Where advocates want to see changes
Where advocates want to see changes
January 30, 2007
JACK KRESNAK
Children's Rights, a New York-based advocacy group, is suing Michigan's child welfare system. Marcia Robinson Lowry, the organization's executive director, cites these areas for which change is needed:
• Accountability: Michigan has little accurate data about how children are being cared for in foster care and no system for evaluating the quality of services and decision-making, Children's Rights contends. Better data management systems and quality assurance functions were put in place under court-ordered reforms in Missouri, Connecticut, Tennessee and the District of Columbia. If a judge orders changes in Michigan, the state would have to figure out how to comply -- and how to pay for them.
• Caseloads: Most of the state's public and private foster-care and adoption caseworkers are carrying caseloads higher than the national standard. Widely accepted standards from the Child Welfare League of America call for a caseload ratio no bigger than 15 to 1 for foster-care workers and 12 to 1 for adoption workers. In Michigan, caseloads for such workers range from 20 to 1 to 29 to 1.
• The backlog of legal orphans: Children's Rights says 6,200 Michigan children are so-called legal orphans because courts terminated their parents' rights. These children are not being adopted fast enough. Comprehensive plans to speed up the process in other states have worked. In New Mexico and Washington, D.C., for example, older children and larger sibling groups have been placed in adoptive homes by offering financial incentives to relatives or unrelated adults.
• Licensing of relatives as caregivers: Forty percent of Michigan's foster children are placed with relatives, most of whom are in middle- or low-income brackets. Most are not licensed for foster care. But if more relatives could become licensed easily, the children would receive better benefits, such as a clothing allowance, and caregivers would get monthly payments to help with expenses. Now, relatives can be barred from becoming caregivers for many reasons, including having a home that is too small and lacking transportation.
• Qualifications and training: Because of early retirements in the late 1990s, the staff of the Department of Human Services suffers from a lack of experience and depth of knowledge in its ranks. Other states have successfully implemented training and accreditation programs. Money for training has been cut in Michigan.