Wagner bill

Wagner foster care bill on Strickland’s desk
Risner, Kevin. Tiffin Advertiser Tribune, Feb. 11, 2008.

State Rep. Jeff Wagner, R-Sycamore, announced last week House Bill 214 has been approved by the Ohio legislature and now is awaiting the signature of Gov. Ted Strickland.

“Because I was a foster parent I was asked to carry the bill,” Wagner said.

“My main concern when we started with this was that we didn’t overreact.

“This came out of a tragic situation in southern Ohio where a child had been murdered by his foster parents. So the natural reaction of government is to overreact and make it too hard to be a foster parent. That’s when I got involved because I didn’t want that overreaction to happen.”

The bill contains a number of foster care reforms, including improving the training of foster parents, ensuring that foster parent information is adequately protected, creating mentoring programs for current and prospective foster caregivers, and enhancing placement procedures for MRDD children.

Wagner said part of the process of creating and moving the bill to passage was to meet with interested parties, such as child care providers and representatives of Child and Family Services. The goal was to form a bill that could make the foster care system safe while not making it too difficult to become a foster parent, he said.

“One of the neat things the foster parents brought to us was the training, which is often by a case worker who means well but doesn’t really have the experience,” Wagner said.

“This bill would allow experienced foster care givers to use some of the continuous training hours to mentor younger care givers, maybe somebody who is entering the system. That’s a real hands-on way of making the system better.”

Part of the bill became controversial, Wagner said. With the Cincinnati Enquirer filing a lawsuit to learn the identities of foster care parents throughout the state, other newspapers joined to oppose language in the bill to shield the identity of foster parents.

“Once these names and information becomes public information, you compromise the safety of foster parents and foster children,” Wagner said. “You are going to have foster parents leave the system or just not sign up. I thought it was important that we just spell that out in law, that that is not public record, other than certain circumstances.”

Wagner said the bill includes three exceptions by which the identity of foster parents would become public record.

Wagner said identifying foster parents and personal information could have a chilling effect on keeping foster parents or recruiting new foster parents.

If people know potentially embarrassing information from their distant past might be revealed, such as a DUI conviction from a decade prior, they may shy away from the foster care program.

“We are already begging for foster homes,” Wagner said. “We don’t have enough in any county in the state. If you lose another 500 or 1,000, it’s just a tragedy. Those kids won’t have homes to go to.”

Wagner said the governor could sign the bill at any time, or he may wait until a companion bill is passed, and then sign the two bills at the same time. If he waits for the second bill, a few weeks could pass before the bill is signed and becomes law.