Half of Kinship Foster Homes are Unlicensed in Rhode Island

“At least one out of every two kinship foster homes where children live after being taken from their families has been unlicensed since January 2014.

At the worst point — in May 2015 — more than 63 percent of the 566 homes where children had been placed with relatives after the state determined they could no longer live with their parents were unlicensed.

With a growing emphasis on keeping children in homes — rather than placing them in less natural settings such as congregate care — officials say there must be some gap between placement and licensing in the most dire circumstances.

The way the system works is this: Once the state determines that a child needs to be taken from a family — for reasons ranging from drug abuse to domestic abuse — social workers first strive to find a relative who can take the child. As long as the foster family includes a relative, a child can be placed immediately after caretakers pass background checks.

But a complete license — which requires the family pass a home study, fire inspections, lead inspections, take training classes and get clearance from a doctor that they are emotionally and physically able to care for a child — might not come until months later. The issue was highlighted in a report by the Child Advocate’s Office last month after two infants died in unlicensed foster homes last year.

The law allows children to be in an unlicensed kinship foster home for up to six months, and it often takes that long to go through the licensing process. But data provided by the state Department of Children, Youth and Families shows that the number of homes that have gone unlicensed for more than six months in violation of that law more than doubled in two years. Dozens have been left pending for as long as two years.

Children are currently living in 118 foster homes that have been unlicensed for more than six months. Jamia McDonald, the Governor Raimondo administration official charged with leading the DCYF’s “turnaround,” has pledged to wipe out the backlog of homes that violate the law my mid-July by contracting out parts of the process and making it easier for families to complete parts of the process, such as adding more locations for required training classes.

“When you first see the data, you don’t always understand it. It’s not until you start implementing changes that you understand how to fix it,” McDonald said. “We’ve been planning this reorganization for several months.”

At the worst point in May 2015, 166 of the 566 kinship foster homes in the state — nearly 30 percent — were in violation. (There are no penalties in the law for violation, but after six months the state loses the roughly 50 percent federal match subsidizing the $18 to $21 foster families receive per day for each foster child. It can recoup the costs for up to two years if the home is later licensed.)

Darlene Allen, director of Adoption Rhode Island and one of the members of the child advocate’s review team that highlighted the issue, said seeking out relatives as potential foster families is a good practice but “ensuring those families are properly trained, screened and supported is necessary” for ensuring a system where children are safe.

A snapshot of the 129 homes where children were living in violation of that law as of March 30, shows 58 licenses were pending for up to nine months, 34 were pending for up to a year, 36 were pending for up to two years, and one exceeded two years. The reasons: more than 100 were waiting for home studies — a written evaluation of a home by a certified worker who through observations and discussions with family members recommends whether a family is qualified to foster, 99 caretakers were missing clearance from a physician, 72 were waiting for training, which includes information on such topics as safe sleeping arrangements, and 31 were pending fire inspections.

Licenses in some of those cases could be held up for more than one reason, but McDonald said the agency’s record keeping is so poor, they can’t be certain some of the data provided isn’t flawed.

How did this happen?

McDonald said she can’t be certain, but her best guess is that the backup was at least initially triggered by lead laws, which foster homes had to comply with for the first time by July 2013. Months later the uptick began.

Still, none of the homes exceeding the six-month law are waiting for lead inspections. The majority of the backup is due to missing home studies, which until recently had been assigned to the DCYF staff. McDonald said she flagged the backup as a problem last year and she moved staff to address the problem. Between June and August 2015, the homes awaiting licensure for more than six months dropped from 166 to 133 but then leveled off there for several months.

While the idea of a foster home often conjures up an image of a family agreeing to take in an unknown child, those kinds of foster homes have accounted for a little less than half of the roughly 1,000 foster homes in the state since January 2014.

Benedict F. Lessing, Jr., CEO and president of the Community Care Alliance, wrote to McDonald last October expressing growing concerns about the backlog and offering to help clear it. And while his organization wasn’t taken up on the offer at the time, DCYF has now changed its mind.

McDonald said she didn’t realize the staff wouldn’t be able to address the backlog. Conceding that help is needed, contracts were modified this month to allow four paid outside providers — Devereux, Children’s Friend, Family Service of RI and Community Care Alliance — to complete the studies. It’s a tall order. McDonald recently told a Senate committee she will have the backlog of homes awaiting licensure for more than six months cleared by mid-July. That means staff and providers must also be addressing cases nearing the six-month mark to meet that goal.

“I wouldn’t say we hadn’t moved with a great sense of urgency. But you can only tackle so many large problems simultaneously,” McDonald said.

Despite the fact that the issues were brought up by the child advocate’s report, McDonald is adamant the issue was being addressed for months and solutions were tried that didn’t pan out. She said she updates Governor Raimondo regularly.

The governor recently said she’s comfortable with McDonald’s leadership. She noted that a staffing change was made that should address some of the problems.”

Half of kinship foster homes in R.I. are unlicensed [ Providence Journal 4/29/16 by Jennifer Bogdan]

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