NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WMOT/TNS) -- The Tennessee Department of Children's Services says more of the state’s orphaned and abandoned children are finding permanent homes.
DCS’s Michael Leach says fewer than 1000 teens turned 18 and aged out of the system last year. That’s down from roughly 12-hundred in each of the previous five years.
Leach says DCS is focused on providing children in the system with the “permanency” adoption provides.
Leach also notes that those wards of the state who choose to attend college can continue to receive public assistance until they turn 21.
"Whatever was going on in their living situation may have affected their schooling or life-skill development. Or the traumas associated with abuse and neglect, they're dealing with those needs and so it's hard to focus on other things to move you forward."
Leach says, overall, there are about eight-thousand kids of all ages in the Tennessee foster-care system at any given time.