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Demands on foster care have exploded everywhere with expanding drug addiction.

Now, a Minnesota community is “testing” an experimental program originally launched in Sacramento, California, in an attempt to control rising costs resulting from escalating removals of children from their parents into foster care.

This experimental program assigns a social worker to each at-risk parent, to mentor them in building better life-coping skills, so they can keep their lives together and, therefore, keep their children at home with them.

Instead of reaching for their substance of choice when the going gets tough, at-risk parents contact their social worker. Also called “recovery specialists”, these social workers serve in part as on-demand best friend.

Although the programs sounds as though it must be expensive, in fact, the investment made in hiring recovery specialists in Sacramento has doubled the number of parents who have been able to regain custody of their kids and saved government and taxpayers millions of dollars in foster care-related costs - not to mention the non-monetary savings in terms of reunification of families.

Read more in this [MN] Pioneer Press article: In Itasca, specialists ‘walk the path’ with recovering addicts.