The state of Arkansas is in a crisis. With a record number of children in the custody of the state, the foster care system is experiencing a housing shortage that has left children without foster homes as well as a lack of funds and employees, forcing many caseworkers to take on double the recommended load.
In the past two years, the crisis in the foster care system has garnered considerable attention from the statewide media as Gov. Asa Hutchinson placed the issue as one of his top priorities. In the summer of 2015, the Arkansas Times published a five-part series on the crisis, publishing lengthy features that looked at the crisis from a variety of angles.
While well written and in-depth, the articles released by the Arkansas Times feature long blocks of text, few images, and no sign of multimedia elements, a design style that is at home in a publication but not on the web. To add to the coverage in a manner that is better suited for the internet, I am working to create a multimedia news site centered around the foster care crisis that incorporates strong writing and multimedia features that will bring together photo, video, sound, and interactives to work to create a more complete picture of the state of the crisis.
Why it Matters
As the children go, so does our future. A symptom of the plague that is poverty, foster children are often born into a brutal cycle of economic insecurity. The result of drug addiction, mental health issues, unstable employment or a combination of multiple factors, the parents of many of the children placed in care are in desperate need of help. Because of the lack of resources available to many of these parents as a result of a lack of funding and overload on the case worker, if the family is reunited, they are often in the same economic position, raising the likelihood the cycle will continue.
Story Breakdown
For this story, I intend to break down the crisis into different overarching themes, each covering a group that the foster care crisis directly affects. These sections will include:
- The Children
- With nearly 5,000 children currently in care, the state has surpassed the limit of children the system can handle.
- The Families
- The foster care crisis affects biological and foster families alike. Whether through a lack of resources to help parents work through case plans or a lack of communication to help foster families navigate the maze of foster care, families on both sides experience their fair share of issues.
- The State
- A poor, fiscally conservative state, Arkansas has lacked the resources and manpower to adequately deal with the expanding crisis.
The Goal
Through this project, I hope to bring to light the issues facing the foster care system in the state of Arkansas. No child should suffer, through this project I hope to place more attention on the crisis and encourage change through smart policy and a reinvigorated desire to help the children of Arkansas.
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