Bikes for Foster Care Kids

I like reporting positive stories regarding children in foster care.  On Friday, June 26, 250 brand new Huffy bikes will be given away at an event for children in foster care family preservation programs with Orchards Children’s Services.

The event will be held at the organization’s headquarters in Southfield from noon to 3 p.m., and will be a part of an annual Olympics event with a carnival, bounce house and games.

The bikes were purchased with help of corporate sponsors Lifetime Fitness and Kroger, individual donations, and many other key players, said Pamela Ayres, director of resource and fund development for Orchards Children’s Services.

50 volunteers helped put the bikes together last weekend.  The staff of Orchards chose the children who will be receiving the bikes. Each child receiving a bicycle also will receive a helmet and bike lock, as well as children’s books donated by DK Publishing.

Foster rules eased for relatives – now relatives won’t have to be licensed

DHS has eased the requirement that relatives become licensed foster care providers in order to have a child placed with them.   In October, a policy was implemented requiring foster home licensing for all family members who take custody of children who are relatives.  Apparently, this policy did not go over very well with relative caregivers.  Of the 1,521 relatives contacted before Dec. 19, only 53 percent said they were interested in becoming licensed, according to a letter recently written by Ismael Ahmed, director of Michigan’s human services department, to state legislators.

Apparently, family members who step in to care for children that have been removed from their parents due to abuse or neglect are a little wary of government oversight.  One can hardly blame them.  The requirements for licensing include foster parent training, fingerprinting of all adults in the home, and minimums on square footage of bedrooms in the house.

In a formal memorandum issued in March, Terry Salacina, DHS’ acting director of field operations, instructed county and local welfare directors to allow placement of children with relatives who refused licensing, as long as safety checks were completed, the child’s interest was met and relatives signed a waiver saying they were informed of their options but declined.

Licensing still has its privileges.  Licensed foster homes receive monthly foster care payments between $399 and $493 a month, plus allowances for clothing and holidays.

The Detroit News published a nice article on this story.  Click here to read the article.

Quick Fact:  Of the 20,142 children in out-of-home placements, 7118 are in relative placements.  That’s 35.3%.

Adoption Forum I Final Report

The Adoption Forum I Final Report has been posted, providing an evaluation and statistical analysis of the 13 Michigan counties with the largest adoption dockets after collaborative work between the courts, local offices of the Michigan Department of Human Services, and other child welfare stakeholders.  Between March 1, 2008, and March 1, 2009, the counties participating in the Adoption Forum were able to increase adoptions by 14 percent for permanent wards.

The participating counties were:

• Berrien
• Macomb
• Calhoun
• Monroe
• Genesee
• Muskegon
• Ingham
• Oakland
• Jackson
• Saginaw
• Kalamazoo
• Wayne
• Kent

The participating counties employed a number of mechanisms to increase the number of adoptions of permanent wards.  These include:  streamlining requirements for adoption (e.g., paperwork); sending the termination order directly to the adoption caseworker to ensure an immediate response after termination; publicizing Adoption Day; judges meeting monthly with CASAs, local DHS, and prosecutor to discuss barriers to timely adoptions and solutions; meetings with the private sector to recruit adoptive families; and creation of a “rocket docket,” a special docket for backlogged cases.  There were a number of other methods employed that are not listed here.

To download or view the report, click here: Adoption Forum I – Final Report 2009

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.