Foster care often takes kids miles away from home

Foster care often takes kids miles away from home

By Michael Boren, McKinney Courier-Gazette
Published: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 9:29 PM CDT
Mary Haynes has to drive three hours to meet the 12-year-old boy she’s appointed to oversee.

It’s too far to travel there and back in one day, so she spends the night.

As a volunteer with Court Appointed Special Advocates, Haynes meets with foster children and their families to determine a child’s best interests.

But it’s not unusual for the foster kids to be far from their original homes, sometimes counties away. Other children appointed to Haynes had to travel 60 miles from the foster home to see their biological parents.

The problem? Kids are placed in foster homes outside their original county, because there are not enough foster caretakers or the right types of homes inside the county. That means visits to parents can take up whole days.

Foster parents and officials partly blame the issue on people only wanting to take younger kids, while others argue a bad light is shed on foster caretakers. Some foster officials also admit foster applicant requirements prohibit families from entering the system.

In May, 64 percent of Collin County kids were placed in foster homes outside the county, according to the latest statistics from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). That equates to 96 out of 150.

“It’s sad because you want those kids to be connected to their parents,” Haynes, 62, said.

In January, DFPS began planning a foster care redesign intended to keep foster kids closer to home and siblings together. At a forum in June, a children’s shelter official recommended the use of emergency shelter placements to situate large sibling groups and provide them with immediate care.

Other childcare groups have also given their input on the plans, which will be finalized on Dec. 31 and presented to the Texas Legislature in January 2011.

The number of local foster kids has dropped in recent years, because DFPS has increasingly emphasized placing them with relatives, said DFPS spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales.

There were more than 7,600 foster kids in the 19-county North Texas DFPS region four years ago, compared to 5,442 last year, she said. The statistics for this year were not yet available.

But there’s a constant need for more foster homes, said DFPS spokesperson Patrick Crimmins. Depending on a child’s needs, the best placement may be hundreds of miles away.

“It’s not as simple as, ‘We need 15,000 beds,’” Crimmins said. “You need 15,000 of the right kinds of beds.”

There are four different service levels of foster caretakers and kids: basic, moderate, specialized and intense.

All caretakers offer medical and therapeutic services, such as cognitive therapy and counseling, which are specialized toward the foster child’s age. But the frequency of services increases by each level as a child’s needs become more specific.

In the North Texas region at the end of June, there were 1,669 basic-level kids and 56 intensive-level kids.

But as children are placed far away from their biological parents, it puts a burden on the foster caretakers and volunteers who may have to drive the kids to court-ordered visits, said Susan Etheridge, executive director of the Collin County division of Court Appointed Special Advocates.

“It’s not the parents who suffer from that,” Etheridge said. “It’s the child and the professionals.”

Collin County kids placed in foster care receive one of Etheridge’s volunteers, who attends the child’s court hearings, sees him or her at least twice a month and talks to family members, doctors, lawyers or others to present an independent view of the child’s situation to the courts.

There are at least 200 volunteers, but Etheridge said some people don’t join because of gas expenses needed to see far-away foster kids.

“We have had people tell us, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t afford to do this,’” Etheridge said.

The lack of foster homes was a historical problem, she said, and she attributed it partly to people not knowing the need or thinking the requirements were harder than they actually are.

With the state, some obligations for potential foster parents include undergoing background checks, personal interviews and 35 hours of foster care training. Depending on the service level, parents may also have to take at least 20 hours of training on precautionary and medical issues.

Private foster agencies can add to the state’s foster requirements by requiring more training or specifications, such as how many kids are allowed in a certain-sized room, said David Chandler, director of the private agency Buckner Foster Care and Adoption.

The requirements to become foster parents prohibit some families from getting into the system, Chandler said. But he questioned the commitment or motivation of the families, as some just do it for the money, he said.

Child-placing agencies pay foster families anywhere from $22 to $88 per foster child and per day the child is in their home, depending on the service level.

But not enough families take in large sibling groups, specialized-needs kids or teenagers, Chandler said, which leads to foster kids being placed far away from home.

“The older kids are perceived as being more difficult, which is not always the case,” Chandler said. “But I think that’s the perception.”

Many foster parents interested in adoption usually want younger kids, said Danette Swasey, president of the Denton County Foster Parent Association.

“I know the older the kids are in the system, the more baggage they come with,” said Swasey, who also teaches emotionally disturbed kids with the Lewisville Independent School District.

She and her husband started fostering in 2007 to adopt kids, adopting their first one this March, she said.

Before that, she underwent foster training and a required home study, in which childcare officials ask about a family’s background and lifestyle.

“It’s time consuming,” Swasey, 42, said. “It’s somewhat invasive into your personal life, because they do ask some very personal questions when you get involved into the home study.”

A few of the questions asked about bodily functions, such as menstruation, she said.

Up in Melissa, Denise and Bruce Kendrick became foster parents through the private agency Buckner. Since starting in 2003, they’ve fostered 25 children.

When the two originally fostered kids in Denton County, none of the kids were from inside the county, Denise, 30, said. Since she and Bruce moved to Collin County five years ago, about half of the placements had been from inside the county.

The couple previously had kids from Gainesville who would miss entire school days to visit their parents because of the required travelling distance, Denise said.

Denise and Bruce, 29, have three biological children, three foster kids and one adopted child. DFPS rules state foster parents can’t typically have more than six biological and foster children at once, but the couple got an exception because it had foster siblings.

Yet foster families get a bad rap, the couple said, because news stories and movies portray them negatively.

“There’s just like this stigma about kids that are in foster care in general and then you as a foster parent,” Bruce said. “It’s constantly like, ‘Are you a good parent? Maybe you’re a good parent to your kids, but are you a good parent to somebody else’s kids?’”

That stigma makes the couple want to go above and beyond for their foster kids, Denise said.

“We’re going to make sure that we look put together so that we’re not painting that continued picture of foster parents who are just doing the bare minimum to get by and make a buck,” Bruce said. “And that’s huge.”

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