Office of Governor Gary Locke
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - February 11, 2004
Contact:  Governor's Communications Office, 360-902-4136

Gov. Gary Locke Highlights Success of State’s Child Welfare System, Urges Continued Progress at Washington Permanency Summit

Gov. Gary Locke today focused on strengthening the state’s child welfare system during his keynote speech at the Washington Permanency Summit in SeaTac.

The summit was hosted by the Families for Kids Partnership, a statewide initiative started in 1994, with the vision of finding a permanent family in a timely manner for each child in foster care.

“Foster care is not meant to be a permanent placement for children,” Locke said. “We need to continue to work together to find a permanent family for each child in Washington.”

Locke lauded efforts being made through the state’s child welfare agency, the courts, and by private and non-profit child placement agencies. The state’s Children’s Administration has created a statewide foster and adoptive home recruitment program, greatly increased efforts to locate relatives who may be able to care for children and has developed new assessment tools that will enable social workers to make more appropriate placement decisions.

Additionally, private and nonprofit child placement agencies have developed new outreach tools to find more families willing to adopt older children or children with special needs.

In January 1999, Locke introduced the Permanency Summit’s five-year plan. Developed by more than 300 individuals from 90 public and private agencies, tribes and organizations, the framework contains six goals:

Expediting permanent placement of children into families;
Recruiting and retaining foster and adoptive families;
Emphasizing kinship;
Working effectively with very young children;
Promoting permanency options for adolescents; and
Involving the community.

Last year, 7,110 children went to a permanent family from the state’s child welfare system. Since the introduction of the framework, the number of children adopted out of the system has almost doubled to 1,204 in 2003. The time children spent in foster care decreased from 46 months in 1996 to 37 months in 2002, and 84 percent of sibling groups were adopted into the same family. Also, 85 percent of the children who went home were reunified with their families within 12 months. The federal standard is 76 percent.

“We must never let anyone forget that our children only get one childhood,” Locke said. “All kids deserve to have a family of their own. A place where, without words, the heart simply knows, ‘I’m home. I belong here.’”

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