Friday, November 5, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Guest View: Don't push foster youths out the door
A new article found here. College is the new high school, let's support AB 12 and give these kids a little support. You don't dump teenagers at bus stops.
Guest View: Don't push foster youths out the door
By Miriam Aroni Krinsky
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Posted:09/19/2010 07:04:01 AM PDT
`On my 18th birthday, my (foster parent) literally dropped me off at a bus station with my worldly possessions packed in a duffle bag. I felt like a ship lost at sea with no destination, no gas, and no motivation."
The above cry for help is far too common among youth who age out of our foster care system.
Few of us would turn our teenaged child out on the street with no place to sleep, no job, minimal life skills, no savings, and no plan for adulthood. Few of us would abandon our 18 year-old with no adult support and nowhere to turn when the challenges of independent living set in. Yet for our most vulnerable youth - the abused and neglected children we bring into foster care - these scenarios are the norm.
Every year more than 1,000 teenagers age out of Los Angeles County's foster care system and come face to face with the challenges of adulthood completely alone. Without the anchor of a family, former foster youth disproportionately join the ranks of the homeless, incarcerated and unemployed. Indeed, recent studies recount that former foster youth are 10 times more likely to be arrested than similarly situated youth and that one in four who age out of foster care will end up in jail within the first two years after leaving care. This incarceration doesn't come cheap: The average price for a year in prison is $35,587, and this figure doesn't even begin to account for the human toll and loss of potential.
Sitting on the governor's desk is a chance to address this dismal record and chart a better path for teenagers in foster care. AB 12 - legislation that received overwhelming bipartisan support in the Legislature - would permit young Californians in the foster care system to continue receiving support until age 21. This support will stabilize their housing, provide a cushion for higher education and/or beginning a career.
While some may question investing in foster youth in the face of a multi-billion dollar deficit, AB 12 would result in no net cost to the state because it draws down new federal money. As a result of the recently enacted federal Fostering Connections to Success Act, the federal government will for the first time support state efforts to extend foster care services and oversight up to age 21; federal money will match every dollar our state invests in supporting foster youth beyond age 18. Moreover, provisions in AB 12 will result in new savings for our state of $60 million annually by converting a formerly state-funded relative guardianship program into a federally-funded initiative.
A few states have extended foster care support beyond age 18 and their results are conclusive - youth who were allowed to remain in foster care beyond age 18 were twice as likely to be working toward completion of a high school diploma, three times more likely to be enrolled in college, 65 percent less likely to have been arrested and 54 percent less likely to have been incarcerated.
So AB 12 is the humane approach but it's also is a fiscally sound bill. It is a rare glimmer of basic common sense in a legislative year too often marked by chaos and dysfunction.
Not surprisingly, AB 12 has received wide bipartisan support. The 51-member California Child Welfare Council, co-chaired by Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno and HHS Secretary Kim Belsh , unanimously recommended expanding support for youth in foster care to age 21.
Let us hope that the governor joins the chorus of bipartisan leaders in our state who have underscored the need to invest in, rather than abandon, our most vulnerable children.The governor should sign the bill before yet another generation of foster youth find themselves ill prepared for adulthood, alone and adrift.
Los Angeles resident Miriam Aroni Krinsky is a member of the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Foster Care and also serves as a lecturer at the UCLA School of Public Affairs.
Guest View: Don't push foster youths out the door
By Miriam Aroni Krinsky
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Posted:09/19/2010 07:04:01 AM PDT
`On my 18th birthday, my (foster parent) literally dropped me off at a bus station with my worldly possessions packed in a duffle bag. I felt like a ship lost at sea with no destination, no gas, and no motivation."
The above cry for help is far too common among youth who age out of our foster care system.
Few of us would turn our teenaged child out on the street with no place to sleep, no job, minimal life skills, no savings, and no plan for adulthood. Few of us would abandon our 18 year-old with no adult support and nowhere to turn when the challenges of independent living set in. Yet for our most vulnerable youth - the abused and neglected children we bring into foster care - these scenarios are the norm.
Every year more than 1,000 teenagers age out of Los Angeles County's foster care system and come face to face with the challenges of adulthood completely alone. Without the anchor of a family, former foster youth disproportionately join the ranks of the homeless, incarcerated and unemployed. Indeed, recent studies recount that former foster youth are 10 times more likely to be arrested than similarly situated youth and that one in four who age out of foster care will end up in jail within the first two years after leaving care. This incarceration doesn't come cheap: The average price for a year in prison is $35,587, and this figure doesn't even begin to account for the human toll and loss of potential.
Sitting on the governor's desk is a chance to address this dismal record and chart a better path for teenagers in foster care. AB 12 - legislation that received overwhelming bipartisan support in the Legislature - would permit young Californians in the foster care system to continue receiving support until age 21. This support will stabilize their housing, provide a cushion for higher education and/or beginning a career.
While some may question investing in foster youth in the face of a multi-billion dollar deficit, AB 12 would result in no net cost to the state because it draws down new federal money. As a result of the recently enacted federal Fostering Connections to Success Act, the federal government will for the first time support state efforts to extend foster care services and oversight up to age 21; federal money will match every dollar our state invests in supporting foster youth beyond age 18. Moreover, provisions in AB 12 will result in new savings for our state of $60 million annually by converting a formerly state-funded relative guardianship program into a federally-funded initiative.
A few states have extended foster care support beyond age 18 and their results are conclusive - youth who were allowed to remain in foster care beyond age 18 were twice as likely to be working toward completion of a high school diploma, three times more likely to be enrolled in college, 65 percent less likely to have been arrested and 54 percent less likely to have been incarcerated.
So AB 12 is the humane approach but it's also is a fiscally sound bill. It is a rare glimmer of basic common sense in a legislative year too often marked by chaos and dysfunction.
Not surprisingly, AB 12 has received wide bipartisan support. The 51-member California Child Welfare Council, co-chaired by Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno and HHS Secretary Kim Belsh , unanimously recommended expanding support for youth in foster care to age 21.
Let us hope that the governor joins the chorus of bipartisan leaders in our state who have underscored the need to invest in, rather than abandon, our most vulnerable children.The governor should sign the bill before yet another generation of foster youth find themselves ill prepared for adulthood, alone and adrift.
Los Angeles resident Miriam Aroni Krinsky is a member of the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Foster Care and also serves as a lecturer at the UCLA School of Public Affairs.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Denmark Parliament Approves Equal Adoption rights
Denmark parliament approves equal adoption rights
By PinkNews.co.uk Staff Writer • March 18, 2009 - 11:32
Denmark joins other Nordic countries in allowing gay joint adoption
A majority vote in parliament yesterday will see the introduction of a bill giving equal adoption rights for civil partners and straight married couples in Denmark.
The Copenhagen Post reports that the proposal, from Civil Centre Party founder Simon Emil Ammitzbøll, grants partners registered in civil unions the right to adopt unrelated children both domestically and internationally.
Currently, gays and lesbians can adopt individually in the country and couples can adopt their partner's existing children. The bill will grant same-sex couples the right to adopt jointly, in line with straight married couples.
Other Nordic countries such as Iceland, Norway and Sweden already allow same-sex couples to adopt jointly.
According to figures from 2007, 103 out of 712 step-child adoptions were from couples in civil partnerships.
Most adoptions involving unrelated children tend to take place abroad, making it difficult for Danish same-sex couples to do so, as many countries will not allow homosexual adoption.
By PinkNews.co.uk Staff Writer • March 18, 2009 - 11:32
Denmark joins other Nordic countries in allowing gay joint adoption
A majority vote in parliament yesterday will see the introduction of a bill giving equal adoption rights for civil partners and straight married couples in Denmark.
The Copenhagen Post reports that the proposal, from Civil Centre Party founder Simon Emil Ammitzbøll, grants partners registered in civil unions the right to adopt unrelated children both domestically and internationally.
Currently, gays and lesbians can adopt individually in the country and couples can adopt their partner's existing children. The bill will grant same-sex couples the right to adopt jointly, in line with straight married couples.
Other Nordic countries such as Iceland, Norway and Sweden already allow same-sex couples to adopt jointly.
According to figures from 2007, 103 out of 712 step-child adoptions were from couples in civil partnerships.
Most adoptions involving unrelated children tend to take place abroad, making it difficult for Danish same-sex couples to do so, as many countries will not allow homosexual adoption.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Foster care frought with private abuses, public excuses | ajc.com
Foster care frought with private abuses, public excuses | ajc.com
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AJC investigation: Children needing homes get placed in harm’s way with few repercussions
By Alan Judd
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7:00 a.m. Sunday, April 18, 2010
Georgia officials decided last year that a rules violation by a private foster care agency was so egregious it warranted one of the toughest possible penalties.
The agency, state records show, had inappropriately placed two children in the same foster home. One was a 17-year-old who had engaged in incest and other sexual activity. The other was 8, autistic and mute, with a history of being abused and an IQ of 16. The boys at first shared a bedroom; ultimately, they shared a bed.
The foster agency’s punishment: a $300 fine.
What happened at the Trek Program, a foster agency based in Fort Oglethorpe, and how the state responded illustrate the scope of problems in Georgia’s growing system of publicly funded but privately operated foster care, according to an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The newspaper reviewed more than 1,500 reports of state inspections and investigations, which provide an astonishing narrative of stark conditions and inadequate oversight in small foster homes and large group facilities alike.
Fights. Sexual assaults. Consensual sex between young teens. Abuse by foster parents and group home employees. Escapes. Suicide attempts. All occur with regularity at many of Georgia’s 336 private foster care agencies, the Journal-Constitution’s examination found.
One agency, for example, repeatedly used anti-psychotic drugs to subdue misbehaving children. Another tried to rid residents of “demons” through forced exorcism.
Yet the state office that oversees foster care consistently excuses serious, repeated rules violations that jeopardize children’s health and safety.
Since 2008, officials have issued 1,107 citations to 300 of the 336 private agencies. Most cases involved multiple violations of foster care rules. But the state imposed fines or other penalties — what it calls “adverse actions” — in just 83, or 7 percent, of those citations. The median fine: $500.
Of the 336 private foster care agencies, 100 receive direct state funding; last year’s total exceeded $55 million. Even among those agencies, violations are common. In the past two years, the state has cited 91 of the 100 agencies — while continuing to pay them for housing foster children.
Like many other states, Georgia increasingly relies on private agencies — not-for-profit organizations, for the most part — to place children in foster homes or group homes and to oversee much of their care. Many of the children have been diagnosed with mental illnesses, behavioral disorders, or both. Some enter foster care through the state’s social services system to protect them from abusive or neglectful parents. Others come through juvenile courts after getting in trouble with the law.
About 4,000 children, roughly half those in state care, reside in privately owned facilities. A decade ago, private agencies cared for no more than 10 percent of Georgia’s foster children.
State oversight, however, has not kept pace with the growth in private care.
In Fulton and DeKalb counties, Georgia’s most populous, half the children in foster care did not receive the required two visits a month from state workers in 2009, court-appointed monitors said in a recent report. In addition, the monitors said, state officials inspected the operations of one-third as many private foster agencies last year as in 2008.
And while half the foster children in the two counties live in private facilities, the monitors told a judge, they account for three-fourths of substantiated maltreatment cases in foster homes. (The state recently countered that 37 percent of the maltreatment occurred outside foster homes.)
“These are just the cases that actually get identified, investigated and substantiated as abuse,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights Inc., a New York-based advocacy group involved in the federal lawsuit that led to the monitors’ appointment.
“If the state is going to utilize the private sector, they have to have mechanisms in place” to ensure children’s safety, Lustbader said. “In the end, it’s all about the quality of the state’s oversight.”
State officials, however, say regulating foster care agencies is a complicated undertaking, one that involves using both persuasion and the specter of serious penalties to combat substandard treatment.
“It is not the goal to put people out of business,” said Keith Bostick, director of the state Office of Residential Child Care. “We want to do as much as we can to try to keep kids safe. But it is a balancing act.”
Dena Smith, spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, which oversees the regulatory office, added: “Many times there are agencies or providers that, with a soft nudge, they can get back into compliance.”
But many foster care providers complain that enforcement is too aggressive, too focused on administrative requirements that don’t directly affect how children are treated.
“The regulations are good regulations,” said Normer Adams, executive director of the Georgia Association of Homes and Services for Children, an industry lobbying group. “But sometimes the citations are really tedious. Most of the violations don’t threaten the health or safety of a child.”
Regardless, in most instances, the state merely tells private agencies to correct deficiencies. Sometimes it also threatens an “adverse action.” But many agencies continue to violate the rules, with little or no consequence.
Drugs and demons
One day last April, an employee of the Mercy’s Door group home near Dalton approached a resident with a plan for his redemption: exorcism.
The employee took the boy to an office, where four other staff members were waiting, the boy later told a state inspector. They sat the boy in a chair and encircled him, hands joined, saying they would “exorcise the demons out” of him, he told the inspector.
“In Jesus’ name,” the boy quoted a staff member as saying, “remove the demons.”
Employees at Mercy’s Door required residents to attend daily “devotionals,” where they claimed to “rebuke demons of depression” and spoke in tongues, according to a second boy, who witnessed part of the exorcism rite. When another resident, an atheist, left his room, the boy said, staff members prayed over his bed. The staff, according to one resident, believed that “everyone has demons inside of them.”
The boy targeted by the exorcism said two staff members rubbed olive oil on his forehead and spoke about “four angels and rings of fire” — an apparent reference to Revelation’s prophesy that 144,000 people will be “sealed” and spared in Earth’s inevitable destruction. The boy said he was told he had been “bought for a price and adopted by Jesus.”
At one point, two of the facility’s employees later said, the boy became distraught. “Why,” he asked, jumping out of his chair, “can’t you be Baptist?”
In a brief telephone interview, the facility’s director, Veronica Alcerro, declined to comment.
A state investigation confirmed the boy’s story about the exorcism — and found that an employee of the group home, which received $62,416 in state money last year, had lied to an inspector.
But while the state cited Mercy’s Door for rules violations, it assessed no penalty.
In May 2008, the state cited Morningstar Treatment Services, which operates the Youth Estate group home outside Brunswick, for repeatedly using anti-psychotic drugs to control residents who would “act up.” A similar citation had been issued the previous October.
Regulators described the shots as an improper form of chemical restraint, used “as a means of convenience” for the facility’s staff.
One resident, for instance, was drugged for “non-compliance,” according to an incident report prepared by Morningstar. The resident had argued over serving an in-school suspension, so a nurse gave the child Ativan, an anti-psychotic, and Benadryl, an over-the-counter antihistamine also used as a sedative. After “lying on the bench for a little while,” the incident report said, the child completed the suspension “without fighting it.”
The state ordered Morningstar to revise its medication policy, and the agency said it would.
Ten months later, however, state inspectors learned that Morningstar was still using medication to discipline or control residents.
A nurse sedated one child for “being out of area.” Another resident was given a blend of Benadryl, Ativan and Haldol, another anti-psychotic, for “agitation, destruction and self-abuse.” Yet another received Valium for “agitation and aggression”; when the child still didn’t calm down, a nurse gave him the powerful anti-psychotic drug Thorazine.
In those instances, as in others, inspectors noted, “there was no valid prescription for the medications given.”
Staff members told inspectors that without the shots, “they would not be able to handle some of the residents,” according to a state report.
The four dozen or so residents at Morningstar typically have IQs between 40 and 70 and emotional and behavioral disorders, said Barry Kerr, the agency’s chief executive.
Morningstar has been “very aggressive” in reducing the use of drugs to manage residents’ behavior, Kerr said. The medicines, he said, have been used only “when we did not have another alternative.”
After Morningstar’s second citation, the state gave the agency a stern warning: “Based on repeat rule violations and failure to comply with an accepted plan of correction, adverse action may be initiated.”
About a week later, the state did act against Morningstar.
It imposed a $450 fine.
‘Eyes on the situation’
At least once a year, Rachel Neal shows up unannounced at each of the 80 or so foster care facilities that comprise her portfolio as a state inspector.
She carries a lengthy list of rules that each must follow: a minimum number of training hours for employees, up-to-date inspections for vehicles that transport foster children, and on and on.
Most violations get a written citation and are corrected within weeks. But when she discovers dangerous situations, such as toxic materials left within the reach of children, Neal expects instant remedies.
“Usually, they’ll be like, ‘OK, Ms. Neal, that will be dealt with immediately,’ ” she said during a tour of The Bridge, a group home in northwest Atlanta. “We make sure before I leave that that hazard will be fixed.”
Even during standard inspections, Neal said, “a lot of times you may come across something else” that endangers children or otherwise violates state rules. She said she may deviate from the routine “if I hear something, or see something, or read something in a file.”
But Neal and other inspectors spend relatively little time at each foster care facility. State case workers — assigned to a different division of the Department of Human Services — are supposed to visit each child they oversee twice a month. But they may not always look for problems affecting children supervised by other case workers, said Melissa Carter, the state’s child advocate.
“They are our eyes on the situation,” Carter said. “If I’m a case manager and I’m responsible for little Susie, I just go in and take a look at little Susie. It could be that other children were seen and other problems could have been detected.”
‘Minimal information’
In early 2007, the state took custody of an autistic child who had been neglected and abused in his home. The boy was “greatly at risk” of more maltreatment, case workers wrote, and would have to be “safeguarded from abuse.”
The state then delegated the boy’s protection to a private agency: Trek, a nonprofit program operated by the Lookout Mountain Community Services Board in North Georgia. Trek, in turn, placed the child in a foster home with which it contracted.
In March 2009, the state asked Trek to handle another child with profound troubles: a 17-year-old with a long, repulsive sexual history. The agency chose the same home where it had put the autistic child.
No one, however, told the foster parents about the 17-year-old’s experiences with incest and pornography. Or about his “sexual inappropriateness” with a stepparent. Or about what a therapist described as his “distorted sexual beliefs”: that children aren’t hurt if adults molest them, for example, and it’s OK for an older child to initiate sex with a younger one.
Trek provided “very minimal information,” the foster parents would later tell a state inspector. When they asked to see the 17-year-old’s psychological evaluations, the foster parents said, a Trek case worker demurred, saying only that the child had “never sexually acted out in previous placements.”
The foster parents moved the 17-year-old into a bedroom with the 8-year-old autistic boy. About a month later, the night of April 7, a cry transmitted by a baby monitor awoke one of the foster parents. He went to the boys’ bedroom, where he found the 17-year-old in bed with the younger child. The older boy was masturbating and had one hand in the 8-year-old’s pants.
The state cited Trek for failing to “prepare the foster family for the placement ... by anticipating adjustments and problems that may arise.” The previous month, the agency had received two similar citations. And a month later, the state assessed the $300 fine.
John Brewer, Trek’s program director, declined to comment on the case. But he said Trek tries to comply with state rules.
“They’ve always looked for specific things and make sure we follow through,” Brewer said. “We do get cited occasionally, and we try to correct those things.”
No one told
The state has cited numerous agencies that withheld critical information from foster parents.
For instance, state officials found that Benchmark Family Services of Jonesboro knew a child it placed in a foster home was supposed to receive therapy for sexual misbehavior. But no one, records show, told the foster family.
Soon, the child “inappropriately touched” another student at school, according to state reports. At the foster home, he groped another child.
The state cited the agency, but imposed no penalty.
A child placed in 2008 by another agency, Choices for Life of Georgia, based in Valdosta, had entered foster care after having sex with a cousin. He was not supposed to sleep, bathe, undress or be alone with younger children.
Again, no one told the foster family. Within weeks, the boy had molested at least one of the younger children in the home.
The state cited the agency, but imposed no penalty.
Foster parents need information about children in their care, said Beth Locker, policy director for Voices for Georgia’s Children, an Atlanta-based advocacy group.
“When that doesn’t happen,” Locker said, “it’s hard to know whether it’s a breakdown in communication, or a genuine concern about the privacy of a child’s family, or a concern about the cost of providing needed services.”
Sometimes, however, foster parents exacerbate harm already done to the children they supervise.
Choices for Life is one of several agencies cited for not preventing foster parents from using corporal punishment or other prohibited disciplinary methods. Last year, regulators said, the agency “failed to take appropriate corrective action” after learning a child had been spanked, and injured, by her foster parent. The child reported the spanking in December 2008, but Choices for Life left her in the foster home for 42 days.
The state imposed no penalty. It rarely does unless it finds a series of serious violations.
Inspectors documented numerous deficiencies in oversight by Bethany Christian Services of Atlanta, for instance. One of the agency’s foster parents left a child who uses a wheelchair home alone several times. Once, a social worker came by and found the wheelchair upstairs and the child on the basement floor, unable to get up and lying in his own waste.
Two other foster parents with Bethany forced a child to swallow a Benadryl tablet. The foster parents, the child said, called it a “sleep vitamin.”
From 20 investigations and four other inspections since May 2008, the state has cited Bethany Christian eight times for a total of 27 rules violations.
Just once, however, did the state impose a penalty: a $500 fine this January.
----------------------
Differing solutions
More regulation or less? Experts and children’s advocates are divided in their suggestions for improving Georgia’s foster care system.
Those who support tougher enforcement of foster care rules suggest that:
● More state case workers are needed so each child in foster care can be visited at least twice each month, as required by a settlement agreement in a lawsuit over conditions in foster care.
● The state should be more diligent in searching for relatives to care for children taken into protective custody.
● State officials could more closely monitor private agencies that operate group homes or place children in foster homes; inspections of those agencies dropped dramatically in 2009.
● The state could increase funding to replace case workers and other regulators, whose numbers have declined through attrition, retirement and other factors.
Those who say less-stringent oversight would help privately operated foster care agencies propose that:
● The state could eliminate what one report called “disparities in degrees of regulation and disparate treatment” of state-supervised foster homes and those overseen by private agencies. Problems in state-operated homes, the report said, may be addressed by case workers “who personally know and have worked with the foster parents.”
● Privately operated foster homes could be regulated by social workers, rather than inspectors with more of an enforcement mentality.
● A single, independent body — not affiliated with the Department of Human Services, which funds foster care — could oversee all foster care providers.
Sources: Court-appointed monitors’ report to U.S. District Court, Georgia Office of the Child Advocate’s 2008 annual report, AJC research
How we got the story
For this series of articles exploring Georgia’s increasing reliance on private agencies to operate the state’s child welfare system, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution examined more than 1,500 state reports and other public documents and interviewed foster care providers, state officials and children’s advocates.
Today: Substandard conditions in privately operated foster care settings seldom incur penalties.
Monday: A riot at a North Georgia group home for foster children was the culmination of a long slide into chaos — and of the state’s failure to intervene.
Next Sunday: Breakdowns in multistate adoptions arranged by a private agency from Georgia largely escape the attention of state regulators.
April 26: Private adoption and foster care agencies are supposed to be not-for-profit organizations. That doesn’t stop some agency officials from turning child welfare into a lucrative enterprise.
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AJC investigation: Children needing homes get placed in harm’s way with few repercussions
By Alan Judd
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7:00 a.m. Sunday, April 18, 2010
Georgia officials decided last year that a rules violation by a private foster care agency was so egregious it warranted one of the toughest possible penalties.
The agency, state records show, had inappropriately placed two children in the same foster home. One was a 17-year-old who had engaged in incest and other sexual activity. The other was 8, autistic and mute, with a history of being abused and an IQ of 16. The boys at first shared a bedroom; ultimately, they shared a bed.
The foster agency’s punishment: a $300 fine.
What happened at the Trek Program, a foster agency based in Fort Oglethorpe, and how the state responded illustrate the scope of problems in Georgia’s growing system of publicly funded but privately operated foster care, according to an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The newspaper reviewed more than 1,500 reports of state inspections and investigations, which provide an astonishing narrative of stark conditions and inadequate oversight in small foster homes and large group facilities alike.
Fights. Sexual assaults. Consensual sex between young teens. Abuse by foster parents and group home employees. Escapes. Suicide attempts. All occur with regularity at many of Georgia’s 336 private foster care agencies, the Journal-Constitution’s examination found.
One agency, for example, repeatedly used anti-psychotic drugs to subdue misbehaving children. Another tried to rid residents of “demons” through forced exorcism.
Yet the state office that oversees foster care consistently excuses serious, repeated rules violations that jeopardize children’s health and safety.
Since 2008, officials have issued 1,107 citations to 300 of the 336 private agencies. Most cases involved multiple violations of foster care rules. But the state imposed fines or other penalties — what it calls “adverse actions” — in just 83, or 7 percent, of those citations. The median fine: $500.
Of the 336 private foster care agencies, 100 receive direct state funding; last year’s total exceeded $55 million. Even among those agencies, violations are common. In the past two years, the state has cited 91 of the 100 agencies — while continuing to pay them for housing foster children.
Like many other states, Georgia increasingly relies on private agencies — not-for-profit organizations, for the most part — to place children in foster homes or group homes and to oversee much of their care. Many of the children have been diagnosed with mental illnesses, behavioral disorders, or both. Some enter foster care through the state’s social services system to protect them from abusive or neglectful parents. Others come through juvenile courts after getting in trouble with the law.
About 4,000 children, roughly half those in state care, reside in privately owned facilities. A decade ago, private agencies cared for no more than 10 percent of Georgia’s foster children.
State oversight, however, has not kept pace with the growth in private care.
In Fulton and DeKalb counties, Georgia’s most populous, half the children in foster care did not receive the required two visits a month from state workers in 2009, court-appointed monitors said in a recent report. In addition, the monitors said, state officials inspected the operations of one-third as many private foster agencies last year as in 2008.
And while half the foster children in the two counties live in private facilities, the monitors told a judge, they account for three-fourths of substantiated maltreatment cases in foster homes. (The state recently countered that 37 percent of the maltreatment occurred outside foster homes.)
“These are just the cases that actually get identified, investigated and substantiated as abuse,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights Inc., a New York-based advocacy group involved in the federal lawsuit that led to the monitors’ appointment.
“If the state is going to utilize the private sector, they have to have mechanisms in place” to ensure children’s safety, Lustbader said. “In the end, it’s all about the quality of the state’s oversight.”
State officials, however, say regulating foster care agencies is a complicated undertaking, one that involves using both persuasion and the specter of serious penalties to combat substandard treatment.
“It is not the goal to put people out of business,” said Keith Bostick, director of the state Office of Residential Child Care. “We want to do as much as we can to try to keep kids safe. But it is a balancing act.”
Dena Smith, spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, which oversees the regulatory office, added: “Many times there are agencies or providers that, with a soft nudge, they can get back into compliance.”
But many foster care providers complain that enforcement is too aggressive, too focused on administrative requirements that don’t directly affect how children are treated.
“The regulations are good regulations,” said Normer Adams, executive director of the Georgia Association of Homes and Services for Children, an industry lobbying group. “But sometimes the citations are really tedious. Most of the violations don’t threaten the health or safety of a child.”
Regardless, in most instances, the state merely tells private agencies to correct deficiencies. Sometimes it also threatens an “adverse action.” But many agencies continue to violate the rules, with little or no consequence.
Drugs and demons
One day last April, an employee of the Mercy’s Door group home near Dalton approached a resident with a plan for his redemption: exorcism.
The employee took the boy to an office, where four other staff members were waiting, the boy later told a state inspector. They sat the boy in a chair and encircled him, hands joined, saying they would “exorcise the demons out” of him, he told the inspector.
“In Jesus’ name,” the boy quoted a staff member as saying, “remove the demons.”
Employees at Mercy’s Door required residents to attend daily “devotionals,” where they claimed to “rebuke demons of depression” and spoke in tongues, according to a second boy, who witnessed part of the exorcism rite. When another resident, an atheist, left his room, the boy said, staff members prayed over his bed. The staff, according to one resident, believed that “everyone has demons inside of them.”
The boy targeted by the exorcism said two staff members rubbed olive oil on his forehead and spoke about “four angels and rings of fire” — an apparent reference to Revelation’s prophesy that 144,000 people will be “sealed” and spared in Earth’s inevitable destruction. The boy said he was told he had been “bought for a price and adopted by Jesus.”
At one point, two of the facility’s employees later said, the boy became distraught. “Why,” he asked, jumping out of his chair, “can’t you be Baptist?”
In a brief telephone interview, the facility’s director, Veronica Alcerro, declined to comment.
A state investigation confirmed the boy’s story about the exorcism — and found that an employee of the group home, which received $62,416 in state money last year, had lied to an inspector.
But while the state cited Mercy’s Door for rules violations, it assessed no penalty.
In May 2008, the state cited Morningstar Treatment Services, which operates the Youth Estate group home outside Brunswick, for repeatedly using anti-psychotic drugs to control residents who would “act up.” A similar citation had been issued the previous October.
Regulators described the shots as an improper form of chemical restraint, used “as a means of convenience” for the facility’s staff.
One resident, for instance, was drugged for “non-compliance,” according to an incident report prepared by Morningstar. The resident had argued over serving an in-school suspension, so a nurse gave the child Ativan, an anti-psychotic, and Benadryl, an over-the-counter antihistamine also used as a sedative. After “lying on the bench for a little while,” the incident report said, the child completed the suspension “without fighting it.”
The state ordered Morningstar to revise its medication policy, and the agency said it would.
Ten months later, however, state inspectors learned that Morningstar was still using medication to discipline or control residents.
A nurse sedated one child for “being out of area.” Another resident was given a blend of Benadryl, Ativan and Haldol, another anti-psychotic, for “agitation, destruction and self-abuse.” Yet another received Valium for “agitation and aggression”; when the child still didn’t calm down, a nurse gave him the powerful anti-psychotic drug Thorazine.
In those instances, as in others, inspectors noted, “there was no valid prescription for the medications given.”
Staff members told inspectors that without the shots, “they would not be able to handle some of the residents,” according to a state report.
The four dozen or so residents at Morningstar typically have IQs between 40 and 70 and emotional and behavioral disorders, said Barry Kerr, the agency’s chief executive.
Morningstar has been “very aggressive” in reducing the use of drugs to manage residents’ behavior, Kerr said. The medicines, he said, have been used only “when we did not have another alternative.”
After Morningstar’s second citation, the state gave the agency a stern warning: “Based on repeat rule violations and failure to comply with an accepted plan of correction, adverse action may be initiated.”
About a week later, the state did act against Morningstar.
It imposed a $450 fine.
‘Eyes on the situation’
At least once a year, Rachel Neal shows up unannounced at each of the 80 or so foster care facilities that comprise her portfolio as a state inspector.
She carries a lengthy list of rules that each must follow: a minimum number of training hours for employees, up-to-date inspections for vehicles that transport foster children, and on and on.
Most violations get a written citation and are corrected within weeks. But when she discovers dangerous situations, such as toxic materials left within the reach of children, Neal expects instant remedies.
“Usually, they’ll be like, ‘OK, Ms. Neal, that will be dealt with immediately,’ ” she said during a tour of The Bridge, a group home in northwest Atlanta. “We make sure before I leave that that hazard will be fixed.”
Even during standard inspections, Neal said, “a lot of times you may come across something else” that endangers children or otherwise violates state rules. She said she may deviate from the routine “if I hear something, or see something, or read something in a file.”
But Neal and other inspectors spend relatively little time at each foster care facility. State case workers — assigned to a different division of the Department of Human Services — are supposed to visit each child they oversee twice a month. But they may not always look for problems affecting children supervised by other case workers, said Melissa Carter, the state’s child advocate.
“They are our eyes on the situation,” Carter said. “If I’m a case manager and I’m responsible for little Susie, I just go in and take a look at little Susie. It could be that other children were seen and other problems could have been detected.”
‘Minimal information’
In early 2007, the state took custody of an autistic child who had been neglected and abused in his home. The boy was “greatly at risk” of more maltreatment, case workers wrote, and would have to be “safeguarded from abuse.”
The state then delegated the boy’s protection to a private agency: Trek, a nonprofit program operated by the Lookout Mountain Community Services Board in North Georgia. Trek, in turn, placed the child in a foster home with which it contracted.
In March 2009, the state asked Trek to handle another child with profound troubles: a 17-year-old with a long, repulsive sexual history. The agency chose the same home where it had put the autistic child.
No one, however, told the foster parents about the 17-year-old’s experiences with incest and pornography. Or about his “sexual inappropriateness” with a stepparent. Or about what a therapist described as his “distorted sexual beliefs”: that children aren’t hurt if adults molest them, for example, and it’s OK for an older child to initiate sex with a younger one.
Trek provided “very minimal information,” the foster parents would later tell a state inspector. When they asked to see the 17-year-old’s psychological evaluations, the foster parents said, a Trek case worker demurred, saying only that the child had “never sexually acted out in previous placements.”
The foster parents moved the 17-year-old into a bedroom with the 8-year-old autistic boy. About a month later, the night of April 7, a cry transmitted by a baby monitor awoke one of the foster parents. He went to the boys’ bedroom, where he found the 17-year-old in bed with the younger child. The older boy was masturbating and had one hand in the 8-year-old’s pants.
The state cited Trek for failing to “prepare the foster family for the placement ... by anticipating adjustments and problems that may arise.” The previous month, the agency had received two similar citations. And a month later, the state assessed the $300 fine.
John Brewer, Trek’s program director, declined to comment on the case. But he said Trek tries to comply with state rules.
“They’ve always looked for specific things and make sure we follow through,” Brewer said. “We do get cited occasionally, and we try to correct those things.”
No one told
The state has cited numerous agencies that withheld critical information from foster parents.
For instance, state officials found that Benchmark Family Services of Jonesboro knew a child it placed in a foster home was supposed to receive therapy for sexual misbehavior. But no one, records show, told the foster family.
Soon, the child “inappropriately touched” another student at school, according to state reports. At the foster home, he groped another child.
The state cited the agency, but imposed no penalty.
A child placed in 2008 by another agency, Choices for Life of Georgia, based in Valdosta, had entered foster care after having sex with a cousin. He was not supposed to sleep, bathe, undress or be alone with younger children.
Again, no one told the foster family. Within weeks, the boy had molested at least one of the younger children in the home.
The state cited the agency, but imposed no penalty.
Foster parents need information about children in their care, said Beth Locker, policy director for Voices for Georgia’s Children, an Atlanta-based advocacy group.
“When that doesn’t happen,” Locker said, “it’s hard to know whether it’s a breakdown in communication, or a genuine concern about the privacy of a child’s family, or a concern about the cost of providing needed services.”
Sometimes, however, foster parents exacerbate harm already done to the children they supervise.
Choices for Life is one of several agencies cited for not preventing foster parents from using corporal punishment or other prohibited disciplinary methods. Last year, regulators said, the agency “failed to take appropriate corrective action” after learning a child had been spanked, and injured, by her foster parent. The child reported the spanking in December 2008, but Choices for Life left her in the foster home for 42 days.
The state imposed no penalty. It rarely does unless it finds a series of serious violations.
Inspectors documented numerous deficiencies in oversight by Bethany Christian Services of Atlanta, for instance. One of the agency’s foster parents left a child who uses a wheelchair home alone several times. Once, a social worker came by and found the wheelchair upstairs and the child on the basement floor, unable to get up and lying in his own waste.
Two other foster parents with Bethany forced a child to swallow a Benadryl tablet. The foster parents, the child said, called it a “sleep vitamin.”
From 20 investigations and four other inspections since May 2008, the state has cited Bethany Christian eight times for a total of 27 rules violations.
Just once, however, did the state impose a penalty: a $500 fine this January.
----------------------
Differing solutions
More regulation or less? Experts and children’s advocates are divided in their suggestions for improving Georgia’s foster care system.
Those who support tougher enforcement of foster care rules suggest that:
● More state case workers are needed so each child in foster care can be visited at least twice each month, as required by a settlement agreement in a lawsuit over conditions in foster care.
● The state should be more diligent in searching for relatives to care for children taken into protective custody.
● State officials could more closely monitor private agencies that operate group homes or place children in foster homes; inspections of those agencies dropped dramatically in 2009.
● The state could increase funding to replace case workers and other regulators, whose numbers have declined through attrition, retirement and other factors.
Those who say less-stringent oversight would help privately operated foster care agencies propose that:
● The state could eliminate what one report called “disparities in degrees of regulation and disparate treatment” of state-supervised foster homes and those overseen by private agencies. Problems in state-operated homes, the report said, may be addressed by case workers “who personally know and have worked with the foster parents.”
● Privately operated foster homes could be regulated by social workers, rather than inspectors with more of an enforcement mentality.
● A single, independent body — not affiliated with the Department of Human Services, which funds foster care — could oversee all foster care providers.
Sources: Court-appointed monitors’ report to U.S. District Court, Georgia Office of the Child Advocate’s 2008 annual report, AJC research
How we got the story
For this series of articles exploring Georgia’s increasing reliance on private agencies to operate the state’s child welfare system, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution examined more than 1,500 state reports and other public documents and interviewed foster care providers, state officials and children’s advocates.
Today: Substandard conditions in privately operated foster care settings seldom incur penalties.
Monday: A riot at a North Georgia group home for foster children was the culmination of a long slide into chaos — and of the state’s failure to intervene.
Next Sunday: Breakdowns in multistate adoptions arranged by a private agency from Georgia largely escape the attention of state regulators.
April 26: Private adoption and foster care agencies are supposed to be not-for-profit organizations. That doesn’t stop some agency officials from turning child welfare into a lucrative enterprise.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Russia 'suspends adoptions to US'
Russia 'suspends adoptions to US'
The return of the child provoked outrage in Russia
Russia says it has halted adoptions of Russian children to US citizens, after a child was sent back to Moscow alone by its adoptive American mother.
The Russian foreign ministry said the freeze would apply until a bilateral adoption agreement could be signed.
However the US state department said its Russian embassy had been told there was no such suspension and was seeking clarification from Moscow.
It will send a delegation to Moscow next week to discuss the incident.
There was an international last week when the adoptive mother, a nurse, sent the seven-year-old Russian boy on a one-way flight to Moscow on his own.
She sent a note with him saying the boy had psychological issues.
"To Whom It May Concern," the letter read. "This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues. I was lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues."
Torry Hansen, 33, reportedly adopted the boy from Russia's Far Eastern town of Partizansk last September.
'Recent tragedies'
The US state department is arranging for a high-level delegation to visit Moscow next week to discuss the possibility of a bilateral adoption agreement.
Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told a TV briefing: "Russia believes only such an agreement… will ensure that recent tragedies in the United States will not be repeated."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the incident was "the last straw"
Russians are furious that no charges have been brought; US authorities have been investigating allegations of abuse and child abandonment.
A Tennessee sheriff told a news conference earlier this week that Ms Hansen's lawyer had said she would not talk to the authorities unless charged.
The adoptive family hired a driver in Moscow to deliver the boy from the airport to the Russian ministry of education on Thursday of last week.
The driver, Artur Lukyanov, has told AP news agency that on the way into town the boy had played with toys and told him in English how big the lorries were in America.
A US adoption agency assigned to check on the family, Adoption Assistance, said earlier this week that its officials had not been able to contact Ms Hansen since March.
The agency said in a statement that the child had appeared to be adjusting well during a visit by a social worker in January to the family home in Shelbyville, a town about 80km (50 miles) south of Nashville.
Ms Hansen's mother, Nancy Hansen, has been quoted as saying that the child had threatened to burn the family's home to the ground.
Thousands of American would-be adoptive parents have been petitioning leaders of the Russian and US presidents to prevent the threatened adoption freeze by Moscow.
Russian lawmakers have previously urged the suspension of American adoptions after other alleged cases of Russian children being mistreated.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called the most recent incident "the last straw".
More than 1,800 Russian children were adopted in the US last year, according to Russia's health and education ministry.
The return of the child provoked outrage in Russia
Russia says it has halted adoptions of Russian children to US citizens, after a child was sent back to Moscow alone by its adoptive American mother.
The Russian foreign ministry said the freeze would apply until a bilateral adoption agreement could be signed.
However the US state department said its Russian embassy had been told there was no such suspension and was seeking clarification from Moscow.
It will send a delegation to Moscow next week to discuss the incident.
There was an international last week when the adoptive mother, a nurse, sent the seven-year-old Russian boy on a one-way flight to Moscow on his own.
She sent a note with him saying the boy had psychological issues.
"To Whom It May Concern," the letter read. "This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues. I was lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues."
Torry Hansen, 33, reportedly adopted the boy from Russia's Far Eastern town of Partizansk last September.
'Recent tragedies'
The US state department is arranging for a high-level delegation to visit Moscow next week to discuss the possibility of a bilateral adoption agreement.
Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told a TV briefing: "Russia believes only such an agreement… will ensure that recent tragedies in the United States will not be repeated."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the incident was "the last straw"
Russians are furious that no charges have been brought; US authorities have been investigating allegations of abuse and child abandonment.
A Tennessee sheriff told a news conference earlier this week that Ms Hansen's lawyer had said she would not talk to the authorities unless charged.
The adoptive family hired a driver in Moscow to deliver the boy from the airport to the Russian ministry of education on Thursday of last week.
The driver, Artur Lukyanov, has told AP news agency that on the way into town the boy had played with toys and told him in English how big the lorries were in America.
A US adoption agency assigned to check on the family, Adoption Assistance, said earlier this week that its officials had not been able to contact Ms Hansen since March.
The agency said in a statement that the child had appeared to be adjusting well during a visit by a social worker in January to the family home in Shelbyville, a town about 80km (50 miles) south of Nashville.
Ms Hansen's mother, Nancy Hansen, has been quoted as saying that the child had threatened to burn the family's home to the ground.
Thousands of American would-be adoptive parents have been petitioning leaders of the Russian and US presidents to prevent the threatened adoption freeze by Moscow.
Russian lawmakers have previously urged the suspension of American adoptions after other alleged cases of Russian children being mistreated.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called the most recent incident "the last straw".
More than 1,800 Russian children were adopted in the US last year, according to Russia's health and education ministry.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
German bishop accused of beating orphaned girls -Times Online
German bishop accused of beating orphaned girls -Times Online
One of the Pope's closest conservative allies in Germany, Bishop Walter Mixa, has been accused of brutally beating and flogging children in his care.
The Bishop of Augsburg, 68, denies the claims by five former pupils at a Catholic-run orphanage and care facility. But they will be a source of deep embarrassment and concern in the Vatican: Bishop Mixa is part of a conservative axis in Pope Benedict XVI's native Bavaria that has always backed the pontiff in his most controversial decisions, from criticising the violence of Islam in Regensburg cathedral, to rehabilitating the Holocaust-sceptic Bishop Richard Williamson.
Although there are no accusations of sexual abuse at the home – where the bishop was a visiting priest in the 1970s and 1980s – it is clear that Mr Mixa is in trouble.
"Once he took a wooden cooking spoon and beat me until it broke," sais Markus Tagwerk, now 41, who was in the Catholic home between 1972 and 1982.
"Then he used his hand. He would shout, 'Take this punishment, child of God!' and 'I'll soon drive Satan out of you!'". The beatings were regular and always brutal.
"At least fifty times Mr Mixa pulled down my trousers and beat me on the bottom with a stick, five or six whacks each time," Mr Tagwerk added.
The name Markus Tagwerk is a pseudonym, because the man making the allegations is a teacher.
But others have decided to give their real names and all five accusers have officially notarised their statements.
"It was a terrible blow for me when I saw that Pope Benedict had promoted Mixa to be the Bishop of Augsburg," Hildegard Sedlmair, 48, said.
"He used to rip me out of bed and beat me on the upper arm with a clenched fist."
She and another former pupil, Monika Bernhard, 47, allege that the then priest, backed up by nuns, introduced a "climate of fear".
The blows were always administered in places where the bruising could be hidden – high up on the arm or on the bottom.
One of the victims, a man who is now 44, reports being flogged with a carpet beater, 35 strokes each time.
Angelika Knopf, the pseudonym of a sales assistant in Augsburg, said she was struck as a young teenager ten times with the future bishop's balled fist. "After every punch I fell on to the bed. Mr Mixa demanded that I stand up immediately and would throw another punch," she said.
The orphanage, in the village of Schrobenhausen, has been under different management since 1999 and no complaints have been made public since Mr Mixa moved on and started to rise in the church hierarchy.
It is a measure of the bishop's standing that he has relatively free licence to make outspoken comments about society in and out of the pulpit.
He has railed against the German Government for making "birth machines" out of women. Its plans to expand the crèche network and allow women to return to work smacked, he said, of East German communist practises.
He compared abortion to the Holocaust – a particularly shocking statement when made by a senior cleric in Germany. He also accused Israel of racism in its treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
His view of the latest child abuse scandal sweeping the church was characteristically pugnacious. "The sexual revolution of the 1960s is at least partly to blame for this," he said.
A long-standing member of the child care charity, SOS-Kinderdorf, has come forward to say that at least two of the bishop's accusers relayed their stories to the charity many years ago – long before the current global flood of abuse reports.
"We did not take action then because open criticism can sometimes boomerang against the accusers," a spokeswoman said.
"These are absurd and defamatory statements, " a spokeswoman for the Bishopric of Augsburg said.
The bishop has let it be known that he is considering legal action to defend his reputation
One of the Pope's closest conservative allies in Germany, Bishop Walter Mixa, has been accused of brutally beating and flogging children in his care.
The Bishop of Augsburg, 68, denies the claims by five former pupils at a Catholic-run orphanage and care facility. But they will be a source of deep embarrassment and concern in the Vatican: Bishop Mixa is part of a conservative axis in Pope Benedict XVI's native Bavaria that has always backed the pontiff in his most controversial decisions, from criticising the violence of Islam in Regensburg cathedral, to rehabilitating the Holocaust-sceptic Bishop Richard Williamson.
Although there are no accusations of sexual abuse at the home – where the bishop was a visiting priest in the 1970s and 1980s – it is clear that Mr Mixa is in trouble.
"Once he took a wooden cooking spoon and beat me until it broke," sais Markus Tagwerk, now 41, who was in the Catholic home between 1972 and 1982.
"Then he used his hand. He would shout, 'Take this punishment, child of God!' and 'I'll soon drive Satan out of you!'". The beatings were regular and always brutal.
"At least fifty times Mr Mixa pulled down my trousers and beat me on the bottom with a stick, five or six whacks each time," Mr Tagwerk added.
The name Markus Tagwerk is a pseudonym, because the man making the allegations is a teacher.
But others have decided to give their real names and all five accusers have officially notarised their statements.
"It was a terrible blow for me when I saw that Pope Benedict had promoted Mixa to be the Bishop of Augsburg," Hildegard Sedlmair, 48, said.
"He used to rip me out of bed and beat me on the upper arm with a clenched fist."
She and another former pupil, Monika Bernhard, 47, allege that the then priest, backed up by nuns, introduced a "climate of fear".
The blows were always administered in places where the bruising could be hidden – high up on the arm or on the bottom.
One of the victims, a man who is now 44, reports being flogged with a carpet beater, 35 strokes each time.
Angelika Knopf, the pseudonym of a sales assistant in Augsburg, said she was struck as a young teenager ten times with the future bishop's balled fist. "After every punch I fell on to the bed. Mr Mixa demanded that I stand up immediately and would throw another punch," she said.
The orphanage, in the village of Schrobenhausen, has been under different management since 1999 and no complaints have been made public since Mr Mixa moved on and started to rise in the church hierarchy.
It is a measure of the bishop's standing that he has relatively free licence to make outspoken comments about society in and out of the pulpit.
He has railed against the German Government for making "birth machines" out of women. Its plans to expand the crèche network and allow women to return to work smacked, he said, of East German communist practises.
He compared abortion to the Holocaust – a particularly shocking statement when made by a senior cleric in Germany. He also accused Israel of racism in its treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
His view of the latest child abuse scandal sweeping the church was characteristically pugnacious. "The sexual revolution of the 1960s is at least partly to blame for this," he said.
A long-standing member of the child care charity, SOS-Kinderdorf, has come forward to say that at least two of the bishop's accusers relayed their stories to the charity many years ago – long before the current global flood of abuse reports.
"We did not take action then because open criticism can sometimes boomerang against the accusers," a spokeswoman said.
"These are absurd and defamatory statements, " a spokeswoman for the Bishopric of Augsburg said.
The bishop has let it be known that he is considering legal action to defend his reputation
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Anti-Abortionists Target Black Women
Though many of us prefer not to think about it, the issue of abortion is directly tied to the issues surrounding adoption, and it's always been an issue I've had deep personal feelings about. I respect your right to be on either side of the argument, but I thought I'd share something I came across that offended me on so many levels. Whatever your feelings are, I'm appalled that anyone thought this was the way to handle it. I'm stunned anyone allowed this to go up, much less that anyone thought this was a good idea.
I can't believe there are still people who believe that birth control was invented to "eliminate minorities."
Here's a link to the original article.
And a link to a picture of the billboard itself. Someone obviously spent some money on it.
Controversial Ga. billboards link abortion, race
ATLANTA — The message on dozens of billboards across the city is provocative: Black children are an "endangered species."
The eyebrow-raising ads featuring a young black child are an effort by the anti-abortion movement to use race to rally support within the black community. The reaction from black leaders has been mixed, but the "Too Many Aborted" campaign, which so far is unique to only Georgia, is drawing support from other anti-abortion groups across the country.
"It's ingenious," said the Rev. Johnny Hunter, national director of the Life Education and Resource Network, a North Carolina-based anti-abortion group aimed at African-Americans that operates in 27 states. "This campaign is in your face, and nobody can ignore it."
The billboards went up last week in Atlanta and urge black women to "get outraged."
The effort is sponsored by Georgia Right to Life, which also is pushing legislation that aims to ban abortions based on race.
Black women accounted for the majority of abortions in Georgia in 2006, even though blacks make up just a third of state population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nationally, black women were more than three times as likely to get an abortion in 2006 compared with white women, according to the CDC.
"I think it's necessary," Cheryl Sullenger, senior policy adviser for Operation Rescue, said of the billboard campaign. "Abortion in the black community is at epidemic proportions. They're not really aware of what's actually going on. If it shocks people ... it should be shocking."
Anti-abortion advocates say the procedure has always been linked to race. They claim Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted to eradicate minorities by putting birth control clinics in their neighborhoods, a charge Planned Parenthood denies.
"The language in the billboard is using messages of fear and shame to target women of color," said Leola Reis, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Georgia. "If we want to reduce the number of abortions and unintended pregnancies, we need to work as a community to make sure we get quality affordable health care services to as many women and men as possible."
In 2008, Issues4Life, a California-based group working to end abortion in the black community, lobbied Congress to stop funding Planned Parenthood, calling black abortions "the Darfur of America."
Pro-Life Action League Executive Director Eric Scheidler said a race-based strategy for anti-abortion activists has gotten a fresh zeal, especially in the wake of the historic election of the country's first black president, Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights.
"He's really out of step with the rest of black America," Scheidler said. "That might be part of what may be shifting here and why a campaign like this is appropriate, to kind of wake up that disconnect."
Abortion rights advocates are disturbed. Spelman College professor Beverly Guy-Sheftall called the strategy a gimmick.
"To use racist arguments to try to bait black people to get them to be anti-abortion is just disgusting," said Guy-Sheftall, who teaches women's history and feminist thought at the historically black women's college.
"These one-issue approaches that are not about saving the black family or black children, it's just a big distraction," she said. "Many black people don't know who Margaret Sanger is and could care less."
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
PBS: This Emotional Life
This is a link to the first part of a new special on PBS (recommended to me by friend and Temple Clinical Psychology graduate student Kendra Read) that deals with "Friends, Family and Lovers." The first part of this three-part series features one of the professors and researchers I've applied to work with in graduate school, Seth Pollak at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He looks at children adopted from Easter European institutions (orphanages) and the difficulties they face due to an inability to form attachments early on. He's really great, and if you get a chance, you should check out the really interesting special.
Monday, January 4, 2010
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