Foster care nightmare cases aren't the norm. But the norm still fails to meet the need in Pa.

Scott Thomas doesn’t represent the typical foster parent in Pennsylvania and neither do Robert and Stephanie Duncan.

But their crimes against children in Lebanon County reveal one of the risks that foster care poses: Adults who have been trained and vetted to support already-traumatized children sometimes fail them too.

Thomas, 55 of Lebanon, sexually assaulted foster children living in his home. Stephanie Duncan tortured five foster sons that she and her husband, Robert, had adopted, and he helped to abuse them. All three adults are now in jail on lengthy sentences.

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Those abuse stories - along with mistreatment and abuse reported in foster group homes for years - are among the worst in foster care, but what remains is a foster system still fraught with other challenges:

• There are more children in need than homes available. In Pennsylvania, about 14,000 children live in foster care. In the United States, nearly a half million children live in foster care and another 117,000 kids and youth await adoption from foster care. 
• Foster children are often moved from home to home, creating more chaos for at-risk children.
• In 2019, the federal government spent $5.3 billion on foster care, and the states add more to that pot, paying foster parents for childcare and giving aid to parents who adopt foster children permanently.
• Foster children who are never adopted – they “age out” of foster care - are more likely to face homelessness and teen pregnancy and are less likely to finish a four-year degree.

“A foster youth hasn’t had the opportunities of a typical youth in America, and at 18 or 21, they’re on their own. They might have to join gangs or the military to survive,” said Bob Herne, national project director for Adopt US Kids.

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He’s a child welfare advocate, a human services/social worker of three decades who believes in foster care and the majority of good people who "open up their hearts and homes" to children in need. But he doesn't believe the foster system should be child welfare's first option.

The system should be supporting families first to keep children in their homes with their parents, when possible, he said. Most child welfare calls are related to poverty, not abuse, he said.

Because poverty-related issues are often what pulls children from their homes, Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children, a child advocacy organization, supports the idea of more state and federal funds being used to ease those burdens.

"More often than not, children and families that come to the attention of child welfare and then come into placement are for non-abuse issues, so some of those issues are poverty, truancy, mental health, so if we start to address some of those issues in a more proactive manner, where there’s greater funding and more cross-system collaboration, government intervention won’t be as necessary,” said Rachael Miller, policy director for PA Partnerships. 

Pennsylvania is improving child welfare as it relates to foster care:

• More children are being placed in kinship care, where relatives or close friends of the family foster the child rather than a stranger. As of April 2021, 44 percent of the state’s foster children were placed with relatives, compared to 31.5 percent in 2015.
• Fewer children are going into congregate care – foster group homes or institutions. In 2015, 17.1 percent of children in foster care were in congregate care in this state, and by 2019, 12.7 percent went into group homes.
• Fewer children are entering foster care. Between 2019 and 2020, almost 3,000 fewer children went into foster care in Pennsylvania. Philadelphia has had a history of removing children at high rates, an issue the city is working to turn around, according to the National Coalition for Child Protective Reform. Pre-pandemic, nearly seven children in 1,000 were removed from their Philadelphia homes in 2019.

A piece of legislation that passed Congress in 2018 - the Families First Prevention Services Act - is beginning to give states the money to invest in family services, when possible, to keep children in their homes. Pennsylvania is part of that program now, but for Cathleen Palm, state leaders need to do even more.

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"To draw down those funds is pretty prescriptive, pretty tight, and it’s still around the context to prevent placement (of a child into foster care) rather than wholly supporting families," she said. Palm is the founder of the Center for Children's Justice, a nonprofit advocacy organization in Pennsylvania.

"Pennsylvania could be bolder and more innovative than it is at the moment," she said. 

Pennsylvania's Department of Human Services reported that in 2020, there were:

• 73 child fatalities from abuse or neglect.
• 115 near fatalities of children.

One of Stephanie and Robert Duncan's sons, adopted from foster care, was one of those near fatalities in 2021, when he was taken to the hospital for hypothermia. He was found to have serious bodily injury and prolonged exposure to cold. 

"Ultimately, the best situation to prevent child abuse is our community. It’s our neighbors, it’s our teachers, it’s our doctors, it’s our next door neighbors, who, when they see something isn’t right, they alert authorities," Herne said. "It’s very easy to go and blame the child welfare system when something goes wrong, but as a community, we need to ask why we don’t get more involved."

Kim Strong can be reached at kstrong@gannett.com.