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An independent study on foster care in Michigan was conducted, and I’m sorry to say the results are pretty dismal. A great disservice is being done to these kids.
Here are some of the statistics:
• When children were moved to unlicensed relatives safety checks are only done 27% of the time, and criminal background checks along with sex offender and child abuse checks were not done about 35% of the time.
• 31% of the time, caseworkers did not make face to face contact within thirty days of a child being placed in a new home.
• Children were moved three or more times in 41% of the cases.
• It took social services an average of seventy-two days to notify adoption agencies that a child was free for adoption after a termination of parental rights. It is supposed to be done within fourteen days.
• Sibling placements only happened about 35% of the time.
• As for required physical and dental exams, the physical exams were not completed on time 23% of the time, and dental exams not completed on time 51% of the time.
Some of these statistics are more frightening than others.
The physical and dental exams are not a huge red flag for me. I have been on the receiving end of scrambling to get exams completed within the time period. Whenever Sammy has a new placement we have to check these, and it can be difficult. Combine that with foster parents having to go to a provider that accepts medical assistance, and getting an appointment can be difficult.
Sibling placements, while ideal in the perfect world are not always feasible during placement, and in some cases it’s better for the child to not be placed with siblings. I know in Sammy’s case and Kory’s case, it was better for them to not be with siblings because of the fighting. There was physical aggression that made it necessary to separate the kids.
I’m not terribly concerned about the delay in notifying agencies that a child was free for adoption. In some cases a child needs to be moved to a pre-adoptive home very quickly, but in most cases they can remain in the foster home. Yes, I would like to see that time frame made shorter, but I know that social workers are over worked as it is.
The statistic on children being moved surprises me. I actually expected it to be much higher than that. The kids that I have dealt with have been moved more often than that.
Now there is the meat of the issue and the unacceptable of the statistics. Not doing background checks and not having face to face visits should not be that high. Social services is supposed to keep kids safe, not placed them in homes that haven’t been checked, then not see these kids in person.
I understand that there is sometimes an urgency in placing a child, but there are receiving homes that have had background checks and safety checks done that can help until a family member can be checked.
If we can’t count on social services to protect our kids, who can we count on?
I wonder if studies like these will be conducted in other states and what the results would be? Maybe this study will make other social services agencies pay attention.
Our safety check was done an hour after our meeting to discuss the placement of the child. And I brought in a copy of my records check (I have one on hand because of work) and a verbal one was ran on my husband. We were thoroughly checked out before they moved him and they were in a hurry because of the situation he was in. But I really would not have had it any other way. I am disappointed to here that the social workers did not have face to face contact because you can say anything over the phone.
The lack of face to face contact with case worker does not surprise me.
(I don’t live in MI) I’ve had 2 children placed with me, stayed for 2 months, and moved to kinship placement all without ever meeting the case worker. It was frustrating!
I do live in MI. I think it really depends on the worker. I’ve had workers drop everything to check on a child for no other reason than I had reported they were having alot of issues at school. I’ve had other workers not return phone calls for days when something VERY SERIOUS was happening. There was an instance in the past year where a sibling should have been placed in my home and wasn’t for no other reason that a bio-relative showed up at the office and they thought it would be easier to place the baby with them since they were already there. They are constantly losing adoption workers and many people I know have waited on average 15 mos. to complete an adoption (where there were no appeals). Our last adoption took 20 months, we went through 3 workers and they kept springing things on us right up until the last minute that they forgot we needed. It took over 6 mos. to get from TPR until the adoption worker initially came to our home (they were foster kids so they were already living with us, but still…). Yeah, there are many reforms that would benefit these kids, but that’s pretty true everywhere.
There is no good or decent reason why adoption in this country should take the same length of time as it takes to get a family if you are an orphan in Guatemala, China, or the far side of the moon. Just utterly unacceptable. — Rachel
It took our worker 4 months to photo copy our daughters file and take it across the hall to the adoption unit. I finally called the supervisor and volunteered my services. It was done the following week. As far as the face to face, workers here in Michigan have an average case load of 35 children. If you did face to face each month, that is 35 hours, plus driving to and from, so one week is gone in a month. Then there is supervising visits for an hour each week per child. Court hearings every 3 months per child averaging 2 hours per court hearing with an additional 4 hours of paperwork per child, per court hearing. Enter payments and medicaid. Contact for each child includes a mother and father, a foster mom and dad, a guardian ad lidem for the child, attorneys for both parents, and the school. As you can see, with large caseloads there just are not enough hours in a month to do it all as it should be done and it is getting worse as they continue to cut budgets and employees and increase caseloads.
As a former elementary teacher, I know how daunting it can be to have 20-25 third graders and their paperwork to keep up with along with parent concerns, principal, counselor, therapist (my last year teaching over 50% of the kids in my class had a therapist that came to the school to see them once a week….a sign of the times), etc.
As a foster parent, I know that the case loads are too much for the workers. However, it isn’t about them. It is about the kids and if the reform needs to start with retaining more case workers, then do so. Because for every caseworker that they do not add, they lose that same number in foster parents.
They complain that they can’t keep good foster parents and I am sure the same can be said for not keeping good social service workers.
Teachers and social workers, neither one, are given the respect and pay they deserve. When they do, things will start to reform. Til then, it isn’t going to happen.
Kim