Fix foster care system

Florida's foster care system often resembles a tax-financed carousel that perpetuates the pathology of misery it is supposed to break. No one can argue the state's good intentions in removing a child from a dysfunctional home. But neither can anyone argue the system works when a child gets bounced among dozens of homes and turned out on his or her 18th birthday without the basics for entering adulthood - a family to lean on, solid life skills and a childhood steeped in confidence and trust. A lawsuit brought against the state by Karen Gievers, a Tallahassee attorney and child welfare advocate, should move the state to end the practice of forcing children to pay for their parents' mistakes.

Gievers filed suit against the Florida Department of Children and Families and its nonprofit contractor in Hillsborough, saying both deprived a 17-year-old referred to as "Jacob Peters" of his rights and his childhood. Peters was placed in foster care at age 3 after his parents separated and his mother's boyfriend was accused of sexual molestation. He is still in foster care, 14 years and 45 different placements later. According to the suit, 60 children receiving care in Hillsborough have spent more than 10 years in the system. The pattern is all too familiar: Children placed in inappropriate homes overwhelm foster parents and end up spending their adolescence in treatment facilities and on psychiatric medications.

Gievers wants an immediate halt to the state placing children until those already in the system receive better foster care. She is right that more services should be available on the front end to avoid the need to remove a child in the first place. Counseling and training might be enough to keep some families together. She also is right that foster care should be short-term, and that the state needs to do a better job of recruiting and screening to place children where they make a good fit.

DCF Secretary Bob Butterworth has made the child welfare agency more open and accountable, and he deserves a chance to fix the foster program. He has proposed legislative and policy changes to recruit more foster parents and serve them better, by providing respite and other care. He also wants to spend more on life skills training so teenagers make a smoother transition into society once they leave the home. These steps would help. But it will take more assertive action to resolve the bigger problem - correcting the problems of the parent instead of removing the child. Butterworth and Gievers have a history of improving life for children in this state. They should use their creativity and good working relationship to change the warehousing nature of the foster system.

[Last modified January 30, 2008, 22:30:34]