My state has a good number of problems when it comes to foster care. Many foster parents complain of an uncaring system that doesn't provide them adequate information about children suddenly dumped onto their laps. They also feel as if they are being taken for granted. As a result, many families with good intentions are leaving the foster care system. An impressive set of reforms and studies can be found at the Pew Charitable Trust Fund website. LB 461 has been proposed in my state. It would requre that foster parents:



Questions for debate:

1.)Should foster care parents have a "Bill of Rights" in regards to equal treatment and due process in dealing with any state department of health and human services?


2.)What specifically can be done to improve foster care?

3.)What proposals in LB 461 sound good and would work? Which ones do you belive would be more problematic?

nebraska29:

You're in trouble now, as I'm the only one yet to reply, and since no one likes me....

Anyway, the proposed legislation does not sound bad, but I have other concerns as well. More specifically, I wish I could forget the number times that I've had to fight off foster parents who wanted to "steal" my client's/clients' child[ren]. Usually not a problem when the child is older, but when the child is, well, infant through early elementary, then some get too attached and then don't seem to know when it's time to let go.

The problem the system otherwise has is a lack of resources, i.e., too much work and not enough money. So I'm not even sure that the agency responsible in this instance would disagree with the proposed legislation. I imagine that the response from the agency and its employees would simply be that we've already too much to do and so there's no way that we can do all that as well. And that probably is the reality. It doesn't otherwise just hurt the foster parent[s], as in my state, these things "safe family home report[s]" are supposed to be prepared and served upon all concerned well in advance of each review hearing. We usually get them the day of the hearing, about 20 minutes or so before we go in. So unless I have the time to stay on top of the social worker, and he or she has the time to respond to my inquiries, then I don't even necessarily know the exact state of affairs until 20 minutes or so before the review hearing. These reports aren't otherwise 2 or 3 pages, but more like 15-20. So I've about a minute or so to read each page, with the client[s] reading over my shoulder, and then we've got about a minute or two to talk before we go in. Sounds lame, yes? It is. But until we're willing to pony up some more dollars for the best interests of our children, well, here we are. As you can imagine from what I've said, the proposed legislation could be passed in every state, but as the man said, no bucks, then no Buck Rodgers, and so without the funding that will afford the agency the ability to have the human hours to effect the legislation, well, then so much hot air and the legislation won't be worth the paper it's printed on. But, again, in the abstract, I can say that I do see all of the measures and/or practices called for as being worthy, though again, will we have the good grace to put our money where our mouths are and truly fund the effort.

Tell me, how does that make you feel?



I understand exactly what you mean here, and I agree. We had an instance in my state where a mother supposedly traded her child for drugs. Her account was that she had to pay up and she left her child with the druggies as a good-faith effort to show them that she would return. The child was in foster care for awhile and the mother has apparently turned things around through completing treatment, jail time, and holding down a job and working through some community based program. The children are back with her and the foster parents are livid. I'm a teacher at a residential treatment center and my wife is a therapist. What does that have to do with anything?, well, we both know, and it's common knowledge, that parental reunification is the goal!. Foster parents knew what they were getting themselves into in the first place, if they wanted a more permanent option, adoption is available.



The funding issue is a huge problem. You can pass all of the high and mighty platitude linguistic bills in the world, it's quite another to fund them. In our state, we could use smaller case loads for social workers, but that won't happen as paying $30,000 to social workers and subsequent benefits means that *gasp!* "state spending" will have to occur. If you don't have that, then the people don't get their tax breaks and somehow the kids are take care of themselves or move on to prison. For once, I'd like to see a politician who is for spending money on these issues and who realizes that if you don't pay now in treatment, you will fork over the dough for prisons and staffing them later on. Logical I know, but the "small government" crowd in my state can't figure that out for the life of them.

nebraska:

To add to my last, re #1 again, the answer is "no". But the child has the following right, expressed at sec. 587-1, Hawaii Revised Statutes:

"Every reasonable opportunity should be provided to help the child's legal custodian to succeed in remedying the problems which put the child at substantial risk of being harmed in the family home. Each appropriate resource, public and private, family and friend, should be considered and used to maximize the legal custodian's potential for providing a safe family home for the child. Full and careful consideration should be given to the religious, cultural, and ethnic values of the child's legal custodian when service plans are being discussed and formulated."

And it might otherwise help if the one[s] actually caring for the child[ren] at any given moment have the history and the resources to do the job. But that's not the foster parent[s]' right[s], but the child[ren]'s.

Now, for the insidious continuation of that same statute, and where there is some serious need of reform in both our thought processes and accompanying law:

"Where the court has determined, by clear and convincing evidence, that the child cannot be returned to a safe family home, the child will be permanently placed in a timely manner."

And so the dissent that ought to be the unanimous majority, from Caso v. Department of Health & Rehabilitative Services, 569 So. 2d 466 (Fla. 3rd DCA 1990):

SCHWARTZ, Chief Judge (dissenting).

The court's opinion conclusively demonstrates in agonizing detail that S.R.S. would have been far better off with a mother different from the thoroughly flawed and seriously ill woman who gave him birth. Such a concept, however, is not only philosophically and biologically impossible, it does not embrace the rule which must be applied to the profoundly important issue in this case. In my view, while the court essentially bases its determination on the undeniable, but impertinent, conclusions that the appellant is not a good mother and that S.R.S.'s 'best interests' accordingly lie without her (even though this means he will have no mother at all but the HRS), the majority fails to demonstrate that the appellant has forfeited her parental interests under the statutory law of Florida -- which, I will permit myself to say, is reflective of the law of nature which binds parents and their children. My views in this regard are summarized and far better expressed in a series of opinions on this issue by Judge Cowart. See Lett v. Department of Health & Rehabilitative Servs., 547 So.2d 328, 330 (Fla. 5th DCA 1989) (Cowart, J., dissenting); Manuel v. Department of Health & Rehabilitative Servs., 537 So.2d 1022, 1024 (Fla. 5th DCA 1988) (Cowart, J., dissenting); Gunter v. Department of Health & Rehabilitative Servs., 531 So.2d 345, 345 (Fla. 5th DCA 1988) (Cowart, J., dissenting); Fredrick v. Department of Health & Rehabilitative Servs., 523 So.2d 1164, 1167 (Fla. 5th DCA 1988)(Cowart, J., dissenting), review denied, 531 So.2d 1353 (Fla. 1988). Although these opinions are dissenting ones, they should not be. Applying them, I would reverse the judgment below.

And from S.D. v. Department of Children & Family Services, 805 So. 2d 10 (Fla. 3rd DCA 2001), with some extra needed reform in bold:

SCHWARTZ, Chief Judge (dissenting).

In dissenting, it would be enough to rely upon the report of the guardian ad litem n3 which, in my view, is both factually and legally irrefutable...
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n3 Although we agree about little else in this case, I enthusiastically join in the court's praise of Greer Davis Wallace, the guardian ad litem, who truly--and uniquely in my appellate experience--actually represented the interests of her ward, rather than acting as an adjunct of the Department of Children and Families. Compare Simms v. State Dep't of Health & Rehabilitative Servs., 641 So. 2d 957 (Fla. 3d DCA 1994), review denied, 649 So. 2d 870 (Fla. 1994); see also Attorney Ad Litem for D.K. v. Parents of D.K., 780 So. 2d 301 (Fla. 4th DCA 2001) (guardian ad litem representing children in resisting psychological evaluation).
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In my view, the decision to the contrary of all of this subverts the interests of both the human beings with whom we are supposed to be concerned. On the one hand, far from a result which least interferes with the mother's 'rights' to her child, as the law requires, the court destroys them entirely. On the other, and far more importantly, it likewise destroys the child's right to his own mother's care and companionship. I cannot and will never understand how L.R.'s interests are served by substituting the Department of Children and Families of the State of Florida for and as his own mother. ...

Thus, all that has happened is to punish the mother for her sadly self-destructive conduct and, more precisely, for her perceived misconduct in insisting on having children in her situation at all. n5 In the absence of any mistreatment of the child himself, however, this type of child-decision-making by character-assessment is just what we are not permitted to do. n6 [citations omitted by me]
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n5 Thus, the Department's lawyer argued before us that S.D. did not deserve to be a mother and that she wanted the benefits of parenthood without accepting the responsibilities. I do not think that a state agency should be heard to make an argument like this one.
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n6 To do so in this case is particularly tragic and ironic because we exacerbate the consequences of a child being born with so little of his mother by depriving him of her altogether."


Lastly, for all here, and not simply nebraska, by way of the response to that certain cross-over bar exam question, here re, why "no" to homosexual marriage, well, as the good Chief Judge so aptly put it, such a concept is philosophically and biologically impossible. Since we call wife, mom, and husband, dad. And for the religion bashers among us, it is indeed for that reason that a man [human with testicles] leaves his father and mother and is joined with his wife [human with ovaries], and the two, via the male and female gamete, shall become for flesh one, the child now subject to the exercise of what the state calls "foster custody". And no need for any Divine inspiration here, as our biology is what is and makes its own statement in this regard, and male and male, and female and female, are no more rational than us pretending that Maria Caso is not S.R.S's mother [and never mind the notion that it is entirely settled that the establishment and continuance of the parent-child relationship is the most fundamental right a child possesses, to be equated in importance with personal liberty and the most basic constitutional rights; see above statement of the same and also, Carla H. v. Tim R. (In Re D.J.), 268 Neb. 239, 246, 682 N.W.2d 238, 244-245 (2004); Hall v. Lalli, 194 Ariz. 54, 58-59, 977 P.2d 776, 780-781 (1999); Ex Parte Martin, 565 So.2d 1, 3 (Ala. 1989); Commonwealth ex rel. Gray v. Johnson, 7 Va.App. 614, 620, 376 S.E.2d 787, 791 (1989); Ruddock v. Ohls, 91 Cal.App.3d 271, 277-278, 154 Cal.Rptr. 87, 91 (1979)].