Ohio hoarding money rather than giving it to kinship care providers

Caregivers want money set aside for them
Suchetka, Diane. Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 6, 2007, pg. B1.

Lucy Napper is embarrassed that Ohio is sitting on millions of dollars that lawmakers set aside to help grandparents like her - grandparents who are raising their grandchildren, keeping them out of foster care and saving taxpayers millions more as a result."I've listened to the financial figures, and I'm almost ashamed," Napper told 45 people gathered at a forum on the subject held Monday in Cleveland.

"I'm almost ashamed to say I live in a country with people living in the situation we're living in. Grandparents should not have to go through what we're going through to take care of our grandchildren. You would think we were talking about people in Haiti."

Napper was one of four Cleveland-area grandmothers who explained how they have been hurt by a program set up to help them.

Their audience included two state lawmakers: Sen. Dale Miller and Rep. Michael DeBose. Both said the program needs improvements.

The forum at Myers University, sponsored by the Cleveland office of the Children's Defense Fund of Ohio, marked the relaunching of an effort to persuade the state to spend more of the $20 million that lawmakers designated for low-income grandparents, aunts, uncles and others who are raising their relatives' children.

Why can't these kinship caregivers, as they're called, get money to help raise children when unrelated foster parents - no matter how wealthy - can? That's what the grandmothers who spoke Monday wanted to know.

"I go to four food lines a month to feed my grandchildren," said Loretta Hunter, who has been raising six grandchildren. "I shouldn't have to do that. Why can't they give us the same amount they're giving foster parents? We're doing the same job."

In September, The Plain Dealer reported that the state had set aside $10 million to help low-income grandparents, aunts and uncles raise their grandchildren, nieces and nephews. But it had spent only $608,500 - about 6 percent - of that money.

Another $10 million became available last July. As of last month, about $2 million of that had been disbursed, according to state officials.

Those officials say the program is just getting started and that more money will be spent as it matures.

But some officials worry that a program with unspent money won't be funded again.

Jim McCafferty, director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services, is one of those. He continues to criticize the state for not giving that money to the poor families it was intended for, especially since foster parents in Cuyahoga County who have no relationship to the children they are caring for get about $600 a month per child. And they get that no matter how wealthy they are.

"I think the Kinship Incentive Program is extremely inadequate," McCafferty said at Monday's meeting, "and it should be abolished. I believe we can do better."

So does the Rev. Mylion Waite, senior manager of the Cleveland office of the Children's Defense Fund, who convened the meeting.

She said her group will carry the discussion across the state and continue to lobby lawmakers so more money gets to kinship caregivers.

"We want to push them to make some changes to a very, very poor public policy," she said.