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Posted on Sun, Apr. 16, 2006



Foster child adoption push investigated
REPORT: STATE UNJUSTLY TERMINATES PARENTAL RIGHTS FOR FEDERAL MONEY
By Valarie Honeycutt Spears
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER

Kentucky's inspector general is investigating complaints that some state
child protection officials are using foster children as "bartering items" in an
adoption push that a recent report equated to the "black-market selling of
children."
Veteran state social workers and other professionals who work with
vulnerable families allege that, under federal pressure to increase the number
of
Kentucky foster children who are adopted, some administrators in the Cabinet
for
Health and Family Services are inappropriately recommending to courts that
the rights of biological parents be terminated.
In January, the Louisville-based National Institute on Children, Youth and
Families Inc. and the Kentucky Youth Advocates released a report titled The
Other Kentucky Lottery that raised concerns about expedited or "quick trigger"
foster care adoptions.
Cabinet Inspector General Robert J. Benvenuti III says an intensive
investigation into the allegations has been under way since January and could
result
in both administrative actions and criminal prosecutions.
At the same time, judges, social workers, biological parents and advocates
-- typically intimidated by confidentiality laws -- are speaking out about how
a well-conceived federal idea to prevent children from languishing in foster
care has increasingly led to "quick trigger" adoptions, in which children
are separated from their parents too quickly or without evidence to justify the
removal.
"There are complaints that some supervisors and workers are unwilling to
listen, complaints about the arrogance of power," said David Richart, executive
director of the National Institute on Children, Youth and Families. "I
suspect this is happening in other states. We appear to be one of the first
groups
to identify this as a problem."
The number of children moved from state foster care to adoption in Kentucky
increased from 384 in 1999 to 902 in 2005. That resulted in $1 million in
bonus money paid to the state in 2004 under a federal program designed to
encourage states to move more children into adoptive families. The state gets
paid
a bonus of $4,000 for each child that is adopted out, more if it's a special
needs child.
Critics of the adoption system say the incentive money motivates the state
to quickly -- sometimes carelessly -- shift children into adoptive homes. A
whistleblower lawsuit filed last fall by a fired state social worker alleges
that the Cabinet stands to lose millions if it fails to meet time frames set by
the federal government.
Federal and Cabinet officials, such as adoption services branch manager Mike
Grimes, defend the movement to find children permanent homes more quickly
and say that a judge must approve any Cabinet recommendation.
Grimes denied that incentive money is motivating premature terminations of
parental rights. He said the state pays out more in subsidies to adoptive
parents of special needs children than it receives in federal bonuses.
Tom Emberton Jr., commissioner of the Department for Community Based
Services, which oversees foster care adoptions, said he requested the Inspector
General investigation of the allegations. So far, Emberton said, he has seen no
evidence of quick-triggering adoptions.
He also said the investigation isn't over: "I don't want to paint a picture
that we aren't concerned."
In the past, Grimes said, as long as children were safe and policies
followed, there was no rush to remove them from foster care. Federal laws
passed in
the late 1990s, however, forced the state to place children in adoptive homes
more quickly.
"It was a huge shift in thinking and practice," he said.
Parental rights debate
The struggle has roots in a debate between people who fiercely believe in
parental rights and those who think children are better served by a permanent
adoptive family if biological parents can't quickly solve their problems.
The controversy has put those who administer the system at odds. Some in the
Family Court system complain that, in some cases, the Cabinet sets
unrealistic expectations for biological families so they will fail and their
children
end up in a state-arranged adoption.
In some cases, judges have stepped in to keep adoptions from happening.
Fayette Family Judge Tim Philpot said the push for foster care adoptions is
so new that problems are just beginning to come to light. He recently stopped
an attempt by the Cabinet to terminate a mother's parental rights because
advocates were concerned the mother hadn't been given a "fair shot" to get her
kids back.
"The key to all of these cases is whether you have a judge paying
attention," Philpot said. "The foster care review boards and the (court
appointed
attorneys) are also the eyes and ears of the court."
The January report was based on 225 complaints received on an anonymous
hotline. The hotline was set up because many in the child-protection system
were
afraid they would be violating confidentiality laws by making their concerns
public.
Social workers in Hardin County, for example, reported that supervisors
picked adoptive families based on how those families could benefit the Cabinet
or
because supervisors thought the families were owed a favor, according to the
report. Emberton said the allegations are under investigation.
Social workers from other parts of the state said supervisors forced them to
tear families apart just to raise the number of adoptions of foster
children.
"Management staff use children and especially infants as bartering items,"
one social worker says in the report. "There is not a lot of difference in the
system than the black-market selling of children."
Richart said he is working with the complainants involved in 22 cases now
under review by the state Inspector General's office, and that there are dozens
of other questionable cases that he expects will be scrutinized.
The crux of the debate is the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act, which
was passed in 1997. The law allows courts to terminate custodial rights if a
parent fails to improve his or her situation, but it also encourages courts
to take into account a parent's efforts to reform.
The law was intended to move children into more stable adoptive homes,
rather than moving them from home to home in foster care.
Federal authorities started cracking down on Kentucky in 1999 for allowing
children to languish in foster care and found the Cabinet out of compliance
again in 2003 for not correcting the problem quickly enough. The state faced
$1.7 million in fines if the situation didn't improve.
Since the law was passed, child welfare professionals have expressed
concerns that it gets more children into adoptive homes at the expense of
parents
who are in the greatest need of help.
The goal of the law should be to get children out of foster care, said
Richard P. Barth, a child welfare researcher and professor at the University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, "not to keep kids from going home to their
parents."
But many advocates in Kentucky fear that's exactly what's happening. They
say the threshold for terminating parental rights has been lowered.
"Ten years ago, we mostly saw burns, physical and sexual abuse" as reasons
for removing children from their parents, Lexington attorney T. Robin Cornette
said. "Now, sometimes we are in court not because parents don't love, feed,
house or get their children to school, but because of substance abuse. It can
be marijuana to much more serious addiction issues. And you don't have as
much time to improve as you used to. It's the family law equivalent of the
death penalty."
Low-income families are especially vulnerable because they don't have money
to pay for legal representation or expert court testimony, Cornette said.
In February, the Kentucky Court of Appeals issued a ruling that could help
impoverished parents whose children have been removed. The court ruled that
the Cabinet had to pay for substance abuse treatment and a mental health
assessment for a Fayette County woman in an effort to reunite her with her
14-year-old daughter.
From bad to worse
Not all cases of alleged "quick trigger" adoptions involve biological
families.
The attorney for former state social worker Pat Moore says Moore was fired
because she criticized her supervisors for insisting that two foster children
be placed with an adoptive family in Verona in Boone County even thought the
family, among other problems, allowed a man described in court documents as a
pedophile convicted of sex crimes to be around the children.
In her whistleblower suit, Moore said the Cabinet was forcing the adoption
to keep its numbers high.
Court records show that Cabinet supervisors pushed for the adoption even
though those same supervisors acknowledged that the prospective adoptive home
should not have been approved and a private foster care agency deemed the home
unfit.
According to a memo from Cabinet officials that is included in the lawsuit
file, there had been a half-dozen complaints about the prospective adoptive
parents, which the Cabinet never substantiated.
In a September 2004 court petition to remove the children from the home,
Thomas W. Beiting, a court-appointed guardian, told a judge that both parents
had criminal records. Beiting also noted that a son living in the home had been
convicted of multiple felonies, including drug convictions, and that the
foster mother's brother, a convicted child abuser, had been in the home around
the foster children.
"It is obvious that this home probably should have never been approved,"
said a July 2004 report that summarized a meeting between three regional
supervisors and was included in the court file. But the supervisors went on to
push
for the adoption.
"It is our recommendation that we proceed quickly with the adoption, while
building in the greatest safety net as possible," the report said.
In 2004, according to court records, Campbell County Judge Michael Foellger
went against the Cabinet recommendation and ruled that the Verona family
should not be allowed to adopt the children. The Cabinet declined to comment on
the case, citing confidentiality laws.
Moore's attorney says the case illustrates how the state is rushing to get
kids out of foster care and into adoptive homes. The Cabinet was especially
eager to place these children because they were classified as having special
needs, attorney Shane Sidebottom said.
He said Moore was fired for going against regional management's judgment:
"The state found foster parents willing to adopt, and even though the state
knew the family had major problems, the state needed to get the kids out of
the 'system,' regardless of how unfit the foster parents were."





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