Settlement will change child welfare system
Crystal NelsonA settlement agreement reached by Children's Rights and the state of Michigan will require Michigan's Department of Human Services to implement changes in its child welfare system program. U.S. District Judge Nancy G. Edmunds approved the settlement agreement Tuesday.
The suit, Dwayne B. v. Granholm, was filed in 2006 by Children's Rights, a New York-based advocacy group. The suit was filed on behalf of 19,000 children in the custody of Michigan's DHS.
Some of the stipulations of the agreement will require DHS to improve the safety for children, provide safety and financial support for children placed with relatives, provide the delivery of medical, mental health and dental services, provide better recruitment of foster care and adoptive families and to make quicker progress toward the placement of children in permanent homes.
Alpena Department of Human Services Director Doug McCombs said the advocacy group has done this in 13 or 14 states now because of its concern the state is not meeting the needs of children in foster care to the point that someone needs to bring the issue to court.
"As they would indicate in their lawsuit and as is kind of spelled out in the settlement, a huge issue is that for a number of reasons and we kind of understand economically difficult times here in Michigan but over the past several years, Michigan has not funded foster care programs - Department of Human Services and private agencies - to do an adequate job of protecting children, making wise placements and doing all of the things that is expected of us, not even close to the numbers we should have," he said.
McCombs said the lawsuit indicates that over a period of five years the number of DHS and private agency staff in the state will need to increase by 700. McCombs said it eventually will give DHS the staff it needs "to do what we should have been doing all along."
When children are placed in foster care in Michigan their case is usually heard by a probate judge in the family division of circuit court.
"If (the judge is) going to place the child in foster care because of abuse and neglect issues, he refers that case or that responsibility to Department of Human Services. By Michigan law, we are the responsible agency," McCombs said.
He said sometimes other agencies, like Child and Family Services, get involved with DHS when they are trying to place a child. He said it is very important to match the childs needs and the ability of the faster family to meet those needs.
"Another possibility besides our regular licenced foster homes is that we put a great deal of stress in recent years of trying to place with relatives so that if at all possible, the child is going to be staying with an individual he knows," he said.
McCombs said DHS can continue to do that but the relatives will have to be licensed as a foster home with the same rules and expectations of a regularly licensed foster home.
He said licensing the relatives will put a huge burden on DHS and private agencies because they have to be licensed so quickly. McCombs said licensing is a very complicated process because the Alpena DHS doesn't have employees whose single job is licensing. He said licensing is typically thought of as a three-month process.
"We don't have any new staff today to do that and we're not sure when we will get more staff to do that so we're doing more with the same number of people as a result of this lawsuit," he said.
He said another positive intention of the lawsuit is to enable the relatives to get the same financial support that a foster parent would. He said with all of the relatives that will now be receiving payment and with the children who will be going into relative care a large part of those payments will now fall on the individual counties.
"It's not going to be, in most cases, solely state and federal money. It will at best be a 50/50 split between the state and the county. So the county is all of a sudden going to see their financial responsibilities in foster care growing," he said.
McCombs expects counties are going to be seeing a lot more cost than they've seen in the past.
Crystal Nelson can be reached via e-mail at cnelson@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5693.
