Raise the Standards Cut the Funding

I live and work in a state where the dreaded "class action lawsuit" against the foster care system has been completed. As a result there are new foster care rules for place, homes, and foster care workers. In theory this is a very good thing, as often times workers had more children than they could over see and homes were not properly monitored for safety. However it is not a good thing when at the same time your state keeps axing the budget making it impossible to hire the workers needed to meet the new guidelines!

Some of the new guidelines:
1. A child can only be placed in two different foster homes. This means if a child is placed in one, and is them transfered to another they cannot be moved to a third foster care home, it doesn't matter WHY the move is requested.

2. Children must returned home after one year or placed for adoption.

3. Of children returned home only 4% can be placed back into foster care.

Now looking at this, they are not bad ideas, but I am sure just as I have you can all come up with "what if" situations. I know I did. For example "what if a child has sever behavioral problems and the foster parents cannot keep them safe?" Does this mean that after a short placement and a refusal on the foster care parent's part to keep the children that they are returned home and may not be elligable to return to the foster care system if the reason they were removed from the home is not resolved? Do we leave that child in an unsafe enviroment because of the numbers?

You can utilize additional programs to help keep the children in the home, but those programs are dwindling and are also on the chopping block. It cannot be both ways, more stringent guidelines and no way to enforce them realistically!