State foster care system faulted for being too slow

State foster care system faulted for being too slow

August 5, 2004, 1:44 AM EDT

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Connecticut's child-welfare system is too slow and
needs to work harder to find permanent homes for foster children, who
are waiting as long as four years to be adopted, a new report by a
federal court monitor says.

Court monitor D. Ray Sirry said abused and neglected children in
Connecticut are waiting twice as long as the federally recognized
standard of 24 months.











The report, released Wednesday, says the Department of Children and
Families is failing to adequately prepare or support new parents,
leading to an unacceptably large number of children who fail in their
new homes after being adopted, The Hartford Courant reported.

Sirry said DCF must focus on helping children who have been difficult
to adopt, instead of on children who are deemed readily adoptable.

Connecticut's practices are raising concerns about whether DCF is
committed to improving its practices or trying to improve its numbers
in an effort to meet federal goals and free itself from federal court
oversight, Sirry said.

The report's findings are disturbing, but not surprising, critics of
the child-welfare system said.

The quality of Connecticut's adoption practices was a factor in the
filing of a federal class-action lawsuit last fall by lawyers
representing the state's foster children, said Ira Lustbader,
associate director of Children's Rights Inc., a child advocacy group
based in New York. The lawsuit called for federal receivership of DCF.

"This is exactly why we moved to hold the state in contempt last
fall," Lustbader said. "This is exactly why the management authority
(of DCF) was taken away from the state and given to the monitor."

DCF Commissioner Darlene Dunbar, Office of Policy and Management
Secretary Marc Ryan and Sirry are members of a task force that is
running DCF.

Sirry has produced a series of studies while assessing the state's
foster care system.

In his first report on state adoptions last year, Sirry said
institutional and often unnecessary delays were harming many
children's mental and emotional states, reducing their chances of
being adopted.

DCF has improved the way foster children are adopted, but the agency
does have more work to do, DCF spokesman Gary Kleeblatt said.

"It is an important goal for the department to find children permanent
homes in a more timely manner," Kleeblatt said.

Sirry said DCF has to move more swiftly in terminating the rights of
seriously abusive and neglectful parents. The agency also has to
discard its current practice of waiting 12 months after a child is
placed in a possible adoptive home to see if the match works before
beginning the formal adoption process.
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