SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO.com) — An effort to help address the need for more foster and adoptive families for children in South Dakota kicked off in Fort Pierre Tuesday.
Governor Kristi Noem says the Stronger Families Together initiative will help recruit, prepare and support foster and adoptive families.
“I’m so grateful for all those families that have opened up their homes, but we need more,” Noem said.
995 of the 1,738 children in state custody are currently living with foster families, according to the South Dakota Department of Social Services.
Noem herself had a foster brother growing up.
“I remember my mom and dad years later talking about the fact that they wished when they decided to become foster parents that they would have had more information,” Noem said, adding “they wished that they would have been better trained to know what they could do to help him, and to help him cope with a lot of the trauma that he had experienced in his life.”
Noem said the state has a goal of recruiting 1,200 new foster families over the next four years.
(Jody Heemstra, Dakota Radio Group, contributed this report.)
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