In foster care, siblings separated or left waiting

Monday, Nov. 12, 2007 | 7:05 a.m.

Claire's assigned bedroom is painted pink and plastered with photographs. One picture is of her brother, smiling. (He lives across the street.) Another is of her younger sister, standing with her hair pulled back. (She moved out last week.)

"She left me," Claire said.

It's estimated that 70 percent of children in the foster care system are in it with their siblings - and not just sets of two or three kids, but groups of five or six. Clans that are often sent to different homes until someone, anyone, can make them whole.

At least that's the goal. The reality is quite different. Siblings in the system, whether placed in shelters or in county-run foster homes, are often separated simply because no other option exists. For children who have already lost their parents and seen their home lives shredded, this separation can rip at the seams of what's left.

Thomas Waite, executive director of the Girls and Boys Town of Nevada, gives one example: At the Vegas residential facility, one group of siblings, two girls and a boy, live as neighbors and have to cross the street to see each other. And they're the lucky ones.

Other children in the system have found themselves utterly separated and have little contact with siblings.

For families of four and five children, finding a single home has been nearly impossible, Waite said.

But the situation is changing, at least for a handful of children.

A $350,000 grant from the Nevada Women's Philanthropy will enable Girls and Boys Town to build a siblings home: a 5,000-square-foot house that, like all the residential properties on the foster care campus, will house nine children full time under the care of a married couple who also live in the house.

Here, sibling groups from one or more families can live together in a co-ed and age-diverse environment, which is an exception to the rule in the foster care system, Waite said.

"The goal for these kids," Waite said, "is to experience what a normal large family would look like." Waite acknowledges that nine children represent a tiny minority of children passing through the system. "We serve 1,000 kids a year (through Girls and Boys Town) and even that is a drop in the bucket in terms of what we are dealing with."

Still, he said, it's a start.

The Nevada Women's Philanthropy awarded the grant Nov. 2. Construction is slated to begin in April and be completed next November, Waite said.

It will not be the first sibling house in the Las Vegas Valley. Child Haven, the county's public shelter for abused and neglected children, operates the Howard Cottage, where 12 children are housed with their brothers and sisters.

Still, there are 62 children who live in the shelter's more traditional housing, which is segregated by gender and age. Of all the children, 57 have siblings who are also at the shelter. Some have been separated out of necessity, said Christine Skorupski, public information officer for Clark County Family Services.

Sometimes a child needing a higher level of care must live separately in a home that is designed to meet his needs. And there are siblings who share only one parent, and are therefore divided among different relatives who promise to keep the children in touch with each other.

Sometimes the family is just too big, and finding a foster parent willing to take them all in "is not even a matter of who has a big enough heart," Skorupski said. "It's who has a big enough home."

"It obviously poses some placement challenges, and (siblings) have a tendency of staying with us a little longer," she said.

From April to June last year, there were some 6,000 children in Nevada's foster care system. On average, those children spent slightly more than 15 months in temporary care, according to the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services.

Unless foster homes can be found to accommodate a family of children, Waite sees the Girls and Boys Club sibling residence as a long-term home, where children won't have to fear being bumped around by the system that is supposed to care for them.

Waite wants to provide a secure environment for siblings until they have completed high school and can move out on their own.

"My goal is to make this the last place they are going to be," Waite said. "If we can create permanency, we can really make a difference in their lives for the first time."