Owsley County volunteers sought to review foster care cases

When foster care cases do not get enough local eyes on them, children can wait longer for services, placements, and the permanent homes they need. In Owsley County and nearby Lee County, Kentucky courts were asking residents to step into that role as the Citizen Foster Care Review Board recruited volunteers in 54 counties during National Child Abuse Prevention Month.

The board’s work is small in calendar time but large in consequence. Volunteers generally reviewed cases virtually one day a month, then looked at whether children in state custody were getting the services they needed and moving toward safe, permanent homes as quickly as possible. The cases include children removed because of abuse, neglect, or dependency, along with some young adults with extended out-of-home commitments for education. In a county where families are often closely connected, that monthly review can be the difference between a child staying visible to the system or getting lost inside it.

The commitment was designed to be manageable for rural volunteers. Applicants had to consent to criminal record and Central Registry checks and complete six hours of initial training, split between two Zoom meetings and two self-paced programs. After training, the board recommended the volunteer to the chief judge of the local Family Court or District Court for appointment. Kentucky courts said there were review boards in all 120 counties and more than 700 statewide volunteers, with an average length of service of six years.

The scale of the system showed why that recruitment mattered. In fiscal year 2025, 716 volunteers conducted 19,746 reviews of 11,435 children. The Kentucky Court of Justice said the Citizen Foster Care Review Board had been created by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1982 in response to federal legislation requiring regular administrative reviews of children in foster care. State law in Chapter 620 also set out the board’s authority over training, permanency plans, case progress reports, and access to records, underscoring that this was not an informal advisory role but part of Kentucky’s child-welfare machinery.

Kentucky’s Department for Community Based Services also said it no longer accepted paper Central Registry background check forms for employment and volunteer purposes, a shift that made the screening process more standardized. For Lee and Owsley counties, the message was direct: the state system needed local residents willing to spend one virtual day a month helping make sure children in foster care were seen, heard, and pushed toward stable homes.