Foster-care system has too often failed the children

Bob Agard

Published June 17, 2006 at midnight

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More Speakout

Bureaucrats love to bad-mouth foster care. Roxane White, who is the director of the Denver Department of Human Services, is quoted in "Staying close to home," the June 10 Rocky Mountain News story, as saying, "The government doesn't do a very good job of raising kids." Isn't that a clever statement? One problem, though: It is not the government that is raising kids in foster care. It is foster families. Moreover, we foster parents have reason to be proud of the work we do with abused and neglected children!

There may well be, as the News paraphrases White, adults today who grew up in foster care who are deeply scarred because their ties to birth parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and teachers and ministers were permanently severed by the government. But these scars are from the abuse and neglect they suffered at the hands of those who were closest to them before the system finally intervened to protect the children. If there are more scars, it is because the system returned them to unsafe situations, to save foster-care dollars and promote "family preservation" instead of child protection.

Of course, the system should treat the child's birthparents and relatives with respect and human kindness at all times. However, at some point - and the sooner the better - someone needs to recognize when it is not in the best interests of the child to be returned to parents who have not substantially changed. Someone needs to have the courage to say so in a court of law and back it up with facts under cross-examination. The system exists to protect children, not to promote someone's latest fad agenda.

The system has too often failed to follow the law and file for legal protection of children. The system has too often failed to make permanent plans for them. The system too often has failed to recruit enough adoptive families.

What the article did not point out is that Colorado law specifies certain situations that require child protection agencies (Colorado's counties) to file for legal protection of children. The article did not say how many such cases the Denver department filed in 2005 and previous years vs. how many were filed before White took over as director. Is the department ignoring the law? If so, who is letting them get away with this? Who is looking after the best interests of the children?

Foster parents usually have little or no say in the decision the system makes as to where the child goes after foster care. Yet, the foster parent may be the one adult who knows the child better than any of the other professionals involved in the case.

It is the foster parent who has personally invested his time and his heart at all hours of the day and night to forge a loving and supportive bond with the child. Caseworkers who work day after day protecting children are special people with great courage, wisdom, and commitment. So are most foster parents.

Bob Agard is a resident of Golden.

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