States Seek U.S. Foster Care Funds to Promote Families

State officials urged congressmen Wednesday to allow federal funds to be shifted from overburdened and often dysfunctional foster home programs for abused children to a controversial new program dubbed “homebuilding.”

Instead of the traditional strategy of placing such children in foster care, several states are focusing on another solution--strengthening the family itself.

“Traditionally, kids are ‘fixed’ and sent back to the same environment, which often remains abusive,” Larry Michalczyk, the commissioner of the Department of Social Services for Kentucky, said at a hearing of a human resources subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee. “This program works to change the home itself.”

“Homebuilder” programs, as they are sometimes called, have been implemented in Kentucky, Iowa, Washington and Michigan, among other states. Rather than placing children in undersubscribed, at times abusive, foster homes, the programs provide a specially trained counselor at the family’s disposal 24 hours a day. During the four- to six-week duration of the program, the counselors--who will often carry “beepers” like emergency-room doctors--work intensively to provide both emotional counseling and solutions to problems such as a lack of money to buy diapers.

Edna Walker, program manager with the Michigan Department of Social Services, deemed even the most seemingly hopeless parents salvageable. “There’s really no way to tell beforehand who can and can’t be helped. We had one mother who was involved in prostitution and was getting her two teen-age daughters involved in prostitution to support her drug habit. . . . There was a vacancy in a foster home, but the mother and kids wanted to be together and were willing to work toward a solution. . . . Now, two years later, she is drug-free and holding a job as a waitress. And the girls are in school.”

Yet even the loudest advocates of “homebuilding” concede that it is not always easy to be sure that the risk to children from remaining in their original, abusive situations--even with the prospect of change--is not excessive.

“Safety is the biggest consideration; it’s not always easy to assess that ahead of time,” admitted David Haapala, executive director of the Behavioral Sciences Institute and one of the pioneers of the program.