Print Daily Journal Online Article

Daily Journal Newswire Articles
www.dailyjournal.com
© 2005 The Daily Journal Corporation. All rights reserved.

• select Print from the File menu above

FAMILY • Dec. 12, 2005
Foster System's Success Hinges on Cooperation

         Forum Column

By Miriam Aroni Krinsky

        "Holidays were always a hard time for us," recalls a young woman who spent her adolescence in the foster care system. "My brothers and I were luckier than most foster kids. ... We got to spend a few days at our grandmother's house. My mom would come to see us for a while, and we'd beg her to stay. 'We'll make cookies! We'll have fun!' we would say.
        "But after a little while, she'd get jittery, and we knew she'd be leaving soon, to go out with her friends. Then the joy would just be lost, and we'd start to worry. Would our mom be safe? Could she make it through another year?"
        Who steps up to take responsibility for children like these - children forced to grow up at too young an age? Children who have learned that their parents may not be able to provide the security, stability or loving homes they want and deserve? Children for whom the holidays aren't marked by light-hearted anticipation, joy and merriment.
        The answer is clear. All of us - our whole community - assume that responsibility. We all, collectively, "parent" the youth in our foster care system. And all of us, collectively, must take stock of our job as parents as we near year's end.
        When we gather for festive dinners to celebrate the holiday season, we inevitably reflect on our successes and failures and craft our personal resolutions to make the new year ahead a better one. We cast a critical eye on our performance as parents, siblings and family members and promise ourselves and our loved ones to do better, try harder, and devote more time in far too frenetic lives to "family" in the year to come.
        Too often, however, the abused and neglected children we parent in foster care have no place in our New Year's resolutions. Nor does our community gather 'round any holiday table to reflect together on this most vulnerable part of our family or to cast that all-important self-assessing eye on how these children have fared in the year past, or what they most need in the year to come.
        Disparate stakeholders that impact the foster care system are too often as scattered as a loosely knit family. Courts, child welfare agencies and other organizations have no institutional gathering point at year's end - or any other time - to question how well our society's goals have been achieved and where or how we can do better. Institutions, like individuals, can't ask these hard questions unless they have a structure in place to come together, take stock of the past, and jointly direct their energies toward promoting positive change in the future.
        We have ample roadmaps to guide our efforts as we seek to better coordinate efforts on behalf of foster youth.
        Leonard P. Edwards, presiding judge of the Juvenile Court, Superior Court of Santa Clara County and former head of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, points out: "For any court improvement to take place on a significant and ongoing basis, the court needs to convene all the players who are participating in the dependency process and needs to meet on a regular basis to hear from them whether and how things are working and how things can be improved, to have an open agenda and to have free flowing discussions about the administration of child protection cases."
        The Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care similarly observed: "Although child welfare agencies and the courts share responsibility for improving outcomes for children in foster care, institutional barriers and long-established practices often discourage them from collaborating. Effective collaboration requires that both entities ... engage in a new way of doing business together. ... Children and families are better served when these multiple community partners come together on their behalf."
        Attaining this degree of collaboration requires a paradigm shift that does not come easily to organizations that have developed "silos" insulating their work in a narrow area of expertise. Despite the inherent difficulties, however, some states have already undertaken innovative efforts to overcome this institutional isolation.
        Utah's groundbreaking Initiative on Utah Children in Foster Care was created by the Utah Supreme Court to improve outcomes for children in, or at risk of entering, foster care by establishing a sense of shared responsibility and collaboration at the highest levels of state government and private agencies. In its first year of existence this Initiative formed a collaborative effort that brings foster youth together with a diverse group of legislators, government officials, health care providers, educators and members of the faith-based community.
        Washington's Supreme Court similarly formed a Commission on Children in Foster Care in that state to improve collaboration among courts, child welfare agencies, child advocates and educational systems and to promote the goal of providing all foster children with safe, permanent families. As a result of the Washington Commission's efforts, progress has been made in achieving statewide use of family group conferencing.
        In our own state, new and encouraging strides are also on the horizon. At the court's Beyond the Bench Conference this month, Chief Justice of California Ronald M. George announced formation of a Blue Ribbon Commission on Foster Care. The commission, to be chaired by California Supreme Court Associate Justice Carlos Moreno, will bring renewed attention and critical support to the dependency courts that play such a key role in attending to the needs of children in foster care.
        On the legislative front, the newly created Select Committee on Foster Care, chaired by Assemblywoman Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista, is working in a similar vein. The committee is charged with identifying how courts and agencies across the state can collaborate more effectively, jointly share relevant data and eliminate institutional hurdles that inhibit improved outcomes for children. In launching this group, Bass stated, "It is my hope the Select Committee's efforts will generate meaningful systemic reform and legislation that will bring state agencies together and improve the lives of our most vulnerable children"
        When courts, child welfare agencies and other stakeholders fail to communicate with one another, it is not surprising that essential services are fragmented, insufficient or even lacking for the children and families in their care. Courts may not have access to critical education and health care information that would enable them to order provision of resources vital for youth's future success; children living in foster care may have concerns about their future, their birth families or court proceedings that go unanswered. Organizations may find themselves working at cross purposes because information is guarded rather than shared.
        As we celebrate the holiday season and look ahead to the coming year, let us resolve to ensure that all parts of the dependency system will break down existing barriers and work together to create the safety and permanence that each child in foster care so richly deserves. Let us resolve that all our children - including our most vulnerable children and youth in foster care - will have a holiday time and a year to come filled with happiness and hope.

        Miriam Aroni Krinsky is executive director of the nonprofit Children's Law Center of Los Angeles - which represents abused and neglected children in the Los Angeles Dependency Court system - and of Home At Last, a national partnership that advocates for the implementation of the Pew Commission recommendations for court reform concerning children in foster care.