\u201cThe numbers don\u2019t stop,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe\u2019re grateful that these families are stepping up \u2026 but we need more [foster parents], especially those willing to take on teens and to replace those who have gone from fostering to adopting if reunification wasn\u2019t possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reunification refers to the process of returning a child in foster care to the biological parents or primary caregivers when it is deemed safe and appropriate by the courts, caseworkers and foster agencies.<\/p>\n
Pressley Ridge also has 32 families with foster children placed in their homes outside of Allegheny County. Senior Director Rachel Duvall helps oversee its Southwest Counties program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The agency has had to look for foster homes across and outside of the state because of the lack of openings, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re often asked, \u2018Do you have a family that you\u2019re onboarding that could be escalated to the emergency certification because we have a child that has nowhere to go,\u2019\u201d Duvall said. \u201cThese are typically kids with more complex needs \u2026 an open family might not have the required training.\u201d<\/p>\n
Duvall also said she is seeing a decrease in court-ordered referrals of community residential rehabilitation, a combination of therapy with psychiatric care and other mental health resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe need is there. Unfortunately, what we\u2019ve noticed is a decrease in referrals because of the lack of homes [certified to provide CRR],\u201d Duvall said. \u201cThey\u2019re having to refer to resources farther away from the home \u2026 putting more stress on these kids and families.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Tanya-Johnson-and-Rachel-Duvall-Pressley-Ridge.jpg\")
Directors of Foster Care at Pressley Ridge Rachel Duvall, left, and Tanya Johnson discuss the current number of children in foster care through their agency at their Marshall-Shadeland office. The directors say there is a greater need for foster families throughout southwestern Pennsylvania. (Erin Yudt\/Pittsburgh Media Partnership Newsroom)<\/p>\n
In Washington County,\u00a0Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children<\/a>\u00a0Executive Director Kelley Swift said finding foster care is difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cThe child welfare system is very overwhelmed. \u2026 We\u2019ve had kids linger in hospitalizations for longer than they needed to because a foster home couldn\u2019t be found that could provide a kind of therapeutic aspect to it,\u201d Swift said. \u201cThe burnout and turnover of caseworkers is super high.\u201d<\/p>\n Allegheny County Director of Child Welfare Mandeep Gill said whenever possible, out-of-home placements for children are in homes of relatives or friends of the family, also known as kinship care.\u00a0<\/p>\n For more than a decade, this approach has been the main out-of-home placement, with 66% of children in the county in kinship care last year; 22% were placed in traditional foster homes. The other 12% were placed in group homes or independent living centers.<\/p>\n The decline in foster parents is due to both the nature of fostering and lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gill said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of our children who do come into care have a high acuity of needs, and there are families who do want to do this. But equally, they\u2019re dealing with their own challenges, and I think we\u2019ve seen a real shift since COVID,\u201d Gill said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that we\u2019re definitely working on with our providers on how we can really engage the community in trying to understand the need is still there, and we need their support to address this.\u201d<\/p>\n Since 2021, the number of children entering foster care in Allegheny County has decreased, with a slight increase from 2023 to 2024 of 51 more children. As of January, there were 1,028 children placed in out-of-home care. Across Pennsylvania, there are about 15,000 children in temporary foster care, according to the\u00a0state Department of Human Services<\/a>.<\/p>\n Experts say that the budget impasses at the state and federal levels could exacerbate the situation for at-risk children and families.<\/p>\n Payments to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients in Pennsylvania were set to be stopped due to the federal government shutdown.\u00a0Nearly 2 million Pennsylvanians<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 including more than 713,000 children and 697,000 older adults \u2014 are estimated to lose access to more than $366 million in monthly food assistance. However, two federal judges ruled on Friday that President Donald Trump\u2019s administration must continue to fund SNAP throughout the shutdown,\u00a0according to reporting by the Associated Press<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Gov. Josh Shapiro joined 24 other states and Washington, D.C., earlier this week<\/a>\u00a0in suing the Trump administration for suspending these payments.<\/p>\n Foster families also receive a monthly stipend funded by the state. Rates can vary based on the foster agency. Allegheny County has been covering the monthly payments to foster families from their reserve funds since July due to the state budget impasse, Gill said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re committed to making sure those payments are made at least until through November,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pressley Ridge is prepared to take over foster parent payments if the county can no longer provide the funding, Duvall said.<\/p>\n Beaver-based foster and adoption agency\u00a0Adoption Connection, PA<\/a>\u00a0said it would be able to sustain foster family payments for six months before having to lay off employees or make other budget cuts.<\/p>\n \u201cFoster families do have to meet\u00a0certain financial requirements<\/a>, but [payments] help establish some savings for kids that foster families might not have had before the child entered the system,\u201d said Jakie Pleska, recruitment and outreach supervisor at Adoption Connection, PA.\u00a0<\/p>\n The agency served 159 children last year primarily in southwestern Pennsylvania, according to the group\u2019s most recent data. They have served children from as far as Philadelphia, but most of their work is connecting and providing services to prevent children from being placed into foster care, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cNeglect is often another term for poverty,\u201d Pleska said. \u201cA lot of these parents grew up in the system themselves. They don\u2019t have good parenting role models. It\u2019s not usually a lack of love. The best case is to keep those children within the home and see what services can be placed in the home.\u201d<\/p>\n Prevention work at Pressley Ridge has already been impacted because of\u00a0federal funding cuts to services like Medicaid.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the services we connect families with, that funding is going away,\u201d Duvall said. \u201cWe can\u2019t connect this family with that community resource because the funding is on hold.\u201d<\/p>\n McKeesport-based human services agency\u00a0Auberle<\/a>\u00a0is the largest provider of foster care services in Allegheny County, serving 50% of teens and 25% of children in the county\u2019s non-kinship foster system in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n The agency is doing its best to keep services running amid the government shutdown and state budget impasse, Chief Operating Officer Aimee Plowman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n It also experienced a decline in the number of foster parents during the COVID-19 pandemic and has recently bounced back to pre-pandemic numbers, registering about two families per month, Director of Foster Care Susan Rosati said.<\/p>\n \u201cFinding the right match for kids is very difficult,\u201d Rosati said. \u201cEven if you have an influx of people waiting for a child, they might only be able to house a female or a male or whatever those unique circumstances are. Sometimes we have children where English is their second language.\u201d<\/p>\n A directory of county children\u2019s youth service offices\u00a0can be found here.<\/a>\u00a0Foster care agencies encourage parents to\u00a0call 211<\/a>\u00a0to be connected with\u00a0food<\/a>,\u00a0home<\/a> and\u00a0other community resources<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you are a current or former foster parent or kinship placement, we would like to hear about your experiences. We are looking to speak with families throughout southwestern Pennsylvania, including Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Washington and Westmoreland counties. We would also like to speak with current or former child welfare caseworkers. Email Erin Yudt at\u00a0erin.yudt@pointpark.edu<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Pittsburgh Media Partnership Newsroom is a regional news service that focuses on government and enterprise reporting in southwestern Pennsylvania. Find out more information on foundation and corporate funders\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Erin Yudt<\/p>\n Erin Yudt is a reporter with Pittsburgh Media Partnership Newsroom, part of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University. She most recently was a multimedia content producer and digital reporter at WKBN in Youngstown and is a graduate of Point Park University. Email her at erin.yudt@pointpark.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fewer families are stepping up to foster, just as experts warn a surge of children could soon flood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[15065,11340,15066,28,73,75,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-22513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-care","9":"tag-foster","10":"tag-fostering","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-pittsburgh","13":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","14":"tag-pittsburgh-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Jackie-Pleska-2.jpg\")
Adoption Connection, PA Recruitment and Outreach Supervisor Jackie Pleska stands outside her office in Beaver. She said the agency can sustain payments to their foster families for six months without aid from the counties they serve. With no state budget, payments have been made to foster families from county reserve funds since July. (Erin Yudt\/Pittsburgh Media Partnership Newsroom)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Auberle-1.jpg\")
A sign outlining the goals and missions of human services nonprofit Auberle. The McKeesport-based organization has seen an increase in foster children with mental health diagnoses including autism and is working to certify more of its foster parents in therapeutic foster care, which provides a more structured environment for children with emotional or behavioral health challenges. (Erin Yudt\/Pittsburgh Media Partnership Newsroom)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Auberle-2.jpg\")
A mural of a tree outside the Auberle office in McKeesport. The human services nonprofit says it is always in need of more foster families, especially those willing to house preteens and teens. (Erin Yudt\/Pittsburgh Media Partnership)
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