Foster care advocates in Mecklenburg County say some children are staying in the system longer than they should, and that a key accountability measure isn't being used consistently.
They're called permanency planning reviews, or PPRs — essentially regular check-ins meant to bring everyone involved in a child's case together to make sure that child is moving toward a permanent home.
The reviews are supposed to happen every 90 days, but a local advocacy group says that hasn't always been the case. WFAE's Nick de la Canal spoke with Lydia Alexander, a former foster parent and director of operations for Path to Permanency.
WFAE has reached out to Mecklenburg County asking for a response.
Nick de la Canal: Let’s start with those 90-day check-ins. They’re required under state guidelines. What are they supposed to do, and why are they important?
Lydia Alexander: In the North Carolina child state welfare manual, it clearly says they’re action-oriented meetings, and they're designed to focus on permanency goals, and the child moving towards a permanent home, whether that’s reunification, guardianship or adoption. It’s really identifying the key voices and decisions that need to be made to keep the case moving.
De la Canal: So your group surveyed local foster parents to see how often these check-ins were happening. Tell us what you found?
Alexander: When we first learned of this last year in 2025, we surveyed our families and found only one case that was having case meetings every 90 days.
De la Canal: One case out of how many?
Alexander: One case out of 29 families we surveyed.
De la Canal: OK. So a small sample, but still.
Alexander: Yes, and then in November, we reached out to Youth and Family Services and worked together to advocate for solutions. So they have hired permanency planning team leads that are then going to be responsible for reaching out and scheduling these meetings and managing these meetings and making sure they’re happening every 90 days.
So we resurveyed our families in the first quarter of 2026 and found that a third of cases had PPRs. So that was progress — we were excited to see that needle move — but we want to keep the progress going until all children in Mecklenburg County are getting these quarterly case reviews.
De la Canal: You, yourself, are a former foster parent. From that perspective, how does a lack of regular check-ins affect a child?
Alexander: That's a great question. It’s really hard to describe the experience of fostering — having a child in your home day to day, often year after year — and really knowing that child very deeply, but not having any sense of what their future holds. My family cared for a young infant who’s now a preschooler and still in the system, and even at a very young age, children can sense the instability.
De la Canal: After your group brought this up to Mecklenburg County’s Division of Youth and Family Services, the division sent out new guidance that seems to put more structure around these reviews. What’s your reaction to that?
Alexander: We’re really excited by YFS's response to our concerns. This is really not a failure of individual social workers, but more of making sure that the expectations are there, and the processes and resources are in place so that they are coordinating these reviews. So what matters now is implementation. We want to keep increasing the number of cases getting these periodic reviews.
Ultimately, it’s not about a new policy that was issued or even new protocols in place — it’s whether kids are reaching permanent homes faster.
