Parents keep up foster care law fight Proposal would give preference to relatives

Parents keep up foster care law fight
Proposal would give preference to relatives
Valerie Olander / The Detroit News
Dearborn -- Ahmed and Rehab Amer of Dearborn, who had three children taken from them and raised in Michigan's foster care system, have been pushing to require the state to give special consideration to relatives when placing children.
"My children fell through the system. I do not want to let that happen to others," Rehab Amer said.
The Amers lost custody of their children when the mother, Rehab, was accused of killing her 2-year-old son, Samier, in 1985. She was acquitted by a jury a year later but never regained custody of an older son and Samier's twin sister.
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A fourth child, Zinabe, was taken by social workers four months after the acquittal.
Nearly 20 years after the boy's death, Wayne Circuit Court ordered the cause of death be changed to accidental on the death certificate. Medical experts said Samier had a rare brittle bone disease.
In the meantime, the children were adopted, their names were changed and they were raised in a Christian home in Clarkston. The Amers are Muslim.
The children are in their 20s now, and Rehab said she has an on-again, off-again relationship with them. They were raised believing she was involved in her son's death.
"My brother-in-law filed to be a foster parent. He was accepted to take other children, but not mine," she said.
The bill, known as the Amer Act, was introduced in 2005. Last year, when the bill was reintroduced by Rep. Gino Polidori, D-Dearborn, it was approved by the House within three months. But for the past 16 months, the bill has been sitting idle in the Senate Committee for Families and Children's Services, chaired by Sen. Mark Jansen, R-Gaines Township.
Polidori will be term-limited out of office in November, meaning the push to have the Senate take action is crucial, Rehab Amer said.
"Sen. Jansen has never returned any of my e-mails and his staff won't talk to me," she said.
Jansen's legislative director, Kelly Miller, said the senator and his staff are aware of the legislation and have been making sure it is compliant with the reforms ordered by a federal court as part of a lawsuit settlement with the nonprofit group Children's Rights.
The children's advocacy group put the Department of Human Services on notice in March, claiming the state is not compliant with the court order.
"It's not that Sen. Jansen is opposed to this bill. We're just doing our research," Miller said.
Department of Human Services policy gives preferential treatment to relatives, she said. The bill, HB 4118, would make that law.
Rehab Amer believes the delay is financial.
"I believe state gets more money from the federal government if a child is passed to a nonrelative's home. I believe that's what's going on," she said.
According to the House Legislative analysis of the bill, the financial ramifications depend on whether the relative becomes licensed as a foster parent.
It costs the state less to pay relatives who are not licensed.
However, the Children's Rights settlement "mandates that the state attempt to license all relative caregivers as foster parents, but provides an exemption for 10 percent of these cases," the legislative analysis says.
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From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100708/METRO01/7080414/1409/Parents-keep-up-foster-care-law-fight#ixzz0t94suODL