In researching a question from one of my readers I found this article about the Whistle Blower in Kentucky who exposed the quick termination of parental rights and quick adoption out of children to qualify for the Feds $4000.00 bonus check for each of those children.
From the article above: "The attorney for former state social worker Pat Moore says Moore was fired because she criticized her supervisors for insisting that two foster children be placed with an adoptive family in Verona in Boone County even though the family, among other problems, allowed a man described in court documents as a pedophile convicted of sex crimes to be around the children."
I found my August 13, 2003 DSHS email sent to all of us social workers urging us to meet the goal of adopting out 150 more children by September 30, 2003 to reach that $4000.00 federal bonus money.
Can you imagine? In a month and a half...quick...get 150 more children adopted out to get that federal money.
Then a few years ago a bill got floated in the legislature by DSHS that essentially created the impression that...well...for those children we were not able to sell (my opinion and cynicism towards this program)...well...parental rights may be able to be restored.
I keep praying an individual out there will take on the massive investigation that rightfully should be done to give clear transparency to this issue.
I am not aware of any study about what happened to these children who were "quickly" adopted out. I know I had a couple of folks over the years who I was processing a child day care license for that were on my caseload who wanted to do foster adopt. My initial assessment was not only shouldn't they have a day care license, they were not healthy candidates to be foster or adoptive parents.
Were they allowed to adopt? I don't know, I did not have access to those records after I recommended denial that they not receive a child day care license.
A former co-worker and former foster care licensor in the state of Washington told me when I asked how many foster care parents on her caseload should not have gotten or kept a foster care license? She said 50%.
If you read my blog piece on the Manson foster parent who was also doing unlicensed child day care and read the child death review on the four babies who died while under her care...it is heartbreaking and revealing.
Out of those child deaths review the legislature strengthened the law (RCW 74.15) in 1995 to protect children. What did the unelected bureaucratic managers to over the ensuing years? Ignored the law, violated the laws made by our citizen legislature.
From the article above quoting Pat Moore's attorney:
"He said Moore was fired for going against regional management's judgment:
"The state found foster parents willing to adopt, and even though the state knew the family had major problems, the state needed to get the kids out of the 'system,' regardless of how unfit the foster parents were."
That was my experience as a social worker licensing and investigating child day care homes. Our duties under the law and regulation were simply ignored by the unelected bureaucratic managers. Then when Administrative Law Judges ruled against the state, instead of the state looking to see what they did wrong in terms of losing their cases, the state managers mucked around with the regulations related to the Office of Administrative Hearings.
When the Department of Early Learning (DEL) was created in 2006 they created new laws for this new department. They took out the protection of children piece in the law. I asked the legislature in 2007 to put it back in, put it into the law that governs the state licensing child day care providers. The legislature did, bless their hearts and integrity.
But then the unelected bureaucratic managers of DEL kept on ignoring the protection of children laws. The Washington State Supreme Court this year (2011) ruled the protection of children is the law in the Hardee v DSHS case. I'll have to look at it again, it might be Hardee v The Department of Early Learning.
Thank you to the legislature, the Appellate Court and Washington State Supreme Court for affirming the law around protecting children.
Now we watch DEL and get records through public disclosure; and see if they will obey the Washington State Supreme Court.
If they don't I will be writing about it.
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