Report Lauds Alternative to Foster-Care Program

More than 14,000 foster children in California have found permanent homes with grandparents or other relatives under an innovative program that provides subsidies to caregivers, a national report said Tuesday.

The “Fostering Results” report, by a nonpartisan group funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, calls for the federal government to allow more flexible spending of the $5 billion it pays states each year to provide foster care.

It suggests that loosening the rigid funding rules would allow more programs such as California’s that could improve outcomes for abused or neglected children.

The report comes as 20 California counties are seeking federal permission to use foster-care funds to keep children out of the foster-care system by helping troubled families avoid child abuse and create a safer environment in their homes.

If the federal government grants that permission, it would free about $250 million now restricted to out-of-home foster-care placements in Los Angeles County alone, said David Sanders, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.

“We could keep that money and reinvest it in front-end services to keep families together,” Sanders said. “Right now, if we get a call about child abuse or neglect, the options we have are very limited because so much of the funding is geared toward out-of-home placement.”

Federal foster-care policy also does not allow subsidies, such as those California provides, to grandparents, aunts and uncles, or other relatives who wish to become legal guardians for children removed from their parents.

California’s program, called Kin-GAP, uses funds from a different federal program that are not constrained by the rules governing foster-care financing.

The federal Adoptions and Safe Families Act of 1997 requires states to pursue adoptive homes for children who have been in foster care for 17 of the previous 22 months. About 186,000 children nationwide were in such circumstances in 2002, the report found, and 46,000 of them were living with relatives.

As states struggle to find permanent placements for these children, advocates say, an obvious solution is to offer financial support to relatives who are already raising many of them.

“Our first priority, if we can’t return a child to their home, should be to place them with someone who is familiar to them, who will preserve their bonds with their siblings, who is vested in the future of that child,” said Miriam Aroni Krinsky, executive director of the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles, which represents foster children in juvenile dependency court. “We should give them financial support and not require ongoing intrusion by the government in that family’s life if they can appropriately care for that child.”

In California, state officials developed Kin-GAP to subsidize guardianship for families such as the Bracamontes. Families receive about $450 per month per child, and they are freed from the supervision of a court because the children have left the foster-care system.

“It’s up to us now to make our own decisions,” said Julia Bracamonte, a Reseda woman who is the legal guardian of four grandchildren aged 5 to 15. “The kids are a lot happier now too.”

Bracamonte’s daughter, who struggles with drug addiction, is the children’s mother. She abandoned them four years ago, Bracamonte said.

Bracamonte and her husband, Gustavo, have cared for them since, but for several years the children remained wards of the foster-care system. That meant regular visits from a social worker and other intrusions.

“When they were in the system, their friends and family members had to be fingerprinted,” she said. “People didn’t have the time or didn’t want to get involved, so they were isolated.”

The Kin-GAP program, which helped secure permanent placements with relatives for 8,500 children in Los Angeles County, does not cover everyone, including children with special needs who require more intensive services.

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said he agreed that states could do much more to move foster children into permanent homes with more funding flexibility.

“The law has to be changed,” said Horn, a child psychologist. “We’ve submitted a proposal to do that and the Congress hasn’t acted yet. We’re on the side of the states.”