Granholm signs bill allowing free babysitting

Gov. Jennifer Granholm has signed legislation that exempts babysitting from day care regulations after the state ordered a Barry County woman to stop watching her friend’s children before school.

The Republican-led Senate approved the bill on a 37-0 vote earlier this month. The Democratic governor signed it Tuesday.  As I reported earlier on this site, the state Department of Human Services sent a letter to Lisa Snyder of Irving Township in August warning her that if she continued watching three children for about an hour each day before school, she’d be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.

The bill is HB 5514, you can get complete information on the Michigan Legislature website or by clicking here.

ABA Report on Parent Representation in Michigan

The Michigan State Court Administrative Office, Child Welfare Services Division, through the Court Improvement Program, has been focusing on improving the quality of legal representation in Michigan. As part of this project, they contracted with the ABA, Center on Children and the Law to conduct an independent study of legal representation for parents in Michigan and to make recommendations for improvement. The report addresses some of the larger concerns like compensation, training, client communication and codifying the duties of attorneys for parents.

The report also suggests appointing counsel prior to the filing of a petition.  This is really a great idea so attorneys can work with DHS to perhaps  avoid the filing of a petition.  Many parents would voluntarily comply with services, if they had trusted representation to explain their options to them.

The report identifies the problem of leaving the compensation of attorneys to the individual counties.  In Oakland County, for example, they have cut compensation for counsel for parents and are only appointing attorneys if requested.  Both of these measures take us backward from the recommendations suggested in this report.  Oakland County is certainly regressing in terms of the quality of counsel it is providing for indigent parents.  In the time of budget cuts, it is easier to cut contract attorneys than salaried employees.

I hate to sound like a pessimist, but in Michigan’s current economic climate, I doubt our legislature will find it a budget priority to provide adequate counsel for “neglectful” and “abusive” parents.  This report will be buried along with a number of other good ideas that would benefit families and children in Michigan.

If you would like to view or download the report, click here: Michigan Parent Representation Report

Middleville mom ordered to stop watching friends’ children waiting for bus

Bureaucratic rules often lead to absurd results.  In this case, I am compelled to believe that DHS has lost its ever-loving mind!

Francie Brummel and Lisa Snyder thought they had a perfect solution to getting their two kids on the Thornapple Kellogg school district bus.  Brummel drops her 7-year-old son off at Snyder’s nearby house on her way to work, where he waits for about an hour before the bus comes each morning.  Another neighbor, Lori Forbes, brings her son and Mindy Rose’s son to Snyder’s home as well. Snyder waits with all of them for the bus.  The women are all friends who live near each other in a rural part of Barry County.  Snyder’s home on Thornbird Drive is a designated bus stop, and the children would all ride the same bus anyway.

Seems like a reasonable solution so your children do not have to wait out in the cold for the bus, right?  Well, not according to DHS.

After only three days of school, Snyder was notified by the state Department of Human Services that a neighbor had filed a complaint that she was operating an illegal day care out of her home.  Really? Are you kidding me?

That was a rhetorical question, but I’m going to answer it anyway.  According to state law, a person cannot provide care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks per calendar year unless they are licensed or registered with the state.  Failure to do so is a misdemeanor punishable with fines or jail time.

This story has now been covered in all of the local papers and nationally on the Today Show.  Frankly, this is an embarrassment for the State and DHS.

You can view the interview on the Today show here:

State Representative Brian Calley has introduced legislation to prevent this in the future. The problem is that this lady should have never been prosecuted in the first place.

The Juvenile Lifer Law: The Debate Continues

The Detroit News printed an article regarding the juvenile lifer law today.  The byline reads, “Mich. ranks second in number of young killers behind bars.”  The report cites a study from the University of Texas that says Michigan has the second most such inmates in the country. The report also says Michigan is among the harshest in the way it treats teens accused of major crimes.

“Children simply aren’t as culpable as adults because their brains aren’t fully developed yet, and they are much more capable of rehabilitation,” said Michele Deitch, an adjunct professor at the University of Texas and principal investigator of the study.

The option to sentence juveniles as adults is “harsh” treatment, the study’s authors said. Michigan’s guidelines — unlike most states’ — require a child who is convicted as an adult of first-degree murder to receive the same sentence as an adult: mandatory life in prison without parole.

The report, released this summer, gave Michigan the dubious distinction, along with three other states — Pennsylvania, Florida and South Carolina — of having children most likely to end up in adult prisons, because of mandatory sentencing laws and the ease of transferring juveniles into the adult system or imposing adult sentences.

If you read this blog often you know that I believe Michigan has a duplicitous view of juvenile delinquency.  The statute indicates that the purpose is rehabilitation, but in practice, the law functions more to punish.  Michigan should decide what the public policy is in addressing juvenile delinquency.

You can view the article here: Teen lifers a burden for state’s prisons.

Study: Michigan’s Economy hurts child well-being in Michigan

The annual Kids Count survey was released on Tuesday and it should come as no surprise that the state of Michigan’s economy is negatively impacting Michigan’s children.  Michigan ranked 27th among the states the 2009 report on child well-being. Rapidly rising poverty and unemployment were the most troubling trends in the report, but the state performed well in reducing the rates of teen deaths and high school dropouts.

The state-by-state report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation looks at 10 indicators of child well-being and ranks the states, with No. 1 the best.  Michigan’s overall rank of 27 puts it behind a majority of other states.

Michigan’s worst ranking (41) was for the percent of children living in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment.  In Michigan in 2007, 36 percent of children lived in those families, compared with 33 percent nationally.

The state ranked No. 34 for the percent of children living in poverty (income below about $21,000 for two adults and two children in 2007). Nearly one out of every five of Michigan’s 2.4 million children lived in poverty in 2007. That rate has jumped by 36 percent since 2000.

Other highlights from Kids Count survey:

• A 4% drop in the child death rate from 22% in 2000 to 18% in 2006.
• No change in the percentage of children living in single-parent families.
• a 14% improvement among the teen death rate and a 50% improvement in the percent of teens, ages 16-19, who are dropouts.

You can view the full report here: 2009 Kids Count Survey