Foster care consists of different components, one being the reasons children enter foster care.
Roanoke County Department of Social Services (RCDSS) workers collaborate with families to prevent children entering foster care, but sometimes children are in imminent danger and no other safe option is available.
To learn more about why children enter foster care, see this excerpt featured below from the Virginia Department of Social Services Child and Family Services manual section 3.1.
"Children enter foster care through:
• Court commitment based on an abuse or neglect petition.
• A CHINS (children in need of services) petition.
• An entrustment. • Delinquency or request for relief of care and custody petitions.
• Non-custodial foster care agreements.
• Re-entry from a commitment to the Department of Juvenile Justice."