MIDLAND, Texas — COVID-19 has many areas putting adoptions and fosters on hold but High Sky Children's Ranch has adapted their programs so as not to slow down the process.
"Here in Midland Odessa and the Permian Basin Area things are going pretty much as normal in a lot of ways, we're continuing with adoptions, continuing licensing foster parents," said JaLynn Hogan, the executive director of High Sky Children's Ranch.
High Sky Ranch knows that parents and children being stuck at home is leading to an increase of stress, so they say their programs are important right now but will be even more so after people start returning to their day to day lives.
"We do expect that the child abuse rate will increase during this time but they're not getting reported because they're not going to school or daycare," said Hogan.
"They're cooped up in their home so the cases that are being seen are more severe because they're ending up in the emergency room or the police are being called due to domestic violence."
High Sky is preparing to deal with the increase of child abuse by moving most of their adoption and foster training virtual, but there is some business that has to be taken care of in person.
"We still do a lot of things in person like placement, we need to meet the kids in person so it's kind of a hybrid right now," said Hogan.
Moving the programs online allows High Sky to help more kids.
"In the Permian Basin 60% of the children are having to leave the area for foster care so we already have a foster care shortage and if those numbers increase that's going to mean that more children are leaving this areas." said Hogan. "It's really important to us that we keep licensing foster families and moving them through the system so that children have a place to go."
Making sure kids have a place to go is the priority for High Sky Children's Ranch.
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