds of things are scary for kids."

When children carry grief with them, it can change through time as they experience life's milestones without their person. At times grief may take the form of acting out, and Jay added adults need to be mindful of a child's experience of loss.

"When a child misbehaves at school, we assume that was his goal that day," Jay pointed out. "'I got up and decided I wanted to draw my teacher crazy,' without looking beyond that and say, 'Why is this child struggling in the classroom?' And many times it goes back to loss and changes in his own personal life."