Instability persists in foster care system, Fewer kids have lengthystays, but abuse rose in year's 1st half....

Instability persists in foster care system
Fewer kids have lengthy stays, but abuse rose in year's 1st half
By SARAH CARR

Posted: Aug. 29, 2007

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=654744

The 2-year-old boy was living in a home with no beds, garbage 6 inches
deep on some floors and surfaces and mold growing from partially filled
baby bottles when police and social workers found him in December.

That month, a judge put the boy and his siblings in foster care. But
even after the boy left the chaos of his home, he faced some chaos in
the system.

Over the last eight months, the boy, now 3, has moved at least four
times, records show. One foster mother dropped him and a sibling back at
the state-run Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare offices within hours of
receiving them.

The foster care system in Milwaukee County has made progress in some
areas since the 2002 settlement of a federal lawsuit alleging it
routinely failed to protect children. In particular, officials have
taken steps to ensure that children do not languish in foster care for
several years. But a report released Wednesday shows that children's
time in the system - while it may be shorter on average - is just as
unstable and rocky as it was four years ago, according to some key
measurements.

Most notably, the number of cases of maltreatment of children in the
system shot up over the first half of this year. From January through
June, the bureau reported 16 confirmed cases of maltreatment of children
in the foster care system, up from only one confirmed case in the first
half of 2006 (the plaintiffs in the 2002 lawsuit have challenged the
number of confirmed cases from 2006).

http://www.jsonline.com/multimedia/g...083007_big.gif


This year's cases, which varied in severity, included a teenager with a
seizure disorder who died in her sleep at Willowglen Academy; a
treatment foster-care provider who gave a child "whoopings" with a belt
or extension cords when he had a bad day at school; and a treatment
provider who locked a child in the home - without access to a phone or
exit - for eight hours while that parent left the county. Treatment
foster parents get paid considerably more than regular ones.

In 2006, there were six confirmed cases of maltreatment over the course
of the entire year. Preliminary figures for last month alone put the
number at nine cases.

Moreover, one-quarter of children who were in the system in the first
six months of 2007 had had four or more foster care placements during
their time in the system. That's a statistic that has barely budged,
even after years of monitoring. At least one child lived in 39 different
placements. And of those children who entered foster care in the first
six months of the year, 12% had been in foster care before. This means
dozens of children are bouncing from their homes to foster care, back
home and back to foster care, within a relatively short period.

Fueling the problems is a grave shortage of foster homes.

"The bureau's main challenge is its continuing lack of safe placements
for abused and neglected children," said Eric Thompson, senior staff
attorney with Children's Rights, the New York-based advocacy group that
brought the lawsuit. "That leads to poor placement choices. It leads to
poor licensing decisions. It leads to abuse and neglect in foster-care
placements and the inevitable shuffling of children from one inadequate,
inappropriate placement to another."

Over the last six years, the number of licensed foster homes in the
county has dropped from 2,800 to about 620.

Denise Revels Robinson, director of the bureau, noted that foster
placement stability "has really not been acceptable to any of us in
terms of the number of times a child is having to move." As to the rise
over the last year in confirmed cases of maltreatment, she said:
"Clearly we need to do better to protect the children in our care."
Some success

In recent years, the bureau has made progress in several areas,
particularly in making sure children are less likely to remain in foster
care for several years at a time. They've made steady gains on speeding
up the adoption process and moving to terminate parental rights or
reunite children with their birth parents.

For example, 70% of children reunited with their parents in the first
six months of the year had been in foster care for less than 12 months,
as opposed to 44% for the same period of 2003.

Thompson noted that while, historically, many children languished in
foster care for "six, seven, eight years - that's changed."

One of the keys, Thompson and others say, is to ensure that the bureau,
and the broader community, do not backslide when it comes treatment
children receive in the system.

The younger sister of the 3-year-old boy mentioned at the start of this
story died in June while in foster care. She had been placed in a foster
home in Waukesha County. The cause of death was undetermined, according
to that county's Office of the Medical Examiner, although there were no
reports of abuse or neglect leading up to the death.

This summer, the boy moved into the home of a grandmother of one of his
siblings.

But the turmoil clearly took its toll. In an end-of-the-year evaluation
of his progress in preschool, Milwaukee Public Schools officials wrote
that the boy was "frustrated because neither the examiner nor his foster
mother understood much of what he said, even though he repeated what he
said a couple of times."

"He also repeated 'mama' and 'daddy' frequently, sometimes in a mournful
way like he was asking for . . . their presence."



CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NSA / CIA
WIRETAPPING PROGRAM....

CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.

every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com

Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS

*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*

Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5

Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.


CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...


BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...