By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service
Nov. 30, 2009
TOPEKA — Several members of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Children’s Issues said they’re convinced the state’s foster care system is broken.
“The system is not working,” Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, said during the committee hearing Monday.
“I can’t go to the grocery store or buy gas or go out in public any more without someone telling me stories about the system and what’s wrong with it,” said Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, D-Wichita.
“In the five years I’ve been in the Legislature, the number and the intensity of the complaints I have received on this has increased,” said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Mike Kiegerl, R-Olathe.
Rep. Bill Otto, R-LeRoy, said he couldn’t help wondering if the 1996 decision to privatize most the state’s foster care responsibilities was a mistake.
“I can’t help but think we were in a better situation when it was under you,” Otto said, directing his comment to Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services Secretary Don Jordan.
Jordan assured the committee that while the system is far from perfect, federal surveys have found it to be one of the best in the nation.
He told Otto the system was privatized because then-Gov. Bill Graves and most legislators were convinced that private contractors would do a better job than SRS, which, at the time, was being sued for failing to meet the needs of the children in its care.
Committee members spent the next three hours listening to parents and grandparents describe how their children and grandchildren had been put in foster care and how, in most cases, they hadn’t been able to regain custody.
Few were able to explain why they had lost custody in the first place, saying they hadn’t been given a clear explanation.
Most of the grandparents said they had been denied custody because they were too old.
Most of the parents blamed their troubles on former spouses who, they alleged, had sexually or physically abused their children. None of those who spoke were able to explain why they, too, had been found to be unfit for parenting.
No one on the committee asked any of the speakers to sign confidentiality waivers that would allow SRS officials to discuss their cases.
Jordan said he sympathized with those who have become entangled in the system but asked legislators to realize that in many cases, when parents and grandparents say they can’t find anyone who will explain the decision-making process, they’re actually saying they haven’t been able to find someone who agrees with them.
Court documents, Jordan said, almost always make it clear why a child was removed from a home.
Several parents said they and their children had little or no legal representation during custody proceedings.
One parent’s account of a courtroom experience prompted Otto to say: “The five-minute rule appears to be pretty standard; by that I mean the GAL (Guardian Ad Litum attorney) doesn’t see the children until five minutes before the hearing starts.”
Jordan did not dispute the criticism. A GAL or Guardian Ad Litum attorney is appointed to represent the interests of the child in cases where the state moves to take custody.
“This is an area that (the state) ought to be spending a lot more money on,” he said. “GALs are not paid nearly enough to spend as much time on these cases as they should.”
The attorneys, he said, are appointed and paid by the courts, not by SRS.
Jordan said he knew of cases in which parents later disputed facts they had “stipulated to” in court.
“When you ask them why they would do that, they say their (court-appointed) attorney told them not to contest anything because they didn’t want to do anything to make the judge mad,” he said.
But Jordan also told the lawmakers that SRS is bound by federal confidentiality laws that prevent the agency in most cases from sharing details that could paint a better picture of how cases were handled.
“Oftentimes, what we can’t tell you would make us look better,” he said.
Faust-Goudeau said despite that explanation she remained frustrated that parents and grandparents might not have a clear understanding why their children and grandchildren were in custody.
“Everybody seems to be passing the buck,” she said.
The committee reconvenes Tuesday.
http://www.khi.org/news/2009/nov/30/parents-grandparents-criticize-foster-care-system/
No comments:
Post a Comment