Kids' services levy up for renewal
Kimball Perry, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 16, 2006.
Two state audits critical of Hamilton County's spending for poor children and families will have minimal impact on whether voters renew a property tax that provides about 40 percent of the funding for the Children's Services Department, backers predict.
"I think any controversies have an impact (but) voters are smart, and they know our children are in need," said Vickie Buyniski-Gluckman of Hyde Park, one of the three chairs of the committee pushing for the levy's renewal.
Residents of Hamilton County have voted to tax themselves to support a children's service levy since 1981 - all but once passing it by double-digit margins.
There is no organized opposition to the levy. The Tax Levy Review Committee, which evaluates levy requests, applauded Children's Services performance and how it spends public money.The audits - one by the Ohio Auditor and one by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services - questioned the spending of the Hamilton County Department of Job & Family Services.
The Ohio JFS audit said Hamilton County should repay $224 million it claims the county misspent.
Hamilton County officials have stressed that no money is missing, that the money was spent on services for poor children and families and that the issue is an intergovernmental fight about accounting differences.
"My main concern is are we going to let the fighting interrupt the services these kids need?" asked Neil Tilow, head of Talbert House, an agency that provides some services to children and gets money from the levy. "Just because those things have happened doesn't mean the needs have stopped."
The current five-year levy, generating $41.6 million of the overall Children's Services annual budget of $111 million, expires at the end of the year. That levy costs the owner of a $100,000 house about $45 per year.
Officials are seeking a five-year renewal that would generate the same amount.County officials are mandated by Ohio law to provide those services the levy partly funds.
"If this levy fails, we still have to provide the services," JFS spokesman Brian Gregg said."The audit situation could take five years (to resolve). In the meantime, we're still going to take care of children."
Children's Services facts
Children's Services is one of the departments that make up the Hamilton County Department of Job & Family Services. It provides foster care, adoption and services aimed at helping keep children in their home. That can include drug and alcohol treatment services and parenting classes.
In 2005, Hamilton County's Children's Services:
Provided services for 15,679 children, one out of every 28 Hamilton County children
Finalized 77 adoptions
Had 1,265 children in foster care in an average month
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Monday, October 16, 2006
Issue 13: pros and cons
Editorial: A robust safety net
Cincinnati Post, Oct. 13, 2006, pg. A10.
Issue 13 on the Hamilton County ballot asks voters to approve a renewal of a five-year, 2.77-mill property tax levy to help provide services to abused, neglected and other needy children.
Because it would collect the same amount (about $41.8 million annually) as the existing levy, and because the cost is relatively low (about $49 a year for the owner of a $100,000 home), Issue 13 has generated little controversy and no organized opposition.
Certainly there's no argument about the need for the services funded by the levy -- which also serves as the local match for about $54 million in state and federal funds.
Among other things, the money pays for foster care placement, investigation of complaints of abuse and neglect, emergency housing, mental health services, juvenile court prosecutors, public defenders, training programs and the like.
Levy supporters say that at any given time the Hamilton County Children's Services program (a division of Hamilton County Job and Family Services) has more than 8,000 active cases and is providing housing for more than 2,000 children outside their home. In 2005 more than 64,000 calls were placed to 241-KIDS, prompting 5,600 investigations resulting in 3,300 substantiated or "indicated'' cases of abuse or neglect. (In about 36 percent of such cases the children were eventually returned to their family home, officials report, while in 28 percent they were placed with relatives and in 12 percent adopted. The rest either went into foster care or other placement or turned 18 and became legally independent.)
Last year, levy advocates report, 15,679 children were served -- one in every 28 who live in Hamilton County.
The Marcus Fiesel tragedy and the litany of other abused and neglected children offer painful testimony to the need for a robust safety net for children. Whether so much of that cost should be charged against the levy is a legitimate question; by way of answer it bears noting that the Hamilton County Tax Levy Review Commission recommended the levy be put on the ballot at the 2.77 mill figure -- which, accounting for anticipated inflation over the next five years, represents a net cut in funding.
For our part, we would be considerably more enthusiastic about endorsing Issue 13 were it not for the audits released recently by the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services and state auditor Betty Montgomery. Both concluded that Hamilton County officials improperly commingled levy funds to attract state and federal dollars and failed to properly account for spending from various children's services accounts. One audit concludes that Hamilton County should transfer $139 million from a public assistance fund to the fund that holds levy proceeds, and another asserts the county must repay $223 million because of accounting mistakes.
Local officials, however, have hotly disputed these findings, saying they did nothing wrong and certainly nothing they hadn't been told or authorized to do by the state. The FBI has investigated but found no criminal wrongdoing, and by all accounts there has been no suggestion that children's services funds were diverted for improper purposes. The most immediate concern is that the county could wind up liable for state or federal funds that it wasn't entitled to receive.
The fact that the county children's services agency hadn't been audited since 1993 in not only an outrage, it complicates any attempt at sorting out who's right or wrong is this dispute. About the only thing that's clear is that the dust won't settle by Election Day on Nov. 7, and that the current levy will expire at year's end.
Hence we don't see much realistic choice for conscientious voters but to renew the levy -- that is, to vote "Yes'' on Issue 13. But if the upshot of the audits is, in fact, a windfall for the children's services fund, even if it's at the expense of welfare or other programs, county commissioners, we submit, are morally obligated to roll back the levy by a corresponding amount.
We love our children and accept the obligation to protect them. That's why Hamilton County taxpayers have agreed -- in 1986, 1991, 1996 and again in 2001 -- to tax themselves for that purpose.
It is profoundly unsettling to discover that state, local and federal officials cannot now give us an assurance that the accounting for such spending has been proper.
Cincinnati Post, Oct. 13, 2006, pg. A10.
Issue 13 on the Hamilton County ballot asks voters to approve a renewal of a five-year, 2.77-mill property tax levy to help provide services to abused, neglected and other needy children.
Because it would collect the same amount (about $41.8 million annually) as the existing levy, and because the cost is relatively low (about $49 a year for the owner of a $100,000 home), Issue 13 has generated little controversy and no organized opposition.
Certainly there's no argument about the need for the services funded by the levy -- which also serves as the local match for about $54 million in state and federal funds.
Among other things, the money pays for foster care placement, investigation of complaints of abuse and neglect, emergency housing, mental health services, juvenile court prosecutors, public defenders, training programs and the like.
Levy supporters say that at any given time the Hamilton County Children's Services program (a division of Hamilton County Job and Family Services) has more than 8,000 active cases and is providing housing for more than 2,000 children outside their home. In 2005 more than 64,000 calls were placed to 241-KIDS, prompting 5,600 investigations resulting in 3,300 substantiated or "indicated'' cases of abuse or neglect. (In about 36 percent of such cases the children were eventually returned to their family home, officials report, while in 28 percent they were placed with relatives and in 12 percent adopted. The rest either went into foster care or other placement or turned 18 and became legally independent.)
Last year, levy advocates report, 15,679 children were served -- one in every 28 who live in Hamilton County.
The Marcus Fiesel tragedy and the litany of other abused and neglected children offer painful testimony to the need for a robust safety net for children. Whether so much of that cost should be charged against the levy is a legitimate question; by way of answer it bears noting that the Hamilton County Tax Levy Review Commission recommended the levy be put on the ballot at the 2.77 mill figure -- which, accounting for anticipated inflation over the next five years, represents a net cut in funding.
For our part, we would be considerably more enthusiastic about endorsing Issue 13 were it not for the audits released recently by the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services and state auditor Betty Montgomery. Both concluded that Hamilton County officials improperly commingled levy funds to attract state and federal dollars and failed to properly account for spending from various children's services accounts. One audit concludes that Hamilton County should transfer $139 million from a public assistance fund to the fund that holds levy proceeds, and another asserts the county must repay $223 million because of accounting mistakes.
Local officials, however, have hotly disputed these findings, saying they did nothing wrong and certainly nothing they hadn't been told or authorized to do by the state. The FBI has investigated but found no criminal wrongdoing, and by all accounts there has been no suggestion that children's services funds were diverted for improper purposes. The most immediate concern is that the county could wind up liable for state or federal funds that it wasn't entitled to receive.
The fact that the county children's services agency hadn't been audited since 1993 in not only an outrage, it complicates any attempt at sorting out who's right or wrong is this dispute. About the only thing that's clear is that the dust won't settle by Election Day on Nov. 7, and that the current levy will expire at year's end.
Hence we don't see much realistic choice for conscientious voters but to renew the levy -- that is, to vote "Yes'' on Issue 13. But if the upshot of the audits is, in fact, a windfall for the children's services fund, even if it's at the expense of welfare or other programs, county commissioners, we submit, are morally obligated to roll back the levy by a corresponding amount.
We love our children and accept the obligation to protect them. That's why Hamilton County taxpayers have agreed -- in 1986, 1991, 1996 and again in 2001 -- to tax themselves for that purpose.
It is profoundly unsettling to discover that state, local and federal officials cannot now give us an assurance that the accounting for such spending has been proper.
95-year-old foster grandparent
Grandma to many takes rest
Jewell Cardwell, Akron Beacon Journal, October 11, 2006, Metro pg. B1.
Her wall of fame -- filled with framed awards and certificates -- suggests a very important person lives there.But Virginia Davis Spencer of Akron, a humble woman who's strong on family values, shrugs off such accolades.
To hear her, she just does what she can to help others.
In my book, her long tenure with Summit County Children Services Board's Foster Grandparents program -- and with some of the most challenging clients -- gives her VIP status.
The silver-haired Mrs. Spencer, who is celebrating her 95th birthday today, will say goodbye this month to the program she has served for 25 years.
"I don't walk too good," she said. "So, it's time for me to hang it up."
Still, it's with a heavy heart.
Most folks would have long since bailed, given that most of her work has been with teenagers and her pay is only $2.65 an hour (four hours/five days a week).
"I prefer older children," Mrs. Spencer said of her earlier duties, when she took teens to their clinic appointments.
Mrs. Spencer really proved her mettle during the 1991 CSB strike. "My supervisor sent me to (Akron Public Schools') Phoenix School," she reminisced. (Phoenix is a last-chance school for students who can't attend traditional schools because of behavior problems.)
"The strike lasted for about three months. But I stayed at Phoenix for seven years," she said. "I just enjoyed talking to them and hearing their stories."
Even the ones involving police chases.
She said she was never one to try to preach to the students -- not that they would listen. Instead, she said, she used her own brand of psychology. She hopes she got through to some of them.
As rough as they were, Mrs. Spencer always insisted they show her respect. "They even walked me to the bus stop," she noted.
For the last seven years, she has worked at CSB's visitation center, where foster parents bring their children to visit with their birth parents. Some meetings go smoothly, some don't, she said.
Mrs. Spencer, who is the proud mother of three daughters and the grandmother of seven, wrenches her hands in sadness when talk turns to the unfortunate subject of kids having kids. "It's just sad. Very sad," she sighed. "Too bad too few people take it seriously."
At least she can take comfort in knowing she did what she could to try to make a difference.
Virginia Davis Spencer, who turns 95 today, received many awards in Summit County's Foster Grandparents program.
Jewell Cardwell, Akron Beacon Journal, October 11, 2006, Metro pg. B1.
Her wall of fame -- filled with framed awards and certificates -- suggests a very important person lives there.But Virginia Davis Spencer of Akron, a humble woman who's strong on family values, shrugs off such accolades.
To hear her, she just does what she can to help others.
In my book, her long tenure with Summit County Children Services Board's Foster Grandparents program -- and with some of the most challenging clients -- gives her VIP status.
The silver-haired Mrs. Spencer, who is celebrating her 95th birthday today, will say goodbye this month to the program she has served for 25 years.
"I don't walk too good," she said. "So, it's time for me to hang it up."
Still, it's with a heavy heart.
Most folks would have long since bailed, given that most of her work has been with teenagers and her pay is only $2.65 an hour (four hours/five days a week).
"I prefer older children," Mrs. Spencer said of her earlier duties, when she took teens to their clinic appointments.
Mrs. Spencer really proved her mettle during the 1991 CSB strike. "My supervisor sent me to (Akron Public Schools') Phoenix School," she reminisced. (Phoenix is a last-chance school for students who can't attend traditional schools because of behavior problems.)
"The strike lasted for about three months. But I stayed at Phoenix for seven years," she said. "I just enjoyed talking to them and hearing their stories."
Even the ones involving police chases.
She said she was never one to try to preach to the students -- not that they would listen. Instead, she said, she used her own brand of psychology. She hopes she got through to some of them.
As rough as they were, Mrs. Spencer always insisted they show her respect. "They even walked me to the bus stop," she noted.
For the last seven years, she has worked at CSB's visitation center, where foster parents bring their children to visit with their birth parents. Some meetings go smoothly, some don't, she said.
Mrs. Spencer, who is the proud mother of three daughters and the grandmother of seven, wrenches her hands in sadness when talk turns to the unfortunate subject of kids having kids. "It's just sad. Very sad," she sighed. "Too bad too few people take it seriously."
At least she can take comfort in knowing she did what she could to try to make a difference.
Virginia Davis Spencer, who turns 95 today, received many awards in Summit County's Foster Grandparents program.
Inconsistencies in Ohio's 88 counties and how they handle foster care
Child Advocates Compare Ohio Counties' Performance Protecting Children;
Counties that Take Far Fewer Children Often Keep Them Safer
U.S. Newswire. Washington:Oct 11, 2006.
Ohio counties that take proportionately fewer children from their parents often keep children safer from abuse and neglect than counties that adopt a "take-the-child-and-run" approach, according to a national non- profit child advocacy organization.
"That means every year thousands of children are wrongfully torn from everyone loving and familiar and forced to endure the enormous emotional torment -- and sometimes worse -- of needless foster care," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.
NCCPR released its Ohio Rate-of-Removal Index today. It compares the total number of children removed from their homes in 2005 to the number of impoverished children living in each county. It also measures county performance on two key indicators of child safety.
The index is available online at http://www.nccpr.org/reports/ohioror.pdf
The index reveals severe problems in Franklin, Summit, Butler and Athens Counties, while Hamilton and Cuyahoga Counties are improving and Trumbull and Lorain counties appear to be doing well.
The data reveal enormous variation among counties in their rates of removal. "This is one more indication that child welfare systems are arbitrary, capricious and cruel," Wexler said. "Whether a child in Ohio is torn from everyone loving and familiar and forced to endure the trauma of foster care depends far more on where he or she happens to live than on any objective measure of child maltreatment.
"But one pattern is clear," Wexler said. "Contrary to suggestions by those with a vested interest in holding children in foster care, child removal does not equal child safety. Repeatedly, counties that take proportionately fewer children did better on key safety measures than counties whose approach to child welfare boils down to 'Take the child and run.'
"This devastates thousands of children emotionally when they are needlessly taken from their parents. One study found that only one in five former foster children is doing well. It exposes children to the risk of abuse in foster care itself where, according that same study, one in three former foster children said they'd been abused. And it diverts scarce resources from finding children in real danger who really should be taken from their parents."
Wexler pointed to Butler County, where three-year-old Marcus Fiesel was taken from his overwhelmed single mother only to be killed, allegedly by his foster parents. Wexler said that of the counties that can be accurately measured, only five took away proportionately more children than Butler.
In contrast, Trumbull and Lorain Counties, each with about the same number of impoverished children as Butler County each took far fewer children -- and did better at keeping children safe.
"Had Butler County not adopted a 'take-the-child-and-run' approach to child welfare, Marcus Fiesel might be alive today," Wexler said.
NCCPR found that the worst county for wrongful removal of children, by far, is Franklin. Though the number of children taken from their parents has declined slightly in recent years, the rate at which children are taken is still:
-- Fifteen percent higher than the second worst county in Ohio, Summit.
-- More than two-and-a-half times the state average.
-- More than three times the national average.
-- More than five times the rate in systems recognized nationally as models.
"Franklin County officials will shrug their shoulders and mumble that all this family destruction is necessary to keep children safe," Wexler said. "Data from around the country, and right in Ohio, show that is not true."
In fact, Wexler said, on one of two key safety outcomes, Franklin County's record is worse than all but four other counties with populations large enough to measure. Franklin does well on a second safety outcome, but, Wexler said, "nine counties do better -- while still taking away far fewer children.
"This means that over the past decade thousands of Franklin County families have been needlessly torn apart, the children thrown into a system that churns out walking wounded four times out of five."
Counties that Take Far Fewer Children Often Keep Them Safer
U.S. Newswire. Washington:Oct 11, 2006.
Ohio counties that take proportionately fewer children from their parents often keep children safer from abuse and neglect than counties that adopt a "take-the-child-and-run" approach, according to a national non- profit child advocacy organization.
"That means every year thousands of children are wrongfully torn from everyone loving and familiar and forced to endure the enormous emotional torment -- and sometimes worse -- of needless foster care," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.
NCCPR released its Ohio Rate-of-Removal Index today. It compares the total number of children removed from their homes in 2005 to the number of impoverished children living in each county. It also measures county performance on two key indicators of child safety.
The index is available online at http://www.nccpr.org/reports/ohioror.pdf
The index reveals severe problems in Franklin, Summit, Butler and Athens Counties, while Hamilton and Cuyahoga Counties are improving and Trumbull and Lorain counties appear to be doing well.
The data reveal enormous variation among counties in their rates of removal. "This is one more indication that child welfare systems are arbitrary, capricious and cruel," Wexler said. "Whether a child in Ohio is torn from everyone loving and familiar and forced to endure the trauma of foster care depends far more on where he or she happens to live than on any objective measure of child maltreatment.
"But one pattern is clear," Wexler said. "Contrary to suggestions by those with a vested interest in holding children in foster care, child removal does not equal child safety. Repeatedly, counties that take proportionately fewer children did better on key safety measures than counties whose approach to child welfare boils down to 'Take the child and run.'
"This devastates thousands of children emotionally when they are needlessly taken from their parents. One study found that only one in five former foster children is doing well. It exposes children to the risk of abuse in foster care itself where, according that same study, one in three former foster children said they'd been abused. And it diverts scarce resources from finding children in real danger who really should be taken from their parents."
Wexler pointed to Butler County, where three-year-old Marcus Fiesel was taken from his overwhelmed single mother only to be killed, allegedly by his foster parents. Wexler said that of the counties that can be accurately measured, only five took away proportionately more children than Butler.
In contrast, Trumbull and Lorain Counties, each with about the same number of impoverished children as Butler County each took far fewer children -- and did better at keeping children safe.
"Had Butler County not adopted a 'take-the-child-and-run' approach to child welfare, Marcus Fiesel might be alive today," Wexler said.
NCCPR found that the worst county for wrongful removal of children, by far, is Franklin. Though the number of children taken from their parents has declined slightly in recent years, the rate at which children are taken is still:
-- Fifteen percent higher than the second worst county in Ohio, Summit.
-- More than two-and-a-half times the state average.
-- More than three times the national average.
-- More than five times the rate in systems recognized nationally as models.
"Franklin County officials will shrug their shoulders and mumble that all this family destruction is necessary to keep children safe," Wexler said. "Data from around the country, and right in Ohio, show that is not true."
In fact, Wexler said, on one of two key safety outcomes, Franklin County's record is worse than all but four other counties with populations large enough to measure. Franklin does well on a second safety outcome, but, Wexler said, "nine counties do better -- while still taking away far fewer children.
"This means that over the past decade thousands of Franklin County families have been needlessly torn apart, the children thrown into a system that churns out walking wounded four times out of five."
Foster care is inherently flawed
Editorial: Fix problems before we need foster care
Krista Ramsey, Cincinnati Enquirier, Oct. 15, 2006.
We all now know the name Marcus Fiesel, the little boy taken from his birth mother for living in squalor and wandering the street who, police say, was then left bound in a closet - to die - while his foster family went off to enjoy a family reunion.
I have seen his name alone bring people to tears.
But after years of covering children's issues, teaching foster children in my high school classroom and watching neighborhoods react - often coldly, almost always suspiciously - to foster families, I am skeptical about how much loving attention any of us would have paid to Marcus in life.
Biological families like Marcus' don't draw a circle of supporters. Children with developmental disabilities are often not the children invited into playgroups or birthday parties. Foster families are admired from a distance, perhaps, but treated with cool scrutiny if they live next door and want their kids to play with yours.
Forgive me for telling the truth.
Frankly, I wish we'd shed more tears for kids like Marcus while they're still alive.
And I hope we'll remember that Marcus was a kid, not just a tragedy. Tragedies we try to find ways to avoid and people to blame for. Kids we might actually crack open the tough shell of our hearts and help.
This is an important distinction as we collectively write the epilogue to Marcus' brief, painful story - as we search for ways to make sure his tragedy isn't repeated. That epilogue can be relatively short, relatively neat and perfunctory. Or it can be long, broad, deep, messy and perhaps even ultimately productive.
The odds aren't good that it will be productive. Foster care is a clunky mechanism to fix. It will always involve placing children with strangers, depending on the goodwill, good sense and good decision-making of adults no one can supervise all of the time. And it will likely continue to involve ripping children from the fabric they call home, a wrenching extraction no matter how frayed that fabric.
The question isn't how we make foster care foolproof. We can't. The question is how we use it as wisely - which probably means as sparingly - as possible.
And that's why the best "fix" for foster care may not come from retrospectives on disastrous cases like Marcus', but from proactive, preventive approaches.
First, we must blow up our definition of "preventive" - expand it from preventing kids from being placed in dangerous foster care homes to being placed in foster care at all.
No, we will never scoop all children from the foster care system, but we may be able to whittle down the numbers. That means more resources, attention and oversight can go to the kids who do end up in the system.
To reduce that number requires an admission most of us don't want to make - that the families whose children are taken from them are more flawed than monstrous, that they do what they do, oftentimes, because they're overwhelmed or under-skilled or because that's the only kind of parenting they themselves have ever seen.
Parenting is the hardest, most demanding, most continuous work on earth. It is exquisitely hard, even for those who enjoy financial comfort, good educational backgrounds and wide circles of support. For people who live in crisis, or are sinking in addiction, or who have no support system, it becomes a daily dance with failure - and thus, with neglect (the reason most children are put in foster care) and sometimes abuse.
We cannot be naïve enough to think we can intercept, pre-empt or fix every troubled family, but the best bet for a long-term solution to foster care abuses is that we try.
We have some superb local examples of programs that come alongside families to help - that identify and seek out families who could be at risk of trouble, then come into their homes and lives and daily behaviors and teach them how to be better parents. Every Child Succeeds and Success By Six are two such programs. The more we watch their success, adopt their mind-set and embrace families, the more meaningfully we write the ending to Marcus Fiesel's heartbreaking story.
Krista Ramsey, Cincinnati Enquirier, Oct. 15, 2006.
We all now know the name Marcus Fiesel, the little boy taken from his birth mother for living in squalor and wandering the street who, police say, was then left bound in a closet - to die - while his foster family went off to enjoy a family reunion.
I have seen his name alone bring people to tears.
But after years of covering children's issues, teaching foster children in my high school classroom and watching neighborhoods react - often coldly, almost always suspiciously - to foster families, I am skeptical about how much loving attention any of us would have paid to Marcus in life.
Biological families like Marcus' don't draw a circle of supporters. Children with developmental disabilities are often not the children invited into playgroups or birthday parties. Foster families are admired from a distance, perhaps, but treated with cool scrutiny if they live next door and want their kids to play with yours.
Forgive me for telling the truth.
Frankly, I wish we'd shed more tears for kids like Marcus while they're still alive.
And I hope we'll remember that Marcus was a kid, not just a tragedy. Tragedies we try to find ways to avoid and people to blame for. Kids we might actually crack open the tough shell of our hearts and help.
This is an important distinction as we collectively write the epilogue to Marcus' brief, painful story - as we search for ways to make sure his tragedy isn't repeated. That epilogue can be relatively short, relatively neat and perfunctory. Or it can be long, broad, deep, messy and perhaps even ultimately productive.
The odds aren't good that it will be productive. Foster care is a clunky mechanism to fix. It will always involve placing children with strangers, depending on the goodwill, good sense and good decision-making of adults no one can supervise all of the time. And it will likely continue to involve ripping children from the fabric they call home, a wrenching extraction no matter how frayed that fabric.
The question isn't how we make foster care foolproof. We can't. The question is how we use it as wisely - which probably means as sparingly - as possible.
And that's why the best "fix" for foster care may not come from retrospectives on disastrous cases like Marcus', but from proactive, preventive approaches.
First, we must blow up our definition of "preventive" - expand it from preventing kids from being placed in dangerous foster care homes to being placed in foster care at all.
No, we will never scoop all children from the foster care system, but we may be able to whittle down the numbers. That means more resources, attention and oversight can go to the kids who do end up in the system.
To reduce that number requires an admission most of us don't want to make - that the families whose children are taken from them are more flawed than monstrous, that they do what they do, oftentimes, because they're overwhelmed or under-skilled or because that's the only kind of parenting they themselves have ever seen.
Parenting is the hardest, most demanding, most continuous work on earth. It is exquisitely hard, even for those who enjoy financial comfort, good educational backgrounds and wide circles of support. For people who live in crisis, or are sinking in addiction, or who have no support system, it becomes a daily dance with failure - and thus, with neglect (the reason most children are put in foster care) and sometimes abuse.
We cannot be naïve enough to think we can intercept, pre-empt or fix every troubled family, but the best bet for a long-term solution to foster care abuses is that we try.
We have some superb local examples of programs that come alongside families to help - that identify and seek out families who could be at risk of trouble, then come into their homes and lives and daily behaviors and teach them how to be better parents. Every Child Succeeds and Success By Six are two such programs. The more we watch their success, adopt their mind-set and embrace families, the more meaningfully we write the ending to Marcus Fiesel's heartbreaking story.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Mother punches 1-year-old in stomach
Mom charges in assault of girl, 1
Toledo Blade, Oct. 10, 2006, News pg. B3.
A Toledo mother was charged yesterday with shaking her 1-year-old daughter and punching her in the stomach inside the Goodwill store in downtown Toledo.
Chantelle Griffin, 32, of Fitchland Avenue, was summoned to appear in Toledo Municipal Court on a misdemeanor child-abuse charge. Police took her and her daughter to Lucas County Children Services.
The agency determined that substitute care, either with a relative or in foster care if no appropriate relative is found, was best for the child, spokesman Rod Brandt said.
The incident occurred about 2:20 p.m. inside the store at Cherry and Erie streets. Ms. Griffin was found a short time later at the TARTA bus station across from Government Center.
Toledo Blade, Oct. 10, 2006, News pg. B3.
A Toledo mother was charged yesterday with shaking her 1-year-old daughter and punching her in the stomach inside the Goodwill store in downtown Toledo.
Chantelle Griffin, 32, of Fitchland Avenue, was summoned to appear in Toledo Municipal Court on a misdemeanor child-abuse charge. Police took her and her daughter to Lucas County Children Services.
The agency determined that substitute care, either with a relative or in foster care if no appropriate relative is found, was best for the child, spokesman Rod Brandt said.
The incident occurred about 2:20 p.m. inside the store at Cherry and Erie streets. Ms. Griffin was found a short time later at the TARTA bus station across from Government Center.
Services for youth living in foster homes and kinship care placements
IMAC school will move to Raemelton Center to save on rent
Lou Whitmire, Mansfield News Journal, Oct. 11, 2006, pg. A3.
MANSFIELD -- Interactive Media & Construction, or IMAC, one of the Mansfield City Schools' conversion schools, is moving Nov. 1 out of the Richland Academy building at 75 N. Walnut St.
IMAC is moving into the district's Raemelton Center on 856 W. Cook Road. to save money.
Harold Dean, director of IMAC, said about $48,000 the district is paying annually in rent to Richland Academy will be saved.
Earlier, there was talk by school officials of moving the program to the 150 W. Fifth St. building, among other sites.
"Since March or April the district has explored six or seven different places and that worked best," Interim Superintendent Joe Madak said, referring to Raemelton.
Madak said the Raemelton building is able to provide the technological setting for the computer-based program.
Students last year started classes in the Richland Academy building, where they could get a high school diploma and learn a valued skill.
There are no plans for the space in the immediate future, said Anngie Tager, director of operations at Richland Academy.
Raemelton Center houses offices for departments including pupil services, special education, therapists, guidance counselors, health services, interpreters and school psychologists.
IMAC has 75 students, Dean said.
The district also sponsors two other conversion schools.
The Mansfield Elective Academy, housed at the Ocie Hill Neighborhood Center, 445 Bowman St., targets students Kindergarten-8 in foster care or children living with extended family members, such as grandparents.
The district also operates the Mansfield Enhancement Academy, 215 N. Trimble Road.
Instruction is provided to students from Mansfield and the surrounding area, ages 17-21, who have dropped out of school or are at-risk of dropping out of high school.
Lou Whitmire, Mansfield News Journal, Oct. 11, 2006, pg. A3.
MANSFIELD -- Interactive Media & Construction, or IMAC, one of the Mansfield City Schools' conversion schools, is moving Nov. 1 out of the Richland Academy building at 75 N. Walnut St.
IMAC is moving into the district's Raemelton Center on 856 W. Cook Road. to save money.
Harold Dean, director of IMAC, said about $48,000 the district is paying annually in rent to Richland Academy will be saved.
Earlier, there was talk by school officials of moving the program to the 150 W. Fifth St. building, among other sites.
"Since March or April the district has explored six or seven different places and that worked best," Interim Superintendent Joe Madak said, referring to Raemelton.
Madak said the Raemelton building is able to provide the technological setting for the computer-based program.
Students last year started classes in the Richland Academy building, where they could get a high school diploma and learn a valued skill.
There are no plans for the space in the immediate future, said Anngie Tager, director of operations at Richland Academy.
Raemelton Center houses offices for departments including pupil services, special education, therapists, guidance counselors, health services, interpreters and school psychologists.
IMAC has 75 students, Dean said.
The district also sponsors two other conversion schools.
The Mansfield Elective Academy, housed at the Ocie Hill Neighborhood Center, 445 Bowman St., targets students Kindergarten-8 in foster care or children living with extended family members, such as grandparents.
The district also operates the Mansfield Enhancement Academy, 215 N. Trimble Road.
Instruction is provided to students from Mansfield and the surrounding area, ages 17-21, who have dropped out of school or are at-risk of dropping out of high school.
Teen moms flee roach infested apartments
Children Services relocating teen moms because of roaches
Tim Doulin and Bill Bush, Columbus Dispatch, Oct. 14, 2006, News pg. 3C.
Bopha Ban gently lifted the radio off the end table, sending about a dozen roaches scurrying for cover behind a couch.
"They are everywhere," the 18-year-old single mother of Orlana, 2, and Breonna, 1, said as she showed her apartment to a reporter Thursday.
A roach infestation is an unpleasant experience for any resident, but John Saros said it is "unacceptable" for Ban and other young mothers who are in the care of Franklin County Children Services.
"We're moving the girls out today," Saros, the agency's executive director, said yesterday.
Children Services has paid up to $2,670 a month to rent seven units at an apartment building at 44 Sturbridge Rd., north of W. Broad Street, for six teenage mothers and their children.
The mothers are in a transitional program between being in foster care and learning to live on their own. The seventh unit at the complex, Hanover Ridge on the Far West Side, is used as an office for an on-site caseworker who's available to help the girls.
"When I first moved here, I swept some dead roaches up, but I didn't know it was going to be this bad," said Ban, who had lived with a Newark foster family before moving to Hanover Ridge in June.
"They come spray, but (the roaches) don't go away," Ban said.
The bugs have crawled on Orlana's face and Breonna picked up one. "I'm just scared one is going to go in my kid's ear," she said.
Saros said Children Services has been working with the management at the apartment complex for six months.
"We've had Orkin out there every month," he said, but the problem remains.
"It's unacceptable," he said. "We're going to get it fixed."
He said the girls would be moved in with relatives or foster families.
Hanover Ridge is the only apartment building in the transitional program. The others are houses.
Earlier this week, The Dispatch called the management of the apartment complex. But when asked to talk about the roaches, a woman said she had no comment and hung up.
Naomi Carr, 17, was happy to hear that Children Services was finding another place for her to live.
"They should," said Carr, who lives in one of the program's apartments with her 5-month-old son, Ty-Quan Tillman. "Why would you move some kids in here with babies when you know you have had a roach problem for the longest?"
Carr said she and her son have been living in the apartment for only a couple of weeks but have had daily encounters with the roaches.
"Just a couple of days ago, my son got bit by a roach on his forehead," Carr said. "One night, I was laying on the couch and a roach was crawling on me. It just freaked me out."
Tim Doulin and Bill Bush, Columbus Dispatch, Oct. 14, 2006, News pg. 3C.
Bopha Ban gently lifted the radio off the end table, sending about a dozen roaches scurrying for cover behind a couch.
"They are everywhere," the 18-year-old single mother of Orlana, 2, and Breonna, 1, said as she showed her apartment to a reporter Thursday.
A roach infestation is an unpleasant experience for any resident, but John Saros said it is "unacceptable" for Ban and other young mothers who are in the care of Franklin County Children Services.
"We're moving the girls out today," Saros, the agency's executive director, said yesterday.
Children Services has paid up to $2,670 a month to rent seven units at an apartment building at 44 Sturbridge Rd., north of W. Broad Street, for six teenage mothers and their children.
The mothers are in a transitional program between being in foster care and learning to live on their own. The seventh unit at the complex, Hanover Ridge on the Far West Side, is used as an office for an on-site caseworker who's available to help the girls.
"When I first moved here, I swept some dead roaches up, but I didn't know it was going to be this bad," said Ban, who had lived with a Newark foster family before moving to Hanover Ridge in June.
"They come spray, but (the roaches) don't go away," Ban said.
The bugs have crawled on Orlana's face and Breonna picked up one. "I'm just scared one is going to go in my kid's ear," she said.
Saros said Children Services has been working with the management at the apartment complex for six months.
"We've had Orkin out there every month," he said, but the problem remains.
"It's unacceptable," he said. "We're going to get it fixed."
He said the girls would be moved in with relatives or foster families.
Hanover Ridge is the only apartment building in the transitional program. The others are houses.
Earlier this week, The Dispatch called the management of the apartment complex. But when asked to talk about the roaches, a woman said she had no comment and hung up.
Naomi Carr, 17, was happy to hear that Children Services was finding another place for her to live.
"They should," said Carr, who lives in one of the program's apartments with her 5-month-old son, Ty-Quan Tillman. "Why would you move some kids in here with babies when you know you have had a roach problem for the longest?"
Carr said she and her son have been living in the apartment for only a couple of weeks but have had daily encounters with the roaches.
"Just a couple of days ago, my son got bit by a roach on his forehead," Carr said. "One night, I was laying on the couch and a roach was crawling on me. It just freaked me out."
Not sure this is a fair accusation against Franklin County Children's Services
County faulted for removing kids from parents so often.
Encarnacion Pyle, Columbus Dispatch, Oct. 11, 2006, News pg. 1A.
Franklin County Children Services takes kids from their parents more often than any other child-welfare agency in the state and has one of the highest rates in the nation, says a national nonprofit advocacy group.
"Franklin County is Ohio's capital of poor child-welfare practice," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va. "The policy of Franklin County Children Services can be boiled down to a single sentence: Take the child and run."
The coalition will release a report today comparing the number of children removed from their homes in 2005 with the number of poor children living in each county.
In recent years, Franklin County has reduced the number of children it has removed from their parents, but it still is taking 2 1/2 times the state average and more than triple the national average, Wexler said.
But Franklin County Children Services says the report is "suspect" because the county child-welfare agencies operate differently.
"This report is highly simplistic and misleading," said John Saros, Children Services' executive director. "You can't say a child-welfare agency is doing a poor job on one indicator alone."
The coalition, however, said its report also considered the proportion of children left in their own homes who are abused again and the number of children returned home from foster care who must be placed again.
Franklin County's "re-abuse" rate was well below the other major metropolitan counties, Saros said. "Our focus is safety, permanence and well-being."
About 90 percent of Children Services' caseworkers make face-to-face contact with their children every month, 88 percent of the children in foster care are returned to their parents and more than 1,500 children were placed with adoptive parents from 2000 to 2005, he said.
"Since 2003, we've been returning more children a month than we've been taking in," Saros said.
But nine other Ohio counties had better safety records than Franklin while taking fewer children, Wexler said. And Franklin County's record of putting children back into foster care was worse than all but four counties with populations large enough to measure, he said.
"Trumbull County takes children at less than one-seventh the rate of Franklin, yet Trumbull outperforms Franklin on both key measures of safety."
Franklin County's removal rate also is so high and the county is so large, it skews the average for the entire state, Wexler said.
"Ohio's statewide rate of child removal is 25 percent above the national average, but that is almost entirely because of Franklin County," he said.
In its report, the coalition fails to consider the delicate balance of helping birth families become better parents while still protecting children who are being abused and neglected, said Penny M. Wyman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Child Caring Agencies.
"If they're going to judge counties on their rate of removal, what are the child-welfare agencies supposed to do? Not remove any kids and watch them get hurt?" Wyman said. "If Franklin County has twice as few children being hurt, then maybe the other counties should be doing what they are."
There are other factors, Saros said. To be fair, the coalition also should include unruly and delinquent teens who have been placed in foster and group homes by the juvenile courts in other counties since all of those youth are sent to Children Services in Franklin County.
"More than 52 percent of the 2,500 kids in our custody are age 13 and above," Saros said. "Of those, 75 percent are not in our care because of abuse, neglect or dependency but have gotten in trouble with the law."
Wexler said he believed those figures were taken into account, but wasn't sure. The state Department of Job and Family Services, which provided the data to the coalition, couldn't confirm whether unruly and delinquent teens placed by the courts were included.
"Even if you take those 400 children out for Franklin County, it still ranks as the most horrendous," Wexler said, referring to estimates by Saros last month that Children Services typically has custody of 300 to 400 kids on probation a year.
Encarnacion Pyle, Columbus Dispatch, Oct. 11, 2006, News pg. 1A.
Franklin County Children Services takes kids from their parents more often than any other child-welfare agency in the state and has one of the highest rates in the nation, says a national nonprofit advocacy group.
"Franklin County is Ohio's capital of poor child-welfare practice," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va. "The policy of Franklin County Children Services can be boiled down to a single sentence: Take the child and run."
The coalition will release a report today comparing the number of children removed from their homes in 2005 with the number of poor children living in each county.
In recent years, Franklin County has reduced the number of children it has removed from their parents, but it still is taking 2 1/2 times the state average and more than triple the national average, Wexler said.
But Franklin County Children Services says the report is "suspect" because the county child-welfare agencies operate differently.
"This report is highly simplistic and misleading," said John Saros, Children Services' executive director. "You can't say a child-welfare agency is doing a poor job on one indicator alone."
The coalition, however, said its report also considered the proportion of children left in their own homes who are abused again and the number of children returned home from foster care who must be placed again.
Franklin County's "re-abuse" rate was well below the other major metropolitan counties, Saros said. "Our focus is safety, permanence and well-being."
About 90 percent of Children Services' caseworkers make face-to-face contact with their children every month, 88 percent of the children in foster care are returned to their parents and more than 1,500 children were placed with adoptive parents from 2000 to 2005, he said.
"Since 2003, we've been returning more children a month than we've been taking in," Saros said.
But nine other Ohio counties had better safety records than Franklin while taking fewer children, Wexler said. And Franklin County's record of putting children back into foster care was worse than all but four counties with populations large enough to measure, he said.
"Trumbull County takes children at less than one-seventh the rate of Franklin, yet Trumbull outperforms Franklin on both key measures of safety."
Franklin County's removal rate also is so high and the county is so large, it skews the average for the entire state, Wexler said.
"Ohio's statewide rate of child removal is 25 percent above the national average, but that is almost entirely because of Franklin County," he said.
In its report, the coalition fails to consider the delicate balance of helping birth families become better parents while still protecting children who are being abused and neglected, said Penny M. Wyman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Child Caring Agencies.
"If they're going to judge counties on their rate of removal, what are the child-welfare agencies supposed to do? Not remove any kids and watch them get hurt?" Wyman said. "If Franklin County has twice as few children being hurt, then maybe the other counties should be doing what they are."
There are other factors, Saros said. To be fair, the coalition also should include unruly and delinquent teens who have been placed in foster and group homes by the juvenile courts in other counties since all of those youth are sent to Children Services in Franklin County.
"More than 52 percent of the 2,500 kids in our custody are age 13 and above," Saros said. "Of those, 75 percent are not in our care because of abuse, neglect or dependency but have gotten in trouble with the law."
Wexler said he believed those figures were taken into account, but wasn't sure. The state Department of Job and Family Services, which provided the data to the coalition, couldn't confirm whether unruly and delinquent teens placed by the courts were included.
"Even if you take those 400 children out for Franklin County, it still ranks as the most horrendous," Wexler said, referring to estimates by Saros last month that Children Services typically has custody of 300 to 400 kids on probation a year.
How might one issue be confused with another?
Justices won't reconsider historic abortion ruling.
Columbus Dispatach, Oct. 11, 2006, pg 3A.
The Supreme Court yesterday turned aside the case of Sandra Cano, one of the women behind the legalization of abortion, who had sought to reverse the victory she won 33 years ago.
Cano says she never wanted an abortion and that her difficult early life resulted in her becoming the anonymous plaintiff in Doe v. Bolton, the lesser-known case that the court ruled on the same day in 1973 as the landmark Roe v. Wade.
"We're very disappointed that the Supreme Court has not decided to protect women and children from the harm of abortion," said Allan Parker, one of Cano's attorneys. "The court has aborted the normal regulation of medicine in this area."
Cano says she was, at 22, the victim of an abusive husband and that her children were in foster care when she sought legal assistance in getting a divorce and in getting her children back.
She said an aggressive attorney pushed her into the abortion case.
"What I received was something I never requested -- the legal right to abort my child," Cano's affidavit said.
Her current attorneys' legal brief says that, despite advances in medicine, science and technology, the justices have "frozen abortion law based on obsolete 1973 assumptions and prevented the normal regulation of the practice of medicine."
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in January that neither it nor a U.S. District Court had the authority to reverse the Supreme Court's decisions in Doe v. Bolton or Roe v. Wade
Columbus Dispatach, Oct. 11, 2006, pg 3A.
The Supreme Court yesterday turned aside the case of Sandra Cano, one of the women behind the legalization of abortion, who had sought to reverse the victory she won 33 years ago.
Cano says she never wanted an abortion and that her difficult early life resulted in her becoming the anonymous plaintiff in Doe v. Bolton, the lesser-known case that the court ruled on the same day in 1973 as the landmark Roe v. Wade.
"We're very disappointed that the Supreme Court has not decided to protect women and children from the harm of abortion," said Allan Parker, one of Cano's attorneys. "The court has aborted the normal regulation of medicine in this area."
Cano says she was, at 22, the victim of an abusive husband and that her children were in foster care when she sought legal assistance in getting a divorce and in getting her children back.
She said an aggressive attorney pushed her into the abortion case.
"What I received was something I never requested -- the legal right to abort my child," Cano's affidavit said.
Her current attorneys' legal brief says that, despite advances in medicine, science and technology, the justices have "frozen abortion law based on obsolete 1973 assumptions and prevented the normal regulation of the practice of medicine."
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in January that neither it nor a U.S. District Court had the authority to reverse the Supreme Court's decisions in Doe v. Bolton or Roe v. Wade
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Meeting to consider attending
Butler County
Improving foster care, subject of meeting
Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 8, 2006
How can Butler County do a better job of screening foster parents? You can speak out at a Children Services Task Force Survey Subcommittee meeting at 5:30 p.m.
Tuesday at Family Connections, 190 N. Brookwood Ave., Hamilton. The task force was created after the death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel. For more information, contact the Butler County Department of Job & Family Services: 513-887-4000
Improving foster care, subject of meeting
Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 8, 2006
How can Butler County do a better job of screening foster parents? You can speak out at a Children Services Task Force Survey Subcommittee meeting at 5:30 p.m.
Tuesday at Family Connections, 190 N. Brookwood Ave., Hamilton. The task force was created after the death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel. For more information, contact the Butler County Department of Job & Family Services: 513-887-4000
Muskingum County's foster care system
Monthly meetings to address issues to help improve foster care in Muskingum County
LeeAnn Moore, Times Record: Zaneville, Oct. 7, 2006.
Staff WriterZANESVILLE -- There are 89 children in foster care in Muskingum County.
That's close to the yearly average of 100 children that come into the care of Muskingum County Children Services each year, according to Bill Seyerle of children services.
Compared to Ohio's median of 225 days a child will spend in temporary custody, an average child's stay in Muskingum County is half of that, 106 days.
After returning from a two-day Supreme Court of Ohio workshop to implement a national curriculum designed to ensure that court cases involving foster children are processed quickly and effectively, representatives from Muskingum County Children Services, Muskingum County juvenile court and attorneys discovered positives, negatives and ways they could improve foster care in the county.
"It was time well spent and we learned stuff about each other's processes. We had no idea of the detail in children services filing a charge and had no idea what the court did at all, it was all very interesting to learn what each part did," said Daniel B. Kieffer, director of court services.
The curriculum presented to members from Carroll, Geauga, Median, Muskingum and Sandusky counties addressed delays in court proceedings that were cited by the Children and Family Services Review (CFSR) as a major factor in prolonging the time children spend in foster care.
According to Kieffer, Muskingum County completes 98.7 percent of their investigations within the mandated time of 45 days compared to the statewide average of 82 percent.
Kieffer said that while lack of available services in the community is a problem locally, Muskingum County's biggest problem is communication.
"Making sure that everybody is aware of when the case is, communication between the attorney(s) and client," Kieffer said.
He said cutting back on that time would mean better communication between attorneys and clients because if an agreement or plan could be reached between children's services, the attorney and client, more than likely there wouldn't need to be a hearing at all.
"Listening to other counties and hearing how much of a huge problem it is in urban counties, we do very well," Kieffer said.
Monthly meetings addressing all the issues discussed at the workshop will be held at the courthouse.
"One thing that we're all interested in is looking at a length of time it takes a child from an original filing in the court until this child achieves some kind of permanency in their life," said Seyerle.
LeeAnn Moore, Times Record: Zaneville, Oct. 7, 2006.
Staff WriterZANESVILLE -- There are 89 children in foster care in Muskingum County.
That's close to the yearly average of 100 children that come into the care of Muskingum County Children Services each year, according to Bill Seyerle of children services.
Compared to Ohio's median of 225 days a child will spend in temporary custody, an average child's stay in Muskingum County is half of that, 106 days.
After returning from a two-day Supreme Court of Ohio workshop to implement a national curriculum designed to ensure that court cases involving foster children are processed quickly and effectively, representatives from Muskingum County Children Services, Muskingum County juvenile court and attorneys discovered positives, negatives and ways they could improve foster care in the county.
"It was time well spent and we learned stuff about each other's processes. We had no idea of the detail in children services filing a charge and had no idea what the court did at all, it was all very interesting to learn what each part did," said Daniel B. Kieffer, director of court services.
The curriculum presented to members from Carroll, Geauga, Median, Muskingum and Sandusky counties addressed delays in court proceedings that were cited by the Children and Family Services Review (CFSR) as a major factor in prolonging the time children spend in foster care.
According to Kieffer, Muskingum County completes 98.7 percent of their investigations within the mandated time of 45 days compared to the statewide average of 82 percent.
Kieffer said that while lack of available services in the community is a problem locally, Muskingum County's biggest problem is communication.
"Making sure that everybody is aware of when the case is, communication between the attorney(s) and client," Kieffer said.
He said cutting back on that time would mean better communication between attorneys and clients because if an agreement or plan could be reached between children's services, the attorney and client, more than likely there wouldn't need to be a hearing at all.
"Listening to other counties and hearing how much of a huge problem it is in urban counties, we do very well," Kieffer said.
Monthly meetings addressing all the issues discussed at the workshop will be held at the courthouse.
"One thing that we're all interested in is looking at a length of time it takes a child from an original filing in the court until this child achieves some kind of permanency in their life," said Seyerle.
Building a network of kinship care providers
Grandchildren in the house
With health, other worries, grandparents also raising their kids' kids
Susan Glaser, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 7, 2006.
They call her "ma."
The Galloway children – Bryan, 10, Bryasha, 8, and Bryjae, 7 – are too young to remember much about their real mom, who died seven years ago.
On that day, Sept. 25, 1999, their grandma, Bessie Johnson, 53, became their guardian, their primary caregiver, their mother.
Now she is sick. And she is shielding them from the reality that she might not get better. She doesn't want them to lose another mother.
Issues of mortality and health, high on the minds of most older adults, gain even greater importance for grandparents who are raising their grandkids, says Mary McNamara, a social worker at Fairhill Center, a Cleveland-based nonprofit that serves older adults.
"I hear over and over again, 'I just hope I raise them until they're 18.' "
It's one of many issues that bind these grandparents together.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 12,256 grandparents raising their grandkids in Cuyahoga County in 2000, with more than half of them – 7,189 – in Cleveland.
Inside the city, the highest concentrations of grandparent caregivers are, not unexpectedly, in the poorer neighborhoods on the East Side – Central, Mount Pleasant, Union-Miles, Glenville and Forest Hills.
Social service experts point to a number of reasons for the movement toward multigenerational living arrangements.
The reasons are not pretty: drug use, teen pregnancy, single-parent households, AIDS, crime, incarceration.
"You don't end up at your grandma's house because of some bonus," says McNamara. "You're there because of some loss."
Though grandparents have always stepped forward in times of family crisis to help rear their grandchildren, the trend didn't attract the attention of the Census Bureau until 2000, the first year it tracked grandparent caregivers nationwide.
It has counted for years the number of grandchildren living with their grandparents - a number that has grown steadily, from 2.2 million in 1970 to 4.1 million in 2005.
Finding help, support that they need
The issue is not isolated to urban areas. Natasha Yovich, coordinator of Cuyahoga County's grandparent/kinship care program, says thousands of grandparents are raising grandkids in the suburbs, but they are less likely to seek help, preferring to keep their family problems private.
For those willing to share, formal and informal support networks are forming across the region to make it easier for grandparents to both learn from and lean on one another.
Johnson's support group comes in the form of the Kinship Care Action Committee, a group of East Side grandmas (with a few grandpas, aunts and uncles mixed in) that tries to help relative caregivers find resources and get help.
The committee sponsors monthly meetings with speakers designed to inform and empower.
Johnson helped form the group with fellow grandmothers Loretta Hunter, Dolores Coleman and Vera D. Brewer, as well as Brewer's son, Darnell Brewer. The group gathered recently in Johnson's home on St. Catherine Avenue, a quiet street off East 93rd in the Union-Miles neighborhood.
Pictures of Johnson's family line the walls of the living room: Her 15 grandchildren, plus Mary and Robert, her children still living; and her children now gone, Joyce, who took her own life in 1999, and Frederic, who died at age 9 of bone cancer.
Their conversations range from the pragmatic to the political: from emergency baby-sitting and hand-me-down clothing to lobbying public officials to increase the benefits for grandparent caregivers.
They are particularly peeved that nonrelative foster parents get substantially more assistance that kinship caregivers.
Nor do most of these grandparents qualify for any of the $10 million in welfare money Ohio lawmakers set aside last year to assist kinship caregivers - they've all cared for their grandkids since before the July 2005 cutoff date.
More than $9 million of that money was unspent because of administrative delays.Recently, the group's conversation has shifted to a more personal struggle - Johnson and her declining health.
Johnson first discovered a lump in her breast a year ago, but ignored it because she didn't have health insurance. She finally saw a doctor in August; by then, the cancer had spread to her bones, lungs and liver.
Hunter faced her own medical crisis a few years ago, when she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.
"If it hadn't been for me having a good support system, I would have died of worry," said Hunter, who took custody of four grandkids in 1997, after her daughter was murdered.She promises to help her friend in any way she can.
Paging through Johnson's medical documents, Hunter inquires about the cost of medication, then offers to make her some dumplings.
"I'll bring them over this weekend," says Hunter, acknowledging that Johnson's first round of chemotherapy, scheduled for the next day, is likely to leave her without an appetite.
The two met a decade ago when they found themselves on the same East Side bus: Hunter was going to work, Johnson was returning. They reconnected years later at a rally for grandparent caregivers.
Putting lives on hold, facing realities
Though every grandparent's story is different, many share similar themes.
Coleman, 69, parents her two young granddaughters while her daughter struggles with addiction; Brewer, 54, is the primary caregiver for four young relatives whose parents cannot provide for them. Both women are motivated by the same overwhelming desire to keep the children together and out of foster care.
Grandparents who become caregivers often end up losing friends and delaying life plans.
Johnson used to love to take gambling junkets before she started caring for her grandkids. Hunter had a shopping habit that was hard to maintain after her empty house filled up again.
Financial circumstances almost always worsen.
Johnson, who worked through mid-August, now worries about making her $498 monthly mortgage payment; Hunter gave up her job as an in-home private caregiver to qualify for food stamps.
"I used to laugh at the people in the food line. Now I go four times a month," she says. "I've got teenage boys. It's hard to say no when they ask for another piece of chicken."
The possibility of declining health looms large.
Caregivers, in particular, tend to overlook warning signs because they're so focused on others, according to Fairhill Center's McNamara.
"Their natural inclination is to take care of other people, perhaps before they take care of themselves," she says.
A recent study in New Jersey found that the average kinship caregiver receiving public assistance was age 52 but had the physical health of a typical 70-year-old.
A separate study, published in 1999 in the Journal of Aging Studies, found that grandparent caregivers frequently suffer from stress-related health problems such as depression, diabetes, hypertension and insomnia.
McNamara encourages grandparents to always have a backup plan if health problems arise.
"Who else can take care of your children so you're not making these decisions when you're in a crisis?" she asks them. "I tell them to think about who the children could stay with for two weeks if they needed surgery, for six weeks if they need a hip replacement."
Watching her friend struggle with cancer has motivated Hunter to think about who should take care of her 6-year-old grandson if she gets sick again. But she says most of her fellow kinship caregivers don't want to think about what happens when they're gone.
"We don't want to face the fact that we are going to die," she says. "What happens after us? Who's going to take care of this child? Who's going to love this child?"
Johnson is reluctantly making plans for her grandkids, should her treatment fail (their father is in prison). She had a frank conversation recently with her adult children, Mary and Robert.
In the end, they agreed that if something happens to Johnson, the kids will move in with Robert, "Uncle Poochy" to his deceased sister's kids.
"I look forward to my mother being here forever," says Robert, 35, who lives in Maple Heights with four of his seven kids. "But I know no one can be. If that time comes where I have to take care of the kids, I don't have a problem with it. It's not a burden, it's not a strain. To me, it's my obligation."
The only ones left to tell are the kids themselves.
With health, other worries, grandparents also raising their kids' kids
Susan Glaser, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 7, 2006.
They call her "ma."
The Galloway children – Bryan, 10, Bryasha, 8, and Bryjae, 7 – are too young to remember much about their real mom, who died seven years ago.
On that day, Sept. 25, 1999, their grandma, Bessie Johnson, 53, became their guardian, their primary caregiver, their mother.
Now she is sick. And she is shielding them from the reality that she might not get better. She doesn't want them to lose another mother.
Issues of mortality and health, high on the minds of most older adults, gain even greater importance for grandparents who are raising their grandkids, says Mary McNamara, a social worker at Fairhill Center, a Cleveland-based nonprofit that serves older adults.
"I hear over and over again, 'I just hope I raise them until they're 18.' "
It's one of many issues that bind these grandparents together.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 12,256 grandparents raising their grandkids in Cuyahoga County in 2000, with more than half of them – 7,189 – in Cleveland.
Inside the city, the highest concentrations of grandparent caregivers are, not unexpectedly, in the poorer neighborhoods on the East Side – Central, Mount Pleasant, Union-Miles, Glenville and Forest Hills.
Social service experts point to a number of reasons for the movement toward multigenerational living arrangements.
The reasons are not pretty: drug use, teen pregnancy, single-parent households, AIDS, crime, incarceration.
"You don't end up at your grandma's house because of some bonus," says McNamara. "You're there because of some loss."
Though grandparents have always stepped forward in times of family crisis to help rear their grandchildren, the trend didn't attract the attention of the Census Bureau until 2000, the first year it tracked grandparent caregivers nationwide.
It has counted for years the number of grandchildren living with their grandparents - a number that has grown steadily, from 2.2 million in 1970 to 4.1 million in 2005.
Finding help, support that they need
The issue is not isolated to urban areas. Natasha Yovich, coordinator of Cuyahoga County's grandparent/kinship care program, says thousands of grandparents are raising grandkids in the suburbs, but they are less likely to seek help, preferring to keep their family problems private.
For those willing to share, formal and informal support networks are forming across the region to make it easier for grandparents to both learn from and lean on one another.
Johnson's support group comes in the form of the Kinship Care Action Committee, a group of East Side grandmas (with a few grandpas, aunts and uncles mixed in) that tries to help relative caregivers find resources and get help.
The committee sponsors monthly meetings with speakers designed to inform and empower.
Johnson helped form the group with fellow grandmothers Loretta Hunter, Dolores Coleman and Vera D. Brewer, as well as Brewer's son, Darnell Brewer. The group gathered recently in Johnson's home on St. Catherine Avenue, a quiet street off East 93rd in the Union-Miles neighborhood.
Pictures of Johnson's family line the walls of the living room: Her 15 grandchildren, plus Mary and Robert, her children still living; and her children now gone, Joyce, who took her own life in 1999, and Frederic, who died at age 9 of bone cancer.
Their conversations range from the pragmatic to the political: from emergency baby-sitting and hand-me-down clothing to lobbying public officials to increase the benefits for grandparent caregivers.
They are particularly peeved that nonrelative foster parents get substantially more assistance that kinship caregivers.
Nor do most of these grandparents qualify for any of the $10 million in welfare money Ohio lawmakers set aside last year to assist kinship caregivers - they've all cared for their grandkids since before the July 2005 cutoff date.
More than $9 million of that money was unspent because of administrative delays.Recently, the group's conversation has shifted to a more personal struggle - Johnson and her declining health.
Johnson first discovered a lump in her breast a year ago, but ignored it because she didn't have health insurance. She finally saw a doctor in August; by then, the cancer had spread to her bones, lungs and liver.
Hunter faced her own medical crisis a few years ago, when she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.
"If it hadn't been for me having a good support system, I would have died of worry," said Hunter, who took custody of four grandkids in 1997, after her daughter was murdered.She promises to help her friend in any way she can.
Paging through Johnson's medical documents, Hunter inquires about the cost of medication, then offers to make her some dumplings.
"I'll bring them over this weekend," says Hunter, acknowledging that Johnson's first round of chemotherapy, scheduled for the next day, is likely to leave her without an appetite.
The two met a decade ago when they found themselves on the same East Side bus: Hunter was going to work, Johnson was returning. They reconnected years later at a rally for grandparent caregivers.
Putting lives on hold, facing realities
Though every grandparent's story is different, many share similar themes.
Coleman, 69, parents her two young granddaughters while her daughter struggles with addiction; Brewer, 54, is the primary caregiver for four young relatives whose parents cannot provide for them. Both women are motivated by the same overwhelming desire to keep the children together and out of foster care.
Grandparents who become caregivers often end up losing friends and delaying life plans.
Johnson used to love to take gambling junkets before she started caring for her grandkids. Hunter had a shopping habit that was hard to maintain after her empty house filled up again.
Financial circumstances almost always worsen.
Johnson, who worked through mid-August, now worries about making her $498 monthly mortgage payment; Hunter gave up her job as an in-home private caregiver to qualify for food stamps.
"I used to laugh at the people in the food line. Now I go four times a month," she says. "I've got teenage boys. It's hard to say no when they ask for another piece of chicken."
The possibility of declining health looms large.
Caregivers, in particular, tend to overlook warning signs because they're so focused on others, according to Fairhill Center's McNamara.
"Their natural inclination is to take care of other people, perhaps before they take care of themselves," she says.
A recent study in New Jersey found that the average kinship caregiver receiving public assistance was age 52 but had the physical health of a typical 70-year-old.
A separate study, published in 1999 in the Journal of Aging Studies, found that grandparent caregivers frequently suffer from stress-related health problems such as depression, diabetes, hypertension and insomnia.
McNamara encourages grandparents to always have a backup plan if health problems arise.
"Who else can take care of your children so you're not making these decisions when you're in a crisis?" she asks them. "I tell them to think about who the children could stay with for two weeks if they needed surgery, for six weeks if they need a hip replacement."
Watching her friend struggle with cancer has motivated Hunter to think about who should take care of her 6-year-old grandson if she gets sick again. But she says most of her fellow kinship caregivers don't want to think about what happens when they're gone.
"We don't want to face the fact that we are going to die," she says. "What happens after us? Who's going to take care of this child? Who's going to love this child?"
Johnson is reluctantly making plans for her grandkids, should her treatment fail (their father is in prison). She had a frank conversation recently with her adult children, Mary and Robert.
In the end, they agreed that if something happens to Johnson, the kids will move in with Robert, "Uncle Poochy" to his deceased sister's kids.
"I look forward to my mother being here forever," says Robert, 35, who lives in Maple Heights with four of his seven kids. "But I know no one can be. If that time comes where I have to take care of the kids, I don't have a problem with it. It's not a burden, it's not a strain. To me, it's my obligation."
The only ones left to tell are the kids themselves.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Baker's testimony incriminates Carrolls in absence of DNA
DNA may never ID Marcus
Dave Greber, Middletown Journal
Tiny bone fragments found where 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel's body allegedly was burned in Brown County in early August may never be confirmed as his, investigators said Tuesday.
But DNA tests may not be the linchpin to convicting Liz and David Carroll Jr., who are charged with killing their Middletown foster child two months ago.
Prosecutors said the Carrolls bound Marcus with packing tape on Aug. 4, wrapped him in a blanket and left him locked in a closet in their home in Clermont County's Union Township for two days. He was dead when they returned.
David Carroll then took the body to a remote location in neighboring Brown County and repeatedly burned it to cover up the crime, prosecutors said. What wouldn't burn was dumped into the Ohio River, according to court records, and has not been recovered.
Investigators found pieces of bones and body tissue consistent with a 2-to-4-year-old child, according to Hamilton County Coroner O'dell Owens.
However, because the body was burned, DNA extraction might be impossible.
"My gut feeling is that these samples were not suitable for DNA testing," said Brown County Coroner Tim McKinley.
Although the remains were collected from Brown County in mid-August, Hamilton County has been handling DNA testing. Once those tests are complete -- sometime this week, Owens said -- McKinley will make a determination on the cause of death, if possible.
Without DNA confirming the pieces of bone and body to be those of Marcus, what's left in the way of evidence against the Carrolls is the testimony of their live-in girlfriend, Amy Baker, who talked to authorities under the promise of immunity.
"I don't think the DNA plays a large role in this case," Owens said. "You have a witness, and it is more than circumstantial."
Owens and prosecutors have said Baker's claims have been confirmed, including that gasoline was used as an accelerant at the location where Marcus' body supposedly was burned.
"I don't think you need much more than that," Owens said. "There has been less evidence in other cases that have put people in jail."
The Carrolls are being held in lieu of $10.1 million bond in the Clermont County Jail on several felony charges, including murder, kidnapping and endangering children. David Carroll Jr. is also charged with gross abuse of a corpse.
They are charged in Hamilton County with inducing panic. Prosecutors said they concocted a story about saying the boy had disappeared from an Anderson Township park and then lied under oath when questioned by investigators.
In a court memorandum filed Sept. 26, Clermont County prosecutors said Aug. 4 was not the first time Marcus was bound by his foster parents.
"It became fairly routine for them to tie up Marcus with tape and a blanket and leave him in a closet while they did their daily chores," prosecutors state. "They also inflicted severe discipline on him."
Trials are scheduled to begin for Liz Carroll on Jan. 22, and for David Carroll Jr. on Feb. 26, both in Clermont County.
Dave Greber, Middletown Journal
Tiny bone fragments found where 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel's body allegedly was burned in Brown County in early August may never be confirmed as his, investigators said Tuesday.
But DNA tests may not be the linchpin to convicting Liz and David Carroll Jr., who are charged with killing their Middletown foster child two months ago.
Prosecutors said the Carrolls bound Marcus with packing tape on Aug. 4, wrapped him in a blanket and left him locked in a closet in their home in Clermont County's Union Township for two days. He was dead when they returned.
David Carroll then took the body to a remote location in neighboring Brown County and repeatedly burned it to cover up the crime, prosecutors said. What wouldn't burn was dumped into the Ohio River, according to court records, and has not been recovered.
Investigators found pieces of bones and body tissue consistent with a 2-to-4-year-old child, according to Hamilton County Coroner O'dell Owens.
However, because the body was burned, DNA extraction might be impossible.
"My gut feeling is that these samples were not suitable for DNA testing," said Brown County Coroner Tim McKinley.
Although the remains were collected from Brown County in mid-August, Hamilton County has been handling DNA testing. Once those tests are complete -- sometime this week, Owens said -- McKinley will make a determination on the cause of death, if possible.
Without DNA confirming the pieces of bone and body to be those of Marcus, what's left in the way of evidence against the Carrolls is the testimony of their live-in girlfriend, Amy Baker, who talked to authorities under the promise of immunity.
"I don't think the DNA plays a large role in this case," Owens said. "You have a witness, and it is more than circumstantial."
Owens and prosecutors have said Baker's claims have been confirmed, including that gasoline was used as an accelerant at the location where Marcus' body supposedly was burned.
"I don't think you need much more than that," Owens said. "There has been less evidence in other cases that have put people in jail."
The Carrolls are being held in lieu of $10.1 million bond in the Clermont County Jail on several felony charges, including murder, kidnapping and endangering children. David Carroll Jr. is also charged with gross abuse of a corpse.
They are charged in Hamilton County with inducing panic. Prosecutors said they concocted a story about saying the boy had disappeared from an Anderson Township park and then lied under oath when questioned by investigators.
In a court memorandum filed Sept. 26, Clermont County prosecutors said Aug. 4 was not the first time Marcus was bound by his foster parents.
"It became fairly routine for them to tie up Marcus with tape and a blanket and leave him in a closet while they did their daily chores," prosecutors state. "They also inflicted severe discipline on him."
Trials are scheduled to begin for Liz Carroll on Jan. 22, and for David Carroll Jr. on Feb. 26, both in Clermont County.
Abusive foster parents diregarded extensive training
Memo: Marcus tied up often
Barrett Brunsman, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 7, 2006.
Carrolls were trained in other ways to handle aggressive foster child
Liz and David J. Carroll Jr. were trained in how to manage and properly restrain an aggressive foster child, according to documents released Friday by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
But in a document filed last week in the Clermont County Court of Common Pleas, where the Union Township couple has been charged with murder in the death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel, prosecutors alleged:
"It became fairly routine for them to tie up Marcus with tape and a blanket and leave him in a closet while they did their daily chores."
Marcus "was disabled with autism," according to the court document.
In an agreement signed by both Carrolls which outlined the conditions of foster care, it was stated in bold-face type that Marcus "may not be left unattended."
The Carrolls understood the "policies on discipline and corporal punishment" of both the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and Lifeway for Youth, the Butler County organization that placed Marcus with them, the state documents say.
The Carrolls planned "to use the following disciplinary techniques: discussion/redirection, grounding, loss of privileges and time out," according to the foster-care application and approval documents obtained from the state, which were requested Aug. 24 by The Enquirer.
But the couple "inflicted severe discipline on him," according to allegations by prosecutors in a pretrial memo filed Sept. 26 in the murder case against David Carroll, 29.
The memo was written by Judge Jerry R. McBride, who is overseeing the case.
The judge wrote the memo after meeting privately at the Batavia Courthouse on Sept. 22 with prosecutors and defense lawyers in David Carroll's case.
"Ultimately, on August 4, (a Friday, the Carrolls) bound him in a blanket and tape and left him in their Union Township home while they went to a family reunion in Kentucky. When they came back on Sunday, he was dead," according to the allegations of prosecutors in the court document.
"The children in the home have been telling tales of very serious abuse at the home since that time," the court document says.
Four children of David and Liz Carroll, 30, lived in the home, along with one other foster child and three children of Amy Baker, according to other court documents obtained by The Enquirer.
The Lifeway for Youth documents obtained by The Enquirer say that each of the Carrolls received two hours of training on Nov. 11 of last year in "managing aggressive children - behavior intervention techniques - physical restraints and de-escalation."
On Nov. 8, they each also received two hours of training in "behavior management techniques - discipline."
The couple took custody of Marcus on May 5 of this year.
Pearl Cline, spokeswoman for Lifeway for Youth, said Friday the agency is now referring all press questions about the Carrolls to its lawyer.
However, in general, the agency favors talking to children as a way to defuse tense situations, she said.
With regard to physical restraints, "there are approved techniques, and they're very limited," Cline said, adding that she wasn't aware of what those might entail.
"What we advocate is the least possible. Where we begin is with knowing the triggers, knowing the child - de-escalating, nonthreatening things," Cline said. "Because these are children who have been abused and neglected, and their trigger points are going to be sensitive."
The Carrolls were to be paid $33.50 a day to care for Marcus, or about $1,000 a month, according to the foster-care agreement.
One of the state documents obtained by The Enquirer said Liz Carroll wanted to become a foster parent because of "her love of working with children."
It said David Carroll "described his motivation for becoming a foster parent as realizing the need for good homes and (he) wants to make a difference."
But after Marcus was found dead on Aug. 6, according to the court documents, "David Carroll and his girlfriend Amy Baker took the body out to Brown County, doused the body in gasoline, and set it on fire. They threw the torso in the Ohio River."
The Carrolls said on Aug. 15 that Marcus had gone missing in an Anderson Township park.Baker served as a reference for the Carrolls when they applied to be foster parents. Prosecutors have said she will be the primary witness against them in their murder trials.
Clermont County Prosecutor Don White has said his office will no longer respond to questions from the media about the charges. Both murder trials are being prosecuted by White's chief assistant, Daniel "Woody" Breyer, and Mark E. Piepmeier, the top trial lawyer for Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters.
Judge Robert P. Ringland of the Clermont Court of Common Pleas has issued a gag order in the Liz Carroll trial.
Liz Carroll's murder trial is set for Jan. 22. She is also charged with involuntary manslaughter, kidnapping, felonious assault and child endangerment.
David Carroll faces the same charges in a trial to begin Feb. 26. He also is charged with gross abuse of a corpse.
Although the information in the state documents released Friday was considered confidential when it was requested by The Enquirer in August, changes in state law that took effect Sept. 21 now give the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services discretion in releasing the records, said agency spokesman Dennis Evans.
Barrett Brunsman, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 7, 2006.
Carrolls were trained in other ways to handle aggressive foster child
Liz and David J. Carroll Jr. were trained in how to manage and properly restrain an aggressive foster child, according to documents released Friday by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
But in a document filed last week in the Clermont County Court of Common Pleas, where the Union Township couple has been charged with murder in the death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel, prosecutors alleged:
"It became fairly routine for them to tie up Marcus with tape and a blanket and leave him in a closet while they did their daily chores."
Marcus "was disabled with autism," according to the court document.
In an agreement signed by both Carrolls which outlined the conditions of foster care, it was stated in bold-face type that Marcus "may not be left unattended."
The Carrolls understood the "policies on discipline and corporal punishment" of both the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and Lifeway for Youth, the Butler County organization that placed Marcus with them, the state documents say.
The Carrolls planned "to use the following disciplinary techniques: discussion/redirection, grounding, loss of privileges and time out," according to the foster-care application and approval documents obtained from the state, which were requested Aug. 24 by The Enquirer.
But the couple "inflicted severe discipline on him," according to allegations by prosecutors in a pretrial memo filed Sept. 26 in the murder case against David Carroll, 29.
The memo was written by Judge Jerry R. McBride, who is overseeing the case.
The judge wrote the memo after meeting privately at the Batavia Courthouse on Sept. 22 with prosecutors and defense lawyers in David Carroll's case.
"Ultimately, on August 4, (a Friday, the Carrolls) bound him in a blanket and tape and left him in their Union Township home while they went to a family reunion in Kentucky. When they came back on Sunday, he was dead," according to the allegations of prosecutors in the court document.
"The children in the home have been telling tales of very serious abuse at the home since that time," the court document says.
Four children of David and Liz Carroll, 30, lived in the home, along with one other foster child and three children of Amy Baker, according to other court documents obtained by The Enquirer.
The Lifeway for Youth documents obtained by The Enquirer say that each of the Carrolls received two hours of training on Nov. 11 of last year in "managing aggressive children - behavior intervention techniques - physical restraints and de-escalation."
On Nov. 8, they each also received two hours of training in "behavior management techniques - discipline."
The couple took custody of Marcus on May 5 of this year.
Pearl Cline, spokeswoman for Lifeway for Youth, said Friday the agency is now referring all press questions about the Carrolls to its lawyer.
However, in general, the agency favors talking to children as a way to defuse tense situations, she said.
With regard to physical restraints, "there are approved techniques, and they're very limited," Cline said, adding that she wasn't aware of what those might entail.
"What we advocate is the least possible. Where we begin is with knowing the triggers, knowing the child - de-escalating, nonthreatening things," Cline said. "Because these are children who have been abused and neglected, and their trigger points are going to be sensitive."
The Carrolls were to be paid $33.50 a day to care for Marcus, or about $1,000 a month, according to the foster-care agreement.
One of the state documents obtained by The Enquirer said Liz Carroll wanted to become a foster parent because of "her love of working with children."
It said David Carroll "described his motivation for becoming a foster parent as realizing the need for good homes and (he) wants to make a difference."
But after Marcus was found dead on Aug. 6, according to the court documents, "David Carroll and his girlfriend Amy Baker took the body out to Brown County, doused the body in gasoline, and set it on fire. They threw the torso in the Ohio River."
The Carrolls said on Aug. 15 that Marcus had gone missing in an Anderson Township park.Baker served as a reference for the Carrolls when they applied to be foster parents. Prosecutors have said she will be the primary witness against them in their murder trials.
Clermont County Prosecutor Don White has said his office will no longer respond to questions from the media about the charges. Both murder trials are being prosecuted by White's chief assistant, Daniel "Woody" Breyer, and Mark E. Piepmeier, the top trial lawyer for Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters.
Judge Robert P. Ringland of the Clermont Court of Common Pleas has issued a gag order in the Liz Carroll trial.
Liz Carroll's murder trial is set for Jan. 22. She is also charged with involuntary manslaughter, kidnapping, felonious assault and child endangerment.
David Carroll faces the same charges in a trial to begin Feb. 26. He also is charged with gross abuse of a corpse.
Although the information in the state documents released Friday was considered confidential when it was requested by The Enquirer in August, changes in state law that took effect Sept. 21 now give the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services discretion in releasing the records, said agency spokesman Dennis Evans.
Powerful editorial
After death of Marcus, put needs of children first
Joanna Hobler, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 6. 2006.
Your voice
Many words have been written about the death of Marcus Fiesel. There certainly is enough blame to go around. But in the aftermath of this tragedy, as officials try to deal with the immediate issues, we also need to look at the bigger picture.
I've been involved in the social services arena in a number of states, and while this situation is more distressing than many, it is not unique. In addition to examining Marcus' death, as a society we should try to learn something from tragedies such as this.
For example, clearly there were authorities in Marcus' biological home long before he was removed.
What happened in the interim? Was his mother offered services, and if so, did she comply? He apparently was developmentally delayed. Were special preschool classes arranged, and/or appropriate day care?
Research tells us that reaching children in early childhood (0-3) is the optimum time to make a difference.
Yet we are not willing to spend the money for early childhood programs that would help with the nurturing process, especially for children whose parents have not been nurtured themselves. Many of these parents could learn the necessary skills if given the opportunity.
However, we must also be willing to acknowledge that some parents are too damaged themselves to parent and provide timely, permanent placement for their children.
The child who enters the foster care system (more than 1 million in the United States), often spends months, if not years, bouncing from home to home, while the system gives parents yet another chance to improve.
It doesn't take much imagination to understand the emotional problems that a child can develop when there is no sense of belonging anywhere.
The response to these suggestions is usually met with the message that there is no money available. However, consider what the cost to society is when children are abused, neglected and left without proper nurturing and support.
Instead of prevention, we often choose to build more prisons.If something positive is to come out of the death of this little boy, it will take the commitment of all of us to look at what really is needed.
In this time of political rhetoric (we hear nothing about the needs of children), we should insist that our politicians consider those who are most voiceless.
Joanna C. Hobler of Milford is a retired clinical social worker.
Want your voice here?Send your column or proposed topic, 400 words or fewer, along with a photo of yourself, to assistant editorial editor Ray Cooklis at rcooklis @enquirer.com, or to letters@enquirer.com, with"Your voice" in subject line.
Joanna Hobler, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 6. 2006.
Your voice
Many words have been written about the death of Marcus Fiesel. There certainly is enough blame to go around. But in the aftermath of this tragedy, as officials try to deal with the immediate issues, we also need to look at the bigger picture.
I've been involved in the social services arena in a number of states, and while this situation is more distressing than many, it is not unique. In addition to examining Marcus' death, as a society we should try to learn something from tragedies such as this.
For example, clearly there were authorities in Marcus' biological home long before he was removed.
What happened in the interim? Was his mother offered services, and if so, did she comply? He apparently was developmentally delayed. Were special preschool classes arranged, and/or appropriate day care?
Research tells us that reaching children in early childhood (0-3) is the optimum time to make a difference.
Yet we are not willing to spend the money for early childhood programs that would help with the nurturing process, especially for children whose parents have not been nurtured themselves. Many of these parents could learn the necessary skills if given the opportunity.
However, we must also be willing to acknowledge that some parents are too damaged themselves to parent and provide timely, permanent placement for their children.
The child who enters the foster care system (more than 1 million in the United States), often spends months, if not years, bouncing from home to home, while the system gives parents yet another chance to improve.
It doesn't take much imagination to understand the emotional problems that a child can develop when there is no sense of belonging anywhere.
The response to these suggestions is usually met with the message that there is no money available. However, consider what the cost to society is when children are abused, neglected and left without proper nurturing and support.
Instead of prevention, we often choose to build more prisons.If something positive is to come out of the death of this little boy, it will take the commitment of all of us to look at what really is needed.
In this time of political rhetoric (we hear nothing about the needs of children), we should insist that our politicians consider those who are most voiceless.
Joanna C. Hobler of Milford is a retired clinical social worker.
Want your voice here?Send your column or proposed topic, 400 words or fewer, along with a photo of yourself, to assistant editorial editor Ray Cooklis at rcooklis @enquirer.com, or to letters@enquirer.com, with"Your voice" in subject line.
Increased oversight regarding foster care placements
Proposal draws on Marcus' life
Jennifer Baker, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 6, 2006.
Law would require stricter oversight of foster parents
HAMILTON - A legislator is proposing a law to require stricter oversight of foster parents, aimed at avoiding another case like Marcus Fiesel's.
"Hopefully this short life will have a positive impact on all of us and save many, many children. One lost child is too many," said state Rep. Courtney Combs, R-Ross Township, who is proposing the legislation.
"We sadly recognize the fact that we can't protect all the children, but we can make it easier for them through counseling, through education and through services that provide safe harbor for our children."
The changes were suggested by Rawnica Dillingham, executive director of the Mental Health Matters Inc., and would require:
-Foster parents to register with a statewide information center where all local police agencies could report criminal activity about any foster parent.
-Access for foster care placement agencies and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to check background databases and systems.
-Lying on applications to become foster parents would be a felony.
-Foster parents to report any major changes in circumstances that could affect the well-being of a child in their care, such as an additional adult moving into a home. If they fail to do so, they would be subject to losing their foster care license.
Marcus, a developmentally delayed 3-year-old Middletown boy, was in the custody of the Butler County Children Services Board.
He was placed in a foster home through Lifeway For Youth, a private agency the county pays to place and monitor foster children.
His foster parents, Liz and David Carroll Jr. of Clermont County, are accused of killing him and then making a false missing-persons report.
"The best way for Marcus Fiesel to be remembered, the greatest tribute we can offer to his memory, is to let Marcus know that his three short years on this earth made a lasting difference to all of the children of Ohio," Dillingham said.
Combs said the proposal will be reviewed by a lawyer and tweaked as it is drafted into a bill.It will be presented after the first of the year, once the newly elected House convenes.Ohio counties collectively pay hundreds of millions of dollars to almost 11,000 foster parents.
What the bill would do
The bill proposed Thursday would:
-Make it a felony to lie on an application to become a foster parent.
-Require foster parents to report major changes in circumstances that could affect the well-being of a child in their care. If they do not, they would face losing their foster care license.
-Grant foster care placement agencies and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services access to informational systems and require all foster parents to be registered with a statewide information center, where all local police agencies could report criminal activity pertaining to any foster parent.
-Establish a "right to treatment" for any abused, neglected or mistreated child under the jurisdiction of a child protection agency for any emotional or mental trauma, disorder or illness resulting from such circumstances.
-Make it a felony for any mother to recklessly use illegal drugs while pregnant. The mother would be charged only if a child is born with traces of illegal substances in his system and the mother has refused participation in a drug treatment program during pregnancy or upon the birth of the child. If she accepted treatment, she would not be charged.
Jennifer Baker, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 6, 2006.
Law would require stricter oversight of foster parents
HAMILTON - A legislator is proposing a law to require stricter oversight of foster parents, aimed at avoiding another case like Marcus Fiesel's.
"Hopefully this short life will have a positive impact on all of us and save many, many children. One lost child is too many," said state Rep. Courtney Combs, R-Ross Township, who is proposing the legislation.
"We sadly recognize the fact that we can't protect all the children, but we can make it easier for them through counseling, through education and through services that provide safe harbor for our children."
The changes were suggested by Rawnica Dillingham, executive director of the Mental Health Matters Inc., and would require:
-Foster parents to register with a statewide information center where all local police agencies could report criminal activity about any foster parent.
-Access for foster care placement agencies and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to check background databases and systems.
-Lying on applications to become foster parents would be a felony.
-Foster parents to report any major changes in circumstances that could affect the well-being of a child in their care, such as an additional adult moving into a home. If they fail to do so, they would be subject to losing their foster care license.
Marcus, a developmentally delayed 3-year-old Middletown boy, was in the custody of the Butler County Children Services Board.
He was placed in a foster home through Lifeway For Youth, a private agency the county pays to place and monitor foster children.
His foster parents, Liz and David Carroll Jr. of Clermont County, are accused of killing him and then making a false missing-persons report.
"The best way for Marcus Fiesel to be remembered, the greatest tribute we can offer to his memory, is to let Marcus know that his three short years on this earth made a lasting difference to all of the children of Ohio," Dillingham said.
Combs said the proposal will be reviewed by a lawyer and tweaked as it is drafted into a bill.It will be presented after the first of the year, once the newly elected House convenes.Ohio counties collectively pay hundreds of millions of dollars to almost 11,000 foster parents.
What the bill would do
The bill proposed Thursday would:
-Make it a felony to lie on an application to become a foster parent.
-Require foster parents to report major changes in circumstances that could affect the well-being of a child in their care. If they do not, they would face losing their foster care license.
-Grant foster care placement agencies and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services access to informational systems and require all foster parents to be registered with a statewide information center, where all local police agencies could report criminal activity pertaining to any foster parent.
-Establish a "right to treatment" for any abused, neglected or mistreated child under the jurisdiction of a child protection agency for any emotional or mental trauma, disorder or illness resulting from such circumstances.
-Make it a felony for any mother to recklessly use illegal drugs while pregnant. The mother would be charged only if a child is born with traces of illegal substances in his system and the mother has refused participation in a drug treatment program during pregnancy or upon the birth of the child. If she accepted treatment, she would not be charged.
Threat of jail for mothers who need substance abuse treatment
Drug-abusing mothers targeted
Marcus case spawns proposal
Chris Dumond, Hamilton Journal, Oct. 6, 2006.
State Rep. Courtney Combs said Thursday he plans to pursue legislative reforms that would punish pregnant women who abuse drugs.
The Hamilton Republican said in the next few weeks he will start the process of drafting a bill that would, among other things, make it a felony for mothers to refuse to enter a drug treatment program during the pregnancy or at the child's birth.
The proposal was initially put forward by Rawnica Dillingham, executive director of Mental Health Matters, in the wake of the death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel, who was found dead in a closet at his foster parents' home in Clermont County after he was left there for two days in August.
The couple is now facing murder and other charges.
Marcus, although he was never diagnosed as such, was suspected to have suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome.
Combs said the proposal is intended both to help drug-addicted pregnant women get the care they need to give birth to a healthy child and to break the habit so they can keep their families together.
"We would hope that the love of the child would do that, but we know the truth is that's not the case," Combs said. "The problem is they're caught up in this vicious circle and it's a terrible thing. In order to break that circle of drug use, we're saying that if you're pregnant and you're on drugs, you must come in for treatment or there will be consequences."
Though proponents have backed away from an initial plan that would have jailed the mother and removed the child from her custody, the proposal is still drawing questions and criticism.
Bruce Jewett, director of the Butler County Department of Job and Family Services and president of the county's Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board, questioned Dillingham's claim that existing state and local treatment programs would be adequate to accommodate expectant mothers needing their service.
"One of the problems we have now is that there's lots of waiting lists," Jewett said.
Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, said the threat of jail will still bring the same result for mothers who need treatment.
"People will run, not walk, from prenatal care," he said. "Kids will still be born with drugs in their system, but studies have shown that a lack of prenatal care can actually be more harmful."
Wexler said that if officials really want to make a difference, they should ensure adequate access first, then find a way for parents to remain united with their children during treatment, and assess penalties if needed.
Combs said he expected his bill to be drafted by the end of the year, but he wouldn't introduce the legislation until early 2007. He said questions over the constitutionality of the proposal will be addressed as part of the bill-drafting process.
"You have to put it out there in order to discuss it," he said. "It may not look like it does here, but we're starting on a process that we hope will make a better environment for our children."
Marcus case spawns proposal
Chris Dumond, Hamilton Journal, Oct. 6, 2006.
State Rep. Courtney Combs said Thursday he plans to pursue legislative reforms that would punish pregnant women who abuse drugs.
The Hamilton Republican said in the next few weeks he will start the process of drafting a bill that would, among other things, make it a felony for mothers to refuse to enter a drug treatment program during the pregnancy or at the child's birth.
The proposal was initially put forward by Rawnica Dillingham, executive director of Mental Health Matters, in the wake of the death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel, who was found dead in a closet at his foster parents' home in Clermont County after he was left there for two days in August.
The couple is now facing murder and other charges.
Marcus, although he was never diagnosed as such, was suspected to have suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome.
Combs said the proposal is intended both to help drug-addicted pregnant women get the care they need to give birth to a healthy child and to break the habit so they can keep their families together.
"We would hope that the love of the child would do that, but we know the truth is that's not the case," Combs said. "The problem is they're caught up in this vicious circle and it's a terrible thing. In order to break that circle of drug use, we're saying that if you're pregnant and you're on drugs, you must come in for treatment or there will be consequences."
Though proponents have backed away from an initial plan that would have jailed the mother and removed the child from her custody, the proposal is still drawing questions and criticism.
Bruce Jewett, director of the Butler County Department of Job and Family Services and president of the county's Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board, questioned Dillingham's claim that existing state and local treatment programs would be adequate to accommodate expectant mothers needing their service.
"One of the problems we have now is that there's lots of waiting lists," Jewett said.
Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, said the threat of jail will still bring the same result for mothers who need treatment.
"People will run, not walk, from prenatal care," he said. "Kids will still be born with drugs in their system, but studies have shown that a lack of prenatal care can actually be more harmful."
Wexler said that if officials really want to make a difference, they should ensure adequate access first, then find a way for parents to remain united with their children during treatment, and assess penalties if needed.
Combs said he expected his bill to be drafted by the end of the year, but he wouldn't introduce the legislation until early 2007. He said questions over the constitutionality of the proposal will be addressed as part of the bill-drafting process.
"You have to put it out there in order to discuss it," he said. "It may not look like it does here, but we're starting on a process that we hope will make a better environment for our children."
Dissolution of Warren County children services board
Children's board dissolved
Jessica Brown. Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 5, 2006.
Warren County agency to report to administrator
LEBANON - Warren County is dissolving the board that governs its children services agency.
Commissioners voted Tuesday to dismantle the agency's five-member board, transferring oversight of the agency to the county commissioners and county administrator.
Under the new structure, the incoming Children Services director, Patty Jacobs, will report directly to county Administrator Dave Gully.
The move comes amid intense public scrutiny and a state investigation into neighboring Butler County's foster care system after the August death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel.
Warren County commissioners say the timing of their decision was mostly coincidental.
"We'd looked at doing this a couple years ago, pulling the children services agency under the (commissioners') oversight," said Commissioner Pat South. "We decided now is the time."
She said three of the five Warren County Children Services board members were planning to resign after the end of the year because of time constraints or other issues. The agency's director, Jeff Centers, is leaving this month for a job in finance at Butler County Children Services.South said the board likely will be dissolved in the next 60 days.
Agency members supported the change, said Commissioner Dave Young. Centers, the agency director, and Bobbie Grice, the board chairwoman, were not available Wednesday for comment.
Board members
The Warren County Children Services Board will be dissolved in the next 60 days, with oversight of the agency transferred to the Warren County administration.
The current board members are:
Bobbie Grice, chair
Julia Hayes
Tiffany Ferrell
Lynn CareyBarry
Riley
To contact the agency: 513-695-1546
Jessica Brown. Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 5, 2006.
Warren County agency to report to administrator
LEBANON - Warren County is dissolving the board that governs its children services agency.
Commissioners voted Tuesday to dismantle the agency's five-member board, transferring oversight of the agency to the county commissioners and county administrator.
Under the new structure, the incoming Children Services director, Patty Jacobs, will report directly to county Administrator Dave Gully.
The move comes amid intense public scrutiny and a state investigation into neighboring Butler County's foster care system after the August death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel.
Warren County commissioners say the timing of their decision was mostly coincidental.
"We'd looked at doing this a couple years ago, pulling the children services agency under the (commissioners') oversight," said Commissioner Pat South. "We decided now is the time."
She said three of the five Warren County Children Services board members were planning to resign after the end of the year because of time constraints or other issues. The agency's director, Jeff Centers, is leaving this month for a job in finance at Butler County Children Services.South said the board likely will be dissolved in the next 60 days.
Agency members supported the change, said Commissioner Dave Young. Centers, the agency director, and Bobbie Grice, the board chairwoman, were not available Wednesday for comment.
Board members
The Warren County Children Services Board will be dissolved in the next 60 days, with oversight of the agency transferred to the Warren County administration.
The current board members are:
Bobbie Grice, chair
Julia Hayes
Tiffany Ferrell
Lynn CareyBarry
Riley
To contact the agency: 513-695-1546
Newspaper denied access to list of Ohio licensed foster parents
Foster-parents list off-limits to paper's request, state says
Columbus Dispatch, Oct. 4, 2006, News pg. 2C.
The state has denied a newspaper's public-records request for the names and addresses of every licensed foster parent in Ohio, saying release of the information would be illegal and could jeopardize children.
Only those who place foster children in homes need access to such information, said Barbara Riley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
The Cincinnati Enquirer asked for the records as part of its coverage of foster parents charged with murder in the death of a 3-year-old boy in their care. Prosecutors say Liz and David Carroll Jr. left the boy for two days in a closet, where he died. David Carroll is accused of burning the boy's body.
Ohio has almost 11,000 foster parents.
The records requested by the newspaper don't contain any information about foster children, The Enquirer reported yesterday. But making the list of foster parents public could allow threatened foster children to be located, Riley said.
The department based its decision on a state adoptions law and an Ohio Supreme Court case.
Columbus Dispatch, Oct. 4, 2006, News pg. 2C.
The state has denied a newspaper's public-records request for the names and addresses of every licensed foster parent in Ohio, saying release of the information would be illegal and could jeopardize children.
Only those who place foster children in homes need access to such information, said Barbara Riley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
The Cincinnati Enquirer asked for the records as part of its coverage of foster parents charged with murder in the death of a 3-year-old boy in their care. Prosecutors say Liz and David Carroll Jr. left the boy for two days in a closet, where he died. David Carroll is accused of burning the boy's body.
Ohio has almost 11,000 foster parents.
The records requested by the newspaper don't contain any information about foster children, The Enquirer reported yesterday. But making the list of foster parents public could allow threatened foster children to be located, Riley said.
The department based its decision on a state adoptions law and an Ohio Supreme Court case.
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