Thanks to the religious community in Tennessee, children in state custody will no longer be housed in Department of Children’s Services (DCS) office buildings.
Often when children are taken into state custody, there is an indefinite waiting period before they can be placed in a foster home. For at least a year, children were sleeping and living in DCS office buildings due to a lack of transitional housing for that period of time.
Many of these children were either resuming DCS custody after being in a previous foster home, taken from their homes after neglect or abuse allegations towards their parents or guardians, or they were coming under DCS custody after running into trouble with the law.
While some of these DCS offices were properly set up with beds and private rest areas, some children were subject to sleeping on chairs or the floor. Either way, this was a major problem for DCS and the children in their custody.
