Cleveland has insufficient number of Jewish foster homes

Need for more Jewish foster-care families hits home
Fine, Arlene. Cleveland Jewish News.

Last October, Fred Taub’s website news@frumcleveland.org began alerting the Jewish community about the plight of three Orthodox Jewish children who were in need of foster care.

The children temporarily lived with a Cleveland Heights family until mid-January. After a legal hearing last month, the Common Pleas Court gave the county custody of the children. They were appointed a county social worker, who placed the siblings with a foster-care family in Mansfield.

The fact that these children now live in a community 50 miles away from Cleveland’s Orthodox hub has raised important issues. “Three young, vulnerable children have been removed from our community because we are powerless to help them,” says Taub. “We as a community have many emergency safety nets, but we missed the boat on this one. Our only Orthodox foster-care family could not accommodate these children, so no one else was legally allowed to take all three of these children in.”

Since this incident, there has been a call to action within the Orthodox community for interested adults to take the state-mandated steps to become state-certified foster parents. Green Road Synagogue’s Rabbi Melvin Granatstein has mentioned the need for more licensed foster-care homes from his pulpit, and Fuchs Mizrachi School’s Shabbat memo also alerted interested adults how to begin the foster-care licensing process.

“Not many Jewish children come into foster care because there are informal networks within the Jewish community that provide help for families in crisis,” says Karen Anderson, director of foster care and adoption at Bellefaire/JCB. “However, when we do have a situation where Jewish children need to be placed outside their home, we would like to have a wide range of potential resources for them.”

Foster care is not just for older children, adds Anderson. “Occasionally we have a Jewish infant waiting for adoptive placement,” she says. “We need foster-care homes where an infant can be taken care of for a short or prolonged period of time until we find the right adoptive parents.”

For information on Bellefaire/ JCB’s foster-care program, go to www.bellefaire/jcb.org or call Anderson at 216-320-8468.


� 21 years old with sufficient income to support your household.

� Free from any condition that could negatively affect the care of a foster child and willing to work with the social service agency as part of the treatment team.


� Home-study process must be completed, including home visits by an agency worker, interviews with all household members, fire and safety inspections, fingerprinting/ criminal record checks, medical examinations, and reference checks.

� Must attend pre-service training prior to certification. Once all activities are completed satisfactorily, the social service agency will recommend your certification to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

� Updates of your home study at least every two years after certification is complete.

� Ongoing training, which can be obtained through the agency’s training program.