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Record Number Of Children In Foster Care

Record numbers of children are under court supervision. More and more kids are in shelters and foster care since 2010. 

As of March 2014, there were nearly 16,000 children in shelters and foster carecompared to nearly 11,000 in 2010. Christine Scarpati, the CEO of Child Crisis Center in Mesa, said during the recession, the state legislature cut funding from programs that helped children reunite with their families. Her agency alone lost $1.8 million. 

“Supervised visitation, parenting classes," Scarpati said. "Things that they had been told they have to do to get their kids back. Well those services were all the sudden not available for them so those kids were staying longer and longer in foster care.“ 

Nearly 600 children were removed from their homes as a result of the recently completed backlog of cases from the Child Protective Services Agency. It was discovered the agency had more than 6,000 uninvestigated cases last year. The newly formed Department of Child Safety said those removals are contributing the recent increase of kids in out-of-home care.

Alexandra Olgin was a Senior Field Correspondent at KJZZ from 2013 to 2016.