December 2007 Update from Kids Are Waiting

Eshawn Peterson at Capitol Hill

Adults Who Spent Part of the Childhood in Foster Care Stage Thanksgiving Dinner with their 'Parents' on Capitol Hill

On Wednesday, November 21, Foster Care Alumni of America hosted a Home for Thanksgiving dinner on the steps of the nation's Capitol.

More than two dozen adults from across the United States - all of whom spent at least part of their childhood or adolescence in foster care - gathered at the U.S. Capitol to recognize that, this year, more than half a million foster children will spend the holidays without a permanent family.

When children are removed from their parents and placed in foster care, the government assumes the role of parent.

"I'm 21 now and I can't remember a time when I was in foster care that we really celebrated Thanksgiving," said Foster Care Alumni of America member Eshawn Peterson of Tucson, Arizona, who spoke at the event. "I have felt so incomplete during the holiday season, especially since the people I care about most, my six sisters, were separated from me for so long."

Lawrence County needs more money for foster care

Children’s Services seeks 1-mil levy
Moore, Teresa. Ironton Tribune, Dec. 21, 2007.

Lawrence County residents will be asked to kick in a little extra money to help care for abused and neglected children.

The Lawrence County Commission gave its blessing Thursday to a one-mil levy that will be on the March primary ballot to fund foster care services.

“We’ve reached a critical point in our operation,” Lawrence County Department of Jobs and Family Services Director Gene Myers told the commission. “The money is vital to our operation of children services, to allow us to keep children in a safe environment.”

If voters approve it, the levy would generate $626,710 annually to help care for children who have been removed from their homes and must be kept in foster care.

The levy would increase real estate taxes by $1 for every taxable $1,000 assessed on a parcel of property. For instance, if a person owned a $100,000, the taxable amount is $35,000 and the homeowner’s taxes would increase by $35 annually. On a $50,000 house, taxes would be increased by $17.50 annually.

Myers said right now he funds his abused and neglected children’s program out of his other office accounts, but state and federal funding for all human services programs is decreasing.

“Unfortunately over the past few years the Lawrence County Children’s Services Department has seen a dramatic increase in the need for services to help abused and neglected children, while at the same time coping with diminishing revenues,” Myers said. “Despite making significant staff reductions and improving operating efficiency, Children’s Services still needs more funding in order to meet the state-mandated duty of ensuring the safety and well-being of every child in Lawrence County.”

Right now, 97 children are in the county’s care because of abuse and neglect. This is a 25 percent increase since 2002. In 2006, children’s services received 1,083 referrals affecting 2,130 children — an average of three investigations involving six kids every day. Of those referrals, more than half were for suspected neglect, more than a quarter of the investigations were for suspected abuse. Fourteen percent of the referrals involved suspected cases of sexual abuse.

At the same time, Myers said the cost of keeping kids in foster care is also increasing. Since 2001, the cost of keeping Lawrence County Children in foster care has increased by $375,000 to more than $1.5 million.

Goal for CASA: Being a constant, in the midst of chaos

Adults on your side
Special advocates watch over children
Kurtzman, Lori. Cincinnati Enquirer, Dec. 9, 2007.

On the day they were supposed to meet, the girl ran away. Kelly Gries drove her hulking Suburban through the city, looking for a 13-year-old she'd never seen. The girl's little brother sat beside her. He scanned the streets and wondered aloud whether the sister who loomed so large in his eyes would fit in the SUV. She's big, he told Gries. Big? Gries wondered. And then there she was, walking toward them. Patricia Bush wasn't big at all. She was just a kid, a slender girl with light-colored eyes and a lifetime of disappointments, an orphan always on the run.

Bush hopped into the Suburban.

Gries's life would never be the same.

Nearly eight years after they first laid eyes on each other, they sit side by side, the two of them.

In the intervening time, Bush has been through six foster homes and two treatment facilities, running away so often it almost became a joke. She's graduated from high school and become a mother to a boy, then a girl. She's making plans to go to college and lives on her own.

Gries has been there through it all.

"We never grew apart," Bush says. "Kelly was just always there for me. I can call her 14 years from now and she'll be there for me."

Bush was Gries's introduction to a new volunteer job. The year was 2000, and the youngest of Gries' children had gone off to kindergarten. Gries, a former nurse, wanted to keep busy. She wanted to do something meaningful.

She ended up at ProKids, a Walnut Hills-based organization that trains volunteers called court appointed special advocates - CASAs - to work with children in foster care.

The CASA movement started in Seattle in 1977, according to the National CASA Association, when Superior Court Judge David Soukup wanted more information about the abused and neglected children whose cases he was deciding. He asked for community volunteers to work with these kids and represent them in court.

Fifty people signed up.

Today, according to the National CASA Web site, more than 50,000 people serve as advocates in about 950 state and local CASA programs. ProKids - which has an annual budget of $800,000, most of which comes from donations - has about 140 volunteers, providing CASAs for about one-quarter of Hamilton County's 1,100 foster children.

In ProKids literature, CASAs are called "the eyes and the ears of the court."

Supplementing overburdened county case workers - who may juggle as many as 20 cases at a time - CASAs talk to everyone from teachers and relatives to therapists to form the recommendations that help judges decide whether to return children to their parents or remove them from potentially dangerous homes.

"From a child welfare perspective, it's nice to have another person out there helping us," said Moira Weir, director of Hamilton County's Department of Job and Family Services. "It's a true team approach in terms of making sure a child's needs are met."

CASAs, who are not paid, take 30 hours of training, work at least two hours each week on a case and see the children on their cases at least once a month. Many stay with a child longer than a social worker does.

Bush, for instance, experienced a parade of case workers but only one CASA.

"These kids wind up in this kind of a system where they could be switched between foster families and relatives and social workers. They don't have any constants," said Hamilton County Juvenile Court Judge Thomas Lipps. "In some cases, the CASA is the most constant person they've had throughout their history."

CASAs are people like Gries, who once discovered the reason a 10-year-old foster boy was doing so poorly in school was that he had lost his glasses - five years earlier.

They are people like Janie Miller, 49, a Blue Ash lawyer who spent more than two years working with a young boy who was finally adopted last month. They're like Patti Minbiole, 59, who's working on a case of siblings born with a drug addiction.

They're people like Glenna Miller, 56, who spent a recent day visiting a girl at school, her mother at jail and three of the woman's other children at two different foster homes.

Their experiences are all different, although the basics are the same. Each has followed a child, and often several children, through the foster-care system. They've spent hours writing reports and visiting foster homes and talking on the phone. They've celebrated cases that worked out well - adoptions, reunions with parents - and agonized over ones that didn't.

Each has been changed by her experience as a CASA.

Minbiole once ran into one of her former foster kids on Fountain Square, a boy she'd worked with for six years who was never adopted. He was watching a movie on the big screen. He was homeless. She caught his eye, unsure whether to approach him, and he stood up and wrapped her in his arms.

"There's so much going on in any of these children's lives that if we can be one constant in all of that chaos - if we do nothing else - that's really important," Minbiole said.

Being a CASA, she said, "has probably been the single most important volunteer commitment of my life."

A NATURAL MOVE
Gries maneuvers her Suburban through rush-hour traffic, headed for an appointment with a Forest Park foster family.

Behind the wheel is a 52-year-old petite blonde with a perpetual smile and a knack for making children laugh. ("Are you married?" she'll ask a 9-year-old, just for the reaction.)

Gries and her husband, a doctor, always wanted a big family and ended up with a huge one - 11 children, nine of them biological, two adopted from foster care. The youngest is 6, the oldest 33. For Gries, becoming a CASA - taking on even more children - was a natural move.

"I was surprised at how many kids are in foster care and lonely," she says. "Everybody needs a cheerleader."

Tonight she's going to see a 2-year-old boy. She walks up to a house and rings the doorbell. The foster dad opens the door and welcomes her up the stairs.

Scott Elsbrock, a Hamilton County caseworker, is already there, sitting on the couch. A white Christmas tree stands in the corner, surrounded by presents. Four stockings hang nearby, two for the parents, one for their son, the other for the 2-year-old, whom they hope to adopt.

"He looks great," Gries tells the foster mother. "You're doing great."

The boys bound through the living room, laughing and playing with the toys Gries has brought. Elsbrock smiles. This is one of 19 cases he's working on, and although it hasn't always been smooth, it looks like it will end well.

"This is a happy one," he says.

NOT ALL ENDINGS HAPPY
Being a CASA, though, isn't all about happy endings and cute kids. It can also be a navigation through filthy homes and lying relatives, a raw insight into poverty and drug abuse, an emotionally draining experience that leaves a person questioning humanity.

Janie Miller, who became a CASA nearly six years ago to "fill a hole" as she was going through a divorce, once visited a house where dog feces lay on the floor and bird droppings coated windowsills. A basket of baby clothes was soaked in cat urine.

"It's been an eye-opener to see the conditions that some people live in and raise children in," Janie Miller said.

The range of human behavior has been startling, too: Janie Miller was fooled by a drug-addicted mom who got her baby back only to lose it again.

Glenna Miller was lied to by a stepfather who gained custody of a boy only to end up in prison for abusing him.

Patti Minbiole's now-homeless teenage charge refused any of the help he was offered, and she doesn't know why.

"I feel real content when I think about him, even though I'm not at all pleased," Minbiole said. "He knows that if he changes his mind, we're just a phone call away."

Sometimes the children offer tidbits that would startle most adults.

Glenna Miller recently visited a little girl with curly dark hair who mentioned, nonchalantly, that her aunt had punched her in the back.

Gries remembers an early conversation with Bush in which the girl mentioned she used to change diapers.

Your brother's? Gries asked.

No, Bush replied. My mom's.

Her mother, suffering from cerebral palsy and AIDS, died when Bush was 7.

All of it makes the CASA experience an emotional one. Some CASAs can distance themselves from their cases. Others find themselves in deep bonds with their children.

Either way, the children affect you, CASAs said.

"Even if you don't take (a case) home, it bothers you," Janie Miller said.

LASTING BOND
Gries and Bush had one of those deep bonds. They still do, years after Bush left the system and Gries could have walked away.

"When I first met her, she was so happy to see me," says Bush, no longer the runaway teenager but a striking woman who can't wait to start nursing classes. "It was like love at first sight."

Gries made the girl laugh. She never judged. She answered the phone in the middle of the night and dragged herself out of bed to pick up Bush, who'd run away again and didn't know where she was. Gries drove up and down Reading Road until Bush spotted her Suburban.

"You're really the strong one, to put up with someone like me," Bush said.

Gries gave respect and got it back. She once taught Bush how to drive in the movie theater parking lot, right after they'd seen the racing movie "2 Fast 2 Furious" and everyone else screeched out of the lot.

Bush crept along as if she had Miss Daisy in the back seat.

They only argued once, over what Bush wore to her high school graduation, high-top shoes and a skirt. Gries desperately wanted to see her in a dress.

In the end, it didn't matter.

The gown covered everything. Bush graduated.

As Bush grew older, settled down, stopped running, she realized just how deeply her CASA had affected her life. She discovered it as she looked at her two babies, as she realized what it was to care for someone who needed you, who couldn't make it without you.

"I learned from the best. I learned a lot from her how to be a good mom." She looks over at Gries. "You didn't think you taught me that?"

Barbara Boxer foster care bill

Extend aid for foster care
Toledo Blade, Aug. 18, 2007, pg. A6.

TODAY, 18-year-olds are legally adults. Yet few people that age have the means or the common sense needed to properly care for themselves. Young people need time to get established, to complete their education, get jobs, and get on their feet. That's a hard enough task when you have a loving family, and it becomes an often insurmountable one when you've spent a lifetime bouncing around in foster care.

What seems clear is that fewer such children would wind up homeless or in jail if states extended foster care benefits up to age 21. After all, few families expect their young adults to maneuver totally on their own. Most provide emotional and some family support for at least a few years beyond the legal age of adulthood.

That's why U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer's proposal to make it easier for states to extend benefits for foster kids makes a lot of sense. Legislation the California Democrat has introduced also would provide matching federal funds.

The American Bar Association is very much behind this idea; lawyers and judges too often see up close what happens when so-called "emancipated" youths are not ready for the real world.

Unfortunately though, Senator Boxer's bill has been slow to attract support in Congress. Sadly, that makes it seem clear that these youths' welfare is not a priority with our elected representatives. That's shameful and financially foolish, looked at over the long term. This seems to confirm the unfortunate notion that foster care children are society's "throwaways."

Every year about 20,000 of the half-million youngsters in foster care "age out" and are suddenly on their own.

Far too many wind up homeless and/or incarcerated. That costs society vastly more than a few more years in foster care would.

William Bell, president of the Seattle-based Casey Family Programs, put it succinctly: "We can choose to pay while they're still in our care or we will continue to pay once they leave."

The state of Ohio does deserve credit for tackling the issue sensibly. Emancipated youths between 18 and 21 can ask for independent living services (maybe... it depends on the county). That includes educational, vocational, and life-skills training; financial assistance, housing, counseling, and various other support.

Nobody can do much about a family that chooses to boot their kids out once they reach 18. But something can be done to aid emancipated foster care youth, whose predicaments are not usually their fault. The first step is to see them not as society's throwaways but as young Americans who need and deserve help.

We also should realize that if it wasn't for chance, their plight could easily be ours, or that of our children.

Kudos to Judge Lohn: Build-a-bear project is a creative idea

Juveniles get chance to show they care
Youths in court program stuff, dress up teddy bears for kids who need a hug
Cardwell, Jewell. Akron Beacon Journal, Dec. 3, 2007.

Dozens of nonviolent juvenile offenders were marshaled together recently for a nontraditional, court-ordered community service project.

It's one that Medina County Juvenile Judge John Lohn hopes will reframe their thinking and leave a lasting and meaningful mark on their hearts.

Lohn — who held court during the nearly four-hour process — ''beared up'' as well as the juveniles who bunched together around tables at the Medina County Health Department. The department donated its facilities and personnel.

The event — which ultimately will benefit the littlest clients of Medina County Job and Family Services — had not only the blessings but also the muscle of Build-A-Bear Workshops, a company that specializes in do-it-yourself teddy bears.

The juveniles — who were glad to be doing inside work, given the cold temperatures, and not cleaning toilets or working in the parks and cemeteries — seemed genuinely eager to be making teddy bears they will later present to children in foster care.

''This project accomplishes two things,'' said Lohn, who, with his own family, also made teddy bears. ''It teaches juvenile delinquents that there are kids in our county who have it a lot worse off than they do.

And it also brings joy to young children removed from their homes for their own protection and through no fault of their own. They need a special someone to hug and love.

''These kids need to learn empathy for others.''

''This is way cool,'' exclaimed a 14-year-old boy who was inserting a sound box in a black bear. ''I think this is an amazing opportunity for me to learn to change.''

Clearly not all of the male and female juveniles had warmed up to the project, but most seemed to embrace the idea.

For those who didn't, Lohn reminded them, ''You're here because you're in trouble with me.''

Melissa Riley, the community services supervisor, said the juveniles — considered by the court to be low-to-moderate-risk offenders — are charged with such offenses as theft, unruly behavior such as fighting or underage drinking, truancy from school, traffic violations and criminal damaging.

Assisting them on this night were a number of court staff, adult instructors, community volunteers, and four folks from Build-A-Bear Workshop.

The youths were able to select from a variety of teddy bear styles and colors and from a heap of different clothes to outfit them.

Not surprisingly, several of the males chose Browns, Cavaliers or camouflage outfits for their bears.

It was their way to ''man up'' in what their peers would consider girls' play.

To get the juveniles off on the right foot, they were instructed to place small, red satin hearts — warmed by their own hands — inside their bears.

''Close your eyes and make two wishes,'' they were told. ''One for the child who will get it and one for yourself.''

Each bear also got equipped with individual sound boxes, including monkey, dog and kitty sounds.

Sharon Danko — the court administrator, who also made a bear — hopes the juveniles will see the wisdom in the exercise.

''Judge Lohn is a very generous individual who's always trying to educate youth,'' she said.

Each juvenile was responsible for making or stuffing two teddy bears which they will present to children in foster care at a holiday party complete with Santa Claus.

Mead Wilkins, director of Medina County Job & Family Services, said the county now has about 70 children in foster care who range in age from newborns to 19.

The teddy bears will be accompanied by birth certificates that include a message from the bear makers and a list with the bear's date of birth, name, height, weight, fur and eye color, and a space for the owner's name.

The cost of the materials for the project were discounted by Build-A-Bear, with the rest covered by community donations.

Here's hoping for a brighter future for those building these special bears and those who will receive them. And that both will appreciate the simple pleasure of hugging something soft and cuddly.

Considering adopting from foster care

Viewpoints: If considering adoption, consider foster care
Community Press & Records, Dec. 1, 2007.

National Adoption Day began in 2000 as a "collective national effort to raise awareness of the 114,000 children in foster care waiting to find permanent, loving families," according to nationaladoptionday.org. Since its inception, nearly 17,000 foster children have been placed with families and more than 3,300 foster children were adopted on National Adoption Day last year.

The need to find families for the 114,000 foster children whose parents' parental rights have been terminated is acute. It is estimated that the average foster child waits more than three years to be adopted and, 21 percent of foster children waiting to be adopted will wait five years or more. Each year, 25,000 foster children "age out" of the system without ever having lived in a real family environment. Statistics indicate that the future for these children is bleak.

According to the Adopt America Network, 56 percent of youths who age out of the foster care system become poverty stricken and unemployed within two to four years; they make up 70 percent of all homeless youth; 40 percent never graduate from high school; 40 percent will be on welfare within two to four years of aging out of the system; and, 60 percent of teenage girls will have a child of their own within two years of leaving foster care.

Conclusions about foster care adoptions from a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by the Dave Thomas Foundation on Adoption were a mix of both good and bad news for the 114,000 foster children waiting to be adopted. The good news is the vast majority of Americans (77 percent) know children in the U.S. foster care system are available to be legally adopted. Of those who are familiar with foster care adoption, 88 percent favorably view the practice. And, finally, 48 million Americans have considered or are actively considering adopting a child from the foster care system.

The bad news is those foster children waiting to be adopted are at a disadvantage because many Americans have inaccurate perceptions of foster children, the adoption process and the costs associated with adopting a foster child. The Dave Thomas Foundation's survey found that 45 percent of Americans believe children are placed in foster care due to juvenile delinquency and 67 percent of potential adoptive parents are worried an adoptive foster child's birth parents will take the child back. And, 46 percent of all Americans believe that adopting a foster child is cost prohibitive.

In the case of foster care adoption, perception is far from reality. The fact is most children are placed in the foster care system because they are victims of neglect or abuse - many are even abandoned. While there are approximately 514,000 children in the foster care system, only the children whose birth parents' parental rights have been terminated are legally eligible for adoption. Once parental rights are terminated, the birth parents are not able to reclaim the child. And, finally, adopting a foster child does not entail substantial costs and financial and other support is available for adoptive parents once the process is finalized.

If you are one of the millions of families considering adoption, I hope you will look into bringing a foster child into your home. To learn more about it, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children's Services Web site at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/opa/index.html

Clinton County needs more foster and adoptive parents

Orphan train has come a long way since 1854
Burge, Joan. Wilmington News, Nov. 21, 2007.

November is Adoption Month and Clinton County Child Protection Unit is celebrating permanency for children and families. We have come a long way from the orphan train of 1854.

Get on board for a quick time-line of adoption practices in the United States. The orphan train began in 1854 and continued until 1930. Orphans, foundlings, waifs and street urchins were a few of the terms used to describe the children who rode the orphan trains west from New York.

But, the term “orphan” children was used loosely in many cases. Some children were truly orphaned living on the streets, sleeping in doorways, fending for themselves. But many of these children had parents. Some only had one parent that could not care for them. Some children had both parents but were turned loose by the parents because the family had grown too large to care for all the children. Some were runaways from abusive parents.

A general attitude among the “higher society” that those in the “lower classes” didn’t deserve help that they were poor and could not take care of their children because of choices they made and did not want to work.

In 1854, it was estimated that approximately 30,000 abandoned children were living on the streets of New York. Over a 75-year span, the orphan train movement, it is estimated that between 150,000 to 200,000 “orphan children” were relocated to new homes out west via the orphan train.

In Europe, there was a similar program that relocated “orphans” to Canada.

In the United States, there were two organizations responsible for the orphan train going west. The Children’s Aid Society run by Rev. Charles Brace and the New York Foundling Hospital, operated by the Sisters of Charity. Both of these organizations are still in operation today.

The hope was to send “orphans” out west to find new “families” they would have a better chance of leading a happy and productive life, than if left to fend for themselves in the streets of New York. That worked for some “orphans” but not all were welcomed into a loving family.

Rev. Brace founded the Children’s Aid Society with the belief that he could provide more than food, clothing and shelter for the growing number of orphans in New York. He wanted all children to learn a trade, how to keep house and learn to save for a rainy day so they could better their life.

The Sisters of Charity created Catholic Charities of New York in 1869. They had always taken in abandoned babies. In the foyer of their building stood a white cradle were mothers could anonymously leave their children to be cared for by the sisters. Ohio presently has “Ohio’s Safe Haven for Newborns — an alternative to leaving infants in unsafe places. Another article will be written on this. The word of the cradle spread, and there were more children than they could adequately care for. Thus, began the Foundling Hospital’s “mercy trains also known as baby trains that went west. There was a difference in how the sisters placed their children in homes. The children were not randomly adopted from the orphan train. Requests were sent to the sisters for a child and they did their best to match the child to the request. “Blue eyed, brown hair, 2-year-old little girl.”

The orphan train ended in the 1930. Due to the depression, it was extremely hard for families in the west to consider adding another mouth to feed and there were new laws and new programs being instituted to help children.

The Clinton County Child Protection Unit is dedicated and committed to placing children in safe, loving and permanent homes. Current laws have progressed to ensure children wait less time for permanent homes and do not grow up in foster care (some still do).

Strong emphasis is placed on providing relative homes for children whenever possible. When a child cannot be adopted by a relative or foster parent, the agency actively searches for a family that best meets the needs of the child. The agency provides pre- and post-adoption services to ensure the stability of the placement. These services include ongoing support, training, and, at times, financial assistance and subsidies when necessary for the child.

Clinton County is always in need of foster and adoptive parents. In 2007, Clinton County made permanent plans for seven children. In addition, six children finalized adoptions with their permanent families. Most of the children available for adoption in the state of Ohio are school age, teens, sibling, or children with significant special needs. The AdoptOhio web site lists children currently available for adoption. The site is http://jfs.ohio.gov/oapl/adoptohi:htm. If you are considering adoption of foster care or would like information about local adoption services, contact the agency at 382-5935 to speak to the foster care or adoption coordinator.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Joan Burge, a licensed social worker, has been employed by Clinton County since 1983. She has worked with Children Services in investigation, protection, foster care and adoption. She can be reached at 382-5935 if you have comments or questions.

Contact Ohio University freshman Ben Clay and invite him to join FCAA

Bill aims to ease aging transition out of foster care
Franko, Kantele. The Post Online (Athens OH), Sept. 25, 2007.

When Ohio University freshman Ben Clay turned 18 last November, the checks he and his foster parents had received from Franklin County Children Services for nearly two years stopped arriving.

“It was just kind of really sudden,” said Clay, who lived with a foster family in Westerville for his junior and senior years of high school.

“It was just like 18, and a couple weeks later, boom, you’re out of the system, you know, like cut-off all services.”

A new congressional bill scheduled to take effect Oct. 1 aims to ease the transition for foster children like Clay as they age out of the system. The Foster Care Continuing Opportunities Act, which was introduced in May by California Sen. Barbara

Boxer and is still being considered in committee, would give states the option to continue foster care beyond age 18 and allow foster children to choose to stay in the system for a few more years.

The legislation, which would amend the Social Security Act, also could give states access to federal funding to match the amount they spend on administrative costs and foster care payments for children between 18 and 21.

Boxer’s bill could provide some financial padding for the 20,000 to 25,000 children who exit the foster system annually, according to the Child Welfare League of America.

In 2006, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services reported that about 1,380 teenagers in Ohio aged out of the foster care system.

And Clay was one of them. He entered the system in 2005 after moving away from his biological parents at 16 and “house-hopping” to stay with friends for a few months. When he arrived at his foster home, he had a spotted past and the tough-skinned attitude of many children who go through the system, said his foster mother, Robin Hicks, a realtor with a master’s degree in social work.

Hicks said she considered Clay a part of the family, a status that didn’t change even when the state’s financial support stopped flowing. Clay stayed with Hicks until his graduation and received some funding — but no health coverage — through the county’s emancipation program.

Then in June, with a little money saved from his high school restaurant job, a chunk of grants and plenty of loans, Clay headed off to college with more of the same financial uncertainty he’d faced for two years.

“In that system, it’s never told to you — Will you be taken care of? Will you have support?” Hicks said. “There’s never a yes. It’s always a maybe.”

For that reason, Clay and Hicks — who hadn’t heard of the legislation until they were contacted by The Post — say Boxer’s bill has the potential to ease financial concerns for foster children aging out of the system, especially those heading toward college.

“If they didn’t have to worry about that, it would take one huge factor off their plate,” Hicks said.

Clay said he would probably opt to stay in foster care if he could, even enduring home visits from case workers and having his foster care history revealed to friends if it meant he could receive some extra financial help.

“Anything from any other government programs that would help provide students in my situation with additional financial assistance would be really, really beneficial,” Clay said. “It would be a miracle.”

Ohio University freshman Ben Clay, originally from Columbus, Ohio, stopped receiving monetary support from the foster care system after turning 18, giving him extra financial worries just before starting college. A bill currently under consideration in the Senate would extend foster care through the age of 21.

Amendment added to foster care bill

Vote delayed on foster care
Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 10, 2007.

The Ohio House delayed a vote Tuesday, at least until this afternoon, on a foster care reform bill that will increase training for parents but exempt details about foster parents from Ohio's public records law.

An amendment by state Rep. Jeff Wagner, R-Sycamore, would block public access to most foster care records except those about parents whose state certification is revoked.

Foster parent organizations have lobbied for keeping records private, while the Ohio Newspaper Association is arguing against it.

The Enquirer sued the state to get access to similar records, including foster parents' names, a case that is awaiting arguments before the Ohio Supreme Court.

Gov. Ted Strickland supports keeping such records confidential, according to his spokesman, Keith Dailey.

Controversy over sharing foster parent information continues...

Editorial: Hiding foster care records won't safeguard Ohioans' rights or toddlers' lives
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 9, 2007.

Almost 47 years ago, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that public records are the people's records. Since December 1960, the only thing that has changed about that is Ohio has a governor who seemingly bridles at that maxim.

Democrat Ted Strickland is the first Ohioan since 1928 to have reached the Governor's Mansion without previously having been elected to a local or state office. And, particularly as to the Open Records Act, that shows.

Today, the Republican-led Ohio House of Representatives, with Strickland's approval, may try to close Ohio foster-care records. A gag could be folded into House-proposed reforms in the state's foster-care laws.

A hideous death last year in suburban Cincinnati helped inspire the overall reform bill. Marcus Fiesel, age 3, a ward of Butler County, died when his "caregivers" wrapped him in a blanket bound with packing tape and left him in a closet so that they could attend a family reunion without him. When they returned from Kentucky, Marcus was dead, so they burned his body and reported him missing.

The likely House foster-care amendment would let state and local agencies hide from the public foster-parent records compiled - for the public - by county welfare departments and children's services boards.

A Strickland spokeswoman confirmed Monday that the governor supports the record-closing amendment, reasoning that an abusive parent could track down and harm an abused child legally taken from that parent.

In reality, the only people served by secret foster-care records are the bureaucrats (and state contractors) who consign the Marcus Fiesels of the world to tax-financed hells. If Marcus Fiesel's death demands accountability, closing public records is a perverse way to achieve that goal. Legal details aside, Marcus Fiesel was a ward of all Ohioans. And Ohio failed him.

The irony is that Strickland might not be governor - and his fellow Democrats might not be attorney general, secretary of state and state treasurer - if newspapers hadn't used the Open Records Act to help expose corruption in the Bureau of Workers' Compensation.

Having betrayed Marcus Fiesel once, Ohio - as represented by Strickland, Speaker Jon Husted and Husted's House Republicans - now runs the risk of betraying his memory. That, too, would be outrageous.

Controversy over sharing foster parent information with the media

Law would add foster parent training
Craig, Jon. Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 8, 2007.

COLUMBUS – The Ohio House is expected to pass legislation as early as Tuesday to increase training for foster parents while restricting access to records telling the public if a foster parent’s license has been denied or revoked.

House Bill 214, co-sponsored by state Rep. Courtney Combs, R-Hamilton, expands foster care training from 24 hours to 36. The change in state law is aimed at helping special needs children like Marcus Fiesel, the 3-year-old developmentally disabled Middletown boy who was killed by his foster parents, David and Liz Carroll.

But a last-minute amendment to the bill would block public access to the names of foster parents, details about the removal of children from foster homes or problems with state certification.

Monday, several Cincinnati-area foster parents said they support criminal background checks and the sharing of information by state and county agencies. But they don’t think such details should be shared with the public including the news media.

Pat McCollum, 60, of College Hill said it will be more difficult to recruit and retain foster parents if criminal background checks are misinterpreted or published.

McCollum, who has two adopted and six foster children, said, “I don’t think it needs to go to the extreme where anybody can review my private records. I think that’s unfair.’’

Sherrie Mathis of Cincinnati, president of the Ohio Family Care Association, a state organization that supports and trains foster families, said: “I don’t have a problem with them running (criminal) records. I have a problem with them giving the information to the press because of the deterioration of the pool of foster families. Nobody wants to be a foster family if you’re going to say lying things about them. … The names should never be public record.’’

State Rep. Jeff Wagner, R-Sycamore, a former foster parent and the bill’s co-sponsor, wants to restrict public access to foster care records so people aren’t discouraged from becoming foster parents, among other reasons.

Gov. Ted Strickland also supports keeping foster care details confidential. Amanda Wurst, a spokeswoman for the governor, said he believes publicizing foster parent names or the county they live in also might leave foster children vulnerable to harm from natural family members.

Frank Deaner, executive director of the Ohio Newspaper Association, said certifying a foster parent – who is paid by the state – is no different from licensing doctors, lawyers, barbers and beauticians.

“It is a safeguard for the public,’’ Deaner said, “and it’s consistent with identifying people who have been approved to carry out a function sanctioned by the state.’’

State Sen. Tom Niehaus, a New Richmond Republican, said that even if the House blocks public access to records, he’s optimistic the Senate can come up with a compromise to restore access. “I think we’re going to continue to talk,’’ Niehaus said Monday. “I’m confident we’ll work it through.’’

The state Senate passed two foster care reform bills – one sponsored by Niehaus and another by Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester -- more than three months ago. But House approval of Cates’ bill was delayed by a long summer recess and concerns about public access to records.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has sued the state over access to foster care records. The case is awaiting arguments before the Ohio Supreme Court.

During legislative hearings last June, John C. Greiner, a Cincinnati attorney representing The Enquirer, argued for more public access to foster records, not increased privacy.

“The public came to know Marcus’ foster parents only when it was too late to raise concerns about their fitness,’’ Greiner testified. “And what the public learned made all of us question why that boy was placed in that house. It is important to remember that Marcus Fiesel died not because the public knew too much about his situation, but because the public knew too little.’’

Sheila McLaughlin contributed to this report.

Not enough foster parents in Franklin County

Franklin County Children Services looking for a few good foster homes
Price, Rita. Columbus Dispatch, Oct. 20, 2007.

When it comes to calls from potential foster parents, Franklin County Children Services has a very specific goal: The agency wants the phone to ring 237 times a month.

Lately, however, calls have tapered off to a 10-year low.

"Last month it was 129," recruitment specialist Daryle Cobb said.

While he can't be sure, Cobb suspects the sagging economy is at least partly to blame for the dip in interest. Foster-care providers are far more likely to be middle-income than wealthy, so they're pinched harder by rising fuel, food and health-care costs.

"People are struggling," Cobb said. "When both parents need to work, there's not a lot of time to devote."

There are other challenges, too. A proliferation of private foster-care agencies has led to competition for prospective foster parents. News accounts have focused on a few foster-parent horror stories; Ohio legislators are considering laws to mandate tougher background checks and additional training.

"And then there are the children," said Ronald Browder, director of the Children's Defense Fund Ohio and a longtime foster parent. "Some of them have just been exposed to so much. The mental-health issues have exploded."

Still, Browder and others say, the rewards are great. "We need more middle- and upper-income families to understand what a difference they can make in the life of a child," he said.

As of June 30, Franklin County had 2,341 children in paid foster care, Cobb said. The agency contracts out much of its care but still needs to add to its current pool of 413 foster homes.

Franklin County also hopes to recruit more prospective foster parents from the growing Somali and Latino communities. "We're trying to stay ahead of the curve there," Cobb said.

Judy Sigman and her husband, Walter, became approved as foster parents this week. Mrs. Sigman has a freshly made bed and a crib ready, and is waiting for the mailman. "We just need our license," she said yesterday.

At first, the Westerville resident found the process -- the classes and the paperwork and the fingerprinting -- intimidating. "But we finished it and I was really, really glad I did," she said. "I said to my husband, 'If every person who wanted to become a parent went through this process, maybe we wouldn't need children services.' "

Although her own children are grown and she has retired from a career in child-care, Mrs. Sigman, 60, said she wasn't ready to settle into a quiet house. "We're both thrilled," she said. "We might be able to help a child. And not just the child, but also the parents."

For more information on fostering or to attend an information session, call Franklin County Children Services at 614-341-6060.

Lifeway: The Agency That Wouldn't Die

License for foster care agency Lifeway revoked
Agency to continue operating while its appeal is under consideration.
Outten, Bridgette and Josh Sweigart, Dayton Daily News, Oct. 31, 2007.

SPRINGFIELD — Lifeway for Youth Inc. will remain open for business as it appeals the revocation of its license to operate as a foster care agency, its executive director said Tuesday.

The license was revoked the same day by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services that a certificate for renewal was denied, according to a release from Attorney General Marc Dann's office. The license was denied because of lack of adequate screening of would-be foster parents and complaints regarding placement of foster children, according to Dann's office.

A hearing examiner from the attorney general's office agreed with the office of Jobs and Family Services that the license should be revoked after an investigation following the killing of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel in August 2006.

Lifeway placed the Middletown boy with foster parents Liz and David Carroll Jr., who were later convicted of causing his death.

Lifeway Executive Director Michael Berner, in a statement released by the agency, said the decision by the office of Jobs and Family Services is not a surprise.

Berner said the department's case against Lifeway initially included 147 violations but has been "quietly reduced" to 24 violations, which the agency plans to appeal along with the revocation.

Fiesel's death sparked a movement for stricter regulations regarding foster parent background checks.

Despite the agency's checkered past, Butler County Children Services has nine children placed through Lifeway.

"The problem was the children were bonded with the foster parents, and you don't want to disrupt those placements ... as long as those placements are safe," Butler County Children Services Director Michael Fox said.

He said his agency inspects all Lifeway group homes monthly to ensure they're safe.

"We're not relying on Lifeway to oversee or vouch for the safety or care in those homes," Fox said.

Young adults who are Overcoming Hurdles in Ohio demand change

Source: May 22, 2007, www.publicnewsservice.org

Ohio children in foster care are headed to Congress today to call for an overhaul of the nation's foster care system.

Arlene Jones with the Ohio Youth Advisory Board is making the trip. She was in foster care as a child, and she says funding reforms could help thousands of kids get into permanent homes, either through adoption or by being reunited with parents.

She notes that Congress has an opportunity to make some simple changes that would meet vital needs. "There are problems with visitation, education resources, even things as simple as obtaining a permit to drive, or clothing, things like that where they can't get the resources they need to live a normal life."

About 30,000 Ohio children spend time in a foster home each year. On average, each child spends two years in foster care. Children in Ohio's foster care system range from infants to teen mothers, and Jones believes the system needs to be more flexible to meet their needs. "They need to look at each individual case. There cannot be a cookie-cutter solution."

1,200 teens age out of foster care in Ohio each year

Editorial: A better send-off for foster care kids
Cincinnati Enquirer, Sept. 16, 2007.

It's the age of helicopter parents, who hover over maturing offspring, and boomerang kids, who graduate from college and then move back home.

In that context, it's hard to imagine the utter aloneness of the 24,000 teenagers who age out of the foster care system each year with nowhere to go and no one to go to.

No one begs these kids to come home for Thanksgiving.

No one chides them for blowing their spare change on Starbucks coffee.

And no one nags them about deciding which colleges to visit or writing Grandma a thank-you note for the birthday gift.

For most of these teens, there is no car, Grandma or home.

EASILY OVERLOOKED
Our area knows well the tragedy of a child who dies in the foster care system but almost nothing about the teenager who survives it only to be kicked out at 18. The first child is an anomaly, with less than 1 percent of children dying in foster care in most years. The second, among teen foster youth, is the norm.

Initially, these youth are easily overlooked. They are notoriously disconnected from family, neighborhoods and activities and, because of their traumatized pasts, gun-shy about committing to anything or anyone.

But within months of emancipating from the system, they turn up in very public ways - in homeless shelters, on public assistance rolls and in jails. Often, they are victims of their own youthful naiveté or impulsiveness. But the scrapes that typical teenagers are rescued from turn into serious trouble - eviction notices, ruined credit, police charges - for these youths.

Hamilton County has one of the nation's most progressive programs for emancipating youth in its Lighthouse Independent Living program. It prepares them to live on their own, sets them up in their own apartment and, if they're responsible, provides them with furnishings, a nest egg and a good start in life.

But effective as it is, the Lighthouse program is only a substitute for what they need desperately: a permanent family.

One thing that prevents them from finding that family is a funding formula that pays for foster care but not for assistance for relatives who could become guardians. Sending more federal and state dollars to guardians or to efforts to locate extended family would reduce the number of teens who age out alone.

VALUE OF PREVENTION
Even better is targeting funding to keeping children out of foster care in the first place. Those efforts include parenting classes, counseling, anger and stress management, and substance abuse programs.

Most years, more than 1,200 teenagers age out in Ohio and 500 in Kentucky. To turn the odds in their favor we must root them in a family, or help them to establish a home for themselves.

Would you trust your children to Marcus Fiesel's foster parents?

New foster care bill includes stringent background check
Noah, Phyllis. Ironton Tribune, Sept. 15, 2007.

Sen. Tom Niehaus recently introduced Senate Bill 163, a foster care reform bill spurred by an incident in Clermont County — the Marcus Fiesel case.

The 3-year-old boy’s foster parents bound him, tied him up and locked him in a closet where he died while they went to a family reunion in Kentucky for the weekend.

The bill provides some requirements for additional background checks for foster parents. This would include a Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification background check and other additional checks that are required.

According SB 163, in part, the list of offenses that disqualify a person from providing out-of-home care, being certified as a foster parent, or being approved as an adoptive parent will be expanded to include the following: cruelty to animals, permitting child abuse, menacing by stalking, menacing, soliciting or providing support for act of terrorism, making terrorist threats, terrorism, identity fraud, inciting to violence, aggravated riot, ethnic intimidation, or two or more state OVI or state OVUAC violations committed or substantially equivalent offenses within the three years immediately preceding the submission of the person's application.

It also allows a public children services agency to access the otherwise confidential criminal records checks for prospective out-of-home care providers, foster caregivers, or adoptive parents.

“This list of violations is an obviously necessary list and probably should be expanded to more violations of the law,” said David Lambert, director of Mended Reeds, a small faith-based foster care and full-service adoption agency in Lawrence County. “Any violation or any illegal act that would jeopardize the safety or health of a child should be included in that list. This bill is long overdue.”

The qualifications to be certified as a foster parent are not that stringent, he said.

“But, there are some safeguards built into the process,” he said. “The laws been changed in the last few years to put more of a collaborative effort on social workers coming together and having a placement matching meeting so that professionals consider the parents and the needs of the child so they can match them more closely.”

They have always completed criminal background checks for employees and foster parents and anybody who is more than18 years old and lives in the home.

“There is also a process called the central registry check where we can check throughout the state of Ohio to see if anybody applying has ever been investigated for abuse and neglect of children,” said Bilreka Ferguson, foster and adoption manager at Mended Reeds. “Even though there’s no criminal record, there is still a process to see if they’ve ever been investigated or charged. So, there are safeguards.”

One concern that people in the social work field have about the central registry is that it may not be updated and properly funded so that it has accurate information, Lambert said.

Faye Blankenship, a social worker and certified home assessor, investigates the families who want to foster or adopt a child.

She interviews each parent separately, asking about their marriage and home life.

“Most of them are pretty honest because we’re in a small community,” she said. “We tell them that we will verify everything so they are aware of that. We do a very thorough investigation of all of our homes. We feel very secure before we ever place a child there.”

“Everyone who has been involved in an assault or domestic violence or in an alleged child abuse or neglect situation … will be placed on this registry and it will have an impact on the future,” Lambert said.

There are two levels of placement, he said.

One is to be approved for certification. The second layer is that social workers get together and make a subjective decision to make sure the family is a good match.

“Our license and reputation is on the line every time we do one of these,” said Nancy Varney, case manager at Mended Reeds. “We are incredibly thorough.”

Varney visits each foster home weekly to see what may be needed in the home and help connect them with services they may need.

“The most important thing about SB 163 is that it allows the agencies that work with foster care children both public and private to share information, which they could not do before and we’ve set up some electronic means for them to do that,” Niehaus said. “This is designed to be prospective. It links to some other systems.”

If, for instance, a foster parent is picked up for DUI, it would give the agency a red flag and they could check into the situation.

Niehaus and other senators worked on the legislation for more than six months. Several foster parents and foster children from both public and private agencies were involved in the meetings.

“Under this bill, the agency would get a red flag,” Niehaus said. “It has passed the Senate and pending before the House. I expect it will move pretty quickly over there and we hope it will be passed by both houses by the end of the year.”

Details of upcoming changes

Proposal to change Ohio's foster-care system
Akron Beacon Journal, Sept. 11, 2007.

State lawmakers in the House and Senate are poised to make changes to Ohio's foster care system that would:

_ Create a database containing information from different law enforcement agencies. The Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation would then notify those involved in the foster-care system when a current foster parent, or prospective parent, was arrested, convicted of, or pleaded guilty to certain crimes. Private placement agencies would also have access to the database.

_ Increase the training provided to would-be parents from 24 to 36 hours. Such training involves preparing parents to positively discipline children with traumatic backgrounds. Current foster parents would be able to meet their continuing training requirements by teaching training classes or becoming mentors to foster caregivers.

Better screening of and training for Ohio foster parents

OH Foster Care
WDTN - Dayton,OH, Sept. 11, 2007.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - State lawmakers returning from summer recess are poised to approve changes to the state's foster care system.

Lawmakers want to create a database so that current and potential foster parents can be screened for any brushes with the law. They also want to provide prospective and current foster-care parents with more training to help them care for at-risk children.

The proposed changes are a result of the death of a 3-year-old southwest Ohio boy who was killed when his foster parents left him bound in a closet for a weekend when they left town in August 2006.

The Senate has already approved the changes to the foster-care system, while the House is set to take up a bill establishing a law-enforcement database this week.

Marcus Fiesel legislation is finally being implemented

Boy's death leads lawmakers to propose foster care changes
Majors, Stephen. Akron Beacon Journal, Sept. 11, 2007.

Names of foster parents who fall on the wrong side of the law will be flagged in a statewide law enforcement database, and caregivers will receive more extensive training, under a plan state lawmakers are poised to approve roughly a year after an Ohio boy was killed by his foster parents.

The proposals are the result of discussions among foster care advocates, lawmakers and foster parents and children following the August 2006 death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel. The developmentally disabled boy died after being left bound in a closet by his foster parents in their Cincinnati-area home for two days while they attended a family reunion in Kentucky.

"The goal from my perspective was to make the system better but not drive foster parents away," said Rep. Jeff Wagner, a former foster parent and Sycamore Republican who is sponsoring a bill in the House to provide more training for parents. "It's awfully easy for government to overreact and cause a bigger problem because of its overreaction."

The House and Senate each have bills addressing the database proposal and separate bills addressing the training proposal. The Senate has passed both of its bills. The House has passed its database bill and is expected to take up Wagner's training bill this week as the Legislature returns from summer recess.

The investigation by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services into Fiesel's death showed there was a wealth of information available on the criminal records of foster parents, but the information had no way of being shared easily with those who make foster placement decisions, said state Sen. Tom Niehaus, the Columbus Republican who sponsored the database bill in the Senate.

"We need to break down barriers to make sure reliable information can be shared with both public and private agencies," Niehaus said.

After Fiesel died, a domestic violence charge against his foster father David Carroll became known to foster care officials. The June 2006 charge was later dropped, but observers in hindsight have said knowledge of the charge could have led to more investigation of the family and possibly the removal of the boy from the home.

The database bills in the House and Senate would require law enforcement agencies to relay up-to-date criminal information into a database containing names of current and prospective foster parents. The state Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation would then be required to notify public and private foster-care agencies of criminal activity.

Under the plan, county-level state employees and private agencies making placement decisions would know when a potential or current foster parent has been arrested, for example, and what the arrest was for.

The training bills in both chambers increase the amount of pre-placement training for foster parents from 24 hours to 36 hours. They also enable current foster parents to meet some of the requirements for continuing training by teaching training classes or mentoring other foster caregivers.

The best recruiters are current foster families, said Greg Kapcar, assistant legislative director for the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, a private, nonprofit advocacy group focused on children's issues. The association worked on the proposals and supports them.

Kapcar said training is vital because it informs parents-to-be about the effects of abuse and neglect on children and how to positively discipline children who have been through emotional trauma.

Penny Wyman is a fabulous person

Ill, disabled children foster kids' care might shift to private agencies
Program stretched too thin, county says
Price, Rita. Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 1, 2007.

Karen Ritchie adopted 2-year-old Matthew, who first came to her as a medically fragile foster child, earlier this year. The toddler has Down syndrome, leukemia and pulmonary hypertension.
Inside Karen Ritchie's toy-filled home, ventilators whir and feeding tubes gurgle.

It is like this every day, 24 hours a day, because of her special talent.

"I have the ability to love someone else's child," Ritchie said.

For the past 15 years, Ritchie has taken in the sickest of Franklin County's abused and neglected children, providing foster care for boys and girls who have neither stable homes nor health.

In 2003 and again in 2005, Franklin County Children Services named her the agency's specialized foster parent of the year.

Now, the agency wants Ritchie to work for someone else.

Executive Director Eric Fenner recently terminated the "treatment" component of county foster-care services so the agency can focus on traditional foster care. He wants private agencies to take over management and licensure of foster-care homes such as Ritchie's that serve ill and disabled children.

"I feel like they're discriminating against these kids," said Ritchie, who worries that private agencies will provide less support, expertise, respite care and pay.

Fenner, however, said the county, which already contracts out 79 percent of its foster care, is in a bind.

"It's a matter of how we prioritize," he said. "And the action itself would be invisible to the children."

To keep the relatively small program jeopardizes the county's rating with the Council on Accreditation, and its good standing within the Child Welfare League of America, because the county doesn't have enough staff members dedicated to the program to meet recommended guidelines, Fenner said.

He thinks it's better to shift the homes to private providers than to ask county commissioners for money to hire at least three more employees.

Children Services board members don't appear as confident. After Ritchie complained at a meeting this week, the board formed a committee to study the decision.

"I would really like to see us maintain this program if we can," board Chairwoman Rhonda Evans said.

The privatization of foster care is an issue playing out throughout the country, said Floyd Alwon of the Child Welfare League of America.

In New York City, virtually all foster care is provided by private agencies.

Ohio has about a 50-50 split.

Some Michigan foster parents have protested legislation to increase the number of foster-care cases in private hands to 60 percent.

Franklin County Children Services oversees 417 foster homes. Of those, the shift would affect 37 "treatment homes," nine of which serve medically fragile foster children. While children with behavioral or mental-health issues have been placed through private agencies for years, the homes for the medically fragile have tended to remain under the county umbrella.

"We're close," Ritchie said. "We know each other, we help each other. Most of us are nurses."

She doesn't think private agencies have the programs and staff members to support the caregivers and keep the children safe. An earlier attempt to put Franklin County treatment foster homes under private management was a failure, Ritchie said.

However, Penny Wyman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Child Caring Agencies, said private foster agencies are up to the task.

"I think that, before they react, they should give us a chance," Wyman said. "This is a trend that's happening all over Ohio. I think that next year at this time, the families will wonder what they were worried about."

Ritchie, 56, isn't sure there will be a next year for her in foster care. The long-time nurse already has cared for 14 children: She said goodbye to 10, watched two die and adopted two.

A 2-year-old in her care might soon return to his family and an infant is about to have brain surgery. Ritchie isn't looking to alter the county arrangement that has worked for her so well.

"I took sick kids and made them the best they can be," she said. "But maybe I'm done now."

New statewide child welfare computer system is flawed

Computer glitch creates problems for foster care agencies
Palladium-Item, August 19, 2007.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio is at risk of losing track of foster care children because of problems in a new statewide computer system, child welfare advocates say.

The new Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System, launched in about half of Ohio's 88 counties so far, is designed to collect data on child abuse and neglect cases, making it easier for child welfare agencies to track abusers and victims instead of independent county-by-county databases currently in use.

But the $93 million project failed to include information from foster care providers who did not have children in their homes at the time the system went online, according to the state's Public Children Services Association.

When children are subsequently places in those homes, county agencies can't add their cases to the new computer system, said Crystal Ward Allen, executive director of the association.
The Children Services Association points to a missing foster child crisis in Florida five years ago as an example of the potential risks.

Then, it took Florida's Department of Children and Families 15 months to realize a 5-year-old Miami foster girl was missing. Later investigations revealed the agency had temporarily been unable to find 102 children.

Allen said her organization has asked the state to stop adding new counties to the system until the problems are fixed.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services recognizes the problems in the transitional period, but the department is eager to keep the program on schedule, said director Helen Jones-Kelley. The database was rolled out last year after a decade of missed deadlines and false starts, she said.

The state is working to enter the missing foster family data, Jones-Kelley said. The database is current to Aug. 1, and as counties discover problems, state workers correct the main system, she said.

To protect the case file information, some counties' caseworkers are using backup systems, such as writing out information by hand, said Franklin County's Children Services Executive Director Eric Fenner.

"All the children in our care, we know where they are. The problem is, they are not all in (the computer system),'' he said.

By January, all of the state's 88 counties should be using the automated information system, Jones-Kelley said.

Youth who emancipate from the foster care system are not ready for adulthood

Extend aid for foster care
Toledo Blade, Aug. 18, 2007.

TODAY, 18-year-olds are legally adults. Yet few people that age have the means or the common sense needed to properly care for themselves. Young people need time to get established, to complete their education, get jobs, and get on their feet.

That's a hard enough task when you have a loving family, and it becomes an often insurmountable one when you've spent a lifetime bouncing around in foster care.

What seems clear is that fewer such children would wind up homeless or in jail if states extended foster care benefits up to age 21. After all, few families expect their young adults to maneuver totally on their own. Most provide emotional and some family support for at least a few years beyond the legal age of adulthood.

That's why U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer's proposal to make it easier for states to extend benefits for foster kids makes a lot of sense. Legislation the California Democrat has introduced also would provide matching federal funds.

The American Bar Association is very much behind this idea; lawyers and judges too often see up close what happens when so-called "emancipated" youths are not ready for the real world.

Unfortunately though, Senator Boxer's bill has been slow to attract support in Congress. Sadly, that makes it seem clear that these youths' welfare is not a priority with our elected representatives. That's shameful and financially foolish, looked at over the long term. This seems to confirm the unfortunate notion that foster care children are society's "throwaways."

Every year about 20,000 of the half-million youngsters in foster care "age out" and are suddenly on their own.

Far too many wind up homeless and/or incarcerated. That costs society vastly more than a few more years in foster care would.

William Bell, president of the Seattle-based Casey Family Programs, put it succinctly: "We can choose to pay while they're still in our care or we will continue to pay once they leave."

The state of Ohio does deserve credit for tackling the issue sensibly. Emancipated youths between 18 and 21 can ask for independent living services. That includes educational, vocational, and life-skills training; financial assistance, housing, counseling, and various other support.

Nobody can do much about a family that chooses to boot their kids out once they reach 18. But something can be done to aid emancipated foster care youth, whose predicaments are not usually their fault. The first step is to see them not as society's throwaways but as young Americans who need and deserve help.

We also should realize that if it wasn't for chance, their plight could easily be ours, or that of our children.

Fighting over the idea

Butler County urges statewide foster parent tracking
Commission candidate accuses Furmon of plagiarizing her idea for a statewide notification system.
Picard, Amy. Oxford Press, Aug. 14, 2007.

HAMILTON — Butler County Commissioner Charles Furmon authorized new Children Services Director Michael Fox to send a letter to the Ohio Attorney General's office urging the state to develop a system capable of tracking law enforcement contacts with foster parents.

The system envisioned in Friday's letter would record all police contact with foster parents so area child welfare agencies would be able to take appropriate actions.

A similar system already is in place for individuals licensed to carry concealed weapons, who are flagged so that police know to be cautious when initiating traffic stops.

"The state has a system in place to help us protect our children, and all we want them to do is use it," Furmon said.

Rawnica Dillingham, executive director of Mental Health Matters and candidate for Butler County Commissioner, criticized Furmon, her opponent in the 2008 race, on Monday for taking credit for the idea she said was hers.

Dillingham suggested a similar system to the commissioners in October, which the commission unanimously supported.

"Simply because Mr. Furmon now realizes he is in serious jeopardy of losing an election, he opted to basically plagiarize an idea brought before this commission by myself 10 months ago," Dillingham said.

Furmon said they weren't able to get the Children Services Board to take the idea seriously at that time, but since the board was disbanded and Fox was named director, the idea is being re-examined.

Ohio Senate approved, waiting on House of Representatives to pass

Toddler's death sparks changes to foster-care law
Cincinnati Enquirer, August 5, 2007.

More thorough checks of people who care for minors in the child-welfare system is at the heart of proposed foster-care changes prompted by Marcus Fiesel's death last August.

The Ohio Senate in June approved two pieces of legislation, and similar bills are awaiting passage when the House of Representatives returns from break next month.

Gov. Ted Strickland has allocated about $20 million in the biennial budget to pay for increased staffing at the state level and other programs needed to carry out the reform.

But even legislators who helped draft the bills concede the changes are not a silver bullet.

"I can't sit here and tell you we're never going to have another problem because you're dealing with human beings," said Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester. "I can't make the highways safe tonight just because we have DUI laws on the books. All we can do is our best to try to create as safe an environment as possible."

The proposed foster-care changes in Ohio include:

-- Requiring FBI criminal background checks on all foster parents.

-- Adding foster parents' fingerprints to a statewide database.

-- Improving cooperation among government agencies.

-- Increasing information shared by public-service agencies.

-- Extending foster-parent training from 24 to 36 hours.

-- Expanding the list of criminal offenses that disqualify people from becoming foster parents. It adds child abuse, menacing by stalking and cruelty to animals. Anyone with two or more drunken-driving convictions within three years would also be disqualified.

3 parents + 6 children + 12 pit bull terriers in one filthy house = Childrens Services

Local family removed from filthy house
Landers, Kevin. Ohio News Network, June 21, 2007.

COLUMBUS- Columbus police officers serving an arrest warrant Tuesday discovered a house littered with filth in the process. After arresting Karl Peterson on a felony probation violation, police summoned the health department and animal control officers to the home.

Officers found 12 pit bull terriers in the house, along with at least three other adults and six children. The three women, each with two children, were ordered out of the Hinman Avenue address when the Columbus Health Department declared it unfit for habitation.

According to Franklin County Children Services, five children were sent to live with other relatives. A sixth was returned to the custody of a parent. The agency said there is a household history involving children services, but no open cases.

Animal control removed the dogs from the house. Most of them were puppies. Along with the probation violation, Peterson was also charged with child endangerment.

No home visits were ever made -- no counseling, no anger management counseling provided

Hamilton Co. Reviews All Child Abuse, Neglect Cases
Three Employees Suspended So Far
WLWT, Ohio, July 19, 2007.

CINCINNATI -- Hamilton County commissioners and the county administrator have ordered the Department of Job and Family Services to review all of its child abuse and neglect cases by Friday.

The order comes after a recent case involving a father and mother who neglected to take their 18-month-old son to a hospital after he suffered a burn on his head and a lacerated liver.

Hamilton County Judge Melba Marsh had ordered the DJFS to keep close watch over the young boy, but in a letter to the commissioners, Marsh noted that no home visits were ever made.

In fact, she said that there was no contact with the child and no anger management counseling set up for the parents.

"The employees who failed to follow appropriate procedures in this matter, subjecting these children to potential harm, have been suspended and will be disciplined accordingly," said county Administrator Pat Thompson.

Hamilton County case workers are responsible for protecting 3,500 children. By Friday, every case is to be reviewed to ensure that home visits have taken place within the past 30 days.

"Regardless of caseload size, that's your No. 1 priority -- to make sure children are seen and that children are safe," said Moira Weir of DJFS. "If we can't do that, then we failed our families."

The DJFS has a 30 percent vacancy rate for case workers, and now three employees have been suspended in connection with the child endangering case that prompted the review of all neglect and abuse cases in Hamilton County.

"If county employees failed to do their jobs as they're required to do so and failed to do what policy and law requires, they will be disciplined," said county Commissioner Todd Portune.

I am sick of hearing about Wexler -- one size does NOT fit all

Study: Keep families intact
Unprecedented look at 'in-between' cases finds children better off at home
Brooks-Higgins, Candice. Middletown Journal, July 16, 2007.

MIDDLETOWN — Killed last summer in foster care, Marcus Fiesel could be the poster child for a recent unprecedented study that found children fare better staying with their troubled families than in foster care.

Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, has argued for nearly a year that Marcus should not have been removed and has argued for years that children like Marcus are better off at home.

The 3-year-old developmentally disabled boy was removed in April 2006 from his mother, Donna Trevino, after he was found wandering the streets alone and was almost hit by a car. Police said they found poor living conditions at his North Grimes Street home in Middletown. Nearly four months earlier, he fell from his home's second-story window.

Placed in a Clermont County foster home in May, Marcus was dead by Aug. 6 after being bound and locked in a playpen inside an upstairs closet for nearly two days while his foster parents, Liz and David Carroll Jr., went to a family reunion in Kentucky. His body was later burned and remains dumped into the Ohio River. The Carrolls are both serving life sentences for his death.
Now, Wexler said he has the evidence to prove children like Marcus should remain with their families.

A study released in March by Joseph Doyle, an economics professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management who studies social policy, focused on children whose cases could have gone either way. Cases of sexual abuse, drug exposure, and severe abuse and neglect were excluded because foster care likely is necessary in those circumstances.

Doyle found children who stayed with their families were less likely to become juvenile delinquents or teen mothers and were more likely to keep a job or earn a better salary. Doyle tracked 15,000 Illinois children ages 5 to 15 from 1990 to 2002 for the study funded by the National Science Foundation, which child welfare experts are calling the largest study conducted on the effects foster care.

The findings weigh in on the "in-between cases," Wexler said, "where the parent is neither all victim nor all villain; cases where there are real problems in the home, but wide disagreement over what should be done. In other words, I would argue, parents like Donna Trevino."
Butler County Children Services, which approved Marcus' placement, agree with Doyle's conclusions about these marginal cases of abuse, spokeswoman Denise Winkler said.

"It provides the first valuable empirical evidence for keeping children with their families," Winkler said. "Caseworkers know from their experience in this field that children are better off with their families if they can be there and be safe. What this does is supports that with numbers and data."

Regardless of the criticism that has surrounded Children Services since Marcus' death, Winkler said the study is important to look at — period. Copies of the study have been distributed to administrators to see if its lessons can be applied to the agency's polices, Winkler said.
County Commission President Gregory Jolivette said he's interested to see how Children Services will respond to the study. The agency is at a pivotal moment as it waits for the commissioners to select a new executive director.

Still, Jolivette said the philosophy of child welfare has been evolving from orphanages to group homes to foster care — and now foster care is being rethought.

"I don't think it's a one size fits all," he said.

Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester Twp., said he will see if the study has any application in Ohio. Meanwhile, he said he expects former care reform legislation, which he has co-sponsored, to be ratified in the fall. Senate Bills 163 and 164 focus on improved foster parent screening.

More than three times number of foster children in Brown County than families willing to take them in

Local foster families are needed: County struggles with care shortage
Arthur, Michael. Ripley Bee, June 21, 2007.

There is currently a shortage in Brown County of families willing to care for local displaced and poverty-stricken children.

Although the county is known for its warmth and willingness to help out those in unfortunate circumstances, Department of Job and Family Services officials say there are more than three times the number of foster children in need of stable homes in Brown County than families willing to take them in, and the situation is only going to get worse.

“There are 25 licensed foster families in the county,” said DJFS Foster Care Coordinator Nicole Williams. “Right now, we have 80 children in the custody of our agency.”

There is currently a shortage in Brown County of families willing to care for local displaced and poverty-stricken children. Although the county is known for its warmth and willingness to help out those in unfortunate circumstances, Department of Job and Family Services officials say there are more than three times the number of foster children in need of stable homes in Brown County than families willing to take them in, and the situation is only going to get worse.

“There are 25 licensed foster families in the county,” said DJFS Foster Care Coordinator Nicole Williams. “Right now, we have 80 children in the custody of our agency.”

Since the numbers obviously do not match up, the county must contract with outside agencies to provide homes and care that the foster children so desperately need. But according to DJFS Director David “Mitch” Sharp, sending foster kids to other counties is not the preferred option for the agency, and can have complicating consequences for the already troubled youngsters as well.

Any time an outside agency is contracted, it has to be paid, of course, with money originally intended to be spent on services within the county. It is always difficult to give up a portion of an agency’s budget, but Sharp said the problem with sending foster kids out of county extends beyond financial concerns.

“We always try to place children with family members, if possible,” said Sharp. “And we try to keep children in the setting that they are used to, near their home and near their school.”

Relocating children with a new family, in a new town and in a new school district can make an already difficult situation even more awkward, Sharp said. Moving in with strangers, no matter how loving, is a delicate and fragile process, and being geographically displaced from friends and familiar settings can make the transition more complicated.

In addition, both Sharp and Brown County Recovery Services Director Steve Dunkin agree problems also arise with mental health services when a foster child crosses county lines. Sharp said it is typical for many foster children to come from troubled backgrounds, and many have received some type of counseling service during or prior to entering foster care. But when the child is relocated to another county, local options for mental health care may no longer be available.

Dunkin said lack of adequate foster care in Brown County has negative effects both socially and economically. Dunkin said children in the foster care program can develop close bonds with local counselors who help the kids deal with often continuous problems with home and family life. But once the child is relocated with a family out of county, geographic and/or bureaucratic restrictions often prevent the child from obtaining the same care, regardless of the child’s connection with a particular counselor or of the progress of the counseling.

Not only do the foster children lose the benefit of prior connections when moving out of county, but Dunkin said Brown County Recovery Services is also required to pay 40 percent of Medicaid charges for children who move and receive services from another agency.

“That ends up being a sizable amount of funds,” said Dunkin.

Dunkin said the situation is unfortunate, especially since he feels that Brown County Recovery Services is a nationally accredited and widely respected organization completely capable of meeting a wide range of mental health care needs, especially in the young. He said Recovery Services would much rather spend the money used to reimburse out-of-county services on building and developing care within the county.

Dunkin said various community leaders from different agencies and backgrounds have discussed establishing a committee to address foster care.

The best way to ensure foster children remain in a familiar and caring community setting, Sharp said, is to increase the availability of foster families. That means families with the time, understanding and means to support a child in need will have to step up and answer the call. Foster families need not be extremely wealthy, extremely intelligent, or high on the social scale. Foster families need only be patient and understanding.

The process is simpler than some might think, although Sharp is quick to note that every aspect of a potential foster parent’s life is checked, and verified to ensure that only the capable and qualified are accepted.

Without exception, potential foster families must hold the child’s welfare as their highest priority.

“Their heart has to be in the right place, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Williams.
Beginning the process is easy – simply call or stop by the Human Services office in Georgetown and ask for information. Department of Job and Family Services can provide booklets outlining all aspects of foster care, and can even put potential care givers in contact with current foster families who can provide first-hand accounts of what to expect.

If still interested, potential foster families fill out an application and complete a total of 40 hours of training with six hour sessions over consecutive Saturdays. The training is provided entirely by DJFS and includes communicable disease and CPR instruction.

Following training, the agency will conduct a home study to inspect the residence where foster children would potentially live. Department of Job and Family Services does not give specific information about the home study, but it is substantial and will reveal possible safety threats for children.

The safety audit is followed by extensive criminal background checks through local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. Polygraph examinations have been initiated as well, Sharp said, but more for the purposes of verifying truthful answers than catching lies.

“It is a crime to provide false information on a foster care application,” said Sharp. “Job and Family Services takes that very seriously.”

If the agency determines an applicant would be suitable, the process of matching a child with the family begins. Williams said potential families are given a checklist to complete that indicates what type of child they would be willing to take in. Families can be very specific, she said, and are able to choose from various aspects, including gender and age range.

Williams said there is always a diverse range of children needing foster care.

The agency still stays extremely involved, Williams said, even after a child has been placed. Home visits are conducted up to once a week, and other inspections are scheduled from month to month.

Because many foster children come from difficult backgrounds and can display behavioral problems at times, Williams said the agency offers respite services, when another party can temporarily take care of a foster child as a way to give the foster family a bit of a break.

There is no cost to becoming a foster parent and the state does provide some assistance for the care of foster children. The stipends are not a huge amount of money, however, and Williams said no one is going to get rich from taking care of foster kids. She said the notion that some people become foster parents only to receive the state check is not really credible because the stipend simply isn’t that much. Also, Williams said agency workers can usually spot prospective families who are only interested in the money.

“You really have to care to do this,” said Williams.

You don’t have to be extremely wealthy, however, as Sharp and Williams agreed that average, upper-middle class families usually qualify. Basic financial resources and an exceptionally large heart are all that are required.

Although foster care situations are supposed to be temporary in nature, Sharp said foster parents always have the option of adopting. All licensing provided by the agency is foster-to-adopt, and the ultimate goal is always finding a permanent, stable and loving home.

According to Sharp, the recent Marcus Fiesel foster care scandal has shed light on needed reform in Ohio’s foster care system, and some beneficial changes are on the horizon. Sharp said four House Bills are currently being considered in committee that focus primarily on making sure families are financially capable and have adequate resources to take care of children, legislation that Sharp said is welcome among foster care agencies. Sharp said the legislation is expected to focus on accountability as well.