Move toward permanent homes is on a faster track

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	Introduction

	Taken away

	Standards for evidence law

	Families under scrutiny

	New permanent home guidelines

Thursday, June 18, 1998

Move toward permanent homes is on a faster track

By HEATH FOSTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STATE CORRESPONDENT

Protecting Angie: A Child Welfare Odyssey
Known as the "orphans of the living," half a million children are caught in this nation's foster care system.

Researchers first documented in the 1950s that the child welfare system was producing a generation of kids disconnected from their birth families and denied the chance to forge bonds with new parents.

A debate about what to do about these children has raged ever since.

Until last year, federal law emphasized the importance of biological families, presuming that even when parents have abused their children, everything should be done to reunite the families.

But increasing concern over the time -- sometimes more than four years -- it was taking to get young children away from repeatedly abusive parents and into new homes sparked a major reform of the child welfare system last November.

The federal legislation marks a fundamental shift in philosophy, placing much greater emphasis on getting children into safe, permanent homes quickly -- if not with their own parents, then with relatives, adopted parents or guardians.

The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 also places tighter deadlines on parents, judges and social workers, requiring that they rapidly address deep-seated family problems if the children are going to be returned home. The new law also requires social workers and the courts to make tough judgments early on about whether families are likely to change enough to win their children back.

Under the new guidelines, Angie Yarwood, whose story is told in the accompanying article, may not ever have been returned to her family in Almira.

With Diane and Dale Yarwood's history of past abuse and the seriousness of Angie's injuries, the Yarwoods would have had to have made meaningful strides in therapy within the first year to have regained custody of their daughter.

Under the new law, once children are taken away from their parents and placed with a relative or in foster care, states have 12 months to come up with a permanent placement plan. Washington has already been applying that time frame to children under age 10, but now must extend it to older children, who, until this year, have had 18 months to be given permanent plans.

And parental rights can now be terminated almost immediately if there is evidence of severe sexual or physical abuse, including abandonment and torture, or if the parent has caused the death of a sibling.

In addition, if a child has been in state care 15 of the last 22 months, parental rights must be terminated. That 15-month limit is 10 months less than it took to reunify Angie Yarwood and her family.

Under the federal law, exceptions to the 15-month termination rule are allowed for children who are in the care of relatives; for parents who have not been provided with services, such as for anger management or parenting classes; or if there's a "compelling reason" not to terminate rights. Exceptions likely will be allowed in cases where parents have begun to make meaningful progress.

Carol Williams, the associate commissioner of the federal Children's Bureau, said that social workers can no longer wait months to tell parents they are likely to lose their children. And parents, she said, can no longer take three to six months to agree to seek treatment, she said.

But she acknowledged the strict new deadlines are controversial.

A study conducted last year by the University of Chicago School of Social Services Administration for the state of Illinois in anticipation of the change in federal law found widespread concern among social workers about the mandating quick turnaround times. Nearly every social worker in the study recalled parents much like the Yarwoods - parents who they initially thought could not change enough to earn reunification, but who surprised the experts, changing enough to provide safe homes.

Another challenge is finding adoptive homes for children once legal ties to their biological parents are terminated.

In Washington, 1,500 children are already "legally free," meaning that they have had their parental right terminated. But one fifth, or 300 of those children, are in homes the state knows cannot become permanent.

And the number of legally free children is expected to dramatically increase in coming years as states get tougher on abusive, and often drug-addicted, parents.

Williams said during the next four to five years, 100,000 more children are expected to need adoptive parents. That is far more than the system has been able to locate in past years, she said.

For that reason, the federal legislation offers cash bonuses to states that increase their adoptions, giving them $4,000 for each child adopted above the previous year's number and $6,000 for children with disabilities.

Because Washington state's Department of Social and Health Service's has placed special focus on finding adoptive homes, the state increased its adoption rate by 92 percent last year, finding new parents for 785 children.

But the financial incentives for adoption have many critics questioning whether biological parents will be discarded too quickly. If that happens, they fear children may drift in the system for years while the state searches for replacement parents.

Marie Jamieson, the executive director of the Children's Home Society in Seattle, said the key to making the new parental termination time frames work in children's best interests will be flexibility, especially for older children more likely to be closely bonded to their biological families.

But she argued the new deadlines give judges ammunition needed to force parents to reform their lives more quickly.

"Families are going to know right away that it's not an acceptable option to have their children grow up in foster care" while they sort out their problems, Jamieson said.

P-I reporter Heath Foster can be reached at 206-448-8337 or heathfoster@seattle-pi.com

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