Proposed statewide requirements

Advocate dismisses tighter foster care
McLaughlin, Sheila, Cincinnati Enquirer.

HAMILTON – Butler County officials are missing the point if they think tightening foster-care licensing standards and better screening will prevent another child from dying in foster care, a children’s advocate said today.

“Almost everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room – the needless removal of thousands of children of thousands of children throughout Ohio. The only way to fix foster care is to have less of it,” said Richard Wexler, executive director of the national Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

Wexler is in Greater Cincinnati this week to sell his ideas to county officials in the region. He offered 23 recommendations for Ohio and Butler County, focusing on changes to reduce the removal of abused and neglected children from their families.

Among the recommendations were:
-- Increased state funding to counties to set up programming to help people be better parents.
-- Pairing families with a single caseworker for up to six weeks to counsel them on parenting and teach skills such as proper housekeeping.
--- Establishment of a competitive system for private foster-care placement companies to reward them for getting the children back home or adopted.
--- Creation of a review board of caseworkers and supervisors to look every request to remove a child to avoid needless removals.
--- The use of outside experts to examine Butler County’s policies and practices, recommend reforms and stay to see the job through.

Wexler went so far as to say that Marcus Fiesel should not have been taken away from his mother, Donna Trevino.

The 3-year-old Middletown boy’s death in August ignited an outcry for child welfare reform in Butler County. Marcus’ foster parents, Liz and David Carroll, are jailed on murder charges, accused of binding the developmentally delayed boy in a blanket with strapping tape and leaving him in a closet while they left town for two days to attend a family reunion. Marcus had been placed at the Carrolls' Clermont County home through the private foster care placement agency, Lifeway For Youth.

A report on the state’s investigation into the involvement of Lifeway and Butler and Clermont counties in Marcus’ placement with the Carrolls is expected to be released in coming weeks.

“From all available evidence, Marcus Fiesel never needed to be taken from his mother Donna Trevino,” Wexler said.“Donna Trevino had real problems. Doing nothing was not an option either. But in thousands of similar cases, children have been kept safely with their parents. In fact, the track record for safety for real family preservation programs is far better than foster care.”

That comment didn’t sit well with the Rev. Johnny Wade Sloan, the chairman of Butler County’s Children Services Board. He sat in on Wexler’s press conference and said he agreed with many of Wexler’s suggestion, but not that point.

Wexler wasn’t privy to the county files that Sloan had reviewed on Marcus’ case. Those files have not been made public, despite numerous requests from the media, because they are being used by prosecutors in the cases against the Carrolls.

“The reality is Marcus Fiesel should have been removed, in my opinion, and he should have been placed in a foster home,” Sloan said. “It is tragic that the system allowed psychopaths and criminals like the Carrolls to be a part of the system. That’s the real tragedy."

Wexler said part of Butler County’s problem is that officials failed to follow through with reform in 2000, which was driven by a sex abuse cover-up involving a foster father and criticism that children were needlessly being removed from their homes.Wexler’s analysis of the rate at which Butler County removes children from their homes puts it at sixth in the state. He noted that of number of removals in Butler County dipped slightly in 2000 and 2003, but, for the most part, has remained consistent. The county removed 334 children from their homes in 2005, and removals have jumped since Marcus’ death in what Wexler calls “foster-care panic.”

Sloan wasn’t on the board for the 2000 reforms, but said 75 percent of them were made.He conceded there have been problems with making changes in Butler County.

“In a 40-month period, there were 40 different board members, four different chairmen, three different directors and four different ombudsmen,” he said.“When you have that much transition and instability, you lose continuity and then the reforms fall through the cracks.”

Marcuss death in early August prompted several changes at Butler County Children Services Board as well as recommendations to the state for improvement.

They require:
--- Private networks, such as Lifeway For Youth, to provide more in depth information on foster homes.
--- Foster homes to verify income every six months to prove that foster care money isn’t their only income.
--- Nationwide criminal background checks must be completed on all adults in network and county foster homes initially, in addition to local and county sheriff checks. Local and county sheriff checks will then be done quarterly. The state now requires FBI checks only for adults who have not lived in Ohio for five years.
--- Monthly visits from county caseworkers in the foster home for all children in care. Previously, caseworkers were required to visit the child in the home once every six months, but monthly in other settings, such as the county’s visitation center.
--- A collaboration with local service providers to establish “specialty” foster homes where parents would receive better training to manage children with severe behavioral disabilities such as autism, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and fetal alcohol syndrome.

Butler County Children Services has asked the state to require:
--- A minimum three interviews with potential foster instead of one before licensing.
--- Foster parents to register with their police departments so officers can notify children services if the parent is arrested.
--- A computer link between foster parent and day care provider information so children services can check for potential problems or state investigations.
-- Foster parents to have their status noted on their driver’s license, triggering notification of arrests to child welfare departments.
--- Changing state guidelines to require monthly visits of children in foster home.
--- Publishing weekly lists of foster-care providers that are being investigated.