Fw: Cash for kids, records falsified? drive by casework?

FWD aa:

Subject: Cash for Kids?
From: (Fern5827)
Date: 10/29/2003 5:04 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

Indeed, the situation in NJ is particularly disturbing, in light of the fact
that at least 38 DOCUMENTED visits were made to the family's home and that the
family had foster children in pre-adoptive status, and other adopted girls,
along with bio children residing in the home.

Now the head of DYFS is making some noises like *records falsification.*

And Richard Wexler is alluding to *drive-by casework.*

Both of which are extremely upsetting to families who are subject to the
vagaries of DYFS and their inconsistent standards.

Jacksons were
being evaluated by state officials for the adoption of a
seventh child, a 10-year-old girl.

One wonders if the homes the bio parents provided were as frightful.

One further wonders about KINSHIP CARE, which is inadequately utilized in the
States.

http://www.childrensrights.org Figures given are kin care used in 27% of
cases.

The
Jacksons, with six adopted children and one foster child,
received more than $30,000 in government payments last
year.

The Boss family in Illinois and other Midwester states where they re-located
are another horrific example of adoptions gone awry. In that case, children
were murdered.

Once children are formally adopted, for instance, the state
is no longer entitled to closely monitor their well-being.

CLOSELY MONITORED did not apparently apply with DYFS.

Experts are quick to caution that the case of the Jacksons
of New Jersey may prove to be distinctly aberrant, and data
concerning abuse or other problems

See Boss case for another recent example.The Jacksons, for example, completed
their many
adoptions over a decade, and investigators are still
checking to see how they could have missed signs that the
boys were being starved.

Nine or ten caseworkers and supervisors have been fired. Supervisors may not
have union protection.

Cw's are part of CWA--Communications workers of America union.

Another concern is that because the federal government does
not limit the number of children either foster families or
adopting families can have, states will start cramming them
wherever they can.

Incredible.

but many states are also allowing families
to adopt many children with specialized needs - with
sometimes disastrous consequences.


The boys were told they had an *eating disorder.* Never mind, that they hadn't
been to a physician in over 5 years.

Since 1980, the federal government, which had long been
subsidizing foster homes, began to also provide financial
support to families even after they had adopted children.

Thus giving incentives to the states to deem each child *special needs.*

Foster care populations in the
cities were bloated, in part as a result of the crack
epidemic of the 1980's. Children were

A Univ of Florida study showed better growth patterns at 6 months when child
maintained in his own home, by addicted mothers.

Numerous studies showed such stays in
foster care crushed self-esteem and created children who
had trouble forming bonds with adults and peers.

Again, the Family Law Journal in its Millennium issue (2000) cited the case of
a state CPS agency who placed children in foster care, even when there was a
Dad eager to keep his children.

Apparently this scenario is not unknown to child welfare agencies.

found that in some parts of New Jersey as many as
one in five children in foster care had been abused.

What's worse the abuse is frequently covered up.

Newsgroup alt support child protective services.

Doug from Canada sent in:

Subject: Cash for Kids?
From: "doug thomas"
Date: 10/29/2003 1:11 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

the New York Times today has an interesting and disquieting article on
payment for adoptions. (in essence creating long term foster parent
placements.

link - http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/ny...29ADOP.html?th

Cash Incentives for Adoptions Seen as Risk to Some Children

October 29, 2003
By LESLIE KAUFMAN





In December 1995, Raymond and Vanessa Jackson, who had
already adopted a young girl, formally adopted another
child - Bruce, a foster child then age 11. Over the next 12
months, the parents adopted two more boys from the state,
and in 1997 they scooped up a fourth. Yet another girl was
made legally theirs in 2000.

And then, even as prosecutors say the four adopted boys in
the family's New Jersey home were being starved on a diet
of peanut butter and plaster wallboard, the Jacksons were
being evaluated by state officials for the adoption of a
seventh child, a 10-year-old girl.

The criminal inquiry into whether the Jacksons willfully
harmed their four adopted boys will play out over the
coming weeks, even months. But their case, even in its
broad outlines, opens a window on a swiftly changing and
some say increasingly risky corner of the adoption world.

States across the country, often in response to cash
incentives offered by the federal government, have been
under intense pressure in recent years to move children
through their foster care systems and into permanent homes.
Indeed, the number of annual adoptions nationally almost
doubled from 1995 to 2001, and New Jersey adoptions more
than doubled in an even shorter time, to 1,364 in 2002 from
621 in 1998.

But the effort to increase adoptions of the largely poor
and minority children in the states' care has not been met
with any surge of ideal families waiting to take them in.
Instead, the already thin ranks of foster parents are being
pushed to take up the slack, with states using federal
money to subsidize the costs of formally adopting the
children. The payments to parents willing to adopt can
amount to hundreds of dollars a month per child. The
Jacksons, with six adopted children and one foster child,
received more than $30,000 in government payments last
year.

The adoption of needy children is in many cases a good
thing, and often the foster families they wind up with as
adopted children are those they have lived with for years.
But some state officials and child welfare experts say they
worry that the current push is, in essence, transforming
adoption into an extended form of foster care and a
possible peril to children.

Once children are formally adopted, for instance, the state
is no longer entitled to closely monitor their well-being.
And having extended money to the foster parents willing to
formally adopt - a greater amount is paid to the families
who adopt medically fragile or psychologically troubled
children - the risk exists that families take on more than
they can handle, sometimes just for the additional money.

"Have we gone too far too fast?" asks Gary Stangler,
executive director of Jim Casey Youth Opportunities
Initiative, a private foundation in St. Louis focusing on
getting children out of foster care. "I worry that with all
the applause going to the increasing numbers of adoptions,
that we are possibly putting these young people into
families not equipped or prepared to handle them."

Experts are quick to caution that the case of the Jacksons
of New Jersey may prove to be distinctly aberrant, and data
concerning abuse or other problems experienced by children
who have been adopted in recent years is still developing.

But it is clear that children in the state's care are now
being adopted at a faster pace, an outcome many advocates
for children have desired for years. The time it takes for
a foster child to be adopted shrank by five months
nationwide from 1998 to 2001.

But increasing the rate of adoptions may also reduce the
time the state has to scrutinize the families and find the
most suitable home, experts warn. Richard Wexler, the
director of the National Coalition for Child Protection
Reform, says he was concerned that the new law "would
create a huge incentive for quick and dirty slipshod
placements."

Of course, even long-term reviews can miss serious
problems. The Jacksons, for example, completed their many
adoptions over a decade, and investigators are still
checking to see how they could have missed signs that the
boys were being starved.

Another concern is that because the federal government does
not limit the number of children either foster families or
adopting families can have, states will start cramming them
wherever they can.

Multiple child adoptions are a challenge under the best of
circumstances, but many states are also allowing families
to adopt many children with specialized needs - with
sometimes disastrous consequences.

Edith and Brian Beebe of Houston, for example, were allowed
to adopt six severely handicapped children. Despite many
complaints of abuse and rat-infested conditions in their
home, the state acted to remove the children only after the
couple beat one to death in 2000. In an internal review the
state agency found it had not violated any of its own
procedures in approving the adoptions.

Since 1980, the federal government, which had long been
subsidizing foster homes, began to also provide financial
support to families even after they had adopted children.
The aim was to eliminate any financial disincentive to
formally adopting a child.

But extending financial support to adoptive parents was not
enough, and so there were very good reasons for the late
1990's changes in adoption practices that are causing many
of the concerns today. Foster care populations in the
cities were bloated, in part as a result of the crack
epidemic of the 1980's. Children were spending years in
care, some bouncing from placement to placement and others
waiting in willing homes that could not get the paperwork
completed and cleared for an adoption.

As part of the broad social policy efforts conducted by
former President Bill Clinton, the government stepped in to
encourage change. Congress adopted legislation in 1997
offering states up to $6,000 for every adoption out of the
foster care system they could accomplish in excess of the
number they completed the year before.

"Thousands of children across the nation and in New York
were spending years in foster care," said William C. Bell,
commissioner of New York City's Administration for
Children's Services. Numerous studies showed such stays in
foster care crushed self-esteem and created children who
had trouble forming bonds with adults and peers.

"The impulse behind the law was to do something better for
children and to demand a better result from the system,"
said Mr. Bell.

But whatever the motivation, state child welfare officials
handling adoptions are increasingly finding themselves face
to face with a thorny reality: lots of new children ready
for adoption and the same old, very limited pool of foster
parents willing to take them in.

Doubtless many of those foster parents are qualified and
caring. But as a group they certainly have their flaws,
particularly in New Jersey, which has what its own
officials admit is a scandalous history of poor screening
and licensing of such foster homes.

Case records of children in foster care in 2001, released
as a result of a lawsuit against the state's foster care
system, found that in some parts of New Jersey as many as
one in five children in foster care had been abused.

More chilling, the case files also showed that, among
foster homes identified as good prospective adoptive homes,
7 percent had confirmed findings of abuse or neglect in New
Jersey in 2001 - 12 times the rates the federal government
has set as acceptable.

Regulators in Washington, many of whom say the 1997 federal
changes were largely good, are nevertheless beginning to
press for ways to detect potentially troubled adoptive
homes.

"There ought to be some method for a state agency to
determine how these kids are doing post-adoption," said
Wade F. Horn, assistant secretary for children and families
at the Health and Human Services Department in Washington.

"Most kids in foster care are there because they have had
something terrible happen in their background. That would
suggest a lot of these kids are going to have issues, and
we shouldn't be surprised that when these kids are adopted
problems emerge."


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/ny...068451006&ei=1
&en=128e18ee2929d408


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DESCRIPTORS; CHILD PROTECTIVE, FOSTER CARE, DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND
FAMILIES, NEW JERSEY, DYFS, KINSHIP CARE, CHILD ABUSE, WHISTLEBLOWER LAWSUIT