Free Press Columnist Rochelle Riley’s Nice Article Regarding Foster Care in Michigan

On Freep.com this morning columnist Rochelle Riley wrote a great article regarding the state of Foster Care in Michigan today and the efforts being made by the Department of Human Services for the future.  Ms. Riley also discusses the efforts being made pursuant to the class action filed by the advocacy group Children’s Rights.

The article addresses the Department of Human Services public relations efforts throughout the month of May, which is National Foster Care Month, to recruit new foster care parents.  She writes, “They are also out to repair the agency’s reputation and tout changes in the system that oversees 16,800 foster children and teens.”

She reports that with all of the State budget cuts, foster care remains untouched. She states: “There are no direct cuts in foster care,” Ismael Ahmed, DHS director since September 2007, told me in an interview this week. “In fact, we’ll be putting more money in foster care as a result of several things that are part of the child welfare improvement template that we adopted.” I have been following the budget cuts to services related to children’s protective services in general on this blog.  (See “The Budget Axe” post)

She also cites a number of statistics in her article. Here are a few:

• The department has cut the ratio of cases to workers from 40-1 to 22-1. The settlement calls for 15-1, and Ahmed said the state hopes to reach that next year.
• There’s about 125,000 phone calls or reports of abuse of children every year.
• DHS investigates about half of those, removing some 17,000 kids from homes each year.

You can read Ms. Riley’s complete article on the Freep.com by clicking here.

© 2009, Melinda Deel. All rights reserved.

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