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Abuses found at foster homes



 
 
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Old May 1st 05, 02:40 PM
Jack Liddy
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Default Abuses found at foster homes


Abuses found at foster homes

Abuse found in foster homes overseen by contractors


10:42 PM CDT on Saturday, April 16, 2005

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS and PETE SLOVER / The Dallas Morning News

Private contractors that handle three-fourths of Texas' foster care have
placed children with foster parents who later abused, molested or
neglected them or even disappeared with kids in their care, records reveal.

Some contractors have failed to act for nearly a year after learning that
foster children were living with people with criminal records or in homes
with fire or safety hazards.

One contractor was investigated for sending a 14-month-old girl on a
breathing machine – who was born with spina bifida, hydrocephalus and
bladder disease – to live with a foster mother who smoked.

The same organization placed "very medically fragile" children with a
woman who later admitted concealing a recent psychiatric hospitalization.
She also was a suspected drug user who, when requested, refused to take a
drug test or turn over medical records.

State legislators are poised to put all of Texas' 26,000 foster children –
victims of abuse, neglect or disintegrated families – in the hands of
private managers, either nonprofit groups or for-profit companies. Backers
say that's because private managers have shown they can keep children safe.

"They have proven, in those areas, to do a very good job," said state Sen.
Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, chief author of a plan that has passed the
Senate.

Told of The Dallas Morning News' findings, she added, "We've got to put
protections in place ... whether it's through private agencies or the
state."

But others say the state is moving too fast and that some plans,
especially one due for House debate this week, give private managers too
much power without enough state oversight. What's really needed, some say,
is a much tougher approach by state Child Protective Services in
investigating child abuse.

"The public's upset with CPS has all been about investigations," said F.
Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Priorities, an
Austin-based group that focuses on Texas child-welfare and related issues.
"We've got an investigative problem, but what we're addressing [in the
Legislature] is something else."

Child welfare

The News reviewed tens of thousands of pages of state files on foster care
contractors that either the newspaper or a state agency obtained through
open-records requests. Many details on abuse investigations aren't
available to the public, so the newspaper focused on contractors for which
the records it reviewed were most complete. It then chose some cases for a
closer look.

Whenever possible, The News compared those records with the much more
limited information that the Texas Department of Family and Protective
Services makes available to the public via an online database of foster
contractors' compliance histories.

The contractors recruit and train foster parents and place children in the
foster homes for the state after a judge puts a child in the state's care.
Then they oversee the foster parents' performance.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services regulates the
contractors and also directly supervises a quarter of the state's foster
care homes. Under the current system, the department is the case manager
for each foster child's overall welfare, whether the child is in a private
or a state foster home.

Contractors receive state payments for each child and pass on part of the
money to the foster parents for the children's general needs. In the
current fiscal year, contractors get $36 per child per day for basic care,
with the foster parent getting $20 of that.

Children with specialized needs, such as serious medical or emotional
problems, generate higher payments – $87.25 per child per day to the
contractor, $45 of that to the foster family. In addition, the state
covers all foster children's medical and dental bills.

Records show that after some serious violations by foster parents, such as
physical punishment, which isn't allowed, the contractors removed the
children and cut off the foster parents from future assignments. In other
instances, however, problem foster parents were allowed to keep working.

Either way, many serious problems never appear in the state's online
database of the contractors' compliance histories, which are supposed to
help the public judge the quality of foster care.

Foster care agencies say they work hard to make sure children are safe.
"We're not going to leave a child in a situation where there is risk to
the child," said Ron McDaniel, vice president of marketing for DePelchin
Children's Center of Houston. One of the state's largest foster care
providers, DePelchin oversees about 250 foster homes.

How safe Texas' foster children are, however, is hard to tell. The Texas
Department of Family and Protective Services, which includes Child
Protective Services, said last year that 96 percent were in safe homes.

But Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's office found that the
figure "greatly overstates" foster child safety. For example, the figure
included only physical or sexual abuse or neglect by adults; it left out
child-on-child abuse in foster homes.

The 96 percent also omits instances in which the state didn't confirm
abuse or where it "administratively closed" cases without investigating.
The Department of Family and Protective Services has stopped the latter
practice.

In addition, the comptroller's office said it couldn't account for 250
children in November 2003, who were either missing from Texas foster care
or living in unapproved places. The department – long at odds with the
comptroller's office – disputes that figure and says it knows of no child
who cannot be found.

"We're not pretending we're doing an adequate job" at managing foster
care, said Darrell Azar, the department's spokesman. "We need more
resources to do it better."

'Minor violations'

In reviewing cases from 2002 to 2004, The News found that in addition to
keeping many violations away from public view, the department frequently
downplays the seriousness of abuse or neglect allegations. Records often
classify allegations of physical or sexual abuse or cruelty as minor
violations of minimum standards that pose a low risk to children.

One such allegation involved a 7-year-old foster child who told an adult
that his 11-year-old brother was sexually molesting him. In another, a
foster mother was allegedly disciplining a psychotic, suicidal 8-year-old
girl by taking her outside and telling her there were monsters in the
bushes. State records classified both as minor, low-risk situations.

An allegation that a 17-year-old male in a foster home had twice raped an
8-year-old girl in foster care was classified as a case of neglectful
supervision.

The records that The News reviewed concerned contractors ranging from
mainstays such as the 113-year-old DePelchin to newcomers such as
Dallas-based Youth in View, in business just four years.

The examined records include complaint and investigation reports and
licensing files and inspections on foster care providers. Some contractors
show up more often than others in the cases the newspaper reviewed, but
that might be because they handle more foster children.

Some documents are dry accounts of required record-keeping, a massive task
that forced Youth in View to stop accepting new foster children for
several months in 2003 while the fledgling contractor tried to correct
paperwork problems.

Others contain easily disproved allegations by disturbed or angry
children. One girl, for example, accused her foster father of sexual
abuse, but an investigation found that he was hospitalized for heart
surgery at the time of the alleged assault. She then changed the date of
the abuse to a time years before she entered the home.

Others are accounts of quick action that limited harm to children. One
case from 2002 involved two children whose foster parents physically and
mentally abused them and eventually ordered them to lie to cover up the
foster parents' role in a car crash.

The contractor, Cedar Ridge Foster Care, based in Lometa in Central Texas,
swiftly removed the children, investigated and cut off the parents from
any more foster work. The children's therapist, who had triggered the
action with a call to CPS, was "very complimentary" of Cedar Ridge's
response, a report said.

Often, however, the records reviewed by The News describe cases in which
foster care providers knew about problems but did not act.

In one such case, two foster families – not identified by name or location
in a 2004 report – were having their foster children assemble weapons in
the families' home-based gun store.

"All of the children work or spend at least 20 hours a week at the barn"
that housed the armory, according to a state report. "The children are
putting together and packing knives, gun magazines, etc. ... Many of the
kids reported that one night they worked until 2-4 a.m. in the morning
helping their [foster] dads complete an order."

A caseworker for the foster care contractor, New Horizons Ranch, based in
Brownwood, knew the children were working at the armory "because the
children told her," a state investigation found. After a tip triggered a
state inspection, the contractor removed the children and shut the foster
homes.

One problem, the inspector noted, was that the contractor's reports of its
home visits, meant to document conditions and reinforce the rules, seemed
to be copied verbatim from reports the parents themselves wrote and sent
in.

New Horizons' executive director, Del Barnett, said New Horizons knew
about the gun store when it approved the families as foster parents. New
Horizons also knew that the children were working there, he said. They
worked voluntarily and were paid more than minimum wage, he said. New
Horizons regularly checked the kids and the families and didn't find any
abuse in the kids' work at the gun store, he said.

The state inspection report said the children should never have been
allowed to work in such a place. "The [foster] facility director was told
that this is not an appropriate working place for children," the report
said. "It is against standards for children to be around these types of
items."

Mr. Barnett said New Horizons didn't object to that finding.

"It's just a question of whether a kid should be around a gun or not," he
said. "We might debate that both ways. It certainly could get out of hand,
and that's the danger. If it's a job and it's supervised, well, I don't
know. I'm not really trying to defend or not defend that."

New Horizons kicked the parents out of its foster program for unrelated
reasons in September 2003, six months before the state wrote its report,
he said. The families moved on to another foster care contractor, he said.

Almost no penalties

Except for cases listed as physical or sexual abuse, the state almost
always has the contractor investigate its own foster home. State officials
review the findings and the steps needed to fix the problem. If the state
concurs, it closes the case without any mention in the contractor's
public, online compliance record that the incident ever happened.

One such case in 2002 concerned a foster home operating through A World
for Children, based in the Austin suburb of Round Rock. The state received
complaints about the home over a five-week period.

Two foster children regularly had to change a younger child's diaper. Two
children went without needed glasses. The foster mother didn't always
provide school supplies. Children rode four-wheelers without helmets.

"One child had a bruise on her pubic bone and a swelling at the back of
the spine that were not explained," the state wrote to the contractor.

The contractor investigated and found the home deficient on a half-dozen
standards, including one barring "any harsh, cruel, unusual, unnecessary,
demeaning, or humiliating punishment." It kicked the foster parents out of
the program.

State officials concurred but took no action against the contractor,
despite a regulation saying the contractor has an ongoing duty to ensure
that foster parents obey the rules. The state's online database says only
that an investigation found no violations – no names or details.

The News found scores of similar cases involving various contractors.

Char Bateman, in charge of residential child-care licensing for the
Department of Family and Protective Services, said the state doesn't cite
a contractor for a foster parent's violation if the contractor handled the
case properly – for example, if it responded quickly and took the right
steps to correct the problem.

If the contractor mismanages the investigation, the contractor itself
might face a violation. The state also does routine inspections that look
at a sample of the contractor's files.

Even when the state cites the contractor for a violation, there's seldom a
penalty. That happened with a 2002 case in which a foster mother concealed
the presence in her home of a man with a known criminal record and the
contractor didn't act.

A worker for A World for Children had told the foster mother that the man,
who wasn't identified, couldn't be in the home. The mother then ordered
the foster children "not to tell the [contractor] staff that the man was
in the home."

The state found that the contractor had known about the problem for months
but didn't force the issue until CPS was tipped Sept. 24, 2002.

The state closed the case by citing two violations against A World for
Children. For each, the solution included a talk with the foster mother,
agreements that she wouldn't let the man back in the house and that she
wouldn't keep any more secrets, unannounced visits by supervisors, and
increased training for the contractor.

The Department of Family and Protective Services has no real police power
over the contractors, Ms. Bateman said. The department can boost
monitoring requirements and inspect more frequently, in serious cases can
tell a contractor to stop putting children in a home.

But it can't fine a contractor for poor performance. The final option,
revoking a contractor's license, is rarely used.

"Our philosophy is to try and help them succeed and do a good job," Ms.
Bateman said.

'Low risk'

It was often hard to tell from the reports how serious the problem was.
Records reviewed by The News classified all of the following as minor,
low-risk allegations that, under state policy, would give the state up
to15 days to launch an investigation:

A foster mother verbally abused the children, withheld water on a hot day,
withheld food as punishment, pushed a child into a van and drove 11
children in a van, forcing some to sit on the floorboards.

A 17-year-old foster child was found sitting by a trash container behind a
restaurant at night, "bleeding from her arms, crying and being obviously
upset." Apparently kicked out of the home by her foster mother, the girl
was cutting herself because it helped "get the pain out."

Four foster children, ages 11 to 14, were forced to take care of the
toddler of the foster mother's 20-year-old, methamphetamine-hooked
daughter.

A foster mother habitually went 14 hours between changing the diaper of a
12-year-old mentally retarded girl with cerebral palsy, eczema, scoliosis
and a reactive airway disease that forced the use of a tracheotomy tube.
The girl was developing a "skin breakdown" and blisters under her diaper.

Sometimes, state child-abuse hotline workers recommended a higher priority
and more serious category, only to have the final paperwork later reflect
lower, less serious risk. That's what happened in the allegation that a
foster mother had tried at least three times to get her mother-in-law to
give her some prescription Valium and Xanax to medicate a 10-year-old boy.

The hotline worker recommended labeling the case medical neglect, priority
2, which would call for a response within 10 days. The child "is
accessible to [the foster mother] and is unprotected," the worker wrote.

However, the official "intake" report called the case a minor violation,
priority 3, the classification for low risk to a child – giving the state
five additional days to start an investigation.

Abuse or neglect allegations are supposed to be the highest urgency,
priority 1, requiring an investigation within 24 hours, Ms. Bateman said.
Each new report is reviewed by one of three investigation supervisors to
make sure it's been given the right priority, she said.

However, if that review isn't done within 24 hours, the state risks
violating its own time limit for investigating abuse complaints.

Ms. Bateman said the supervisors upgrade cases into more urgent categories
more often than they downgrade them to lower priorities. The News found
one such case in the files it reviewed.

In July 2004, the Department of Family and Protective Services started
checking samples of intake reports to make sure cases were given the right
priority, said Mr. Azar, the department spokesman.

No results are available yet, he said.

Another "minor, low-risk" case stirred concerns by police in McAllen.

On Sept. 18, 2003, two children in a McAllen foster home overseen by A
World for Children were being moved to a temporary home while the foster
mother was hospitalized. However, one child, a 13-year-old girl, ran away
before being moved.

According to the other child, the foster mother's 30-year-old son was
living in the house and had started buying the girl gifts and giving her
"a lot of attention,"

While investigating the girl's disappearance, a McAllen detective learned
something else about the foster mother's son: Two months earlier, a
security guard had caught him in his car in a shopping mall parking lot,
videotaping girls without their knowledge.

A police officer who responded watched the tape and saw that it contained
shots of girls at the mall, a Target store and McAllen High School,
"zooming in on their breast and buttocks area."

The officer didn't arrest the son because he didn't know that a new state
law made it a crime to secretly taping someone for sexual purposes. Still,
the detective who was looking for the runaway girl "was wondering why [the
son] was allowed to live with [the foster mother] in a foster home."

All that information was available when the state classified it as a
minor, low-risk case.

The News did not find the son's name in Texas' sex-offender and criminal
convictions records. Sgt. Mike Zellers of the McAllen Police Department
said he couldn't find a report of the incident, but he added that his
small department gets from 75 to 100 referrals from CPS each month.

Neither the documents themselves nor the McAllen police could determine if
the girl ever came home.
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  #2  
Old May 1st 05, 03:31 PM
Pop
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"Jack Liddy" wrote in message
news:1114954885.699e277f30df3cd542581eb41cdc4f25@t eranews...

Abuses found at foster homes

Abuse found in foster homes overseen by contractors


10:42 PM CDT on Saturday, April 16, 2005

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS and PETE SLOVER / The Dallas Morning News

Private contractors that handle three-fourths of Texas' foster care have
placed children with foster parents who later abused, molested or
neglected them or even disappeared with kids in their care, records
reveal.

Some contractors have failed to act for nearly a year after learning that
foster children were living with people with criminal records or in homes
with fire or safety hazards.

One contractor was investigated for sending a 14-month-old girl on a
breathing machine - who was born with spina bifida, hydrocephalus and
bladder disease - to live with a foster mother who smoked.

The same organization placed "very medically fragile" children with a
woman who later admitted concealing a recent psychiatric hospitalization.
She also was a suspected drug user who, when requested, refused to take a
drug test or turn over medical records.

State legislators are poised to put all of Texas' 26,000 foster children -
victims of abuse, neglect or disintegrated families - in the hands of
private managers, either nonprofit groups or for-profit companies. Backers
say that's because private managers have shown they can keep children
safe.

"They have proven, in those areas, to do a very good job," said state Sen.
Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, chief author of a plan that has passed the
Senate.

Told of The Dallas Morning News' findings, she added, "We've got to put
protections in place ... whether it's through private agencies or the
state."

But others say the state is moving too fast and that some plans,
especially one due for House debate this week, give private managers too
much power without enough state oversight. What's really needed, some say,
is a much tougher approach by state Child Protective Services in
investigating child abuse.

"The public's upset with CPS has all been about investigations," said F.
Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Priorities, an
Austin-based group that focuses on Texas child-welfare and related issues.
"We've got an investigative problem, but what we're addressing [in the
Legislature] is something else."

Child welfare

The News reviewed tens of thousands of pages of state files on foster care
contractors that either the newspaper or a state agency obtained through
open-records requests. Many details on abuse investigations aren't
available to the public, so the newspaper focused on contractors for which
the records it reviewed were most complete. It then chose some cases for a
closer look.

Whenever possible, The News compared those records with the much more
limited information that the Texas Department of Family and Protective
Services makes available to the public via an online database of foster
contractors' compliance histories.

The contractors recruit and train foster parents and place children in the
foster homes for the state after a judge puts a child in the state's care.
Then they oversee the foster parents' performance.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services regulates the
contractors and also directly supervises a quarter of the state's foster
care homes. Under the current system, the department is the case manager
for each foster child's overall welfare, whether the child is in a private
or a state foster home.

Contractors receive state payments for each child and pass on part of the
money to the foster parents for the children's general needs. In the
current fiscal year, contractors get $36 per child per day for basic care,
with the foster parent getting $20 of that.

Children with specialized needs, such as serious medical or emotional
problems, generate higher payments - $87.25 per child per day to the
contractor, $45 of that to the foster family. In addition, the state
covers all foster children's medical and dental bills.

Records show that after some serious violations by foster parents, such as
physical punishment, which isn't allowed, the contractors removed the
children and cut off the foster parents from future assignments. In other
instances, however, problem foster parents were allowed to keep working.

Either way, many serious problems never appear in the state's online
database of the contractors' compliance histories, which are supposed to
help the public judge the quality of foster care.

Foster care agencies say they work hard to make sure children are safe.
"We're not going to leave a child in a situation where there is risk to
the child," said Ron McDaniel, vice president of marketing for DePelchin
Children's Center of Houston. One of the state's largest foster care
providers, DePelchin oversees about 250 foster homes.

How safe Texas' foster children are, however, is hard to tell. The Texas
Department of Family and Protective Services, which includes Child
Protective Services, said last year that 96 percent were in safe homes.

But Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's office found that the
figure "greatly overstates" foster child safety. For example, the figure
included only physical or sexual abuse or neglect by adults; it left out
child-on-child abuse in foster homes.

The 96 percent also omits instances in which the state didn't confirm
abuse or where it "administratively closed" cases without investigating.
The Department of Family and Protective Services has stopped the latter
practice.

In addition, the comptroller's office said it couldn't account for 250
children in November 2003, who were either missing from Texas foster care
or living in unapproved places. The department - long at odds with the
comptroller's office - disputes that figure and says it knows of no child
who cannot be found.

"We're not pretending we're doing an adequate job" at managing foster
care, said Darrell Azar, the department's spokesman. "We need more
resources to do it better."

'Minor violations'

In reviewing cases from 2002 to 2004, The News found that in addition to
keeping many violations away from public view, the department frequently
downplays the seriousness of abuse or neglect allegations. Records often
classify allegations of physical or sexual abuse or cruelty as minor
violations of minimum standards that pose a low risk to children.

One such allegation involved a 7-year-old foster child who told an adult
that his 11-year-old brother was sexually molesting him. In another, a
foster mother was allegedly disciplining a psychotic, suicidal 8-year-old
girl by taking her outside and telling her there were monsters in the
bushes. State records classified both as minor, low-risk situations.

An allegation that a 17-year-old male in a foster home had twice raped an
8-year-old girl in foster care was classified as a case of neglectful
supervision.

The records that The News reviewed concerned contractors ranging from
mainstays such as the 113-year-old DePelchin to newcomers such as
Dallas-based Youth in View, in business just four years.

The examined records include complaint and investigation reports and
licensing files and inspections on foster care providers. Some contractors
show up more often than others in the cases the newspaper reviewed, but
that might be because they handle more foster children.

Some documents are dry accounts of required record-keeping, a massive task
that forced Youth in View to stop accepting new foster children for
several months in 2003 while the fledgling contractor tried to correct
paperwork problems.

Others contain easily disproved allegations by disturbed or angry
children. One girl, for example, accused her foster father of sexual
abuse, but an investigation found that he was hospitalized for heart
surgery at the time of the alleged assault. She then changed the date of
the abuse to a time years before she entered the home.

Others are accounts of quick action that limited harm to children. One
case from 2002 involved two children whose foster parents physically and
mentally abused them and eventually ordered them to lie to cover up the
foster parents' role in a car crash.

The contractor, Cedar Ridge Foster Care, based in Lometa in Central Texas,
swiftly removed the children, investigated and cut off the parents from
any more foster work. The children's therapist, who had triggered the
action with a call to CPS, was "very complimentary" of Cedar Ridge's
response, a report said.

Often, however, the records reviewed by The News describe cases in which
foster care providers knew about problems but did not act.

In one such case, two foster families - not identified by name or location
in a 2004 report - were having their foster children assemble weapons in
the families' home-based gun store.

"All of the children work or spend at least 20 hours a week at the barn"
that housed the armory, according to a state report. "The children are
putting together and packing knives, gun magazines, etc. ... Many of the
kids reported that one night they worked until 2-4 a.m. in the morning
helping their [foster] dads complete an order."

A caseworker for the foster care contractor, New Horizons Ranch, based in
Brownwood, knew the children were working at the armory "because the
children told her," a state investigation found. After a tip triggered a
state inspection, the contractor removed the children and shut the foster
homes.

One problem, the inspector noted, was that the contractor's reports of its
home visits, meant to document conditions and reinforce the rules, seemed
to be copied verbatim from reports the parents themselves wrote and sent
in.

New Horizons' executive director, Del Barnett, said New Horizons knew
about the gun store when it approved the families as foster parents. New
Horizons also knew that the children were working there, he said. They
worked voluntarily and were paid more than minimum wage, he said. New
Horizons regularly checked the kids and the families and didn't find any
abuse in the kids' work at the gun store, he said.

The state inspection report said the children should never have been
allowed to work in such a place. "The [foster] facility director was told
that this is not an appropriate working place for children," the report
said. "It is against standards for children to be around these types of
items."

Mr. Barnett said New Horizons didn't object to that finding.

"It's just a question of whether a kid should be around a gun or not," he
said. "We might debate that both ways. It certainly could get out of hand,
and that's the danger. If it's a job and it's supervised, well, I don't
know. I'm not really trying to defend or not defend that."

New Horizons kicked the parents out of its foster program for unrelated
reasons in September 2003, six months before the state wrote its report,
he said. The families moved on to another foster care contractor, he said.

Almost no penalties

Except for cases listed as physical or sexual abuse, the state almost
always has the contractor investigate its own foster home. State officials
review the findings and the steps needed to fix the problem. If the state
concurs, it closes the case without any mention in the contractor's
public, online compliance record that the incident ever happened.

One such case in 2002 concerned a foster home operating through A World
for Children, based in the Austin suburb of Round Rock. The state received
complaints about the home over a five-week period.

Two foster children regularly had to change a younger child's diaper. Two
children went without needed glasses. The foster mother didn't always
provide school supplies. Children rode four-wheelers without helmets.

"One child had a bruise on her pubic bone and a swelling at the back of
the spine that were not explained," the state wrote to the contractor.

The contractor investigated and found the home deficient on a half-dozen
standards, including one barring "any harsh, cruel, unusual, unnecessary,
demeaning, or humiliating punishment." It kicked the foster parents out of
the program.

State officials concurred but took no action against the contractor,
despite a regulation saying the contractor has an ongoing duty to ensure
that foster parents obey the rules. The state's online database says only
that an investigation found no violations - no names or details.

The News found scores of similar cases involving various contractors.

Char Bateman, in charge of residential child-care licensing for the
Department of Family and Protective Services, said the state doesn't cite
a contractor for a foster parent's violation if the contractor handled the
case properly - for example, if it responded quickly and took the right
steps to correct the problem.

If the contractor mismanages the investigation, the contractor itself
might face a violation. The state also does routine inspections that look
at a sample of the contractor's files.

Even when the state cites the contractor for a violation, there's seldom a
penalty. That happened with a 2002 case in which a foster mother concealed
the presence in her home of a man with a known criminal record and the
contractor didn't act.

A worker for A World for Children had told the foster mother that the man,
who wasn't identified, couldn't be in the home. The mother then ordered
the foster children "not to tell the [contractor] staff that the man was
in the home."

The state found that the contractor had known about the problem for months
but didn't force the issue until CPS was tipped Sept. 24, 2002.

The state closed the case by citing two violations against A World for
Children. For each, the solution included a talk with the foster mother,
agreements that she wouldn't let the man back in the house and that she
wouldn't keep any more secrets, unannounced visits by supervisors, and
increased training for the contractor.

The Department of Family and Protective Services has no real police power
over the contractors, Ms. Bateman said. The department can boost
monitoring requirements and inspect more frequently, in serious cases can
tell a contractor to stop putting children in a home.

But it can't fine a contractor for poor performance. The final option,
revoking a contractor's license, is rarely used.

"Our philosophy is to try and help them succeed and do a good job," Ms.
Bateman said.

'Low risk'

It was often hard to tell from the reports how serious the problem was.
Records reviewed by The News classified all of the following as minor,
low-risk allegations that, under state policy, would give the state up
to15 days to launch an investigation:

A foster mother verbally abused the children, withheld water on a hot day,
withheld food as punishment, pushed a child into a van and drove 11
children in a van, forcing some to sit on the floorboards.

A 17-year-old foster child was found sitting by a trash container behind a
restaurant at night, "bleeding from her arms, crying and being obviously
upset." Apparently kicked out of the home by her foster mother, the girl
was cutting herself because it helped "get the pain out."

Four foster children, ages 11 to 14, were forced to take care of the
toddler of the foster mother's 20-year-old, methamphetamine-hooked
daughter.

A foster mother habitually went 14 hours between changing the diaper of a
12-year-old mentally retarded girl with cerebral palsy, eczema, scoliosis
and a reactive airway disease that forced the use of a tracheotomy tube.
The girl was developing a "skin breakdown" and blisters under her diaper.

Sometimes, state child-abuse hotline workers recommended a higher priority
and more serious category, only to have the final paperwork later reflect
lower, less serious risk. That's what happened in the allegation that a
foster mother had tried at least three times to get her mother-in-law to
give her some prescription Valium and Xanax to medicate a 10-year-old boy.

The hotline worker recommended labeling the case medical neglect, priority
2, which would call for a response within 10 days. The child "is
accessible to [the foster mother] and is unprotected," the worker wrote.

However, the official "intake" report called the case a minor violation,
priority 3, the classification for low risk to a child - giving the state
five additional days to start an investigation.

Abuse or neglect allegations are supposed to be the highest urgency,
priority 1, requiring an investigation within 24 hours, Ms. Bateman said.
Each new report is reviewed by one of three investigation supervisors to
make sure it's been given the right priority, she said.

However, if that review isn't done within 24 hours, the state risks
violating its own time limit for investigating abuse complaints.

Ms. Bateman said the supervisors upgrade cases into more urgent categories
more often than they downgrade them to lower priorities. The News found
one such case in the files it reviewed.

In July 2004, the Department of Family and Protective Services started
checking samples of intake reports to make sure cases were given the right
priority, said Mr. Azar, the department spokesman.

No results are available yet, he said.

Another "minor, low-risk" case stirred concerns by police in McAllen.

On Sept. 18, 2003, two children in a McAllen foster home overseen by A
World for Children were being moved to a temporary home while the foster
mother was hospitalized. However, one child, a 13-year-old girl, ran away
before being moved.

According to the other child, the foster mother's 30-year-old son was
living in the house and had started buying the girl gifts and giving her
"a lot of attention,"

While investigating the girl's disappearance, a McAllen detective learned
something else about the foster mother's son: Two months earlier, a
security guard had caught him in his car in a shopping mall parking lot,
videotaping girls without their knowledge.

A police officer who responded watched the tape and saw that it contained
shots of girls at the mall, a Target store and McAllen High School,
"zooming in on their breast and buttocks area."

The officer didn't arrest the son because he didn't know that a new state
law made it a crime to secretly taping someone for sexual purposes. Still,
the detective who was looking for the runaway girl "was wondering why [the
son] was allowed to live with [the foster mother] in a foster home."

All that information was available when the state classified it as a
minor, low-risk case.

The News did not find the son's name in Texas' sex-offender and criminal
convictions records. Sgt. Mike Zellers of the McAllen Police Department
said he couldn't find a report of the incident, but he added that his
small department gets from 75 to 100 referrals from CPS each month.

Neither the documents themselves nor the McAllen police could determine if
the girl ever came home.
--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

Network Working Group S. Hambridge
Request For Comments: 1855 Intel Corp.
FYI: 28 October 1995
Category: Informational


Netiquette Guidelines

Status of This Memo

This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo
does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of
this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

This document provides a minimum set of guidelines for Network
Etiquette (Netiquette) which organizations may take and adapt for
their own use. As such, it is deliberately written in a bulleted
format to make adaptation easier and to make any particular item easy
(or easier) to find. It also functions as a minimum set of
guidelines for individuals, both users and administrators. This memo
is the product of the Responsible Use of the Network (RUN) Working
Group of the IETF.

Table of Contents

1.0 Introduction 1
2.0 One-to-One Communication 2
3.0 One-to-Many Communication 7
4.0 Information Services 14
5.0 Selected Bibliography 18
6.0 Security Considerations 21
7.0 Author's Address 21


1.0 Introduction


In the past, the population of people using the Internet had "grown
up" with the Internet, were technically minded, and understood the
nature of the transport and the protocols. Today, the community of
Internet users includes people who are new to the environment. These
"Newbies" are unfamiliar with the culture and don't need to know
about transport and protocols. In order to bring these new users into
the Internet culture quickly, this Guide offers a minimum set of
behaviors which organizations and individuals may take and adapt for
their own use. Individuals should be aware that no matter who
supplies their Internet access, be it an Internet Service Provider
through a private account, or a student account at a University, or



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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995


an account through a corporation, that those organizations have
regulations about ownership of mail and files, about what is proper
to post or send, and how to present yourself. Be sure to check with
the local authority for specific guidelines.

We've organized this material into three sections: One-to-one
communication, which includes mail and talk; One-to-many
communications, which includes mailing lists and NetNews; and
Information Services, which includes ftp, WWW, Wais, Gopher, MUDs and
MOOs. Finally, we have a Selected Bibliography, which may be used
for reference.


2.0 One-to-One Communication (electronic mail, talk)


We define one-to-one communications as those in which a person is
communicating with another person as if face-to-face: a dialog. In
general, rules of common courtesy for interaction with people should
be in force for any situation and on the Internet it's doubly
important where, for example, body language and tone of voice must be
inferred. For more information on Netiquette for communicating via
electronic mail and talk, check references [1,23,25,27] in the
Selected Bibliography.


2.1 User Guidelines



2.1.1 For mail:


- Unless you have your own Internet access through an Internet
provider, be sure to check with your employer about ownership
of electronic mail. Laws about the ownership of electronic mail
vary from place to place.

- Unless you are using an encryption device (hardware or software),
you should assume that mail on the Internet is not secure. Never
put in a mail message anything you would not put on a postcard.

- Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost
every country has copyright laws.

- If you are forwarding or re-posting a message you've received, do
not change the wording. If the message was a personal message to
you and you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission
first. You may shorten the message and quote only relevant parts,
but be sure you give proper attribution.

- Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters
are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges
will be revoked. Notify your local system administrator



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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995


if your ever receive one.

- A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and
liberal in what you receive. You should not send heated messages
(we call these "flames") even if you are provoked. On the other
hand, you shouldn't be surprised if you get flamed and it's
prudent not to respond to flames.

- In general, it's a good idea to at least check all your mail
subjects before responding to a message. Sometimes a person who
asks you for help (or clarification) will send another message
which effectively says "Never Mind". Also make sure that any
message you respond to was directed to you. You might be cc:ed
rather than the primary recipient.

- Make things easy for the recipient. Many mailers strip header
information which includes your return address. In order to
ensure that people know who you are, be sure to include a line
or two at the end of your message with contact information. You
can create this file ahead of time and add it to the end of your
messages. (Some mailers do this automatically.) In Internet
parlance, this is known as a ".sig" or "signature" file. Your
.sig file takes the place of your business card. (And you can
have more than one to apply in different circumstances.)

- Be careful when addressing mail. There are addresses which
may go to a group but the address looks like it is just one
person. Know to whom you are sending.

- Watch cc's when replying. Don't continue to include
people if the messages have become a 2-way conversation.

- In general, most people who use the Internet don't have time
to answer general questions about the Internet and its workings.
Don't send unsolicited mail asking for information to people
whose names you might have seen in RFCs or on mailing lists.

- Remember that people with whom you communicate are located across
the globe. If you send a message to which you want an immediate
response, the person receiving it might be at home asleep when it
arrives. Give them a chance to wake up, come to work, and login
before assuming the mail didn't arrive or that they don't care.

- Verify all addresses before initiating long or personal discourse.
It's also a good practice to include the word "Long" in the
subject header so the recipient knows the message will take time
to read and respond to. Over 100 lines is considered "long".




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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995


- Know whom to contact for help. Usually you will have resources
close at hand. Check locally for people who can help you with
software and system problems. Also, know whom to go to if you
receive anything questionable or illegal. Most sites also
have "Postmaster" aliased to a knowledgeable user, so you
can send mail to this address to get help with mail.

- Remember that the recipient is a human being whose culture,
language, and humor have different points of reference from your
own. Remember that date formats, measurements, and idioms may
not travel well. Be especially careful with sarcasm.

- Use mixed case. UPPER CASE LOOKS AS IF YOU'RE SHOUTING.

- Use symbols for emphasis. That *is* what I meant. Use
underscores for underlining. _War and Peace_ is my favorite
book.

- Use smileys to indicate tone of voice, but use them sparingly.
:-) is an example of a smiley (Look sideways). Don't assume
that the inclusion of a smiley will make the recipient happy
with what you say or wipe out an otherwise insulting comment.

- Wait overnight to send emotional responses to messages. If you
have really strong feelings about a subject, indicate it via
FLAME ON/OFF enclosures. For example:
FLAME ON: This type of argument is not worth the bandwidth
it takes to send it. It's illogical and poorly
reasoned. The rest of the world agrees with me.
FLAME OFF

- Do not include control characters or non-ASCII attachments in
messages unless they are MIME attachments or unless your mailer
encodes these. If you send encoded messages make sure the
recipient can decode them.

- Be brief without being overly terse. When replying to a message,
include enough original material to be understood but no more. It
is extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including
all the previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material.

- Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line
with a carriage return.

- Mail should have a subject heading which reflects
the content of the message.





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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995


- If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb
is no longer than 4 lines. Remember that many people pay for
connectivity by the minute, and the longer your message is,
the more they pay.

- Just as mail (today) may not be private, mail (and news) are
(today) subject to forgery and spoofing of various degrees of
detectability. Apply common sense "reality checks" before
assuming a message is valid.

- If you think the importance of a message justifies it, immediately
reply briefly to an e-mail message to let the sender know you got
it, even if you will send a longer reply later.

- "Reasonable" expectations for conduct via e-mail depend on your
relationship to a person and the context of the communication.
Norms learned in a particular e-mail environment may not apply in
general to your e-mail communication with people across the
Internet. Be careful with slang or local acronyms.

- The cost of delivering an e-mail message is, on the average, paid
about equally by the sender and the recipient (or their
organizations). This is unlike other media such as physical mail,
telephone, TV, or radio. Sending someone mail may also cost them
in other specific ways like network bandwidth, disk space or CPU
usage. This is a fundamental economic reason why unsolicited
e-mail advertising is unwelcome (and is forbidden in many contexts).

- Know how large a message you are sending. Including large files
such as Postscript files or programs may make your message so
large that it cannot be delivered or at least consumes excessive
resources. A good rule of thumb would be not to send a file
larger than 50 Kilobytes. Consider file transfer as an
alternative, or cutting the file into smaller chunks and sending
each as a separate message.

- Don't send large amounts of unsolicited information to people.

- If your mail system allows you to forward mail, beware the dreaded
forwarding loop. Be sure you haven't set up forwarding on several
hosts so that a message sent to you gets into an endless loop from
one computer to the next to the next.









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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995



2.1.2 For talk:


Talk is a set of protocols which allow two people to have an
interactive dialogue via computer.

- Use mixed case and proper punctuation, as though you were typing
a letter or sending mail.

- Don't run off the end of a line and simply let the terminal wrap;
use a Carriage Return (CR) at the end of the line. Also, don't
assume your screen size is the same as everyone else's. A good
rule of thumb is to write out no more than 70 characters, and no
more than 12 lines (since you're using a split screen).

- Leave some margin; don't write to the edge of the screen.

- Use two CRs to indicate that you are done and the other person may
start typing. (blank line).

- Always say goodbye, or some other farewell, and wait to see a
farewell from the other person before killing the session. This
is especially important when you are communicating with someone
a long way away. Remember that your communication relies on both
bandwidth (the size of the pipe) and latency (the speed of light).

- Remember that talk is an interruption to the other person. Only
use as appropriate. And never talk to strangers.

- The reasons for not getting a reply are many. Don't assume
that everything is working correctly. Not all versions of
talk are compatible.

- If left on its own, talk re-rings the recipient. Let it ring
one or two times, then kill it.

- If a person doesn't respond you might try another tty. Use finger
to determine which are open. If the person still doesn't respond,
do not continue to send.

- Talk shows your typing ability. If you type slowly and make
mistakes when typing it is often not worth the time of trying to
correct, as the other person can usually see what you meant.

- Be careful if you have more than one talk session going!







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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995



2.2 Administrator Issues


- Be sure you have established written guidelines for dealing
with situations especially illegal, improper, or forged
traffic.

- Handle requests in a timely fashion - by the next business day.

- Respond promptly to people who have concerns about receiving
improper or illegal messages. Requests concerning chain
letters should be handled immediately.

- Explain any system rules, such as disk quotas, to your users.
Make sure they understand implications of requesting files by
mail such as: Filling up disks; running up phone bills, delaying
mail, etc.

- Make sure you have "Postmaster" aliased. Make sure you have
"Root" aliased. Make sure someone reads that mail.

- Investigate complaints about your users with an open mind.
Remember that addresses may be forged and spoofed.


3.0 One-to-Many Communication (Mailing Lists, NetNews)


Any time you engage in One-to-Many communications, all the rules for
mail should also apply. After all, communicating with many people
via one mail message or post is quite analogous to communicating with
one person with the exception of possibly offending a great many more
people than in one-to-one communication. Therefore, it's quite
important to know as much as you can about the audience of your
message.


3.1 User Guidelines



3.1.1 General Guidelines for mailing lists and NetNews


- Read both mailing lists and newsgroups for one to two months before
you post anything. This helps you to get an understanding of
the culture of the group.

- Do not blame the system administrator for the behavior of the
system users.

- Consider that a large audience will see your posts.
That may include your present or your next boss. Take
care in what you write. Remember too, that mailing lists and
Newsgroups are frequently archived, and that your words may be



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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995


stored for a very long time in a place to which many people have
access.

- Assume that individuals speak for themselves, and what they
say does not represent their organization (unless stated
explicitly).

- Remember that both mail and news take system resources. Pay
attention to any specific rules covering their uses your
organization may have.

- Messages and articles should be brief and to the point. Don't
wander off-topic, don't ramble and don't send mail or post
messages solely to point out other people's errors in typing
or spelling. These, more than any other behavior, mark you
as an immature beginner.

- Subject lines should follow the conventions of the group.

- Forgeries and spoofing are not approved behavior.

- Advertising is welcomed on some lists and Newsgroups, and abhorred
on others! This is another example of knowing your audience
before you post. Unsolicited advertising which is completely
off-topic will most certainly guarantee that you get a lot of
hate mail.

- If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make
sure readers understand when they start to read your response.
Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the
postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a
response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context
helps everyone. But do not include the entire original!

- Again, be sure to have a signature which you attach to your
message. This will guarantee that any peculiarities of mailers or
newsreaders which strip header information will not delete the
only reference in the message of how people may reach you.

- Be careful when you reply to messages or postings. Frequently
replies are sent back to the address which originated the post -
which in many cases is the address of a list or group! You may
accidentally send a personal response to a great many people,
embarrassing all involved. It's best to type in the address
instead of relying on "reply."




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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995


- Delivery receipts, non-delivery notices, and vacation programs
are neither totally standardized nor totally reliable across the
range of systems connected to Internet mail. They are invasive
when sent to mailing lists, and some people consider delivery
receipts an invasion of privacy. In short, do not use them.

- If you find a personal message has gone to a list or group, send
an apology to the person and to the group.

- If you should find yourself in a disagreement with one person,
make your responses to each other via mail rather than continue to
send messages to the list or the group. If you are debating a
point on which the group might have some interest, you may
summarize for them later.

- Don't get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond
to incendiary material.

- Avoid sending messages or posting articles which are no more than
gratuitous replies to replies.

- Be careful with monospacing fonts and diagrams. These will
display differently on different systems, and with different
mailers on the same system.

- There are Newsgroups and Mailing Lists which discuss topics
of wide varieties of interests. These represent a diversity of
lifestyles, religions, and cultures. Posting articles or sending
messages to a group whose point of view is offensive to you
simply to tell them they are offensive is not acceptable.
Sexually and racially harassing messages may also have legal
implications. There is software available to filter items
you might find objectionable.


3.1.2 Mailing List Guidelines


There are several ways to find information about what mailing lists
exist on the Internet and how to join them. Make sure you understand
your organization's policy about joining these lists and posting to
them. In general it is always better to check local resources first
before trying to find information via the Internet. Nevertheless,
there are a set of files posted periodically to news.answers which
list the Internet mailing lists and how to subscribe to them. This
is an invaluable resource for finding lists on any topic. See also
references [9,13,15] in the Selected Bibliography.

- Send subscribe and unsubscribe messages to the appropriate
address. Although some mailing list software is smart enough



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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995


to catch these, not all can ferret these out. It is your
responsibility to learn how the lists work, and to send the
correct mail to the correct place. Although many many mailing
lists adhere to the convention of having a "-request" alias for
sending subscribe and unsubscribe messages, not all do. Be sure
you know the conventions used by the lists to which you subscribe.

- Save the subscription messages for any lists you join. These
usually tell you how to unsubscribe as well.

- In general, it's not possible to retrieve messages once you have
sent them. Even your system administrator will not be able to get
a message back once you have sent it. This means you must make
sure you really want the message to go as you have written it.

- The auto-reply feature of many mailers is useful for in-house
communication, but quite annoying when sent to entire mailing
lists. Examine "Reply-To" addresses when replying to messages
from lists. Most auto-replys will go to all members of the
list.

- Don't send large files to mailing lists when Uniform
Resource Locators (URLs) or pointers to ftp-able versions
will do. If you want to send it as multiple files, be
sure to follow the culture of the group. If you don't
know what that is, ask.

- Consider unsubscribing or setting a "nomail" option (when it's
available) when you cannot check your mail for an extended
period.

- When sending a message to more than one mailing list, especially
if the lists are closely related, apologize for cross-posting.

- If you ask a question, be sure to post a summary. When doing so,
truly summarize rather than send a cumulation of the messages you
receive.

- Some mailing lists are private. Do not send mail to these lists
uninvited. Do not report mail from these lists to a wider
audience.

- If you are caught in an argument, keep the discussion focused on
issues rather than the personalities involved.







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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995



3.1.3 NetNews Guidelines


NetNews is a globally distributed system which allows people to
communicate on topics of specific interest. It is divided into
hierarchies, with the major divisions being: sci - science related
discussions; comp - computer related discussions; news - for
discussions which center around NetNews itself; rec - recreational
activities; soc - social issues; talk - long-winded never-ending
discussions; biz - business related postings; and alt - the alternate
hierarchy. Alt is so named because creating an alt group does not go
through the same process as creating a group in the other parts of
the hierarchy. There are also regional hierarchies, hierarchies
which are widely distributed such as Bionet, and your place of
business may have its own groups as well. Recently, a "humanities"
hierarchy was added, and as time goes on its likely more will be
added. For longer discussions on News see references [2,8,22,23] in
the Selected Bibliography.

- In NetNews parlance, "Posting" refers to posting a new article
to a group, or responding to a post someone else has posted.
"Cross-Posting" refers to posting a message to more than one
group. If you introduce Cross-Posting to a group, or if you
direct "Followup-To:" in the header of your posting, warn
readers! Readers will usually assume that the message was
posted to a specific group and that followups will go to
that group. Headers change this behavior.

- Read all of a discussion in progress (we call this a thread)
before posting replies. Avoid posting "Me Too" messages,
where content is limited to agreement with previous posts.
Content of a follow-up post should exceed quoted content.

- Send mail when an answer to a question is for one person only.
Remember that News has global distribution and the whole world
probably is NOT interested in a personal response. However, don't
hesitate to post when something will be of general interest to the
Newsgroup participants.

- Check the "Distribution" section of the header, but don't
depend on it. Due to the complex method by which News is
delivered, Distribution headers are unreliable. But, if you
are posting something which will be of interest to a limited
number or readers, use a distribution line that attempts to
limit the distribution of your article to those people. For
example, set the Distribution to be "nj" if you are posting
an article that will be of interest only to New Jersey readers.





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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995


- If you feel an article will be of interest to more than one
Newsgroup, be sure to CROSSPOST the article rather than individually
post it to those groups. In general, probably only five-to-six
groups will have similar enough interests to warrant this.

- Consider using Reference sources (Computer Manuals, Newspapers,
help files) before posting a question. Asking a Newsgroup where
answers are readily available elsewhere generates grumpy "RTFM"
(read the fine manual - although a more vulgar meaning of the
word beginning with "f" is usually implied) messages.

- Although there are Newsgroups which welcome advertising,
in general it is considered nothing less than criminal
to advertise off-topic products. Sending an advertisement
to each and every group will pretty much guarantee your loss of
connectivity.

- If you discover an error in your post, cancel it as soon as
possible.

- DO NOT attempt to cancel any articles but your own. Contact
your administrator if you don't know how to cancel your post,
or if some other post, such as a chain letter, needs canceling.

- If you've posted something and don't see it immediately,
don't assume it's failed and re-post it.

- Some groups permit (and some welcome) posts which in other
circumstances would be considered to be in questionable taste.
Still, there is no guarantee that all people reading the group
will appreciate the material as much as you do. Use the Rotate
utility (which rotates all the characters in your post by 13
positions in the alphabet) to avoid giving offense. The
Rot13 utility for Unix is an example.

- In groups which discuss movies or books it is considered essential
to mark posts which disclose significant content as "Spoilers".
Put this word in your Subject: line. You may add blank lines to
the beginning of your post to keep content out of sight, or you
may Rotate it.

- Forging of news articles is generally censured. You can protect
yourself from forgeries by using software which generates a
manipulation detection "fingerprint", such as PGP (in the US).

- Postings via anonymous servers are accepted in some Newsgroups
and disliked in others. Material which is inappropriate when
posted under one's own name is still inappropriate when posted



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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995


anonymously.

- Expect a slight delay in seeing your post when posting to a
moderated group. The moderator may change your subject
line to have your post conform to a particular thread.

- Don't get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond
to incendiary material.


3.2 Administrator Guidelines



3.2.1 General Issues


- Clarify any policies your site has regarding its subscription
to NetNews groups and about subscribing to mailing lists.

- Clarify any policies your site has about posting to NetNews
groups or to mailing lists, including use of disclaimers in .sigs.

- Clarify and publicize archive policy. (How long are articles
kept?)

- Investigate accusations about your users promptly and with an
open mind.

- Be sure to monitor the health of your system.

- Consider how long to archive system logs, and publicize your
policy on logging.


3.2.2 Mailing Lists


- Keep mailing lists up to date to avoid the "bouncing mail" problem.

- Help list owners when problems arise.

- Inform list owners of any maintenance windows or planned downtime.

- Be sure to have "-request" aliases for list subscription and
administration.

- Make sure all mail gateways operate smoothly.


3.2.3. NetNews


- Publicize the nature of the feed you receive. If you do not get
a full feed, people may want to know why not.




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RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines October 1995


- Be aware that the multiplicity of News Reader clients may cause
the News Server being blamed for problems in the clients.

- Honor requests from users immediately if they request cancellation
of their own posts or invalid posts, such as chain letters.

- Have "Usenet", "Netnews" and "News" aliased and make sure someone
reads the mail.


3.3 Moderator Guidelines



3.3.1 General Guidelines


- Make sure your Frequestly Asked Questions (FAQ) is posted at
regular intervals. Include your guidelines for articles/messages.
If you are not the FAQ maintainer, make sure they do so.

- Make sure you maintain a good welcome message, which contains
subscribe and unsubscribe information.

- Newsgroups should have their charter/guidelines posted
regularly.

- Keep mailing lists and Newsgroups up to date. Post
messages in a timely fashion. Designate a substitute
when you go on vacation or out of town.


4.0 Information Services (Gopher, Wais, WWW, ftp, telnet)


In recent Internet history, the 'Net has exploded with new and varied
Information services. Gopher, Wais, World Wide Web (WWW), Multi-User
Dimensions (MUDs) Multi-User Dimensions which are Object Oriented
(MOOs) are a few of these new areas. Although the ability to find
information is exploding, "Caveat Emptor" remains constant. For more
information on these services, check references [14,28] in the
Selected Bibliography.


4.1 User Guidelines



4.1.1. General guidelines


- Remember that all these services belong to someone else. The
people who pay the bills get to make the rules governing usage.
Information may be free - or it may not be! Be sure you check.

- If you have problems with any form of information service, start
problem solving by checking locally: Check file configurations,
software setup, network connections, etc. Do this before assuming



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the problem is at the provider's end and/or is the provider's
fault.

- Although there are naming conventions for file-types used, don't
depend on these file naming conventions to be enforced. For
example, a ".doc" file is not always a Word file.

- Information services also use conventions, such as www.xyz.com.
While it is useful to know these conventions, again, don't
necessarily rely on them.

- Know how file names work on your own system.

- Be aware of conventions used for providing information during
sessions. FTP sites usually have files named README in a top
level directory which have information about the files available.
But, don't assume that these files are necessarily up-to-date
and/or accurate.

- Do NOT assume that ANY information you find is up-to-date and/or
accurate. Remember that new technologies allow just about anyone
to be a publisher, but not all people have discovered the
responsibilities which accompany publishing.

- Remember that unless you are sure that security and authentication
technology is in use, that any information you submit to a system
is being transmitted over the Internet "in the clear", with no
protection from "sniffers" or forgers.

- Since the Internet spans the globe, remember that Information
Services might reflect culture and life-style markedly different
from your own community. Materials you find offensive may
originate in a geography which finds them acceptable. Keep an open
mind.

- When wanting information from a popular server, be sure to use
a mirror server that's close if a list is provided.

- Do not use someone else's FTP site to deposit materials you
wish other people to pick up. This is called "dumping" and
is not generally acceptable behavior.

- When you have trouble with a site and ask for help, be sure to
provide as much information as possible in order to help
debug the problem.






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- When bringing up your own information service, such as a homepage,
be sure to check with your local system administrator to find what
the local guidelines are in affect.

- Consider spreading out the system load on popular sites by
avoiding "rush hour" and logging in during off-peak times.


4.1.2 Real Time Interactive Services Guidelines (MUDs MOOs IRC)


- As in other environments, it is wise to "listen" first to
get to know the culture of the group.

- It's not necessary to greet everyone on a channel or room
personally. Usually one "Hello" or the equivalent is enough.
Using the automation features of your client to greet people is
not acceptable behavior.

- Warn the participants if you intend to ship large quantities
of information. If all consent to receiving it, you may send,
but sending unwanted information without a warning is considered
bad form just as it is in mail.

- Don't assume that people who you don't know will want to talk to
you. If you feel compelled to send private messages to people you
don't know, then be willing to accept gracefully the fact that they
might be busy or simply not want to chat with you.

- Respect the guidelines of the group. Look for introductory
materials for the group. These may be on a related ftp site.

- Don't badger other users for personal information such as sex, age,
or location. After you have built an acquaintance with another user,
these questions may be more appropriate, but many people
hesitate to give this information to people with whom they are
not familiar.

- If a user is using a nickname alias or pseudonym, respect that
user's desire for anonymity. Even if you and that person are
close friends, it is more courteous to use his nickname. Do
not use that person's real name online without permission.











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4.2 Administrator Guidelines



4.2.1 General Guidelines


- Make clear what's available for copying and what is not.

- Describe what's available on your site, and your organization.
Be sure any general policies are clear.

- Keep information, especially READMEs, up-to-date. Provide READMEs
in plain ascii text.

- Present a list of mirrors of your site if you know them. Make
sure you include a statement of copyright applicable to your
mirrors. List their update schedule if possible.

- Make sure that popular (and massive) information has the bandwidth
to support it.

- Use conventions for file extensions - .txt for ascii text; .html
or .htm for HTML; .ps for Postscript; .pdf for Portable Document
Format; .sgml or .sgm for SGML; .exe for non-Unix executables, etc.

- For files being transferred, try to make filenames unique in the
first eight characters.

- When providing information, make sure your site has something
unique to offer. Avoid bringing up an information service which
simply points to other services on the Internet.

- Don't point to other sites without asking first.

- Remember that setting up an information service is more than just
design and implementation. It's also maintenance.

- Make sure your posted materials are appropriate for the supporting
organization.

- Test applications with a variety of tools. Don't assume everything
works if you've tested with only one client. Also, assume the low
end of technology for clients and don't create applications which
can only be used by Graphical User Interfaces.

- Have a consistent view of your information. Make sure the look
and feel stays the same throughout your applications.






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- Be sensitive to the longevity of your information. Be sure to
date time-sensitive materials, and be vigilant about keeping
this information well maintained.

- Export restrictions vary from country to country. Be sure you
understand the implications of export restrictions when you post.

- Tell users what you plan to do with any information you collect,
such as WWW feedback. You need to warn people if you plan to
publish any of their statements, even passively by just making it
available to other users.

- Make sure your policy on user information services, such as
homepages, is well known.


5.0 Selected Bibliography


This bibliography was used to gather most of the information in the
sections above as well as for general reference. Items not
specifically found in these works were gathered from the IETF-RUN
Working Group's experience.

[1] Angell, D., and B. Heslop, "The Elements of E-mail Style",
New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994.

[2] "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Usenet"
Original author: (Jerry Schwarz)
Maintained by:
(Mark Moraes)
Archive-name: usenet-faq/part1

[3] Cerf, V., "Guidelines for Conduct on and Use of
Internet", at: URL://http://www.isoc.org/proceedings/
conduct/cerf-Aug-draft.html

[4] Dern, D., "The Internet Guide for New Users", New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1994.

[5] "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette"
Original author:
(Brad Templeton)
Maintained by:
(Mark Moraes)
Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1

[6] Gaffin, A., "Everybody's Guide to the Internet", Cambridge,
Mass., MIT Press, 1994.







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[7] "Guidelines for Responsible Use of the Internet"
from the US house of Representatives gopher, at:
URL:
gopher://gopher.house.gov:70/OF-1%3a208%3aInternet
%20Etiquette

[8] How to find the right place to post (FAQ)
by (Aliza R. Panitz)
Archive-name: finding-groups/general

[9] Hambridge, S., and J. Sedayao, "Horses and Barn Doors:
Evolution of Corporate Guidelines for Internet Usage",
LISA VII, Usenix, November 1-5, 1993, pp. 9-16.
URL:
ftp://ftp.intel.com/pub/papers/horses.ps or
horses.ascii

[10] Heslop, B., and D. Angell, "The Instant Internet guide :
Hands-on Global Networking", Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley,
1994.

[11] Horwitz, S., "Internet Etiquette Tips",
ftp://ftp.temple.edu/pub/info/help-net/netiquette.infohn

[12] Internet Activities Board, "Ethics and the Internet", RFC 1087,
IAB, January 1989. URL: ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1087.txt

[13] Kehoe, B., "Zen and the Art of the Internet: A Beginner's
Guide", Netiquette information is spread through the chapters
of this work. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ., Prentice-Hall,
1994.

[14] Kochmer, J., "Internet Passport: NorthWestNet's Guide
to our World Online", 4th ed. Bellevue, Wash.,
NorthWestNet, Northwest Academic Computing Consortium, 1993.

[15] Krol, Ed, "The Whole Internet: User's Guide and
Catalog", Sebastopol, CA, O'Reilly & Associates,
1992.

[16] Lane, E. and C. Summerhill, "Internet Primer for
Information Professionals: a basic guide to Internet networking
technology", Westport, CT, Meckler, 1993.

[17] LaQuey, T., and J. Ryer, "The Internet Companion",
Chapter 3 "Communicating with People", pp 41-74. Reading,
MA, Addison-Wesley, 1993.






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[18] Mandel, T., "Surfing the Wild Internet", SRI International
Business Intelligence Program, Scan No. 2109. March, 1993.
URL: gopher://gopher.well.sf.ca.us:70/00/Communications/
surf-wild

[19] Martin, J., "There's Gold in them thar Networks! or Searching for
Treasure in all the Wrong Places", FYI 10, RFC 1402,
January 1993. URL: ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1402.txt

[20] Pioch, N., "A Short IRC Primer", Text conversion
by Owe Rasmussen. Edition 1.1b, February 28, 1993.
URL: http://www.kei.com/irc/IRCprimer1.1.txt

[21] Polly, J., "Surfing the Internet: an Introduction",
Version 2.0.3. Revised May 15, 1993.
URL: gopher://nysernet.org:70/00/ftp%20archives/
pub/resources/guides/surfing.2.0.3.txt
URL: ftp://ftp.nysernet.org/pub/resources/guides/
surfing.2.0.3.txt

[22] "A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community"
Original author: (Chuq Von Rospach)
Maintained by:
(Mark Moraes)
Archive-name: usenet-primer/part1

[23] Rinaldi, A., "The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette",
September 3, 1992.
URL: http://www.fau.edu/rinaldi/net/index.htm

[24] "Rules for posting to Usenet"
Original author:
(Gene Spafford)
Maintained by:
(Mark Moraes)
Archive-name: posting-rules/part1

[25] Shea, V., "Netiquette", San Francisco: Albion Books,
1994?.

[26] Strangelove, M., with A. Bosley, "How to Advertise
on the Internet", ISSN 1201-0758.

[27] Tenant, R., "Internet Basics", ERIC Clearinghouse of Information
Resources, EDO-IR-92-7. September, 1992.
URL:
gopher://nic.merit.edu:7043/00/introducing.
the.internet/internet.basics.eric-digest
URL: gopher://vega.lib.ncsu.edu:70/00/library/
reference/guides/tennet





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[28] Wiggins, R., "The Internet for everyone: a guide for
users and providers", New York, McGraw-Hill, 1995.


6.0 Security Considerations


Security issues are not discussed in this memo.


7.0 Author's Address


Sally Hambridge
Intel Corporation
2880 Northwestern Parkway
SC3-15
Santa Clara, CA 95052

Phone: 408-765-2931
Fax: 408-765-3679
EMail:

































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  #3  
Old May 1st 05, 10:44 PM
Phillip
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Jack Liddy" wrote in message
news:1114954885.699e277f30df3cd542581eb41cdc4f25@t eranews...

Abuses found at foster homes

Abuse found in foster homes overseen by contractors


10:42 PM CDT on Saturday, April 16, 2005

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS and PETE SLOVER / The Dallas Morning News

Private contractors that handle three-fourths of Texas' foster care have
placed children with foster parents who later abused, molested or
neglected them or even disappeared with kids in their care, records
reveal.

Some contractors have failed to act for nearly a year after learning that
foster children were living with people with criminal records or in homes
with fire or safety hazards.

One contractor was investigated for sending a 14-month-old girl on a
breathing machine - who was born with spina bifida, hydrocephalus and
bladder disease - to live with a foster mother who smoked.

The same organization placed "very medically fragile" children with a
woman who later admitted concealing a recent psychiatric hospitalization.
She also was a suspected drug user who, when requested, refused to take a
drug test or turn over medical records.

State legislators are poised to put all of Texas' 26,000 foster children -
victims of abuse, neglect or disintegrated families - in the hands of
private managers, either nonprofit groups or for-profit companies. Backers
say that's because private managers have shown they can keep children
safe.

"They have proven, in those areas, to do a very good job," said state Sen.
Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, chief author of a plan that has passed the
Senate.

Told of The Dallas Morning News' findings, she added, "We've got to put
protections in place ... whether it's through private agencies or the
state."

But others say the state is moving too fast and that some plans,
especially one due for House debate this week, give private managers too
much power without enough state oversight. What's really needed, some say,
is a much tougher approach by state Child Protective Services in
investigating child abuse.

"The public's upset with CPS has all been about investigations," said F.
Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Priorities, an
Austin-based group that focuses on Texas child-welfare and related issues.
"We've got an investigative problem, but what we're addressing [in the
Legislature] is something else."

Child welfare

The News reviewed tens of thousands of pages of state files on foster care
contractors that either the newspaper or a state agency obtained through
open-records requests. Many details on abuse investigations aren't
available to the public, so the newspaper focused on contractors for which
the records it reviewed were most complete. It then chose some cases for a
closer look.

Whenever possible, The News compared those records with the much more
limited information that the Texas Department of Family and Protective
Services makes available to the public via an online database of foster
contractors' compliance histories.

The contractors recruit and train foster parents and place children in the
foster homes for the state after a judge puts a child in the state's care.
Then they oversee the foster parents' performance.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services regulates the
contractors and also directly supervises a quarter of the state's foster
care homes. Under the current system, the department is the case manager
for each foster child's overall welfare, whether the child is in a private
or a state foster home.

Contractors receive state payments for each child and pass on part of the
money to the foster parents for the children's general needs. In the
current fiscal year, contractors get $36 per child per day for basic care,
with the foster parent getting $20 of that.

Children with specialized needs, such as serious medical or emotional
problems, generate higher payments - $87.25 per child per day to the
contractor, $45 of that to the foster family. In addition, the state
covers all foster children's medical and dental bills.

Records show that after some serious violations by foster parents, such as
physical punishment, which isn't allowed, the contractors removed the
children and cut off the foster parents from future assignments. In other
instances, however, problem foster parents were allowed to keep working.

Either way, many serious problems never appear in the state's online
database of the contractors' compliance histories, which are supposed to
help the public judge the quality of foster care.

Foster care agencies say they work hard to make sure children are safe.
"We're not going to leave a child in a situation where there is risk to
the child," said Ron McDaniel, vice president of marketing for DePelchin
Children's Center of Houston. One of the state's largest foster care
providers, DePelchin oversees about 250 foster homes.

How safe Texas' foster children are, however, is hard to tell. The Texas
Department of Family and Protective Services, which includes Child
Protective Services, said last year that 96 percent were in safe homes.

But Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's office found that the
figure "greatly overstates" foster child safety. For example, the figure
included only physical or sexual abuse or neglect by adults; it left out
child-on-child abuse in foster homes.

The 96 percent also omits instances in which the state didn't confirm
abuse or where it "administratively closed" cases without investigating.
The Department of Family and Protective Services has stopped the latter
practice.

In addition, the comptroller's office said it couldn't account for 250
children in November 2003, who were either missing from Texas foster care
or living in unapproved places. The department - long at odds with the
comptroller's office - disputes that figure and says it knows of no child
who cannot be found.

"We're not pretending we're doing an adequate job" at managing foster
care, said Darrell Azar, the department's spokesman. "We need more
resources to do it better."

'Minor violations'

In reviewing cases from 2002 to 2004, The News found that in addition to
keeping many violations away from public view, the department frequently
downplays the seriousness of abuse or neglect allegations. Records often
classify allegations of physical or sexual abuse or cruelty as minor
violations of minimum standards that pose a low risk to children.

One such allegation involved a 7-year-old foster child who told an adult
that his 11-year-old brother was sexually molesting him. In another, a
foster mother was allegedly disciplining a psychotic, suicidal 8-year-old
girl by taking her outside and telling her there were monsters in the
bushes. State records classified both as minor, low-risk situations.

An allegation that a 17-year-old male in a foster home had twice raped an
8-year-old girl in foster care was classified as a case of neglectful
supervision.

The records that The News reviewed concerned contractors ranging from
mainstays such as the 113-year-old DePelchin to newcomers such as
Dallas-based Youth in View, in business just four years.

The examined records include complaint and investigation reports and
licensing files and inspections on foster care providers. Some contractors
show up more often than others in the cases the newspaper reviewed, but
that might be because they handle more foster children.

Some documents are dry accounts of required record-keeping, a massive task
that forced Youth in View to stop accepting new foster children for
several months in 2003 while the fledgling contractor tried to correct
paperwork problems.

Others contain easily disproved allegations by disturbed or angry
children. One girl, for example, accused her foster father of sexual
abuse, but an investigation found that he was hospitalized for heart
surgery at the time of the alleged assault. She then changed the date of
the abuse to a time years before she entered the home.

Others are accounts of quick action that limited harm to children. One
case from 2002 involved two children whose foster parents physically and
mentally abused them and eventually ordered them to lie to cover up the
foster parents' role in a car crash.

The contractor, Cedar Ridge Foster Care, based in Lometa in Central Texas,
swiftly removed the children, investigated and cut off the parents from
any more foster work. The children's therapist, who had triggered the
action with a call to CPS, was "very complimentary" of Cedar Ridge's
response, a report said.

Often, however, the records reviewed by The News describe cases in which
foster care providers knew about problems but did not act.

In one such case, two foster families - not identified by name or location
in a 2004 report - were having their foster children assemble weapons in
the families' home-based gun store.

"All of the children work or spend at least 20 hours a week at the barn"
that housed the armory, according to a state report. "The children are
putting together and packing knives, gun magazines, etc. ... Many of the
kids reported that one night they worked until 2-4 a.m. in the morning
helping their [foster] dads complete an order."

A caseworker for the foster care contractor, New Horizons Ranch, based in
Brownwood, knew the children were working at the armory "because the
children told her," a state investigation found. After a tip triggered a
state inspection, the contractor removed the children and shut the foster
homes.

One problem, the inspector noted, was that the contractor's reports of its
home visits, meant to document conditions and reinforce the rules, seemed
to be copied verbatim from reports the parents themselves wrote and sent
in.

New Horizons' executive director, Del Barnett, said New Horizons knew
about the gun store when it approved the families as foster parents. New
Horizons also knew that the children were working there, he said. They
worked voluntarily and were paid more than minimum wage, he said. New
Horizons regularly checked the kids and the families and didn't find any
abuse in the kids' work at the gun store, he said.

The state inspection report said the children should never have been
allowed to work in such a place. "The [foster] facility director was told
that this is not an appropriate working place for children," the report
said. "It is against standards for children to be around these types of
items."

Mr. Barnett said New Horizons didn't object to that finding.

"It's just a question of whether a kid should be around a gun or not," he
said. "We might debate that both ways. It certainly could get out of hand,
and that's the danger. If it's a job and it's supervised, well, I don't
know. I'm not really trying to defend or not defend that."

New Horizons kicked the parents out of its foster program for unrelated
reasons in September 2003, six months before the state wrote its report,
he said. The families moved on to another foster care contractor, he said.

Almost no penalties

Except for cases listed as physical or sexual abuse, the state almost
always has the contractor investigate its own foster home. State officials
review the findings and the steps needed to fix the problem. If the state
concurs, it closes the case without any mention in the contractor's
public, online compliance record that the incident ever happened.

One such case in 2002 concerned a foster home operating through A World
for Children, based in the Austin suburb of Round Rock. The state received
complaints about the home over a five-week period.

Two foster children regularly had to change a younger child's diaper. Two
children went without needed glasses. The foster mother didn't always
provide school supplies. Children rode four-wheelers without helmets.

"One child had a bruise on her pubic bone and a swelling at the back of
the spine that were not explained," the state wrote to the contractor.

The contractor investigated and found the home deficient on a half-dozen
standards, including one barring "any harsh, cruel, unusual, unnecessary,
demeaning, or humiliating punishment." It kicked the foster parents out of
the program.

State officials concurred but took no action against the contractor,
despite a regulation saying the contractor has an ongoing duty to ensure
that foster parents obey the rules. The state's online database says only
that an investigation found no violations - no names or details.

The News found scores of similar cases involving various contractors.

Char Bateman, in charge of residential child-care licensing for the
Department of Family and Protective Services, said the state doesn't cite
a contractor for a foster parent's violation if the contractor handled the
case properly - for example, if it responded quickly and took the right
steps to correct the problem.

If the contractor mismanages the investigation, the contractor itself
might face a violation. The state also does routine inspections that look
at a sample of the contractor's files.

Even when the state cites the contractor for a violation, there's seldom a
penalty. That happened with a 2002 case in which a foster mother concealed
the presence in her home of a man with a known criminal record and the
contractor didn't act.

A worker for A World for Children had told the foster mother that the man,
who wasn't identified, couldn't be in the home. The mother then ordered
the foster children "not to tell the [contractor] staff that the man was
in the home."

The state found that the contractor had known about the problem for months
but didn't force the issue until CPS was tipped Sept. 24, 2002.

The state closed the case by citing two violations against A World for
Children. For each, the solution included a talk with the foster mother,
agreements that she wouldn't let the man back in the house and that she
wouldn't keep any more secrets, unannounced visits by supervisors, and
increased training for the contractor.

The Department of Family and Protective Services has no real police power
over the contractors, Ms. Bateman said. The department can boost
monitoring requirements and inspect more frequently, in serious cases can
tell a contractor to stop putting children in a home.

But it can't fine a contractor for poor performance. The final option,
revoking a contractor's license, is rarely used.

"Our philosophy is to try and help them succeed and do a good job," Ms.
Bateman said.

'Low risk'

It was often hard to tell from the reports how serious the problem was.
Records reviewed by The News classified all of the following as minor,
low-risk allegations that, under state policy, would give the state up
to15 days to launch an investigation:

A foster mother verbally abused the children, withheld water on a hot day,
withheld food as punishment, pushed a child into a van and drove 11
children in a van, forcing some to sit on the floorboards.

A 17-year-old foster child was found sitting by a trash container behind a
restaurant at night, "bleeding from her arms, crying and being obviously
upset." Apparently kicked out of the home by her foster mother, the girl
was cutting herself because it helped "get the pain out."

Four foster children, ages 11 to 14, were forced to take care of the
toddler of the foster mother's 20-year-old, methamphetamine-hooked
daughter.

A foster mother habitually went 14 hours between changing the diaper of a
12-year-old mentally retarded girl with cerebral palsy, eczema, scoliosis
and a reactive airway disease that forced the use of a tracheotomy tube.
The girl was developing a "skin breakdown" and blisters under her diaper.

Sometimes, state child-abuse hotline workers recommended a higher priority
and more serious category, only to have the final paperwork later reflect
lower, less serious risk. That's what happened in the allegation that a
foster mother had tried at least three times to get her mother-in-law to
give her some prescription Valium and Xanax to medicate a 10-year-old boy.

The hotline worker recommended labeling the case medical neglect, priority
2, which would call for a response within 10 days. The child "is
accessible to [the foster mother] and is unprotected," the worker wrote.

However, the official "intake" report called the case a minor violation,
priority 3, the classification for low risk to a child - giving the state
five additional days to start an investigation.

Abuse or neglect allegations are supposed to be the highest urgency,
priority 1, requiring an investigation within 24 hours, Ms. Bateman said.
Each new report is reviewed by one of three investigation supervisors to
make sure it's been given the right priority, she said.

However, if that review isn't done within 24 hours, the state risks
violating its own time limit for investigating abuse complaints.

Ms. Bateman said the supervisors upgrade cases into more urgent categories
more often than they downgrade them to lower priorities. The News found
one such case in the files it reviewed.

In July 2004, the Department of Family and Protective Services started
checking samples of intake reports to make sure cases were given the right
priority, said Mr. Azar, the department spokesman.

No results are available yet, he said.

Another "minor, low-risk" case stirred concerns by police in McAllen.

On Sept. 18, 2003, two children in a McAllen foster home overseen by A
World for Children were being moved to a temporary home while the foster
mother was hospitalized. However, one child, a 13-year-old girl, ran away
before being moved.

According to the other child, the foster mother's 30-year-old son was
living in the house and had started buying the girl gifts and giving her
"a lot of attention,"

While investigating the girl's disappearance, a McAllen detective learned
something else about the foster mother's son: Two months earlier, a
security guard had caught him in his car in a shopping mall parking lot,
videotaping girls without their knowledge.

A police officer who responded watched the tape and saw that it contained
shots of girls at the mall, a Target store and McAllen High School,
"zooming in on their breast and buttocks area."

The officer didn't arrest the son because he didn't know that a new state
law made it a crime to secretly taping someone for sexual purposes. Still,
the detective who was looking for the runaway girl "was wondering why [the
son] was allowed to live with [the foster mother] in a foster home."

All that information was available when the state classified it as a
minor, low-risk case.

The News did not find the son's name in Texas' sex-offender and criminal
convictions records. Sgt. Mike Zellers of the McAllen Police Department
said he couldn't find a report of the incident, but he added that his
small department gets from 75 to 100 referrals from CPS each month.

Neither the documents themselves nor the McAllen police could determine if
the girl ever came home.
--
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  #4  
Old May 1st 05, 10:46 PM
Phillip
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"Pop" wrote in message
...


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"Jack Liddy" wrote in message
news:1114954885.699e277f30df3cd542581eb41cdc4f25@t eranews...

Abuses found at foster homes

Abuse found in foster homes overseen by contractors


10:42 PM CDT on Saturday, April 16, 2005

By RANDY LEE LOFTIS and PETE SLOVER / The Dallas Morning News

Private contractors that handle three-fourths of Texas' foster care have
placed children with foster parents who later abused, molested or
neglected them or even disappeared with kids in their care, records
reveal.

Some contractors have failed to act for nearly a year after learning that
foster children were living with people with criminal records or in homes
with fire or safety hazards.

One contractor was investigated for sending a 14-month-old girl on a
breathing machine - who was born with spina bifida, hydrocephalus and
bladder disease - to live with a foster mother who smoked.

The same organization placed "very medically fragile" children with a
woman who later admitted concealing a recent psychiatric hospitalization.
She also was a suspected drug user who, when requested, refused to take a
drug test or turn over medical records.

State legislators are poised to put all of Texas' 26,000 foster
children - victims of abuse, neglect or disintegrated families - in the
hands of private managers, either nonprofit groups or for-profit
companies. Backers say that's because private managers have shown they
can keep children safe.

"They have proven, in those areas, to do a very good job," said state
Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, chief author of a plan that has passed
the Senate.

Told of The Dallas Morning News' findings, she added, "We've got to put
protections in place ... whether it's through private agencies or the
state."

But others say the state is moving too fast and that some plans,
especially one due for House debate this week, give private managers too
much power without enough state oversight. What's really needed, some
say, is a much tougher approach by state Child Protective Services in
investigating child abuse.

"The public's upset with CPS has all been about investigations," said F.
Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Priorities, an
Austin-based group that focuses on Texas child-welfare and related
issues. "We've got an investigative problem, but what we're addressing
[in the Legislature] is something else."

Child welfare

The News reviewed tens of thousands of pages of state files on foster
care contractors that either the newspaper or a state agency obtained
through open-records requests. Many details on abuse investigations
aren't available to the public, so the newspaper focused on contractors
for which the records it reviewed were most complete. It then chose some
cases for a closer look.

Whenever possible, The News compared those records with the much more
limited information that the Texas Department of Family and Protective
Services makes available to the public via an online database of foster
contractors' compliance histories.

The contractors recruit and train foster parents and place children in
the foster homes for the state after a judge puts a child in the state's
care. Then they oversee the foster parents' performance.

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services regulates the
contractors and also directly supervises a quarter of the state's foster
care homes. Under the current system, the department is the case manager
for each foster child's overall welfare, whether the child is in a
private or a state foster home.

Contractors receive state payments for each child and pass on part of the
money to the foster parents for the children's general needs. In the
current fiscal year, contractors get $36 per child per day for basic
care, with the foster parent getting $20 of that.

Children with specialized needs, such as serious medical or emotional
problems, generate higher payments - $87.25 per child per day to the
contractor, $45 of that to the foster family. In addition, the state
covers all foster children's medical and dental bills.

Records show that after some serious violations by foster parents, such
as physical punishment, which isn't allowed, the contractors removed the
children and cut off the foster parents from future assignments. In other
instances, however, problem foster parents were allowed to keep working.

Either way, many serious problems never appear in the state's online
database of the contractors' compliance histories, which are supposed to
help the public judge the quality of foster care.

Foster care agencies say they work hard to make sure children are safe.
"We're not going to leave a child in a situation where there is risk to
the child," said Ron McDaniel, vice president of marketing for DePelchin
Children's Center of Houston. One of the state's largest foster care
providers, DePelchin oversees about 250 foster homes.

How safe Texas' foster children are, however, is hard to tell. The Texas
Department of Family and Protective Services, which includes Child
Protective Services, said last year that 96 percent were in safe homes.

But Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's office found that the
figure "greatly overstates" foster child safety. For example, the figure
included only physical or sexual abuse or neglect by adults; it left out
child-on-child abuse in foster homes.

The 96 percent also omits instances in which the state didn't confirm
abuse or where it "administratively closed" cases without investigating.
The Department of Family and Protective Services has stopped the latter
practice.

In addition, the comptroller's office said it couldn't account for 250
children in November 2003, who were either missing from Texas foster care
or living in unapproved places. The department - long at odds with the
comptroller's office - disputes that figure and says it knows of no child
who cannot be found.

"We're not pretending we're doing an adequate job" at managing foster
care, said Darrell Azar, the department's spokesman. "We need more
resources to do it better."

'Minor violations'

In reviewing cases from 2002 to 2004, The News found that in addition to
keeping many violations away from public view, the department frequently
downplays the seriousness of abuse or neglect allegations. Records often
classify allegations of physical or sexual abuse or cruelty as minor
violations of minimum standards that pose a low risk to children.

One such allegation involved a 7-year-old foster child who told an adult
that his 11-year-old brother was sexually molesting him. In another, a
foster mother was allegedly disciplining a psychotic, suicidal 8-year-old
girl by taking her outside and telling her there were monsters in the
bushes. State records classified both as minor, low-risk situations.

An allegation that a 17-year-old male in a foster home had twice raped an
8-year-old girl in foster care was classified as a case of neglectful
supervision.

The records that The News reviewed concerned contractors ranging from
mainstays such as the 113-year-old DePelchin to newcomers such as
Dallas-based Youth in View, in business just four years.

The examined records include complaint and investigation reports and
licensing files and inspections on foster care providers. Some
contractors show up more often than others in the cases the newspaper
reviewed, but that might be because they handle more foster children.

Some documents are dry accounts of required record-keeping, a massive
task that forced Youth in View to stop accepting new foster children for
several months in 2003 while the fledgling contractor tried to correct
paperwork problems.

Others contain easily disproved allegations by disturbed or angry
children. One girl, for example, accused her foster father of sexual
abuse, but an investigation found that he was hospitalized for heart
surgery at the time of the alleged assault. She then changed the date of
the abuse to a time years before she entered the home.

Others are accounts of quick action that limited harm to children. One
case from 2002 involved two children whose foster parents physically and
mentally abused them and eventually ordered them to lie to cover up the
foster parents' role in a car crash.

The contractor, Cedar Ridge Foster Care, based in Lometa in Central
Texas, swiftly removed the children, investigated and cut off the parents
from any more foster work. The children's therapist, who had triggered
the action with a call to CPS, was "very complimentary" of Cedar Ridge's
response, a report said.

Often, however, the records reviewed by The News describe cases in which
foster care providers knew about problems but did not act.

In one such case, two foster families - not identified by name or
location in a 2004 report - were having their foster children assemble
weapons in the families' home-based gun store.

"All of the children work or spend at least 20 hours a week at the barn"
that housed the armory, according to a state report. "The children are
putting together and packing knives, gun magazines, etc. ... Many of the
kids reported that one night they worked until 2-4 a.m. in the morning
helping their [foster] dads complete an order."

A caseworker for the foster care contractor, New Horizons Ranch, based in
Brownwood, knew the children were working at the armory "because the
children told her," a state investigation found. After a tip triggered a
state inspection, the contractor removed the children and shut the foster
homes.

One problem, the inspector noted, was that the contractor's reports of
its home visits, meant to document conditions and reinforce the rules,
seemed to be copied verbatim from reports the parents themselves wrote
and sent in.

New Horizons' executive director, Del Barnett, said New Horizons knew
about the gun store when it approved the families as foster parents. New
Horizons also knew that the children were working there, he said. They
worked voluntarily and were paid more than minimum wage, he said. New
Horizons regularly checked the kids and the families and didn't find any
abuse in the kids' work at the gun store, he said.

The state inspection report said the children should never have been
allowed to work in such a place. "The [foster] facility director was told
that this is not an appropriate working place for children," the report
said. "It is against standards for children to be around these types of
items."

Mr. Barnett said New Horizons didn't object to that finding.

"It's just a question of whether a kid should be around a gun or not," he
said. "We might debate that both ways. It certainly could get out of
hand, and that's the danger. If it's a job and it's supervised, well, I
don't know. I'm not really trying to defend or not defend that."

New Horizons kicked the parents out of its foster program for unrelated
reasons in September 2003, six months before the state wrote its report,
he said. The families moved on to another foster care contractor, he
said.

Almost no penalties

Except for cases listed as physical or sexual abuse, the state almost
always has the contractor investigate its own foster home. State
officials review the findings and the steps needed to fix the problem. If
the state concurs, it closes the case without any mention in the
contractor's public, online compliance record that the incident ever
happened.

One such case in 2002 concerned a foster home operating through A World
for Children, based in the Austin suburb of Round Rock. The state
received complaints about the home over a five-week period.

Two foster children regularly had to change a younger child's diaper. Two
children went without needed glasses. The foster mother didn't always
provide school supplies. Children rode four-wheelers without helmets.

"One child had a bruise on her pubic bone and a swelling at the back of
the spine that were not explained," the state wrote to the contractor.

The contractor investigated and found the home deficient on a half-dozen
standards, including one barring "any harsh, cruel, unusual, unnecessary,
demeaning, or humiliating punishment." It kicked the foster parents out
of the program.

State officials concurred but took no action against the contractor,
despite a regulation saying the contractor has an ongoing duty to ensure
that foster parents obey the rules. The state's online database says only
that an investigation found no violations - no names or details.

The News found scores of similar cases involving various contractors.

Char Bateman, in charge of residential child-care licensing for the
Department of Family and Protective Services, said the state doesn't cite
a contractor for a foster parent's violation if the contractor handled
the case properly - for example, if it responded quickly and took the
right steps to correct the problem.

If the contractor mismanages the investigation, the contractor itself
might face a violation. The state also does routine inspections that look
at a sample of the contractor's files.

Even when the state cites the contractor for a violation, there's seldom
a penalty. That happened with a 2002 case in which a foster mother
concealed the presence in her home of a man with a known criminal record
and the contractor didn't act.

A worker for A World for Children had told the foster mother that the
man, who wasn't identified, couldn't be in the home. The mother then
ordered the foster children "not to tell the [contractor] staff that the
man was in the home."

The state found that the contractor had known about the problem for
months but didn't force the issue until CPS was tipped Sept. 24, 2002.

The state closed the case by citing two violations against A World for
Children. For each, the solution included a talk with the foster mother,
agreements that she wouldn't let the man back in the house and that she
wouldn't keep any more secrets, unannounced visits by supervisors, and
increased training for the contractor.

The Department of Family and Protective Services has no real police power
over the contractors, Ms. Bateman said. The department can boost
monitoring requirements and inspect more frequently, in serious cases can
tell a contractor to stop putting children in a home.

But it can't fine a contractor for poor performance. The final option,
revoking a contractor's license, is rarely used.

"Our philosophy is to try and help them succeed and do a good job," Ms.
Bateman said.

'Low risk'

It was often hard to tell from the reports how serious the problem was.
Records reviewed by The News classified all of the following as minor,
low-risk allegations that, under state policy, would give the state up
to15 days to launch an investigation:

A foster mother verbally abused the children, withheld water on a hot
day, withheld food as punishment, pushed a child into a van and drove 11
children in a van, forcing some to sit on the floorboards.

A 17-year-old foster child was found sitting by a trash container behind
a restaurant at night, "bleeding from her arms, crying and being
obviously upset." Apparently kicked out of the home by her foster mother,
the girl was cutting herself because it helped "get the pain out."

Four foster children, ages 11 to 14, were forced to take care of the
toddler of the foster mother's 20-year-old, methamphetamine-hooked
daughter.

A foster mother habitually went 14 hours between changing the diaper of a
12-year-old mentally retarded girl with cerebral palsy, eczema, scoliosis
and a reactive airway disease that forced the use of a tracheotomy tube.
The girl was developing a "skin breakdown" and blisters under her diaper.

Sometimes, state child-abuse hotline workers recommended a higher
priority and more serious category, only to have the final paperwork
later reflect lower, less serious risk. That's what happened in the
allegation that a foster mother had tried at least three times to get her
mother-in-law to give her some prescription Valium and Xanax to medicate
a 10-year-old boy.

The hotline worker recommended labeling the case medical neglect,
priority 2, which would call for a response within 10 days. The child "is
accessible to [the foster mother] and is unprotected," the worker wrote.

However, the official "intake" report called the case a minor violation,
priority 3, the classification for low risk to a child - giving the state
five additional days to start an investigation.

Abuse or neglect allegations are supposed to be the highest urgency,
priority 1, requiring an investigation within 24 hours, Ms. Bateman said.
Each new report is reviewed by one of three investigation supervisors to
make sure it's been given the right priority, she said.

However, if that review isn't done within 24 hours, the state risks
violating its own time limit for investigating abuse complaints.

Ms. Bateman said the supervisors upgrade cases into more urgent
categories more often than they downgrade them to lower priorities. The
News found one such case in the files it reviewed.

In July 2004, the Department of Family and Protective Services started
checking samples of intake reports to make sure cases were given the
right priority, said Mr. Azar, the department spokesman.

No results are available yet, he said.

Another "minor, low-risk" case stirred concerns by police in McAllen.

On Sept. 18, 2003, two children in a McAllen foster home overseen by A
World for Children were being moved to a temporary home while the foster
mother was hospitalized. However, one child, a 13-year-old girl, ran away
before being moved.

According to the other child, the foster mother's 30-year-old son was
living in the house and had started buying the girl gifts and giving her
"a lot of attention,"

While investigating the girl's disappearance, a McAllen detective learned
something else about the foster mother's son: Two months earlier, a
security guard had caught him in his car in a shopping mall parking lot,
videotaping girls without their knowledge.

A police officer who responded watched the tape and saw that it contained
shots of girls at the mall, a Target store and McAllen High School,
"zooming in on their breast and buttocks area."

The officer didn't arrest the son because he didn't know that a new state
law made it a crime to secretly taping someone for sexual purposes.
Still, the detective who was looking for the runaway girl "was wondering
why [the son] was allowed to live with [the foster mother] in a foster
home."

All that information was available when the state classified it as a
minor, low-risk case.

The News did not find the son's name in Texas' sex-offender and criminal
convictions records. Sgt. Mike Zellers of the McAllen Police Department
said he couldn't find a report of the incident, but he added that his
small department gets from 75 to 100 referrals from CPS each month.

Neither the documents themselves nor the McAllen police could determine
if the girl ever came home.
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  #5  
Old May 2nd 05, 08:53 PM
Greegor
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More examples of what a wonderful parent the
government makes? (sic)

Government TOLERATES this?

But at the same time SECOND GUESSES parents?

  #6  
Old May 2nd 05, 11:10 PM
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Greegor wrote:
More examples of what a wonderful parent the
government makes? (sic)


Since government has never claimed nor tried to be a child's parent
your claim is pointless, but not your head.

Government TOLERATES this?


Where do you see that "Government TOLERATES this?"

But at the same time SECOND GUESSES parents?


Not all parents, just the ones that come to their attention and are
shown to abused, or neglected, or put their children at risk of abuse
and neglect.

Kind of like Lisa seems to have done.

You are still there, are you not, and the little girl is not.

You workin' up to telling us your real feelings about parent's using
lethal force to take their children from state custody, are yah?

0:-

  #7  
Old May 3rd 05, 02:26 AM
Pop
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Posts: n/a
Default

"Greegor" wrote in message
oups.com...
More examples of what a wonderful parent the
government makes? (sic)

Government TOLERATES this?

But at the same time SECOND GUESSES parents?

Pure unadulterated blather there. No point of reference, nothing of any
intelligence, just smelly, rotten stuff spewing from an orfice. "sic" is
right, only it's spelled "sick" in your case. I feel sorry for you in some
ways, you're so pathetic and limited in intelligence and sapienity. You
must live in a very dark, putrid world, alone and without companionship most
of the time unless you can find a drunken blatherskite of similar ilk to
prowl the gutters and bowels of your mind with.
You should get mental help; it's obvious you need it badly. You're
lacking in just about every societal nicety that exists, and even more, like
it. Pathetic yet abhorrant.



  #8  
Old May 3rd 05, 02:28 AM
Pop
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Posts: n/a
Default

....
You workin' up to telling us your real feelings about parent's using
lethal force to take their children from state custody, are yah?

0:-

Probably has a very tough intestinal obstruction which will give at any
moment. Hope no one gets too close!


  #9  
Old May 3rd 05, 02:45 AM
Julie
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Default


"Pop" wrote in message
...
"Greegor" wrote in message
oups.com...
More examples of what a wonderful parent the
government makes? (sic)

Government TOLERATES this?

But at the same time SECOND GUESSES parents?

Pure unadulterated blather there. No point of reference, nothing of any
intelligence, just smelly, rotten stuff spewing from an orfice. "sic" is
right, only it's spelled "sick" in your case. I feel sorry for you in
some ways, you're so pathetic and limited in intelligence and sapienity.
You must live in a very dark, putrid world, alone and without
companionship most of the time unless you can find a drunken blatherskite
of similar ilk to prowl the gutters and bowels of your mind with.
You should get mental help; it's obvious you need it badly. You're
lacking in just about every societal nicety that exists, and even more,
like it. Pathetic yet abhorrant.


YIKES!! You need to turn yourself in to the MH authorities. And give the
kids back before you pollute their mind with your irrational hate and
disguisting narcissism.


  #10  
Old May 3rd 05, 09:55 PM
Greegor
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Julie: The hate and narcissism from the BENEFICIARIES is
powerfully driven by any perception that their supply of
kids and ""reimbursement"" money is threatened.

They deny their intellectual prostitution.

 




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