Showing posts with label kentucky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kentucky. Show all posts
Saturday, December 16, 2006
More on KY's quick-trigger adoptions
Definition of beaurocracy: An administrative system in which the need or inclination to follow rigid or complex procedures impedes effective action; e.g. innovative ideas that get bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy.
As mentioned in previous blog entries, Kentucky social workers have alleged that the Cabinet inappropriately removes children from their homes and expedites state adoptions, motivated by federal funding, e.g. women who enter homless shelters due to domestic violence in Kentucky lose custody of their children.
Complaints have been levied by Kentucky Youth Advocates and the National Institute on Children, Youth and Families.
A 12-member adoption panel, chaired by Cabinet for Health and Family Services Commissioner Mark D. Birdwhistell... can you see a conflict of interest here? I can... has reviewed the process and practices leading to termination of parental rights and adoption in Kentucky's child welfare system.
Their goal was to identify areas of improvement and propose legislation for the 2007 General Assembly. Basically, there needs to be fairness and consistency in custody termination.
What proposals have they made?
1.) Take more efforts to locate family members (such as the biological father) before putting child up for adoption; something that is not being done now
2.) Give parents an attorney and let them know that their child's custody is at stake
3.) Give court-appointed attorneys and guardians ad litem a raise (this initiative has been unsuccessfully suggested in 10 other statewide panels over the past 30 years)
4.) Require that family judges and attorneys attend training specifically about foster care and custodial termination (I wholeheartedly agree that this training shold be mandated).
All of these improvements will need to be approved by the General Assembly. If they are not approved, they are basically 'dead in the water.'
Definition of 'dead in the water:' Not going anywhere or making any progress, e.g. The crippled ship was dead in the water. With no leadership, the project was dead in the water.
Meanwhile, Kentucky State Auditor Crit Luallen has released a performance audit of the states adoption process from foster care. The Cabinet for Health and Family Services... again, can you see the conflict of interest, it's difficult for a beaurocracy to audit itself... issued a news release saying the audit would offer "general recommendations" for improving the adoption process.
Conversely, Crit Luallen's audit indicated that "Kentucky should make adoption a higher priority." Here is a direct quote: "The Commonwealth has an interest in making adoptions a favorable choice for Kentucky families." A financial interest, yes.
I don't want children to languish in foster care. If their biological parents cannot and will not care for them, I have no problem with putting them up for adoption.
What troubles me is the financial interest that the Cabinet has in facilitating speedy custodial terminations. The state receives a bonus of $4,000 for each adopted child, and more if the child has special needs. I will link to my previous blog entry on May 7th for your convenience.
Sources
Honeycutt-Spears, Valarie. Auditor to report on adoption, foster care practices today - Quick-trigger adoptions alleged. Lexington Herald-Leader, Dec. 14, 2006, City & Region pg. C4.
Honeycutt-Spears, Valarie. Panel wants Kentucky's adoption laws changed: Focuses on parents' rights. Lexington Herald-Leader, Dec. 15, 2006, City & Region pg. C1.
As mentioned in previous blog entries, Kentucky social workers have alleged that the Cabinet inappropriately removes children from their homes and expedites state adoptions, motivated by federal funding, e.g. women who enter homless shelters due to domestic violence in Kentucky lose custody of their children.
Complaints have been levied by Kentucky Youth Advocates and the National Institute on Children, Youth and Families.
A 12-member adoption panel, chaired by Cabinet for Health and Family Services Commissioner Mark D. Birdwhistell... can you see a conflict of interest here? I can... has reviewed the process and practices leading to termination of parental rights and adoption in Kentucky's child welfare system.
Their goal was to identify areas of improvement and propose legislation for the 2007 General Assembly. Basically, there needs to be fairness and consistency in custody termination.
What proposals have they made?
1.) Take more efforts to locate family members (such as the biological father) before putting child up for adoption; something that is not being done now
2.) Give parents an attorney and let them know that their child's custody is at stake
3.) Give court-appointed attorneys and guardians ad litem a raise (this initiative has been unsuccessfully suggested in 10 other statewide panels over the past 30 years)
4.) Require that family judges and attorneys attend training specifically about foster care and custodial termination (I wholeheartedly agree that this training shold be mandated).
All of these improvements will need to be approved by the General Assembly. If they are not approved, they are basically 'dead in the water.'
Definition of 'dead in the water:' Not going anywhere or making any progress, e.g. The crippled ship was dead in the water. With no leadership, the project was dead in the water.
Meanwhile, Kentucky State Auditor Crit Luallen has released a performance audit of the states adoption process from foster care. The Cabinet for Health and Family Services... again, can you see the conflict of interest, it's difficult for a beaurocracy to audit itself... issued a news release saying the audit would offer "general recommendations" for improving the adoption process.
Conversely, Crit Luallen's audit indicated that "Kentucky should make adoption a higher priority." Here is a direct quote: "The Commonwealth has an interest in making adoptions a favorable choice for Kentucky families." A financial interest, yes.
I don't want children to languish in foster care. If their biological parents cannot and will not care for them, I have no problem with putting them up for adoption.
What troubles me is the financial interest that the Cabinet has in facilitating speedy custodial terminations. The state receives a bonus of $4,000 for each adopted child, and more if the child has special needs. I will link to my previous blog entry on May 7th for your convenience.
Sources
Honeycutt-Spears, Valarie. Auditor to report on adoption, foster care practices today - Quick-trigger adoptions alleged. Lexington Herald-Leader, Dec. 14, 2006, City & Region pg. C4.
Honeycutt-Spears, Valarie. Panel wants Kentucky's adoption laws changed: Focuses on parents' rights. Lexington Herald-Leader, Dec. 15, 2006, City & Region pg. C1.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Oh, Kentucky, when will you ever learn?
To the staff in the Cabinet for Health and Family Services,
You are just not getting it. Please let me spell this out to you in the simplest of terms.
Adoption = good.
Separating children from their biological families unnecessarily = bad.
This is not just about your quotas. Yes, we all know that Kentucky is under pressure to increase the number of children in adoption. We know that your goal is to increase the number of adoptions each year.
And, we also know that financial incentives are involved. After the number of statewide adoptions increased from 384 in 1999 to 902 in 2005, Kentucky received $1 million in bonus money.
And yet, putting as many babies as possible on the fast track to adoption isn't the point.
Step back for a moment and think about the purpose of adoption. Aren't we trying to avoid older children languishing for years in foster care? To keep foster teens from aging out of the system and facing the adult world completely on their own? I can't recall that getting babies and two-year-olds adopted has constituted a problem.
For a recent example, look at two-year-old Dae'Kuavion Perry. His mother died before his father could establish paternity. His father wants him. His aunt wants him.
You want to give Dae'Kuavion to strangers. Why? Because his father made a mistake four years ago and has been clean ever since? Court records and drug tests prove that father Tim Mabson has made every effort to turn his life around.
If you won't give Dae'Kuavion to his father, why not to his aunt? His aunt is a foster mother. She has adopted two foster children. How could she not be qualified to provide foster care to her own nephew?
Sources
Kentucky. Children's Voice. Washington: Sept. / Oct. 2006, Vol. 15, Issue 5, pg. 10.
Not family-friendly: State too quick to separate child from relatives. Lexington Herald-Leader, Editorial, Oct. 3, 2006.
You are just not getting it. Please let me spell this out to you in the simplest of terms.
Adoption = good.
Separating children from their biological families unnecessarily = bad.
This is not just about your quotas. Yes, we all know that Kentucky is under pressure to increase the number of children in adoption. We know that your goal is to increase the number of adoptions each year.
And, we also know that financial incentives are involved. After the number of statewide adoptions increased from 384 in 1999 to 902 in 2005, Kentucky received $1 million in bonus money.
And yet, putting as many babies as possible on the fast track to adoption isn't the point.
Step back for a moment and think about the purpose of adoption. Aren't we trying to avoid older children languishing for years in foster care? To keep foster teens from aging out of the system and facing the adult world completely on their own? I can't recall that getting babies and two-year-olds adopted has constituted a problem.
For a recent example, look at two-year-old Dae'Kuavion Perry. His mother died before his father could establish paternity. His father wants him. His aunt wants him.
You want to give Dae'Kuavion to strangers. Why? Because his father made a mistake four years ago and has been clean ever since? Court records and drug tests prove that father Tim Mabson has made every effort to turn his life around.
If you won't give Dae'Kuavion to his father, why not to his aunt? His aunt is a foster mother. She has adopted two foster children. How could she not be qualified to provide foster care to her own nephew?
Sources
Kentucky. Children's Voice. Washington: Sept. / Oct. 2006, Vol. 15, Issue 5, pg. 10.
Not family-friendly: State too quick to separate child from relatives. Lexington Herald-Leader, Editorial, Oct. 3, 2006.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
From One Extreme to the Other
Quick to reunify or quick to sever custody? Is there no middle ground between these two extremes?
While some states and social services agencies drag their heels in terms of finding children a stable permanent home, it appears that Kentucky has gone in the opposite direction.
Financial incentives appear to be prompting hasty and unwise decisions that are not necessarily in the best interests of the child.
From 384 in 1999 to 902 in 2005, the number of children moved from state foster care to adoption in Kentucky has steadily increased.
This increase has resulted in $1 million in bonus money which Kentucky received in 2004. The state receives a bonus of $4,000 for each adopted child, and more if the child has special needs.
A whistleblower lawsuit claims that the Cabinet stands to lose millions of dollars if it fails to meet federal time frames. Veteran state social workers have reported being pressured to terminate parental rights.
The bottom line in the parent rights debate:
1.) It's important to prevent children from languishing in foster care.
As my recent blogs will attest, ongoing abuse and repeated abandonment by a parent of their biological children should lead to termination of parental rights -- not reunification.
2.) It is also important to avoid "quick trigger" adoptions if there is not enough evidence to justify the removal.
Kentucky political agenda
- 225 complaints were filed on an anonymous hotline, which was set up by child-protection workers who were concerned about the situation, but fearful of violating confidentiality laws by making their concerns public.
-Social workers in Hardin County reported that supervisors picked adoptive families based on how those families could benefit the Cabinet or because supervisors thought the families were owed a favor.
-Social workers from other parts of the state said supervisors forced them to terminate custody prematurely in order to raise the number of adoptions of foster children.
"Over-correcting the problem"
-In 1999, federal authorities found Kentucky out of compliance with the Adoption and Safe Families Act. Children were languishing in foster care.
-By 2003, the problem still had not been sufficiently corrected and Kentucky faced $1.7 million in fines if the situation didn't improve.
Unsafe adoptive homes
Here's a quote that really disturbs me: The attorney for former state social worker Pat Moore says Moore was fired because she criticized her supervisors for insisting that two foster children be placed with an adoptive family in Verona in Boone County even thought the family, among other problems, allowed a man described in court documents as a pedophile convicted of sex crimes to be around the children.
In her whistleblower suit, Moore said the Cabinet was forcing the adoption to keep its numbers high. Court records show that Cabinet supervisors pushed for the adoption even though those same supervisors acknowledged that the prospective adoptive home should not have been approved and a private foster care agency deemed the home unfit.
According to a memo from Cabinet officials that is included in the lawsuit file, there had been a half-dozen complaints about the prospective adoptive parents, which the Cabinet never substantiated.
In a September 2004 court petition to remove the children from the home, Thomas W. Beiting, a court-appointed guardian, told a judge that both parents had criminal records. Beiting also noted that a son living in the home had been convicted of multiple felonies, including drug convictions, and that the foster mother's brother, a convicted child abuser, had been in the home around the foster children.
"It is obvious that this home probably should have never been approved," said a July 2004 report that summarized a meeting between three regional supervisors and was included in the court file.
But the supervisors went on to push for the adoption. "It is our recommendation that we proceed quickly with the adoption, while building in the greatest safety net as possible," the report said (Foster adoption push).
Where's the logic? To take a child from an unsafe home and place that child with a secure adoptive family - that I can respect and understand.
But to try to use children to repay favors? To place them in adoptive homes that are unsafe? That child doesn't need a safety net. He or she needs a safer initial placement.
Equally disturbing is this quote from a second article: Domestic violence shelter directors say the state is increasingly taking children away from women who have done nothing more than move to a shelter to escape a violent home...Some Cabinet workers have been telling women that shelters aren't an appropriate atmosphere for children (Mothers in domestic violence shelters).
Here's the scenario: Mother is in an abusive situation. She leaves, taking the child with her. That's motherly love. Is she protecting the child? Yes. Caring for the child? Yes. Making sure that the child is sheltered, fed and nurtured? Apparently so. She certainly didn't abandon the child by leaving him or her behind.
So, I would ask the Cabinet to give me a good, strong reason why such a mother might lose parental custody. Is the mother neglectful? Addicted to drugs? Abusive? Or has she just fallen on a period of hard luck, and all she needs is some support in order to pull her life back together?
These are very important distinctions to make before coming to custodial decisions.
Sources: Foster child adoption push investigated: State unjstly terminates parental rights for federal money. By Valarie Honeycutt Spears, Herald-Leader staff writer.
Mothers in domestic violence shelters face losing their children. By Valarie Honeycutt Spears, Herald-Leader staff writer.
While some states and social services agencies drag their heels in terms of finding children a stable permanent home, it appears that Kentucky has gone in the opposite direction.
Financial incentives appear to be prompting hasty and unwise decisions that are not necessarily in the best interests of the child.
From 384 in 1999 to 902 in 2005, the number of children moved from state foster care to adoption in Kentucky has steadily increased.
This increase has resulted in $1 million in bonus money which Kentucky received in 2004. The state receives a bonus of $4,000 for each adopted child, and more if the child has special needs.
A whistleblower lawsuit claims that the Cabinet stands to lose millions of dollars if it fails to meet federal time frames. Veteran state social workers have reported being pressured to terminate parental rights.
The bottom line in the parent rights debate:
1.) It's important to prevent children from languishing in foster care.
As my recent blogs will attest, ongoing abuse and repeated abandonment by a parent of their biological children should lead to termination of parental rights -- not reunification.
2.) It is also important to avoid "quick trigger" adoptions if there is not enough evidence to justify the removal.
Kentucky political agenda
- 225 complaints were filed on an anonymous hotline, which was set up by child-protection workers who were concerned about the situation, but fearful of violating confidentiality laws by making their concerns public.
-Social workers in Hardin County reported that supervisors picked adoptive families based on how those families could benefit the Cabinet or because supervisors thought the families were owed a favor.
-Social workers from other parts of the state said supervisors forced them to terminate custody prematurely in order to raise the number of adoptions of foster children.
"Over-correcting the problem"
-In 1999, federal authorities found Kentucky out of compliance with the Adoption and Safe Families Act. Children were languishing in foster care.
-By 2003, the problem still had not been sufficiently corrected and Kentucky faced $1.7 million in fines if the situation didn't improve.
Unsafe adoptive homes
Here's a quote that really disturbs me: The attorney for former state social worker Pat Moore says Moore was fired because she criticized her supervisors for insisting that two foster children be placed with an adoptive family in Verona in Boone County even thought the family, among other problems, allowed a man described in court documents as a pedophile convicted of sex crimes to be around the children.
In her whistleblower suit, Moore said the Cabinet was forcing the adoption to keep its numbers high. Court records show that Cabinet supervisors pushed for the adoption even though those same supervisors acknowledged that the prospective adoptive home should not have been approved and a private foster care agency deemed the home unfit.
According to a memo from Cabinet officials that is included in the lawsuit file, there had been a half-dozen complaints about the prospective adoptive parents, which the Cabinet never substantiated.
In a September 2004 court petition to remove the children from the home, Thomas W. Beiting, a court-appointed guardian, told a judge that both parents had criminal records. Beiting also noted that a son living in the home had been convicted of multiple felonies, including drug convictions, and that the foster mother's brother, a convicted child abuser, had been in the home around the foster children.
"It is obvious that this home probably should have never been approved," said a July 2004 report that summarized a meeting between three regional supervisors and was included in the court file.
But the supervisors went on to push for the adoption. "It is our recommendation that we proceed quickly with the adoption, while building in the greatest safety net as possible," the report said (Foster adoption push).
Where's the logic? To take a child from an unsafe home and place that child with a secure adoptive family - that I can respect and understand.
But to try to use children to repay favors? To place them in adoptive homes that are unsafe? That child doesn't need a safety net. He or she needs a safer initial placement.
Equally disturbing is this quote from a second article: Domestic violence shelter directors say the state is increasingly taking children away from women who have done nothing more than move to a shelter to escape a violent home...Some Cabinet workers have been telling women that shelters aren't an appropriate atmosphere for children (Mothers in domestic violence shelters).
Here's the scenario: Mother is in an abusive situation. She leaves, taking the child with her. That's motherly love. Is she protecting the child? Yes. Caring for the child? Yes. Making sure that the child is sheltered, fed and nurtured? Apparently so. She certainly didn't abandon the child by leaving him or her behind.
So, I would ask the Cabinet to give me a good, strong reason why such a mother might lose parental custody. Is the mother neglectful? Addicted to drugs? Abusive? Or has she just fallen on a period of hard luck, and all she needs is some support in order to pull her life back together?
These are very important distinctions to make before coming to custodial decisions.
Sources: Foster child adoption push investigated: State unjstly terminates parental rights for federal money. By Valarie Honeycutt Spears, Herald-Leader staff writer.
Mothers in domestic violence shelters face losing their children. By Valarie Honeycutt Spears, Herald-Leader staff writer.
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