The system must work for the children

St. Petersburg Times

Author: Janice Martin

It's the same every time. A child in the custody or under the observation of the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) dies. This time it was Albert Smith, 5, and he had his head crushed with a board wielded, so police charge, by his foster mother.

A sort of psychic growl of outrage emanates from our collective throats. We are horrified by the crime and deeply dismayed at the inability of HRS, the state agency charged with delivering all our social welfare benefits, to prevent it.

But after our disapproval, then what?

Rosa Lee Jones, the accused foster mother, will have her fate decided by the courts. The small memory of Albert Smith will fade.

But that won't change the fact that this morning about 8,500 other children will wake up in foster homes across Florida. They aren't there by choice. They had the misfortune to be born to parents who couldn't take care of them or abused them or left them to fend for themselves. One person I talked to called them ''Nobody's Kids.''

Foster parents open their homes to these kids, many of whom are damaged by the circumstances that led them there. Foster parents may get a 4-year-old who can't feed himself or a 12-year-old who pounds holes in the walls. They get kids who set fires or don't talk or run away or torture animals.

Still, the notion lingers that foster parents are wicked people who take children into their homes for gain. Hardly.

The state gives these parents expense money for the children - $233 a month for a child 11 or under, and $293 for a youngster 12 to 17.

That's for everything. Housing, food, clothing, transportation, recreation, extras. Not much when you consider that foster children come with the clothes on their back. Or that milk costs more than $2 a gallon. Or that a kid can go through a pair of sneakers in a couple of months. Or that a teen-ager can eat mountains of food.

And what about the foster care caseworkers, the ones who are supposed to make sure these things don't happen?

In Hillsborough County, they have caseloads of 30 to 40 foster children each. (The national standard is 20.) They're supposed to see each kid once a month, but they're lucky if that happens. They have to visit the kid's school, the foster home, the natural parents, arrange medical care for the kid, do paperwork, show up for court. And then there are the truants to deal with and runaways to find.

There's a lot of job turnover because the stress is high and pay is low. Starting salary is $328.77 a week if you have a college degree. The degree doesn't have to be in a behavioral science, like psychology, because they have to fill those jobs, and they can't be picky.

HRS isn't some sort of evil empire. People don't go into social work because they want to be bad guys.

And foster parents don't open their homes for money. They do it to help kids.

But the system is so overloaded, so short of staff and resources, that it always has more to handle than it can manage. After all, it can't hang out a ''No Vacancy'' sign.

So foster parents frequently wind up with more kids than they can really handle for longer periods than they can handle. They get no respite and they get little or no training in dealing with these kids' special difficulties.

Albert Smith shouldn't have died. In fact, he should have been born to a matched set of warm, loving parents willing and able to give him and his little brother a wonderful start on life.

In that world, we wouldn't need foster care. Or if we did, they'd never make a mistake.

But this is not a perfect world. And the fault doesn't just lie with HRS. It lies with us. This state's record on social services is shameful.

The Legislature is going to consider more money for foster care in the session that begins soon. Of course, foster kids don't have much clout at the state house.

But you might.