Panel Calls for Changes in Foster Care

WASHINGTON - On any given day, half a million children are in foster care, many languishing five years or more, according to a special commission that called on the federal government and courts to move them into permanent homes more quickly.



The Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care said that to address the problem, states need to be more accountable for how long children remain in foster care, the federal government should change how it pays for the care and courts need to give greater priority and keep closer watch on the children's cases.


The commission's report and recommendations were to be released Tuesday, culminating a review that began in May 2003. The release will help ignite a debate on an issue that already has the attention of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and other members of Congress.


Former Rep. Bill Frenzel, R-Minn., chairman of the 16-member Pew commission, said: "The system has done a pretty good job of taking kids out of unsafe, unhealthy family environments and protecting them from harm. But states then had incentives to keep children in foster care, instead of moving them to a more permanent kind of situation, which is what any kid would love."

~snip~
more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=718&e=10&u=/ap/20040518/ap_on_re_us/foster_care

anti-choicers haven't snapped up all the unwanted children. Unbelievably, Bugman gets a pass on this one. Now if the 25 million other hardcore fundies would step up, problem solved.

First, many children in foster care are ineligable for adoption. They are waiting for parents to straighten out their lives.

Second, until the early 1990's in many jurisdictions is was close to impossible for a white couple to adopt an African American child. That was changed by a law authored by Howard Metzenbalm and Mike DeWine. That, combined with standards for adoption which were detremental to black parents, made it very difficult to place African American babies for adoption.

Third, a very large percentage of pro lifers do adopt children. I have no idea of the exact percentage but it is by no means trivial.

Therefore, I wasn't referencing the pro-lifers that adopt, I was referencing the pro-lifers<sic> that don't. There's appx. a 100,000 adoptions a year. I would guess that at least half of those are by non-fundies. That leaves 50,000 adopted by fundies. There's appx. 700,000 children available for adoption every year. There's several million fundies. Do the math.

a very large percentage of pro lifers do adopt children

If there are 20 million fundies, the percentage that adopt is 0.25%.



Edit to add: Upon further review, I found that the conservative estimate is 30 million. http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/fund.html

So make the corresponding correction to that 1/4 of one percent.

both high and low. Presumedly you don't expect the 8 year olds to adopt nor the 80 year olds. Adoption age fundies are probably around 10 million. But even if every single one adopted many children would still be in foster care due to the issues I enunciated.

But I would like to point out that the reason that many children are in Foster Care to begin with, beyond the adoption/choice issue, is the policies that fundies stand for. Defunding of social programs, intolerance, discrimination, hypocrisy, war on drugs, corporatism, ignorance, etc...

Sorry if my attack on fundies has upset you. :(

:hippie: Peace.

is now beginning to be out in the open. Stay tuned in future years for vast warehouses for children to live in where wealthy folks can come look at them occasionally.

"Federal child welfare money emphasizes foster care at the expense of other services that might keep families together or move children to permanent homes, the commissioners said."

Read: federal funds will be slashed.

"It also recommended dropping family income eligibility rules to allow all children — including those from American Indian tribes and U.S. territories — to qualify for foster care."

While they're at it, take a poke at Native American sovereignty laws.

"We have a tiny child protection system in Texas and we most certainly are not meeting the needs of all the children in Texas who need foster care," said McCown, the group's executive director. "A block grant for us would mean our system couldn't grow."

A voice of reason that will be trampled in the stampede to "improve" the system.

When was the last time you saw an orphanage? There's not many left, because our paradigm of "best interests of the children" has changed substantially over the last few decades. Not only are foster families a healthier environment (for the most part) than the warehouses of old -- which appeals to Democrats -- foster family programs are usually cheaper, appealing to sensible Republicans.

You're definitely roght about slashing funding, though. The *s have managed to cut Federal grants for Family & Youth services every year for the last 3 1/2 years in my county at least, leaving us to operate the same level of servies on half the budget. I imagine it's worse in other, poorer counties and states. Evil fucks.

a child who was in foster care for more than 4 years before she came to me, I pray that kids are not only kept safe, but well, secure, and stable. These kids are heroes.

http://www.asentenceoftheirown.com/Essays%20-%20Welfare%20Ref.html

Is Welfare Reform Sending More Kids to Foster Care?
Despite the success stories, more families at the bottom are falling apart.

By Nell Bernstein

In 1994 Newt Gingrich sparked a short-lived tempest by suggesting that welfare payments be cut off and the money used instead to ship the children of the poor off to orphanages.

Officially, Newt's vision never even made it to the drawing board. But as the two-year limits imposed by welfare reform begin to kick in, throwing a number of already struggling families deeper into poverty, a troubling possibility arises: Some families who lose their welfare benefits may also lose their children.

While it is too early to measure definitively, there are some unsettling early signs. In Wisconsin -- which embarked on welfare reform early and avidly -- 5 percent of former welfare recipients, or one in 20, reported being forced to abandon their children. In San Diego County, foster care placements doubled after the new welfare law took effect. When researchers interviewed San Diego families who had become homeless after losing their benefits, 18 percent said their children subsequently went into foster care.

-more-

Make sure this story gets to that repugnant Mickey Kaus.

To prevent children from being raised in orphanages and allowing them to stay together as a family. So much for that compassionate conservative bullshit. :eyes:

in foster care are waiting for their parents to get themselves together. And waiting, and waiting and waiting. The trend now, at least in my state, is to give parents every chance and multiple chances.

No one keeps kids in foster care for financial incentives, it's just that no one wants to pull the plug on Mom and Dad. The court IS ultimately the decision-maker, and getting more kids into permanent situations is going to require judges to lower the boom on parents.

of parents. I know of a case where a child called CPS on her dad essentially because he grounded her. She made all sorts of accusations against him, thinking he'd be taken away. But she and her siblings were the ones taken away. She quickly confessed that she had lied in order to get back at him, but it was too late. The judge had already found out that he was an atheist. The end result was that the kids weren't allowed to leave foster care until the parents divorced, and the children were forbidden to even speak to their father.

Where's the financial incentive there? There isn't one. It's simply use of state power to punish nonconformists.

States do similar things to people whose only "crime" is being poor. They don't care that foster care is more expensive than welfare. Poor people don't have a right to have a family. Soon you will see their labor on the auction block, followed shortly afterward by the enforced labor of the "fostered" kids. Don't think this can happen? It has happened before, and it will again if we aren't very careful.

1. Most foster kids either go home eventually or get placed within the family.
2. Most kids come into foster care for abuse/neglect reasons. The parents want their kids back, but they need treatment before they can get them back. Most of the parents need things like counseling, parenting skills classes, and/or substance abuse treatment.
3. Kids whose parents have mental health problems are the ones most likely to be in the system longest, and to end up being adopted. These are not easy kids to find homes for, as many have mental health problems themselves, or have behaviors that are disturbing to others because they learned them from watching crazy adults. Sometimes, foster parents who have been in the game for a while are the best homes for kids with behavior problems because they've seen it all and can deal with it best. The other kids who end up being adopted are those born to long-term substance abusers, especially those mothers who are prostitutes (no identifiable father, and usually no maternal relatives available. In both cases, the kids are not what prospective adoptive parents are looking for. Most of these kids get adopted by the foster parents.

Newt Gingrich talked in the 90s about returning to using orphanages and peoples' responses to that idea were so negative, the idea was scrapped. I wouldn't worry about this happening. We do have programs for kids in some of the old orphanages, but we call them "Residential Treatment Centers". In my state, these places are for kids who are over 10 and have behavior problems. A kid under 10 can only be placed in residential if they have serious behavioral problems. Most of the centers are for teenaged foster kids who keep running away from foster homes and relative placements. They are generally not locked up, but heavily supervised.