Press Conference for Foster Youth Bill of Rights

State Senators Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo) and Tina Maharath (D-Canal Winchester) held a press conference on Friday, Oct. 22, 2021 at 10 am to introduce Senate Bill 254, to codify the Foster Youth Bill of Rights in Ohio Revised Code.

Raven, Melinda, Ashley, Deanna and Lisa were honored to participate. Nikki and Cloe assisted in early morning preparation. Participants were quoted in the Hannah Report. 

Foster Care Alumni, Lawmakers Urge Foster Bill of Rights to Be Written into Law
Hannah Report, Oct, 22, 2021.

Former foster youth joined two Democratic senators Friday to advocate for codification of rights for children under state protection, to help them have a voice in setting the direction of their own lives and give them meaningful recourse when facing mistreatment.

Sens. Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo) and Tina Maharath (D-Canal Winchester) introduced SB254 earlier this week; it was also referred to Senate Judiciary Committee this week. Fedor and Maharath -- the latter of whom spent time in foster care -- joined several advocates who experienced foster care themselves to press for action on the measure during a press conference Friday.

Maharath said the proposal would guarantee rights to be free from physical, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse, from discrimination, and to have privacy, belongings and access to communication, among other things.

A codified bill of rights for foster youth was among recommendations of the DeWine administration’s Children Services Transformation Advisory Council. (See The Hannah Report, 10/26/20.)

Fedor, who’s spent much of her legislative career focused on trafficking issues, said foster youth who are frequently moved around and crave attention and stability become targets of traffickers. 

Though they expressed support for the legislation, the former foster youth said the state needs also to create an independent ombudsman’s office for foster youth to ensure their rights are truly preserved.

Lisa Dickson, representing ACTION OHIO and the Ohio Youth Advisory Board, said from the founding of those foster youth organizations she’s observed the following three trends: grievances filed by youth generally sit unaddressed on someone’s desk; youth who call abuse hotlines are not taken seriously; and those who run away from abuse are often sent right back to the place they’re being abused. 

These situations make it “vitally important” that foster youth be informed of their rights, including whom to contact when those rights are violated, and that those complaints generate a meaningful response, she said. 

Melinda Juergens, now 30, described the abuse she experienced in her teen years at her fourth foster placement -- being made to stand with her arms outstretched for hours at a time, severe restrictions on food, orders not to sit down unless asleep, bathing or in the bathroom, and having to drink dish soap after being reported for cursing at school. “For a long time, I couldn’t even smell lemon dish soap without getting queasy,” she said. 

“It amounts to torture, and if I would have had that youth ombudsman office back then, my adoptive parents could have empowered me to go through and use my rights to report these foster parents with the youth ombudsman office, and I could have prevented [placement of] the seven other children they fostered after me,” she said. 

“I was in the same private foster care agency that Marcus Fiesel was in,” Juergens said, referencing the 2006 case of a three-year-old boy murdered by his foster mother. 

Fedor said after their remarks she’d seek an amendment to create an independent ombudsman office. 

Fedor said she would like to see the bill of rights get full hearings in both chambers as standalone legislation rather than attaching it to HB4 (Plummer-Manchester), other child welfare legislation that’s passed the House and is pending in Senate Judiciary, because she wants her colleagues to hear the youth voices behind the proposal.