Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Wednesday that the two-day conference aimed at addressing problems with foster care and prisoner re-entry in Arkansas only marked a beginning.
The first-term Republican, who organized the Governor's Restore Hope Summit, said that the lectures, testimonies and workshops aimed at addressing child welfare and prisoner rehabilitation were a heartening start to finding long-term solutions involving partnerships forged by government, faith groups and other entities.
"Arkansas has an opportunity to lead," Hutchinson said. "Leaders are in this room. That was our objective. ... We have leadership in your community in your churches in your organizations that are here that will go home and inspire others."
Hutchinson said he has asked that the steering committee that helped put together the conference reconvene and figure out ways to measure progress while also working to enlist other groups that share the same objectives.
"We need to look at the future. I want to assure you that I have no desire to convene this Restore Hope Summit and to leave here only with hope," Hutchinson said. "We need to follow that with action, commitment, measuring sticks."
On Tuesday, the conference focused on the challenges facing prison and parole officials, who are dealing with record prison numbers and high rates of recidivism among parolees.
To lessen the strain on prisons, and cut down on recidivism, parole officials obtained $5.4 million earlier this year to fund as many as 500 beds at re-entry centers around the state.
Through contracts with the state, the privately run centers will take prisoners and put them through a six-month program consisting of various skill and job training programs that will, ideally, lead offenders to gainful employment upon their release.
On Wednesday, officials from the Division of Children and Family Services of the Department of Human Services told the audience of about 500 that as of July, the state had 4,422 foster children, but only 2,709 available beds at foster homes.
Various ministers, advocates and state social workers made the case for faith groups to help by either recruiting families for fostering or adopting children, or by providing mentoring or other services to children in the state's care.
Jessica Eldred, an administrator with the state's Children Services Division, said that something as simple as reaching out to teenagers already in foster care and engaging them in activities or hobbies that they enjoy can make a monumental difference.
"Caseworkers may have the heart to follow that plan but they don't have the time," Eldred said. "Think of everyone you know in your county. Are there eight teenagers [in foster care]? Twenty teenagers? Do we not have enough people who can come together to [help them]?"
After Wednesday's sessions officials from Hutchinson's office said it was too early to tell how many of those in attendance will actively work to help foster children and parolees.
But David Featherstone, a pastor at Greater Second Baptist Church in Little Rock, said that he was "inspired" by the conference and wanted to move forward by working with state parole officials to open a 30-bed re-entry center through his church.
"[Offenders] are already coming back to our community, all of us have been touched in our family by someone going to prison," Featherstone said. "It's the right thing to do, to help someone who has fallen."
Metro on 08/27/2015