I say this because the bill would open hearings where DSS seeks to end a child’s life to the public, and place clear requirements as to what steps to take into our laws for the first time.
The health insurance industry has a constituency and lots and lots of money. Part of that constituency is the health care industry [such as the competition between community and teaching hospitals], another part consists of employers who need to provide health insurance to keep skilled workers.
Foster children do not have a constituency, really. Yes, foster care is an industry, as is the prison system. Both need bodies in their systems [foster children, prisoners] so are not likely to support actions that send children home because families get help with housing and so forth, or reduce the number of prisoners because there are enough treatment beds for addicts and housing for the recovering. Sad but true.
The estimated cost for foster care this year is 12 billion. It costs $17.500 on average for all the costs of each foster child. Usually, though, there is no money for counseling or housing or other services to keep the kids home. Group home care averages $42,500 per year, about the cost of keeping a prisoner imprisoned. Imagine if even 10% of that money was available for services, instead, to families that need support in dealing with the issues of poverty and housing?
Neither foster children nor poor parents have lobbyists, or any organization to do the work that was done to make the health insurance changes Judith Meredith describes. Change takes work. It can be done, but it takes a LOT of work.
Similarly, we spend more in this state on prisons then on education. Hello! The prison industry has lobbyists; the guards have a union. The prisoners have nothing working on their behalf. The last I heard, 42% of minority men have “criminal records” now – where is the money to retrain, treat addiction or mental illness? I hate to say it, but poor ex-prisoners do not seem to be organized advocates any more than foster children can advocate for themselves.
Frankly, preventing imprisonment would cost much less than the cost of imprisonment and the rapidly expanding prison industry.
Preventing removal of children from their families by supporting and strengthening families would cost much less than foster care, and the rapidly expanding foster care, and child welfare industry.
However, changing how we in Massachusetts “do business” with regard to the poor and struggling would require honesty and cash up front.
Example: Family preservation services are ultimately less expensive than foster care but require honest services that are: 1) Culturally appropriate; 2) Fully funded; 3) Rationally related to the needs of the family, such as addiction treatment where children can live with their parents and affordable housing; 4)Actually available; 5)Geographically accessible. That is “for a start”.
Example: The “graduates” of prison need to be able to get certified as having “paid their debt” in some fashion that regains access to employment and housing, or only crime and “three squares” in the big house are left to them. Imagine: Certified Rehabilitation would be a lot better investment then bigger and bigger prisons where more is spent on warehousing human beings then on the entire public education system of this state.
But all the same – it is the legislature that did not drop the ball on preventing DSS from pulling the plug to save money when a high risk, medically fragile child is in their custody…in the dark and out of the public view.
I was the only “civilian” who came to testify or provide an analysis of the legislation. There were Commissioners, Union presidents, provider organization employees…and me. If anyone wants to see either the executive analysis I did of H 4191 – or the full analysis – let me know. I don’t have them “online” as I do not have a website, and am not sure how to post them here. Deb a/k/a AmberPaw@aol.com
Amber Paw, I do remember that DSS did support an Association of Foster Parents at one time….maybe back in the late 80’s. And more recently, the Mass Society for the Protection of Children under Joyce Strom was supporting a peer training program for their foster parents. The parents lobbied for increased training and a more realistic level of stipends among other things.
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Do you know if anything like that exists today?
To the best of my knowledge, nothing like that exists today. None of the foster parents I visit, because I represent the child or I am the guardian ad litem have access to anything like that. At times, I am the one who makes them referrals, because the workers visit at most once a quarter, if that.
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I assisted one adoptive parent, where I represent the child on appeal recently. It was heart breaking. She described what was occurring, was thinking of giving the child “back to DSS” and it was ME, despite not being a clinician that suggested she bring up RAD [reactive attachment disorder] with the pediatrician. Turns out that was the diagnosis. It was ME who gave her a book, referred her to the therapeutic preschool at Tufts run by one of the best child development people on this planet, Dr. Janet Zeller, etc.
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And guess what – there is very little for parents, especially young parents or parents viewed through the lens of stigma. Once upon a time there were a fair number of “beds” where women and their children could receive treatment together for addiction.
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There are also very few transitional beds where a homeless young parent can be released from the hospital with their new born, to live together while the young mother “gets on their feet”. There are none for young biological fathers. If there is not family support, well, DSS sure does not have funded placements for these young or homeless biological parents unless there is a claim of domestic violence.
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Plus, please remember that under Commissioner Spence there were more funds for consultants than for either social workers or services. There are no longer “housing workers” – to help parents find housing; there have not been for at least a decade. And homelessness is treated like defacto neglect.
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There are also zero transitional housing slots for single fathers, to the best of my knowledge. Further, G.L.c. 119 Sec. 23B states
Note NOTHING is said about assisting fathers. That is about the way it is much, though not all, of the time.
Foster children have strong representation on Beacon Hill bin such organizations as The Home For Little Wanderers and the Mass. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Both of whom testified before the House Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect and continue to work with the legislature in perfecting H4191. Also, DSS currently contracts with MSPCC to support KidsNet, a programs that works with and for the Massachusetts Alliance for Families. This is a continuation of the program Judy Meredith mentioned.
I do not disagree that both the Home for Little Wanderers and MSPCC do good work. However, they are also “stake holders” with institutional bias, and dependent on keeping the foster care inventory up. Their paycheck Y solvency as institutions benefits, unfortunately, from foster care, not from reunification or stronger families or over sight as to reasonable efforts by the courts. I do not consider these groups, despite the good they do, either “civilians” or a “check and balance” on DSS, who pay them.
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Neither organization has a particularly strong record as to strengthening families, supporting reunification, or increasing and supporting “reasonable efforts” to prevent removal.
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It is sort of like having the Massachusetts Correctional Institute being what is out there to advocate for CORI reform, or prisoner rights.
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KidsNet also is weak as to strengthening families/preventing removal/reunification/kids who age out of foster care as legal orphans.