Gazette opinion: Federal rules foster state care challenge

Gazette opinion: Federal rules foster state care challenge

Montana's foster care program has run short of money to cover care of
children removed from their parents' homes because of
abuse or neglect.

As a result, $1.7 million in state funds has been shifted into the
foster care program this year and the program will try to close a
$300,000 funding gap by eliminating allowances for respite care and
reducing children's clothing allowances.

With the cuts, the basic payment of $15 to $18 a day isn't being
touched, according to Gail Gray, director of the Montana Department
of Public Health and Human Services. "We protected what foster care
parents told us to protect," Gray said.


Committed families

"Foster families will be tightening their belts," said Melody Blendu,
a foster parent for nine years and president of the Yellowstone
Valley Foster Parent Adoptive Association. "They will ride this out
and wait to see better times. Our foster families are very
committed. They really pull together, they rally. I don't think we'll
lose families over this."

Because of changes in federal regulations and the federal government's
stricter application of its rules, fewer Montana foster care
children qualify for federal funding. The Montana Department of Public
Health and Human Services started the biennium with a
budget that assumed that the federal government would cover 60 percent
of the children in Montana foster care. Last month, only 40
percent of the children in Montana foster care were deemed eligible
for this federal program for impoverished children.

The rules that have made some Montana foster care cases ineligible for
federal reimbursement include those in homes that haven't
yet been fully licensed. Gray says all the foster homes used by the
state are safe, but some are in the process of completing
licensure. For example, if the state places foster children with a
relative who isn't already a licensed foster parent, it will take 60
to 90
days to complete the training and other licensure requirements. In the
meantime, the state keeps the children in the relative's home
because the placement is in the childrens' best interest.


Court requirements

Another stumbling block is a federal requirement that each foster care
child have a permanency hearing in court within 12 months and
that the court's finding must include language recently specified by
federal regulators. The timing is a challenge in busy courts that
must protect children as well as the rights of parents. The verbiage
problem seems to be a matter of getting the word out to all courts
all over the state.

Other states are in similar situations with their latest federal
foster care audits, Gray said. In Montana, the cuts in respite care
and
clothing allowance take the foster families back a couple of years
when similar cuts were made during the state budget crisis. The
allowances were then restored and now are being taken away again.

Next year, the federal auditors will be back. And then they won't just
be pulling funds from the cases they find out of compliance. The
feds will extrapolate the audit findings to cut funds from a
percentage of all Montana foster care children. Instead of hundreds of
thousands of dollars, millions will be at risk.

DPHHS must work hard within the agency and with the court system to
make sure it gets all the federal foster care reimbursement
possible. It appears that the Legislature and Gov.-elect Brian
Schweitzer will have to consider increasing state support for foster
care.

We join Blendu in urging concerned citizens to talk to their
legislators and congressional delegation about foster care. Over time,
Blendu worries, the cutbacks may mean that children "will have to
reach higher levels of crisis" before the state can step in because
there won't be money to take care of all the children. Society doesn't
benefit from taking money away from the necessary care of
abused and neglected children.
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