Muskingum County's foster care system

Monthly meetings to address issues to help improve foster care in Muskingum County
LeeAnn Moore, Times Record: Zaneville, Oct. 7, 2006.

Staff WriterZANESVILLE -- There are 89 children in foster care in Muskingum County.

That's close to the yearly average of 100 children that come into the care of Muskingum County Children Services each year, according to Bill Seyerle of children services.

Compared to Ohio's median of 225 days a child will spend in temporary custody, an average child's stay in Muskingum County is half of that, 106 days.

After returning from a two-day Supreme Court of Ohio workshop to implement a national curriculum designed to ensure that court cases involving foster children are processed quickly and effectively, representatives from Muskingum County Children Services, Muskingum County juvenile court and attorneys discovered positives, negatives and ways they could improve foster care in the county.

"It was time well spent and we learned stuff about each other's processes. We had no idea of the detail in children services filing a charge and had no idea what the court did at all, it was all very interesting to learn what each part did," said Daniel B. Kieffer, director of court services.

The curriculum presented to members from Carroll, Geauga, Median, Muskingum and Sandusky counties addressed delays in court proceedings that were cited by the Children and Family Services Review (CFSR) as a major factor in prolonging the time children spend in foster care.

According to Kieffer, Muskingum County completes 98.7 percent of their investigations within the mandated time of 45 days compared to the statewide average of 82 percent.

Kieffer said that while lack of available services in the community is a problem locally, Muskingum County's biggest problem is communication.

"Making sure that everybody is aware of when the case is, communication between the attorney(s) and client," Kieffer said.

He said cutting back on that time would mean better communication between attorneys and clients because if an agreement or plan could be reached between children's services, the attorney and client, more than likely there wouldn't need to be a hearing at all.

"Listening to other counties and hearing how much of a huge problem it is in urban counties, we do very well," Kieffer said.

Monthly meetings addressing all the issues discussed at the workshop will be held at the courthouse.

"One thing that we're all interested in is looking at a length of time it takes a child from an original filing in the court until this child achieves some kind of permanency in their life," said Seyerle.