Youngkin Signs Bipartisan Child Welfare Reforms and Sets New Goals for Foster Care

Katie Jones was 11 the last time she saw her childhood home, where her father, an alcoholic, stayed between jail stints and her mother struggled with heroin addiction. One day after school, just moments after she had settled in with a bag of chips and her homework, police and social services workers pulled up outside.

Within minutes, Jones and her five siblings were loaded into vehicles, separated from each other, and plunged into the foster care system — an experience that would shuffle her through five homes, three schools, and years of uncertainty before she aged out at 18, never adopted.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin signs legislation reforming child welfare laws in Richmond on Thursday as Katie Jones (right), who spent much of her childhood in the foster system, looks on. (Photo by Markus Schmidt/Virginia Mercury)

Now 25, Jones stood beside Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Thursday as he signed a slate of new child welfare reforms into law and launched “Safe Kids, Strong Families,” a sweeping initiative to strengthen Virginia’s support for foster youth and help families in crisis stay together.

“The system is broken and it needs to be changed,” Jones told the crowd gathered at the Patrick Henry Building in Richmond’s Capitol Square. “I hope sharing my story today makes a difference.”

As of April 1 2024, there are 5,156 children in foster care in Virginia, with 2,638 (51.16%) children in non-relative foster homes, according to data from the Virginia Department of Social Services. The children range in age from birth to 17 years.

Thursday’s event brought together lawmakers, advocates, caseworkers, and foster families to celebrate progress in Virginia’s child welfare system — and to acknowledge how far it still has to go.

Among the bills Youngkin signed were House Bill 1777 and Senate Bill 1406, bipartisan proposals that guarantee foster youth age 12 and older direct access to the Office of the Children’s Ombudsman.

The legislation ensures children can file complaints and communicate with the ombudsman without requiring permission from social workers, foster parents, or custodians. It also requires agencies to provide contact information to foster youth, their families and caregivers.

Supporters say the measure will help increase transparency and empower youth to advocate for themselves — something Jones didn’t always feel she could do.

“Children need families. Children need support, and they need love,” Youngkin said. “When we work together in order to address this basic need … then we are all marching together toward a destination that will truly guarantee a great future for the commonwealth of Virginia.”

The governor said his focus on child welfare reform began at the onset of his term with one startling fact: over 100 children in foster care were sleeping in social services offices because there was nowhere else to send them.

“I asked Janet Kelly to take on this most important task of finding a place for these children to call home,” Youngkin said. Kelly, now Virginia’s Secretary of Health and Human Resources, had been serving as a senior advisor at the time. She launched the Safe and Sound Task Force, and within months, the number of children sleeping in government offices dropped dramatically.

“I remember the first time she came into my office and said, ‘Governor, tonight, there are no children sleeping in offices.’ That was a moment,” Youngkin said. “Today, we still have a few. But that is the absolute exception now — not the rule.”

Kelly, speaking from personal experience, called the work “deeply personal.”

Secretary of Health and Human Resources Janet Kelly speaks at a bill signing ceremony in Richmond on Thursday. (Photo by Markus Schmidt/Virginia Mercury)

“By investing in them, coaching them, believing in them, trusting them, teaching them, loving them, and listening to them, all kids — even and especially kids in foster care — can have the opportunity to turn heartbreak into hope,” she said.

Thirteen years ago, Kelly and her husband took custody of an 18-month-old boy through a kinship placement. “It worked pretty well,” she said, “but we know all too well that the balance of hope and heartbreak never ends when it comes to foster care.”

Another reform that Youngkin signed Thursday, Senate Bill 801, modernizes the Children’s Services Act (CSA), expanding eligibility to children identified as “in need of services.” It also mandates state approval for the tool used to determine eligibility and eliminates outdated references to long-defunct programs and structures.

Youngkin called the bill a turning point. “Kinship care is at the heart of providing a safe place for kids and strong families,” he said. “And the work that was done on a bipartisan basis … changes everything.”

He pointed to recent progress in Virginia’s kinship placement rankings. “We’re watching the numbers move,” he said. “Virginia went from last, and we’re climbing.”

But the governor also issued a challenge.

“Notwithstanding the tremendous progress that we have made, we have huge mountains yet to climb,” Youngkin said. Abuse hotline calls are up 25% since 2020, he noted, and more than 70% of child fatalities tied to abuse or neglect had prior contact with child protective services.

“Forty percent of frontline workers leave their jobs after one year due to trauma and burnout,” he added. “We need to continue to strive to be the very best — not because we want to be ranked, but because we are serving children.”

“Safe Kids, Strong Families” aims to take a system-wide approach to reform, aligning policy, funding, and community efforts around a shared goal — stability, safety, and long-term success for every Virginia child.

First lady Suzanne Youngkin reminded the audience of the moral and spiritual weight behind the work.

“Every single person in this room — and everyone in the commonwealth of Virginia, in our country, in our world — has an obligation to defend the weak, rescue the poor, keep them from the wicked, and focus on the fatherless and motherless,” she said. “It’s a very intricate web of services, of laws, of God stepping into the gap.”

For Katie Jones, those gaps were often wide and painful.

“The sad truth is most foster kids don’t graduate high school, less than 10% go to college, and even fewer get a degree or certification,” she said. “I was the exception, I got lucky. But to this day, I never got adopted.”

by Markus Schmidt, Virginia Mercury

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