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Erik Williams was expected to be among the first five tenants to move into New Kensington’s new, $18.2 million Pioneer Apartments on Thursday afternoon.

“I just want to get in my apartment, period. It’s time for a change,” said Williams, who has lived at the nearby Arnold Towers for the past nine years.

Williams, 41, got a sneak peak at his apartment Thursday morning while workers were still putting finishing touches on the building. Williams, who is legally blind following a 2008 stroke, will be living there with his service dog, a black Labrador retriever mix named Polka.

His first-floor apartment has several features to help people with disabilities. In the kitchen, the area under the sink is open so those in wheelchairs can use it, and controls on the stove are at the front. Shelves in closets throughout are lower.

In the bathroom, where the sink is similar to the kitchen and there are grab bars for the toilet, Williams took note of the wheel-in shower with a built-in seat.

“I like that,” he said. “This is perfect.”

Pioneer Apartments was built by Wesley Family Services on a former city parking lot on Fourth Avenue.

Construction of Pioneer started in June 2019. Its opening was delayed by the covid-19 pandemic as work stopped in the third week of March and did not resume until May 4.

The four-story building has 36 apartments, plus office space for Wesley Family Services. The agency is expected to move into the building in mid-November, said Stephen Christian-Michaels, CEO of Family Services of Western Pennsylvania, part of Wesley Family Services.

In addition to the five people expected to move in Thursday, another seven tenants are expected to move in next week. Another 11 possible tenants are going through the application process, said Shelley Umphress, a regional manager with the property management firm NDC Asset Management.

According to Lee Kuhner-Harrison, the program director for Pressley Ridge Treatment Foster Care in Allegheny County, there has been a major drop in recruitment of its foster families during the coronavirus pandemic. Usually, the service receives about six referrals a week. In the months since the stay-at-home order began, it has received about six applicants.

Of those six families, Ms. Kuhner-Harrison said, only one completed the recruitment process. Other prospective foster parents, she said, were furloughed or lost their jobs and needed to focus on themselves first. This decrease is a concern for Ms. Kuhner-Harrison, because she believes there will be an “explosion” of child abuse reports as Allegheny County moves further into the green phase.

“As children re-emerge outside and see primary-care providers, teachers and coaches, child abuse reporting will start to go up,” she said. “And so we’ll need even more homes, and we don’t have a surplus of homes. We currently have four families that don’t have kids.”

Ashley Copeman, director of adoption at Family Care for Children and Youth, said she’s concerned more with the possible uptick of child abuse reports in the fall when children go back to school. With offices in Greensburg and Franklin, Venango County, as well as Milton, Northumberland County, Leesport, Berks County, and Dunmore, Lackawanna County, Ms. Copeman said, her organization has received 28 referrals in the past two weeks — a rate she says would be unusual prior to the pandemic.

For many organizations, the pandemic forced management to adjust their operations. At the beginning of Allegheny County’s stay-at-home order, Laura Maines, the executive director of Every Child Inc., said it was a challenge finding personal protective equipment for workers who needed to do in-person checks of children at the foster homes.

Even now, Ms. Maines said, she has a hard time finding disinfectant wipes. And while she says the size of Every Child is much smaller in comparison to Pressley Ridge — with 50 employees, roughly 30 foster families and 30 kids in foster care within the past year — her organization still solves similar issues with adjusting to operating safely during a pandemic.

The pandemic didn’t affect funding, but Ms. Maines said she’s “concerned” about what funding will be in the fall. After the state Legislature approved the budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year, the county’s child welfare budget decreased by 12.4%.

“Which was not a particularly significant cut given what we’re hearing about revenue falling and what that may look like in the fall, but it does add a layer of uncertainty,” Ms. Maines said. “We think that the demand for services is going to increase over the next several months and over the next year as the community tries to recover from this uncertain time.”

Amy Devinney, the director of behavioral health and family services at The Children’s Institute, said its foster-care program was not as impacted as its other human services were, as foster services were deemed an essential service.

Ms. Devinney said the institute had two children leave the system and two children who were placed into care in the past two months. She also said the institute was able to bring in five or six new foster families during the pandemic, which was a normal rate of recruitment.

Now that Allegheny County is in the green phase, Ms. Kuhner-Harrison said Pressley Ridge is slowly bringing back in-person visits between foster children and their biological families with safety precautions at a separate building on Pressley’s campus. The building is referred to as “The Rectory” and is just a few blocks away from the main office on Stayton Street in Marshall-Shadeland. Ms. Harrison said two rooms are kept “sparse” for easy cleaning.

Staff have already ordered 1,000 masks and plan to have a hand sanitizer station nearby and disposable or easy-to-clean toys for the toddlers.

“It’s a little tricky, but people deserve to see each other, so we find ways to make it happen. It’s their right,” Ms. Kuhner-Harrison said.

In-person visits between children and their biological families are becoming more available in other counties that are now in the green phase. Wesley Family Services, which has offices in Wilkinsburg, Washington and Greensburg, said it is holding in-person visits at either a park or one of its offices. Masks must be worn at all times, rooms are sanitized after each visit, and a limited number of toys — ones that can be cleaned easily — are allowed.

Colleen Slebodnik, Wesley’s placement services manager, said “it’s a blessing” that in-person foster parent training will start up again in July.

“We have enough space to make sure people are keeping their distance,” she said. “That to me is really important because it’s not just teaching what’s in the curriculum, it’s people being able to connect with each other and share their ideas and be able to learn from each other.”

At Every Child, one of its main focuses is looking at what employees can do in person versus virtually. Ms. Maines said staggered work schedules will be used to minimize the amount of staff in the building. Foster parent training will be done virtually, but checkups of children will be done in person.

Ms. Slebodnik said Wesley’s workers did a “fantastic job” while working from home. The experience will provide “more latitude” for them to work at home in the future, she said.

Ms. Copeman said the push for virtual meetings has helped her agency by allowing employees to increase the class training size instead of having to do one-on-one training in person. Instead of just calling foster families in between the two in-person check-ins each month, Ms. Copeman said her agency will now use video chat to check in on the children to be “a little bit more personal and one-on-one.”

“I think we learned as an agency that there are other ways we can utilize the technology,” Ms. Copeman said.

Employees from each foster-care service said the pandemic added a challenge for children moving into a new home. In order to prevent the spread of the virus, in-person visits with children and their biological families were suspended among all foster-care services.

“It was really hard on the biological families,” Ms. Maines said. “Obviously they were deeply concerned for their kids, they wanted to spend time with them.”

In addition to the loss of in-person visits, children had to remain isolated in their new homes, away from friends and teachers at school.

“Kids who are in foster care sort of have their lives upended, and they’re already taken out of their routine,” Ms. Maines said. “So we work really hard with our foster families to re-establish that routine and keep that safety and consistency. It’s not that the experience of the pandemic for kids in care is so dramatically different than what other kids are experiencing; it’s adding another layer of an already challenging situation.”

Foster parent Samantha Dix said video chats — three times a week for four months — between her foster child and the child’s biological parents were beneficial.

“He’s a baby, so you tend to conversate more about the child instead of with the child. They can see the home, see his routine and became more comfortable,” said Ms. Dix, 32, of Elliot. “In a way, it has helped the foster parent and the birth parent relationship, just by communicating well. We just do what’s best for the child.”

Foster parent Stephanie Romero said a lack of socialization for her two foster children has become “the biggest challenge.”

Ms. Romero, 51, of Mt. Lebanon said she tries multiple times daily to check in on her children. She provides them “guiding journals” so that they can process their feelings by writing them down. At the end of each day, she tries to have a family dinner where they can talk about their day.

“I try to share my struggles with them and how I cope with them, so they know how to cope as well,” she said. “We all have good days and bad days.”

Lauren Lee: llee@post-gazette.com; @lauren_llee.