LAWMAKERS URGE NEW FOSTER CHILD SAFEGUARDS
STEVEN GOLDSMITH
Washington state should notify the biological parents of children in foster care when the children are prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs, a key House committee chairwoman said yesterday.
"These drugs just have a tremendous impact on these kids," said Rep. Suzette Cooke, a Republican from Kent who heads the Children and Family Services Committee.
Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle and vice chairwoman of the minority caucus, said it is urgent the state beef up safeguards governing prescription drug use by wards of the state.
"It shows that huge caseloads and poor medical monitoring are literally threatening the lives of foster children entrusted to state care," she said. "Let's save kids' lives."
The legislators made their remarks in response to a four-day series in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that showed that children in state foster care have experienced serious medical problems, and even death, from behavior-altering medications that flow from doctors to children with virtually no state oversight.
Department of Social and Health Services officials have said legislative changes aren't needed and that new policies are under review to deal with weaknesses in the system.
But Rep. Bill Backlund, an orthopedic surgeon and Republican from Redmond, said regulations alone are not enough. "We disagree with the bureaucrats that we don't need to have legislation," he said, adding that he leans toward notifying birth parents before their children are given the drugs.
Meanwhile, Gov. Gary Locke sent his chief of staff, Joe Dear, to meet with DSHS Secretary Lyle Quasim yesterday to discuss the medication issues raised in the series.
The Post-Intelligencer stories described the death of a 6-year-old foster child from prescription anti-depressants and the harmful side effects experienced by several others.
"It would be a concern to us anytime a child dies in this state," said Mary Lou Flynn, a spokeswoman for Locke. "He feels confident the chief of staff will get to the bottom of it."
Locke told child welfare advocates at a rally yesterday that he would fight to restore $39 million for foster-care improvements that had been cut by Republican budget writers.
"There were some really tough choices in my budget, but I put funding into children's services," Locke said.
Unlike many other states, Washington lacks any statewide guidelines on the use of psychotropic drugs in foster care, deferring entirely to the physicians who prescribe the drugs.
Dickerson said the lack of a thorough statewide record-keeping system and caseworker overloads - caseworkers may handle twice as many cases as the national standard - put foster children at risk of having drug side effects overlooked. She called for lawmakers to take a hard look at adding safeguards before legislators wrap up their work this spring.
Locke said improving children's services is crucial.
"As a new dad, I've had a deeper appreciation just how innocent and helpless and how totally dependent on adults young children are," Locke said of his 3-week-old daughter, Emily.
He is seeking legislative approval of $4 million for a statewide health "passport" system that would track health information on foster children. A pilot program already has been tested in South King County.
The governor also wants $8 million to hire 83 more social workers to cut caseloads, he said.