Sacramento Head Start Alumni Association

State Revises Foster Care Standards

Oct 28, 2002

THE STATE
State Revises Foster Care Standards
Changes settle a lawsuit with child advocacy group and call for audits of relatives caring for foster children to ensure health and safety.
By Evelyn Larrubia
Times Staff Writer

October 25 2002

A San Francisco child advocacy group sued the state of California Thursday, saying it had failed to ensure that foster parents who are related to their children meet federal health and safety requirements. The group then immediately agreed to settle the suit in exchange for reforms.

The settlement, which will be monitored by the court, requires uniform, statewide standards for foster parents who are related to the children in their custody. It also calls for audits and requires counties to help unqualified relatives meet the standards, rather than simply not considering the relatives or taking the children away from them. The state will set aside $1 million a year to help those families.

"What the relatives get out of this is help from the counties -- if they're basically good homes," said Carole Shauffer, executive director of the Youth Law Center, which filed the suit. "And they get due process, so it's not as arbitrary a process as it's been in the past."

The settlement may also help the state in a dispute with the federal government, which earlier this year began reducing grants to California to pay foster families, alleging that the state was not properly screening relatives, who care for 38% of the state's foster children.

"What this is doing is really part of convincing the feds that we are in fact ensuring that the relative homes are in compliance with [the Adoptions and Safe Families Act]," said Blanca Castro, spokeswoman for the California Department of Social Services, which oversees the counties' child welfare programs.

As part of the settlement, the state will immediately audit 620 foster cases involving relatives across the state and will require counties to use the same assessment form. The oversight, and creation of an appeals process for relatives, will cost about $3 million a year, Castro said.

Federal rules have required states to hold both relatives and nonrelatives to the same standards since January 2000. For much of the ensuing two years, California and the federal government have been arguing in letters about whether or not the state meets the standards.

The state held that it was sufficient to require counties to assess relatives and unrelated foster parents against health and safety standards, even if those standards are different. The state passed emergency legislation a year ago that raised some of the standards for relatives, but did not create a mechanism to oversee the counties' reassessment of those homes.

"I don't have a quick answer ... for why we didn't do it two years ago," Castro said. "To be honest with you, we thought that we were in compliance."

In March, Los Angeles County released a study of 200 randomly selected foster homes involving relatives. The study found that only 1% would meet the health and safety standards that the state imposes on foster parents who are not related to the children they raise. The violations ranged from crowding to unsanitary or hazardous conditions. Weapons and ammunition were not secured in eight homes, and 25 relatives were not checked for criminal records or against the state's child-abuse registry.

The findings were significant because Los Angeles County is home to more than a third of the state's foster children who live with relatives.

So far this year, the federal government has withheld $37 million in grants, which California claimed as reimbursement to support foster families. The state is challenging the reduction, asserting that every foster home for which it billed the federal government met federal standards, Castro said.

Castro said many counties have already reassessed all of their relatives, including Orange County, and many others expect to finish by the end of the year.

Los Angeles County officials said earlier this year that it had begun using the stricter standards for relatives in new cases and intended to hire a staff to reassess those relatives who are already getting paid to care for children.
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Foster-care pact may free U.S. funds
By Mareva Brown -- Bee Staff Writer - (Published October 25, 2002)
Bowing to pressure from child advocates and the federal government, California officials have agreed to inspect and monitor the homes of relatives caring for foster children and to provide families with money to bring homes within federal standards, according to a court settlement reached Thursday.


The agreement comes as federal regulators continue to withhold more than $6 million a month in reimbursements to families because the state Department of Social Services has not demonstrated that they meet the same standards as non-relative foster homes, as required by federal law. Officials said they hoped the federal withholdings, which total nearly $75 million, will end now.


"It's good for the state, because at a minimum, it will stop them from losing any more money," said Carole Shauffer, executive director of the Youth Law Center, which filed suit against the state Thursday in San Francisco and simultaneously filed the agreement. "And it will be good for the kids, because they'll be able to live with relatives and we'll know they'll be in safe homes."


Since 2000, the federal government has required that family caregivers be certified using the same standards that the state uses to license foster families in order to receive federal foster care reimbursements.


When the state did not demonstrate by the beginning of 2002 that relatives' homes were being held to the same standard -- or inspected at all -- the federal Administration on Children, Youth and Families began withholding $18.7 million per quarter that was earmarked for relative care.


Nearly 37,000 of California's 97,000 foster children live with relatives.


California argued that the standards were unfair because some poor relatives cannot meet stringent rules that specify no more than two children may occupy a bedroom and each child must have his own bed and dresser. They said it was more important to place children in the nurturing home of a relative than with a stranger who had more space.


Under Thursday's agreement, the state can grant waivers to relatives for non-safety issues -- like bedroom space -- if social workers believe the families are appropriate. Relatives who have any history of crimes against children would be ineligible. The state in 2000 established a $1 million annual fund to help relatives buy fire alarms and bunk beds and to fence pools to bring homes to standard.


"Our main concern is that we provide safe and good care for children, whether they be with families or in licensed foster care," said Larry Bolton, chief DSS legal counsel. "This (agreement) makes monitoring of the homes easier, so that we can convince the federal government that the bulk of children who are with relatives are in good and safe homes."


To streamline the process, the agreement requires each county to adopt the same inspection checklist. Each of the 58 counties had created its own.


It requires the state to audit a sample of each county's cases annually, to ensure relatives' homes continue to meet requirements.


And, for the first time, it requires that relatives who are deemed unqualified be given a written notice and grievance procedure. Until now, there was no method to challenge a social worker's decision.


The Rev. Frank Higgins, a Pasadena pastor who was the plaintiff in the Youth Law Center's suit, said the state's inaction over the past two years has left some relatives fearful that the children in their homes would be removed.


One grandmother in his congregation has burglar bars on her windows that do not break away, a fire hazard that renders her home out of compliance with California's rigorous foster care standards. She fears losing her three grandchildren, uprooting them from their home, school and neighborhood because she can't afford to replace the bars.


"She is who you would want to have rear a child -- she's a nurturing person. It's a safe environment," Higgins said. "And the loss of federal dollars is obscene."


Over the past year, as federal withholdings began, some counties started inspecting relatives' homes on their own, often pulling social workers away from overseeing families and assigning them instead to inspect homes where children were placed before 2000.


Sacramento's Child Protective Services director, Leland Tom, said in September that his agency was nearly finished performing these retroactive approvals.


But Los Angeles County officials said last month they had barely made a dent in more than 6,000 retroactive cases. In a survey of 200 relatives' homes last spring, Los Angeles County officials found 198 were out of compliance with federal standards. To be approved, those homes had to either obtain waivers or fix problems.


Thursday's agreement specifies that all counties will have completed family home inspections by Dec. 31 and that DSS will conduct a computer audit of 620 cases statewide to show federal officials.


One source familiar with the process said that even if all counties have completed all their relative inspections by the end of the year, federal auditors are unlikely to release the funds already withheld, unless the state can prove counties were in compliance all along.


So far the state has absorbed the losses, paying the counties their regular reimbursements, according to Blanca Castro, a DSS spokeswoman.


"Our department and the Youth Law Center both want kids in foster care to be safe," she said. "And that has been undeniably the common goal from the beginning of the process. So this is good news."



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The Bee's Mareva Brown can be reached at (916) 321-1088 or mbrown@sacbee.com.