How is the Foster Care in South Carolina?

By Nicole Perry

“The foster care system is a network of homes, people, and organizations that provide temporary care for children who have been removed from their families due to abuse, neglect, or other circumstance…,” stated Jimmy Nygo. Nygo is a Homeless Prevention Program Manager at the Pendleton Palace. 

In Greenville, South Carolina there are a total of 417 kids in the system. Most of these kids have been placed in the system due to some type of issue at home. For example, 7,753 kids in SC are in the system due to physical neglect at home. In the United States, there are 407,000 kids in the system. There are so many things happening in the system that we don’t even know about. Most of these issues are dealing with the pay of the social workers, the financial situation of the system itself, and the issues within the foster homes. As I was talking to Marina Lewis, the Social Worker at Mauldin High School, she talked about some of those issues within the foster system. 

“It is a really tough job because they are the ones who have to take them away and put them into those foster homes…. It is similar to teachers with pay, and we need to pay the teachers what they are worth. I think it is the same as the Human Services industry,” Lewis stated. Throughout the interview, she stated multiple times that the pay with the social workers is not great. 

On the website Indeed, the median salary of a social worker in Greenville, SC is $61,000 per year. Social workers stated that they are not very happy with their pay. On Career Explore they took a poll and it showed that they rate their salaries 2.5 out of 5.

The other issue Lewis spoke about is the financial situation of the system itself. “These kids are moving from place to place and their stuff gets literally put in a garbage bag and they just take it,” she said.

 These days the system has to take all the donations it can get because the money they get from the government can’t pay for everything they need. The site Foster Focus stated on average more than $9,000,000,000 federal and state dollars go to this system, but it is still a struggle to take care of all the children.

Lewis also commented on the life of the foster kids. “They never know what's gonna change or not change and I mean the people that go into foster care families 99.9% are wonderful and doing what they can,” she said. 

Nygo also stated on this topic. “When a child is placed in foster care, they are placed with a foster family who will provide them with a safe and nurturing environment while their family works to resolve any issues that led to the child being removed”, Nygo said.

On the website Fostering Great Ideas, the foster parents get paid $20-$25 for each child based on the age of the child. Some of these parents have used the kids just for money. 1,000,000 kids suffer from abuse or neglect within their foster homes. Only a fraction, 100,000, of those cases get reported according to the Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC website. Victoria Rose Smith is an example of one of the many flaws in this system. According to the Greenville News, she was a three-year-old girl who was murdered by her foster parents on January 14, 2021, in Simpsonville, SC. Her foster mother was known as the disciplinary person within the household. Her foster mother had beaten her multiple times on many occasions. On that day the foster mother beat Victoria so hard with a belt that she made her black and blue and that led to her death. Her last words said to her foster father was, “I love you.”

After realizing how many problems there are in the foster system Lewis states, “There should be more support in the foster homes and support of the kids.”  The foster system should be focused on more because the children within the system are our future and their lives matter too.

*All information came from the Department of Social Services unless stated otherwise*