Calif: No kids for cash. Editorial

FW:

Subject: No kids for cash
From: ospam (LilMtnCbn)
Date: 2/18/2004 1:26 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories...962110,00.html

Op-ed piece

No kids for cash


Foster care shouldn't be a profit industry.

It took the needless deaths of a couple of kids and reports showing a system in
calamity. But it seems that momentum is building for an overhaul of the state's
and county's "cash for kids' foster system that appears not to have the best
interests of the children in mind.

Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to start reforms in the county's
child protective services system in order to change the fiscal structure. Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger also has called for an overhaul of the state's system as
well.

The actions come in the wake of a series of L.A. Daily News stories that
examined Los Angeles County's child welfare system. The articles revealed that
as many as half of the 75,000 kids who go through the county's foster care and
adoptive homes system each year didn't need to be there, and that many faced
even more dangerous situations than they would have at home.

The current structure of the system gives foster care workers and
subcontractors financial incentives to keep kids in the system -- and away from
their homes. County government, for example, receives between $30,000 and
$150,000 each year in state and federal money for each child in foster care.

That's wrong.

The governor and the supervisors have the right idea that instead there ought
to be an incentive for keeping kids (((BEGINN ITALLLS))) out ((((END ITALLS)))
of foster care, and for solving the problems that led to their involvement in
the system in the first place.



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California sites for DSS reform: http://www.familyrightsassociation. com
There is a California chapter, which is very active.

Also: http://www.the-facts.com California site. Nr. central Calif.