FROM: JACOBY 28-JUL-95,15:00 
Dear Valery -- Here's the column you asked for.
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A CATASTROPHE IN FOSTER CARE
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
 
   Foster care is meant to be a safe haven for the saddest kids in America_  
those who have been abandoned, hurt, or neglected by their natural parents.  
But it slowly seems to be turning into a system where children who were  
treated badly are sent to be treated badly again. 
   (*) In March, a 2-year-old Chicago toddler, Corese Goldman, died of 
drowning and blunt injuries at the hands of his foster mother. She is 
accused of killing Corese by forcing his head underwater as a way to 
toilet-train him.
   (*) Luis Perez, aged 13 months, died on July 8 in Springfield, Mass.,  
after being scalded in a bathtub. He had been one of five foster children _  
four of them no older than 3 _ placed in the care of a single woman. In 
Boston not long before, 24-year-old Raul Vasquez, an unemployed single man, 
was arrested for raping one of two dozen boys the commonwealth had put in 
his custody.
   (*) Maryland officials put Laura Clem and her two brothers in foster care  
after their alcoholic mother was killed. For two years, the children were  
repeatedly molested in their foster home. Examined at age 3 1/2, Laura 
didn't know her own name, and bruises mantled her body. 
   (*) Since 1993, an Arizona child has died in foster care, on average, 
once every 7 1/2  weeks. According to the Arizona Republic, at least four 
children were ``viciously beaten to death'' by their foster parents. 
   Such horror stories, thank God, are not the norm. There are still many 
wonderful people in the foster-care system, caseworkers and substitute 
parents who give of themselves generously. No one suggests that most 
children in foster care are as bad off as they would be had they been left 
in their original, dysfunctional households. 
   But in far too many cases, they are no better off. And without exception 
they are worse off than they would be if a pair of devoted parents were 
allowed to adopt them. 
   In recent years, the number of American children in substitute care has 
exploded. Today it stands at close to 500,000, according to the American 
Public Welfare Association _ an increase of more than 65 percent since 1986.  
Every year, more kids enter foster care than leave it. Way more: The  
population of children who are wards of the state is growing 33 times faster 
than the population of children overall.
   At this moment, 50,000 foster children are free to be adopted. Their 
birth parents' legal rights have been severed. Nothing stands between them  
and the tens of thousands of potential adoptive parents who could give them  
permanent, stable homes _ except the government.
   But the government has far less interest in getting these kids adopted  
than the kids do. For the state, it is literally more rewarding to prolong  
foster care _ even bad foster care _ than to promote adoption. 
  In the new issue of Policy Review, Conna Craig, president of the  
Cambridge-based Institute for Children, dissects the awful cruelty of the  
foster-care ``leviathan.'' A former foster child who calls herself ``one of  
the lucky ones'' _ she was adopted by loving foster parents _ Craig is at  
pains to dispel the notion that what child-welfare agencies mostly need is  
more money.
   ``America already is spending $10 billion a year on foster care and
adoption services through public agencies,'' she writes. ``The problem with  
foster care is not the level of government spending, it is the structure of  
that spending. The funding system gives child-welfare bureaucracies  
incentives to keep even free-to-be-adopted kids in state care. State . . .  
agencies are neither rewarded for helping children find adoptive homes nor  
penalized for failing to do so.''
   Cockeyed incentives permeate the system. Foster parents are paid hundreds  
of dollars per month per child, with the amount rising as each child gets  
older. The longer kids remain unadopted, the more lucrative they become.  
``The money is tax free,'' notes Craig. ``It doesn't take much imagination 
to see that paying people to parent can lead to mischief.. . . For too many  
foster parents, the children in their homes are reduced to mere income  
streams.''
   States typically claim that ``special needs'' render children 
unadoptable. To Craig, this is the ultimate heresy. Every child is 
adoptable, she says. Sick children. Minority children. Older children.  
It is a ``myth that adoptive parents are interested only in `healthy white 
babies' '' _ look at the waiting lists of parents seeking black or Hispanic 
kids, or kids with Down Syndrome or AIDS. Private adoption agencies readily 
place even severely disabled infants. But to the state, an unadopted 
``special needs'' child is valuable _ the designation triggers a federal 
subsidy. 
   Craig scorns the bureaucracy's bias against transracial adoption, which  
robs black children of adoring moms and dads. She reports that adults deemed 
unfit to adopt are often hired as foster parents. She details the ``victim  
status'' that allows abusive birth parents to assert their legal rights for  
years: While children bounce between foster homes, their birth parents ``are  
given multiple chances to fail at parenting.'' 
   For generations, the adoption of unwanted or Uncared-for children was a  
private endeavor, and on the whole it worked. Now the system is dominated by  
the state. As a result, kids by the tens of thousands languish in foster  
care, while parents by the tens of thousands yearn to adopt.  
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for the Boston Globe.)
~~~ ReneWave v1.00.wb2 (unregistered)
--- Mankind = One Family
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