Child advocate highlights Heart Gallery, volunteer gains and a proposal to speed permanency hearings

Amanda Whittle, the state child advocate, told the Legislative Oversight Subcommittee that the Department of Children's Advocacy has stepped up efforts to recruit adoptive families and Guardian ad Litem volunteers and will pilot a modest monetary stipend to support volunteer participation.

Whittle said adoption inquiries rose from 383 to 851 in one fiscal year and credited the South Carolina Heart Gallery — a program of the foster care review division that posts photographs and videos of children legally free for adoption — with helping generate interest. "They take beautiful photographs of children who have indicated that they want forever homes," Whittle said of the Heart Gallery exhibit she described at the Columbiana Center in Harbison.

On volunteer staffing, Whittle said the Guardian ad Litem program served 11,577 children in the last fiscal year, averaging about 6,600 children per month. The program, she said, employed 128 staff and had 999 volunteers; volunteers were appointed in roughly 56 percent of cases while staff acted as guardian in 44 percent. The agency reported a vacancy rate for Guardian ad Litem positions of 37 percent when Whittle joined in 2019 and said that rate had fallen to 6 percent in the most recent fiscal year after targeted recruiting and hiring.

To further support volunteers, Whittle said the agency will test using carry-forward funds to pay $250 per guardian per case next year and evaluate whether that increases the volunteer pool. "We're going to try to put that into play, test it, look at the results next year to determine did spending $250 per guardian per case increase our volunteer pool or not," Whittle said.

Whittle also described the Foster Care Review Division, established by statute in 1974, which supports a state board and 43 local boards that review cases of children who have been in foster care longer than four months. Foster care review board recommendations are delivered to judges on a yellow paper the director said is displayed prominently in court files to aid judicial review.

The committee briefly discussed pending legislation that would move permanency planning hearings from 12 months to nine months; Whittle said she had reviewed the draft and that the bill had input from the state's children's law center and judges. The bill was in the Family and Veterans Services Committee and was expected to be heard again by a subcommittee; Whittle said the Department of Children's Advocacy had not been a drafter but would review the proposal and provide feedback.

Whittle noted the agency's outreach to legislative delegations and offered to provide county-level data on current Guardian ad Litem staffing and vacancies to delegation chairs to aid local recruitment. Chairman Young and senators on the panel recorded follow-up items to receive that information.

Whittle is the department's first state child advocate; she told the subcommittee she expects to leave the post around the end of April when she assumes a judgeship in the second judicial circuit.