Kansas Senate Passes “Foster parents” Bill of Rights UPDATED

“Senate bill 394 known as the “foster parent’ bill of rights easily passed with a vote of 34-3.

The bill gives foster parents a greater say in child welfare cases involving children in their care.  It requires the state to inform foster parent 30 days in advance of any plans to change a child’s placement.  It also requires foster parents to be informed before court hearings regarding children in their care.”

Kansas Senate passes bills regarding foster parents rights and voter party changes[High Plains Public Radio 3/16/14 by Cindee Taylor]

“But one Sedgwick County senator said she worried that the bill would give foster parents rights in child welfare cases at the expense of grandparents.

Senate Bill 394 would give foster parents a greater say in child welfare cases involving children under their care. It would require the state to inform foster parents 30 days in advance of any plans to change a child’s placement. It also would require that foster parents be informed before court hearings regarding children in their care.

The bill passed 34-3.

Kansas has a shortage of foster parents, and establishing clearer rights for them could encourage more people to take on the role, said Senate Vice President Jeff King, R-Independence, who carried the bill.

“For too long, we’ve treated foster parents as glorified baby sitters. We need to have foster parents that are part of the solution, that are part of an overall move to promoting the best interest of the child,” King said.

The bill would allow foster parents to be involved in the decision-making process with the Department for Children and Families, but King said it has been amended to ensure that won’t affect the rights of biological parents.

“Someone who’s giving care and love to a child, we want to have a say in what the best interest of a child is,” King said.

Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, D-Wichita, opposed the bill on the grounds that it might end up favoring foster parents over biological grandparents.

Faust-Goudeau has long been an advocate for giving grandparents a greater say in child welfare cases.

“I just still feel it gives the foster families an unfair advantage over biological grandparents,” Faust-Goudeau said. “We’re supposed to be working to keep families together if at all possible.” She said the state should exhaust all possibilities to let children stay with relatives.

“When you sign up to be a foster parent, you know the child may be there a limited time or long period of time,” Faust-Goudeau said. “It might be three days, three hours, three weeks, three months or three years. But that’s a temporary placement.”

King said he respected Faust-Goudeau’s advocacy for grandparents but argued that her concerns were unfounded in this case and reiterated that foster parents deserve to have a voice in the child welfare process.

Both legislators agreed that the primary concern should be the best interest of the child.”
Senate passes bill giving foster parents greater say in child welfare cases[The Wichita Eagle 3/12/14 by Bryan Lowry]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

 

Update:“Lawmakers and advocates are resurrecting an effort to pass a foster care parent’s bill of rights as the new legislative session approaches. Legislation passed the Senate during the 2014 session only to die in a House committee.

After the defeat, Rep. Lance Kinzer, an Olathe Republican who chaired the House Judiciary Committee where the bill died, tasked the Kansas Judicial Council with studying the legislation and formulating its own recommendations. A draft of the council’s report details a number of rights to be outlined in law — from informing foster parents of training opportunities to giving foster parents information about the well-being of children once they have left the foster home.

Perhaps the biggest expansion of foster parents’ rights is a recommendation from the council to establish a grievance process for foster parents to object to planned changes of placement when a child has been in a home for more than 30 days, but less than six months. The report calls this recommendation a “significant expansion” of foster parents’ rights.

The Department of Children and Families, which oversees foster care in Kansas, is remaining neutral on the legislation, as it did when the first bill — SB 394 — was introduced in February. But Kathy Armstrong, the agency’s assistant director for legal services, appeared supportive of the idea in written testimony to the Special Committee on Judiciary.

“While we are offering neutral testimony today, we support the concept of a Foster Care Parents’ Bill of Rights. DCF did, in fact, develop and adopt a Foster Parents’ Rights document during the summer of 2014 and (the) same is now posted on the DCF website,” Armstrong said in her testimony.

Since the legislative session, DCF also appointed an ombudsman who gathers foster parent concerns.

Lori Ross, president and CEO of the Midwest Foster Care and Adoption Association, has thrown her support behind the council’s recommendations. Ross drafted the original 2014 legislation that was amended as it moved through the legislative process. She said the proposal from the council was well-vetted.

“As the original drafter of the first bill introduced … I want to reiterate my belief that it is critically important for foster parents to have easy access to a bill of rights which are protected by law. I believe that this can best be accomplished by enacting the changes in law suggested by the KS Judicial Council,” Ross said in written testimony to the Special Committee on Judiciary.

That doesn’t mean all groups are in total agreement over everything, however. According to Armstrong, DCF would recommend some revision to the proposal to give foster parents information on children no longer in their care. Armstrong also expresses some reservation about how a grievance process for foster parents would be established.

Armstrong said in her testimony that, while DCF supports establishing a grievance process, the entities responsible in the proposal for developing a grievance process — the private child placement agencies — would need to be reviewed.

In the spring, the first attempt at passing a foster care parents bill of rights drew emotional testimony from former state senator Barbara Allen, who told a Senate committee of how a foster child her family had been caring for was removed from their home with little explanation.

Kansas’ bill is modeled after a Missouri law, though Kansas has a fully privatized foster care system while Missouri’s is only partially private. Kansas and Florida are the only two states with fully private systems.”

New effort underway on foster parents bill of rights[The Topeka Capital Journal 12/28/14 by Jonathan Shoman]