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The Department of Human Services is making steady progress in improving our foster care system in Oklahoma, and we are committed to building on this momentum in the additional time we have been granted to continue this important work. In the days, weeks and months ahead, DHS will persist in its efforts to ensure the system is consistently providing the level of support kids need and deserve while they are in state care.

Caring for our state’s most vulnerable children is a moral, social and legal imperative that has its greatest potential when DHS partners with communities to develop and implement the most promising solutions to the causes and effects of abuse and neglect.

We are so grateful to the thousands of Oklahomans who have opened their homes and their hearts to become foster and adoptive families to the children we serve. We could not do this work without the love and support of these families.

There is yet more opportunity for Oklahomans to pitch in, as our greatest need remains to secure more homes for children with medical needs and developmental disabilities. Sadly, these are the children occupying emergency shelters and other facilities because there are not enough families for them. Schools, churches and businesses can be key partners to help us ensure these children can live with families, not in facilities.