Join WHYY News at West End Neighborhood House in Wilmington on Tuesday, Dec. 2, to learn about foster care and adoption opportunities in Delaware.

As Delaware's foster care system stretches thin across three counties, a quiet crisis is unfolding in homes, courtrooms, hospitals and state offices. Babies with nowhere else to go enter the system. Teenagers linger in temporary placements, hoping for someone who chooses them. And for youth who age out, adulthood begins before stability ever arrives.

At the center is a system doing everything it can -- and still not enough -- as the need grows, especially in Sussex County, where finding foster homes has become one of the state's steepest challenges.

Statewide, about 470 children are currently in foster care, with their demographics reflecting the diversity of the state itself. According to the Division of Family Services, that includes four Asian children, 39 Hispanic children, 168 white children and 298 Black children. Each child enters the system for a different reason, and each one begins a journey shaped by where -- and with whom -- they are placed.

That placement can look different from child to child, said Trenee Parker, director of the Division of Family Services.

"Most people are probably most familiar with what I will call a traditional foster home. Individuals in the community who go through the training program," she said. "We also have some settings that are called congregate care or group care settings. We have contracts with three different agencies across the state that provide more of a group care, not an individual foster home type of setting. Then we also have some individuals that are not traditional foster parents, but are relatives or nonrelatives ... and they provide services for those children as well."

But Delaware's greatest need is not simply more homes -- it's the specific homes many children require. Those needs span from medical conditions that require specialized caregiving skills, to developmental or intellectual disabilities, and behavioral health challenges.

"What we are trying to do right now is engage the community; to have families who are interested in providing services to teenagers, to sibling groups because when we have children who experience foster care, we like to try to keep them with their siblings," she said.

The shortage is particularly acute for one group: teenagers.

Parker said the agency is urgently trying to find families willing to take them in.

"Teenagers are a population that we need more families for," she said. "Teenagers oftentimes have experienced more trauma before they enter the foster care system. So, making sure that they have what they need is an area where we're trying to really prioritize."

Supporting teens also means keeping them close to what feels familiar -- their schools, communities and routines. That becomes harder when homes are sparse, especially downstate.

"We want to make sure that they are ideally served in their communities. We don't like children from, let's say, New Castle County to have to be in Kent or Sussex County," she said, noting that keeping kids in their own counties allows them to remain in their schools and extracurriculars.

That scarcity is most visible in Sussex County, where the distance between a child and a potential foster home can stretch far beyond geography -- into cultural connection, language and community familiarity.

"Our goal is to make sure that we have a good representation of families who do look like the families that we serve throughout the state," Parker said.