Governor of Kentucky Appoints a Baptist Minister to Oversee the State’s Adoption and Foster Care System UPDATED

“Daniel S. Dumas has been appointed to oversee innovative change in the state’s adoption and foster care system, effective June 19, 2017, Gov. Bevin announced today.

Since 2007, Dumas has served as a senior vice president at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. He also has prior experience in strategic consulting, leadership coaching, and serving in the United States Navy. Dumas is a published author and professor of Christian ministry and leadership. [So, where are his qualifications for this job???]He currently resides in Louisville with his wife Jane and their two adopted sons, Aidan and Elijah.

“There is no reason a child in Kentucky, who is ready to be adopted, should be without a family,” said Gov. Bevin. “We have to rethink the way we do foster care in this state, and Dan Dumas is just the visionary to help lead that charge. Dan is a servant leader, and his proven track record of excellence in innovation will help us cut through the red tape currently keeping 8,000 of Kentucky’s foster children from their forever families.”

Improvement of the state’s adoption and foster care system has been a cornerstone of the Bevin administration since taking office. During his State of the Commonwealth address early this year, Gov. Bevin announced his intent to appoint a leader with the objective to transform Kentucky into the gold standard for adoption and foster care systems.

Dumas said that he is honored to serve the Commonwealth of Kentucky and vows to be an agent of change on behalf of children and families.

“I am resolved to make our adoption and foster care system faster, safer, more affordable, and more accessible,” Dumas said. “Gov. Bevin and I are committed, along with many other Kentuckians, to not back down until every orphan in Kentucky has a loving home.”

Daniel S. Dumas to lead transformation of adoption and foster care system [Lane Report 5/3/17 ]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update: “A pastor and Baptist seminary professor hired by Gov. Matt Bevin as the state’s adoption “czar” has left Bevin’s administration midway through the first year of his controversial $240,000-a-year contract.

The departure of Dan Dumas comes one year after Bevin pledged in his 2017 State of the Commonwealth address to name a “czar” to oversee reform of the state adoption and foster care system, one of his priorities as governor.

Dumas did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services said only that the state contract with Dumas had been terminated.

As of Tuesday, Dumas still listed himself on his Facebook page as “Foster care and adoption czar for Kentucky’s great kids.”

Dumas’ hiring in June 2017 drew criticism from some because of Dumas’ lack of professional social service experience and the high salary. But Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, at the time praised Bevin’s “commitment to children and families” in creating the job.

Bevin, in announcing Dumas’ appointment last year, praised the pastor and former executive with the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, as a “servant leader” who could help find homes for some of the thousands of Kentucky children in foster care.

Dumas was hired under a contract renewable for two more years and was to report directly to the governor. Much of his work involved reviewing operations of the Health and Family Services Cabinet, which oversees foster care and adoption in Kentucky.

Rep. Jim Wayne, a Louisville Democrat, said he liked the concept of a czar. “But why wouldn’t we get an expert,” Wayne told Courier Journal in May.

Wayne said Tuesday he is concerned that a number of top human service officials have left the cabinet in the past year, including former Public Health Commissioner Dr. Hiram Polk, cabinet Inspector General Robert Silverthorn and budget director Cindy Murray.

I had my concerns about the czar, but his leaving could be a symptom of something that needs to be addressed,” Wayne said.

Critics also included gay rights activists concerned that Dumas’ previous role as an executive with the Baptist seminary would influence his views toward gay couples as adoptive parents. The seminary opposes same-sex marriage and views homosexuality as a sin.

Chris Hartman, director of Kentucky’s Fairness Campaign, said Tuesday that Dumas’ departure is for the best.

“I really do think it’s welcome news,” said Hartman, whose group advocates for lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual causes. “I think very few people thought Dumas was a prudent choice for the commonwealth to spend a quarter-million dollars a year on someone who had no experience in this field.””

Kentucky’s ‘adoption czar’ is gone 7 months after Gov. Bevin gave him a $240,000-a-year job

[Louisville Courier-Journal 1/16/18 by Deborah Yetter]

Update 2:“Lawmakers working to revamp Kentucky’s adoption and foster care system are pushing for a provision to strengthen the Office of Inspector General’s oversight of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

House Majority Caucus Chairman David Meade, R-Stanford, said the provision would move the cabinet’s ombudsman position out from under the direct supervision of the state’s health secretary and into the Office of Inspector General.

“It’s the single biggest factor in the bill that would shed light on any wrongdoing in the cabinet,” Meade told the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s Public Affairs Committee at the Capitol on Thursday, “The general public needs to see where the problems are, to be as informed as possible.”

Meade, who is also an adoptive parent, is sponsoring the legislation that has been designated the House’s top priority of the current legislative session. He said the measure would be a first step in streamlining and speeding up the actual placement of children into loving homes in a quick and affordable manner.

The measure is based on recommendations from the House Adoption and Foster Care Working Group, which was tasked to find way to reduce to the high cost and burdensome paperwork associated with adoption in Kentucky.

“We’ve worked with Rep. Meade and the House task force members for months to find collaborative solutions that will transform our foster care and adoption system,” said Doug Hogan, spokesman for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. “While we are still reviewing the actual bill and there may be a few minor technical points to work out, the Cabinet is fully supportive of the efforts to provide better services to Kentucky children and families.”

Meade, who co-chaired the work group, wants to prevent children from lingering too long in state custody, whether that be moving them quicker through the foster care system or into adoptive homes.

The comprehensive bill creates more specific timelines for the termination of parental rights, establishes more accountability and oversight within the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, standardizes home studies to ensure safe homes in a more efficient manner, establishes a putative father registry, and creates a separate child welfare committee in the Kentucky House of Representatives. The legislation also aims to give foster care parents a stronger voice in the process, by expanding foster care advisory boards and allowing more parental input.

Other key components of the bill include utilizing technology to reduce the large amount of paperwork required of social workers, as well as improving efforts to recruit and retain valuable social workers. Gov. Matt Bevin has proposed an additional $24 million in funding for hiring more social workers and increasing pay for current ones., as well as $10.8 million to improve the foster care placement process and adoption efforts.

The 750,000-member Kentucky Baptist Convention has been pushing for the revamping the state’s adoption and foster care system, passing a resolution last November calling for improvements.

“Unfortunately, the system is designed to protect deadbeat parents and not protect children,” said Matt Shamblin, pastor of Rose Hill Baptist Church in Ashland and a member of the KBC Public Affairs Committee. “Children become very much the victims of a very broken system.”

Meade said his overhaul proposal has widespread support among lawmakers, and he said he expects it to easily pass both the House and Senate.”

Lawmakers want increased accountability over agency in charge of adoption, foster care

[Kentucky Today 2/8/18]

Update 3:“Gov. Matt Bevin has appointed a Baptist pastor from Florida and his wife to serve as special advisers on adoption and foster care, about seven months after Bevin’s former adoption “czar,” also a Baptist pastor, abruptly left a similar job with no explanation.

Bevin’s office announced Wednesday that Chris and Alicia Johnson, from Clermont, Florida, are joining the governor’s office of Faith and Community Based Initiatives to support goals of Bevin, and his wife, Glenna, to advance adoption and foster care reform.

The news release did not say how the Johnsons were hired or how much they are to be paid. Dan Dumas, the former adoption “czar,” a term Bevin coined for the position, was  paid $240,000 a year under a no-bid contract and was awarded a $60,000 “termination” payment when he left state government midway through his first year.

A Bevin spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for information on the Johnsons’ pay. The Courier Journal has filed a state open records request for the information, and Bevin spokeswoman Elizabeth Kuhn said in an email she would forward it to the “records custodian” but did not respond to further questions.

Chris Johnson is pastor at Liberty Baptist Church in Clermont, Florida, according to its website.He and his wife are the parents of 10 children, seven adopted, and are active in child welfare, adoption and foster care programs in Florida, according to a news release from Bevin’s office.

A short biography on the church website says Johnson and his wife began serving full time in church ministry after graduating from Trinity Baptist College in Jacksonville, Florida. It said Chris Johnson had served at churches in Georgia and Florida.

It said his wife is involved in various programs at the Liberty church and oversees the “Ladies Ministry.”

Chris Johnson, who is listed on his church’s website as “lead elder and pastor,” did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An employee who answered the phone at the church Wednesday said Johnson wasn’t available for comment.

The state news release didn’t say whether Johnson plans to quit the job but describes him as “former lead pastor” of the Liberty church.

In a Facebook post Wednesday, Chris Johnson said his family is excited to be moving to Kentucky.

The news release quotes Johnson as saying he and his wife answered “God’s call” in becoming foster and adoptive parents and that the role has “provided blessings for our family that are greater than we could have ever imagined.”

He added: “We look forward to joining the wonderful team in Kentucky who clearly shares this same passion.”

News of the appointment drew praise but also some concern from Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, who was critical of Dumas’ appointment to the previous job as czar, in which he was supposed to coordinate and improve adoption and foster care.

Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, praised the Bevins’ focus on child welfare, calling adoption and foster care a nonpartisan issue even in politically divided times.

“Here’s hoping that the Johnsons can be external catalysts for a sea change in child welfare,” Brooks said.

Wayne, a licensed clinical social worker, said he’s he’s glad the governor is focusing on child welfare but concerned about whether the Johnsons have appropriate, professional experience.

“They may be well-intentioned, loving people and have great ideals,” Wayne said.

But, he said, assessing and placing children in adoptive and foster homes is “a highly specialized role” requiring professional experience, comparing it to a medical school hiring someone to teach brain surgery.

“You don’t go out and get someone who’s enthusiastic about brain surgery but doesn’t have any professional skill or training in brain surgery,” he said, adding that the state found that out last year in hiring Dumas.

“The problem we ran into last time was that we had someone without any background or experience,” Wayne said. “There’s a whole body of knowledge on how to assess children and place them.”

The Johnsons have served as foster parents to more than 40 children and adopted seven former foster children, the news release said. It also said both are active in various organizations and associations that promote foster care and adoption.

When Bevin appointed Dumas to the job, the administration touted his role as an adoptive father as well as his leadership role at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and experience as a Navy veteran.

Dumas, a pastor and former executive with the seminary, did not respond to requests for comment about reasons for his departure, and the Bevin administration did not provide a reason for canceling his contract.

In appointing Dumas, Bevin fulfilled a pledge in his 2017 State of the Commonwealth address to name a “czar” to coordinate state efforts to move more children into adoptive and foster homes.

Bevin, a Christian, has long called on churches and faith-based organizations to help provide adoptive and foster care for the growing number of Kentucky children removed from homes because of abuse or neglect. He and his wife are the parents of nine children, four adopted.

The appointment of the Johnsons comes amid what child advocates describe as a growing crisis in child welfare in Kentucky, with escalating numbers of children removed from homes because of abuse or neglect and continuously high caseloads for social workers.

More than Kentucky 9,500 children currently are in what the state calls “out of home care,” an unusually high number that children’s advocates say is driven in part by the state’s addiction crisis.“

Bevin appoints pastor and wife as adoption advisers, salaries unknown

[Louisville Courier-Journal 8/1/18 by Deborah Yetter]

Update 4:“Kentucky will pay a Baptist minister and his wife an annual salary of $82,500 each to help the state reform its foster care and adoption systems, a state spokesperson said Thursday.

Gov. Matt Bevin’s office had declined to release the salaries for Chris and Alicia Johnson of Florida on Wednesday, when the announcement about their new Kentucky jobs was made.

Pamela Trautner, a spokeswoman for the state Finance and Administration Cabinet, confirmed the salary Thursday and said the state’s contract with the Johnsons would be provided soon. The Herald-Leader filed an open records request for the contract Wednesday.

State Rep. Kelly Flood, D-Lexington, called the combined $165,000 annual salary for the Johnsons “confounding.”

“To see how much money this state needs for foster care and pay for our social workers and then that salary, I don’t understand it,” she said.

Flood said she knew little about the Johnsons and their qualifications. “As a state legislator, this governor made no introductions of them to me,” she said.

Flood also said she was quizzical about hiring a team for the job. “How does that happen? How does that work?” she asked.

Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said Wednesday before the Johnsons’ salary was announced that he’s “hoping that the Johnsons can be external catalysts for a sea change in child welfare.”

Brooks was not immediately available for comment Thursday.

In May 2017, Bevin hired Daniel S. Dumas, who had been a senior vice president at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, for $240,000 a year plus bonuses to overhaul Kentucky’s adoption and foster care systems. The Republican governor then terminated his contract last January without explanation.

Bevin said the Johnsons will be special advisers in his Office of Faith and Community Based Initiatives. Their expenses will be covered by a memorandum of agreement with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

Chris Johnson is the former lead pastor of Liberty Baptist Church in Clermont, Fla., where he worked for 11 years. At the church, the couple began a program to connect prospective foster and adoptive parents with child welfare agencies. They also have been connected with foster and adoptive parent associations in Florida.

The couple has 10 children, ranging in age from 8 to 24. Three of their children are biological and seven are adopted from the foster care system. They have fostered more than 40 children.”

Kentucky will pay couple $165,000 a year to advise state on adoption, foster care

[Lexington Herald-Leader 8/2/18 by Jack Brammer]

Update 5:“Attorney General Andy Beshear said Thursday a $240,000 yearly contract issued by Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration to an “adoption czar” was invalid and so, too, was a $60,000 termination fee given to Dan Dumas when he left the job.

Dumas was a pastor and executive with the Southern Baptist Seminary when he was hired under a no-bid contract to advise Bevin and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services on ways to improve adoption and foster care services in Kentucky at an annual salary of $240,000.

Bevin and his wife are the adoptive parents of four children from Africa, children they adopted after they were rejected as adoptive parents in Kentucky, according to Bevin, because they already were parents to five children of their own. He has made improvements to the adoption and foster care services a priority.

When Dumas left the job and paid the termination fee, state Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, sought an attorney general’s opinion on the legality of that termination fee. Wayne is a licensed clinical social worker.

Beshear’s opinion said Dumas was improperly hired under a so-called “sole source” contract because Bevin’s claim that Dumas was “uniquely qualified” was inaccurate.

Dumas’ only experience, Beshear said, was that he was himself an adoptive parent and the position should have been filled through a competitive bid process.

Because the contract itself was invalid, said Beshear (who has announced he will run for governor next year), the termination fee is also invalid. Beshear and Bevin have repeatedly clashed with Beshear challenging multiple executive orders by Bevin and a pension reform law in court.

Bevin’s spokeswoman, Elizabeth Kuhn, dismissed Beshear’s advisory opinion, attributing it to Beshear’s political ambitions.

“This is a classical political response from candidate Beshear who is once again using public office to advance his personal agenda,” Kuhn said. She said Beshear hadn’t scrutinized or objected to contracts given to his own political allies or those of his father, former Gov. Steve Beshear.

Dumas began his job in June of 2017 but the cabinet terminated his contract in January of this year and paid him the $60,000 termination fee called for in the original contract.

Just this month, Bevin announced the state had employed Chris Johnson, a Florida pastor, and his wife Alicia Johnson to advise the governor and his wife how to improve the adoption and foster care system. Each will separately be paid $82,500.

Like Dumas and the Bevins, the Johnsons are adoptive parents but it’s unclear if they have any formal child welfare experience beyond their service as foster parents and personal experience as adoptive parents in Florida.

The state currently has in its care 9,500 children. The high number is attributed in part to the state’s growing addiction and substance abuse problems.”

AG Beshear says adoption czar contract was invalid

[Richmond Register 8/16/18 by Ronnie Ellis]