FOSTER PARENTS GETTING ORGANIZED

In Washington State, Some Seek A Union To Give Them Louder Voice With
Agencies That Make Decisions

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- In 18 years as foster parents, Steve and Daniele
Baxter have seen drug-addicted newborns taken from strung-out moms;
angry, abusive teenagers; kids bounced from home to home a dozen
times or more; suicidal kids; sexually aggressive kids; slow
learners; adolescent bed-wetters -- you name it.

The couple also has seen -- and this refrain is heard across the USA
- -- inadequate support from child-welfare agencies, high turnover of
foster parents, meager training in caring for severely troubled
children, erratic reimbursement for kids' needs and, most troubling,
a bureaucratic deaf ear to foster parents' opinions.

"Nobody really fully understands what being a foster parent is unless
you are a foster parent and you actually live it," Daniele Baxter
says. "Anyone who ever makes a decision about foster children should
have a foster child for a while."

The Baxters and others, convinced that Washington state's foster-care
system is "in crisis," are forming the nation's first union
representing foster parents to gain more clout with state agencies.
By January, organizers expect to have a proposal before the
Legislature, which must approve any new group of unionized state employees.

Foster parents want more training, a role in foster-care
decision-making and benefits such as health coverage. They want a
portion of parents in Washington state's 6,000 foster homes to become
paid professionals who house difficult and medically fragile
children. The state pays its volunteer foster parents for kids'
expenses but not wages.

"The debate is if we treat foster parents like employees or
businesses, somehow the kids automatically do better," says
Republican state Sen. Joseph Zarelli. "But I'd argue that to become a
foster parent you ought to first be financially stable in your own home."

Mike Canfield, a foster parent with his wife, Beth, in Bremerton,
says fewer than 100 homes can handle "high-risk children."

"If a foster parent doesn't know how to take care of a kid like that,
they can make things worse," says Canfield, a psychologist who has
been a foster parent for 23 years.

The push for a union isn't coming out of a sense that Washington's
system lags the rest of the country. Reimbursement rates here are
above the national average, and the state is considered as
progressive as any, according to the National Foster Parent Association.

Like many other states, Washington has been putting more foster
children in relatives' homes -- 38% last year, the Department of
Social and Health Services says. A larger proportion of the remaining
cases are harder-to-manage children. The state has about 9,500 foster
children but 400 fewer foster homes than a year ago.

"A lot of foster parents feel poorly treated by the state. It's been
a long-standing problem," says Dee Wilson, executive director of the
Northwest Institute for Children and Families at the University of
Washington and for many years a child-welfare administrator. "Lots of
times they don't have a say in what happens to kids in their home,
even though they know more about the kids than anyone else."

Foster-care systems are "dysfunctional" in many states, says Marcia
Lowry, executive director of Children's Rights, an advocacy group.

Virginia was penalized $42 million this year when an audit found
cities and counties improperly diverting federal foster-care funds. A
state audit in June found that abuse increased after Florida
privatized its child-welfare system. A federal judge in May struck
down Missouri's law cutting aid to foster parents. The state is appealing.

"In state after state, foster parents are paid way below the rate the
U.S. government sets for the cost of raising a child," Lowry says.

Her group won settlements in Connecticut; Tennessee; New Jersey;
Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; and Milwaukee. Class-action lawsuits are
pending in Mississippi, Michigan and Nebraska, whose $222-a-month
base rate is the nation's lowest.

The federal government oversees states' foster care and matches their
spending on children eligible under a formula. Since 1998, the number
of children eligible for the federal match has fallen "at an alarming
rate," from 55% to 45% in 2004, the Child Welfare League of America
said in a study released in July.

The league found 22 states not complying with eligibility rules. In
federal audits since 2001 looking at abuse levels, parent turnover,
placement, foster-child adoptions and other measures, no state has
passed. However, many have shown "significant improvement" since,
says Wade Horn, an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.

Year to year, about a half-million children are in foster care, the
government estimates.

Most foster parents are middle-aged or older and have less education
than parents in general. Nearly half are single, and more than 90% of
those are women. African-Americans make up the biggest share of
foster parents, 42%, according to a 2003 federal study.

Washington state officials know that too many kids see too many
homes, that foster-parent turnover -- 30% last year -- is too high
and that parents want a greater role, says Kathleen Spears, a Social
and Health Services spokeswoman.

The department is trying to recruit more parents in places with a lot
of foster children so a child, if moved, can stay in the same school,
Spears says. "We're moving toward more involvement from children's
families, whether foster parents or relatives," she says.

Lawmaker Zarelli wants the state to set clearer expectations for
parents who lose their children and timetables by which they would
have to straighten up or have the state move toward severing parental
rights and permitting adoption.

Democratic state Rep. Ruth Kagi chairs the House Children and Family
Services Committee and says she favors "every possible initiative to
support foster parents," possibly including "a professional level of
foster care that we need to look at."

She's not sure a union is the answer, though, and says linking foster
issues with the need to engage biological parents more vigorously
"makes no sense."