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Home > Blogs > Butler County News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > June > 20 > Entry
Children services trying to keep kids with kin
Today, June 20, we featured a pair of stories about policies in the works in Butler County Children Services in an attempt to change the agency’s culture.
Executive Director Michael Fox said he wants to improve the foster experience locally by keeping children in their care with family members instead of resorting to out-of-home placement.
Click the link below to read both stories.
Thoughts?
Here’s the first story.
In March, a Butler County foster child was removed from the Mount Healthy home of Charles V. Day after it was alleged the day care and foster care provider showed pornographic images to an 8-year-old girl.
Day, 38, who operates a day care out of a church on Compton Road, was charged Wednesday, June 18, with disseminating harmful material to a juvenile.
Although interviews conducted by Butler County Children Services found the incident to be an isolated one, the latest allegations point to a larger issue, according to local officials: That taking children away from their families should be a last resort.
According to data released this month, county children services case workers have removed 234 children from their biological parents so far this year. Of those, 161 — or about 69 percent — were placed outside their homes or families.
Slightly greater than one-third of those 234 children were placed with a relative. “I think we can do better than that,” said Michael Fox, the child welfare agency’s executive director.
The results of an ongoing study will make sure they will, Fox said.
Fox is slowly turning a ship that has had its anchor mired in redundancies, a sea of useless data, and enough cracks in its checks and balances to nearly sink the entire agency.
Operating under the shadow of the brutal August 2006 death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel, Fox — who was appointed to the position in August 2007 — said he is on the cusp of changing the way children services does business.
“But first we had to have the information,” said Fox, referring to the three-month study. “The question is, are we doing all that we can do to minimize the risk (to children)? And the answer (according to the data) is ‘no.’
“When I arrived, that question wasn’t even being asked,” he said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2112 or dgreber@coxohio.com.
Here’s the second story.
HAMILTON — For the first time, Butler County Children Services is using its own information to create new policies and practices, agency officials said this week.
Data collected during an internal audit of placement decisions, case worker tendencies and how money and resources were spent from December 2007 through February 2008 will be used to change the culture of an organization that has influence on the lives of more than 2,500 local children at any given time, officials said.
The overall goal, according to Michael Fox, the agency’s executive director, is protecting clients’ well-being.
“Nothing has changed in this agency about what the first priority is, and that’s protecting children,” Fox said. “This is about making informed decisions about what keeps the child safe and getting the best outcome at the lowest possible price.”
Price is important, especially considering the financial forecast for children services shows a nearly $6 million deficit in 2009. And county commissioners nixed the idea of placing a levy on the November ballot because of the sluggish economy.
As a result, Fox immediately shifted more than $1 million — mostly through staff cuts — from administrative costs to resources for what they call the “front line.”
Although it’s been viewed as controversial, the new program allows children services to help struggling families with bills and other expenses to prevent intervention. And more importantly, Fox said, to prevent out-of-home placement situations.
But the change hasn’t been easy, Fox said. During the past few weeks — and as recently as Tuesday, June 17 — local foster parents, case workers and their supervisors have voiced concerns.
“It’s always been our philosophy,” said Linda Peters, children services quality improvement and information manager, about placing children with family members. But Fox has been given “the resources to do it,” she said.
Greater than two-thirds of the 234 children the agency has placed so far this year have been sent away from their families.
National studies, however — the only benchmark available at this time — suggest children have a better experience when placed with a family member.
Local studies — which are still incomplete — suggest out-of-home placements are less likely to graduate high school and find jobs, and more likely to be homeless and involved with the judicial system.
“It’s not that these kids are more likely to be molested or abused in foster homes,” Fox said. “It’s the outcome. It’s the overall experience.”
The new data also provides supervisors with yet another tool to address tendencies with case workers, analyze best practices and increase accountability regarding decisions about the lives of children, he said.
“We’re not just taking a sample (each month),” Fox said. “We’re monitoring every decision in every case.”
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: Children Services
Comments
By Jim
June 20, 2008 9:08 AM | Link to this
I question whether placing a child within the same family that failed to protect him/her from other members of the same family is a wise and prudent decision. Children who need to be removed from the home need to be taken someplace safe, not someplace cheap. I also question the fiscal responsibility of using $7 million on a new one-stop-shopping facility when you are facing a $6 million deficit the following year.By barbara
June 20, 2008 10:20 AM | Link to this
to jim, i disagree that u feel kids should not be with family members if they have the means and the love to care for them. i am raising 3 grandchildren given custody by csb. i am their grandmother and can provide a loving home to them. i would not want them in the hands of a stranger no matter how good this person might be. how devastating for a child to be taken from all members of the family and placed with strangers. do u have any idea what that can do to a child. i think mike fox is doing a great job and for once we have someone in the csb that cares how these little ones feel and what is in there best interest. i didnt sit by and watch my grandchildren be abused i fought and i won custody. so unless u are ever in that position u should not make such comments.By Jessica
June 20, 2008 10:54 AM | Link to this
Ok well my family and I are raising 3 boys and yes they are my cousins kids and I think that the family should be first in suggestion before you remove kids from there family to place them with a stranger, I could not imagine my family out there being raised by someone who hardly knws them i feel that kids who go through children services have a hard enough time adjusting to what they have to deal with and then to give them to strangers. for me i just feel that family is always the best option! yes the boys we are raising have had a rough start but they have come a long way and now have a safe palce they can call home!By Jessica
June 20, 2008 10:54 AM | Link to this
Ok well my family and I are raising 3 boys and yes they are my cousins kids and I think that the family should be first in suggestion before you remove kids from there family to place them with a stranger, I could not imagine my family out there being raised by someone who hardly knws them i feel that kids who go through children services have a hard enough time adjusting to what they have to deal with and then to give them to strangers. for me i just feel that family is always the best option! yes the boys we are raising have had a rough start but they have come a long way and now have a safe palce they can call home!By sybil
June 20, 2008 1:14 PM | Link to this
This is much to do about spin! Family or others, there is no hard and fast rule applicable to all cases. Mr Fox wants to distance himself from the past because he badmouthed the earlier management and got their job. This is just politics played in the name of children.By sybil
June 20, 2008 1:15 PM | Link to this
This is much to do about spin! Family or others, there is no hard and fast rule applicable to all cases. Mr Fox wants to distance himself from the past because he badmouthed the earlier management and got their job. This is just politics played in the name of children.By sybil
June 20, 2008 1:15 PM | Link to this
This is much to do about spin! Family or others, there is no hard and fast rule applicable to all cases. Mr Fox wants to distance himself from the past because he badmouthed the earlier management and got their job. This is just politics played in the name of children.By my opinion
June 20, 2008 1:33 PM | Link to this
Well, I have two cousins in foster care and I wouldn’t DREAM of having them moved. I am a certified Butler County foster home and I HAVE the room to take them, but I won’t do that. I will tell you that in most situations, family is the best option. NOT in all cases, though. My cousins get to come to my home every other weekend for visitation and they love their foster home. The three year old cries when he separates from his foster parents. He asks about them when he’s with us. The eight year old calls them at least once a day. Because they are in a “stranger” placement, they didn’t have to transfer schools, they didn’t have to be placed almost an hour away…all in the name of being kept with family. Their mom has began attending church b/c of the foster family. And mom said that she is glad her children went into fostercare because IF they had been placed with family she never would have tried so hard to get them back. By the way, she’s getting them back in 60 days and worked her caseplan beautifully. I sacrificed MY wants to do what was best for those kids and keep them in a wonderful foster family.By A non-family mother
June 20, 2008 1:54 PM | Link to this
What I am asking here is that before anyone makes a blanket statement that these children need to be placed with family before other options are considered is that you make the placement process as error proof as possible. Many times, not all but many, the rest of the family is just as dysfunctional as the birth parent. My “step” daughter was removed from her mother’s home and placed in foster care and then, before a homestudy was completed, in the “home” of her maternal grandmother. Two months down the road, once the homestudy was actually complete, and the caseworkers were allowed to do spot checks, it was found that the grandmother had lied and provided a false address for the homestudy. Instead of supervising the visitation as was ordered by the court, my step daughter was actually living with the mentally ill biomother again. My “step” daughter has been with me, a non-relative as her father and I have been divorced since before she was born, for nearly three years. I might not be a relative by blood, or even by marriage, but I am the only “mommy” she knows. Her biomother and maternal grandmother, the people that BCCSB held in such high regard, haven’t tried to see her or even just ask about her in all this time. A background check for placement needs to be more than court cases on a database. It needs to be police reports, neighbor interviews, and references. Placement needs to put the child first, and that child should not be looked at like an estate to be given to the first family member available, or a case number that needs to be cleared from a docket, or a BCCSB case that needs to clear as quickly as possible, but a precious gift that should be protected by choosing the most suitable person to receive that gift. How hard would it really be to ask the neighbors; Who actually lives at the address given for the homestudy and if there are any problems that they’ve seen? How hard would it have been to go to the police department in the city where the child lives, and the department of the potential placement person and ask for incident reports involving the parent and anyone else involved? I was able to do these things without offical title so why couldn’t the case workers do it? I’m sure the 57 incident reports on the biomother and maternal grandmother that I found would have been helpful in the decision making process. Because these things weren’t done to begin with, my step daughter was in three different homes before she came to my home. She went through more than she ever should have because the placement process is so focused on staying with the birth parent’s family that BCCSB overlooks some of the most basic safeguards for placement. Improving the process will get better outcomes.By BJ
September 1, 2008 4:10 PM | Link to this
It is not a hard and fast rule anywhere and from my own personal experience and many others in Washington State - Reunification and “best Interst of the child” is that last thing CPS thinks of. We have been lied to, lied about without any way to protect ourselves and our other 9 grandchildren. Family should not be blamed or 1 or 2 rotten apples in the barrel. I don’t think any child should be completely cutoff from everything they have ever known. One child I know has been placed with a bio-dad (family?) who is a rapist and CPS made that decision. Who are these workers what kind of education do they have. In this county its like being in nazi germany.