“Every child who walks in through these doors – many of them have challenges we couldn’t even imagine,” Bullock said in announcing the Protect Montana Kids initiative. “Every one of those children can be successes or statistics.”
The initiative is aimed at improving systems used by child protection agencies and increasing resources available to them. Bullock called that mission “the most important responsibility we have as a state.”
Bullock said that over the past eight years, the number of children in foster care has gone up 75 percent – largely due to an increase in the number of kids who are placed there as a result of cases involving drug or alcohol abuse by a parent. Those cases are up 65 percent over the past five years.
