By Jennifer Comes Roy
The Wichita Eagle

Abused or neglected children who enter foster care in [Wichita and] Sedgwick County are three times more likely than foster children across the country to never return home -- and no one can say exactly why.

61% of all children in the county who left foster care last year were put up for adoption, compared with 30% statewide and 22% nationally, according to James Bell Associates, an Alexandria, Va. consulting firm that evaluated the state's child welfare system in 1999.

Moving foster children toward permanent homes quickly is good on one hand, tragic on the other.

"You have a lot of families being busted apart, and that's not what anyone wants," said Jane Alleva, vice president of community resources for United Methodist Youthville, the foster care contractor in Sedgwick County.

"At the same time, if kids can't return home and it's not a safe place, we shouldn't be worried about numbers, we should be worried about kids. If the families didn't do enough to make sure home was a safe place for their children, then adoption is the best choice."

Many factors may contribute to the trend, but experts inside Kansas' child protective system mention three in particular:

More cases of abuse and neglect continue to flood juvenile court dockets. Sedgwick County's caseloads have grown by 158% -- three times the rest of the state's -- in the past decade. The reasons are unclear. Some say the transfer of child welfare services from the state to private agencies has contributed by freeing up more state workers to investigate abuse and to attack a backlog of cases.

Sedgwick County's juvenile court judges demand a lot from parents who try to reclaim their children, say some within the system. The judges say a high rate of drug and alcohol addiction among parents compels them to require more proof that the children will be safe at home.

The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 has forced juvenile courts across the country to move children out of the transience of foster care and into the permanency of adoptive homes. This has increased the number of children available for adoption everywhere but doesn't alone explain why the county's rate is so high.

The influx of potential adoptees creates a number of issues in the community. The need for both foster and adoptive parents is growing at a pace that's difficult to maintain. Without adoptive families, children find themselves "aging out" of foster care at 18, deprived of the monetary support and parental guidance that most young adults continue to need. Studies show that unadopted former foster children are more likely to be unemployed, get pregnant, be on welfare, be homeless or commit crimes.

Are courts tougher here?

When children enter the foster system, parents face tough standards to get them back.

They must complete all court orders, including psychological and substance abuse evaluations, urinalysis, counseling and supervised visitations. They are expected to stay sober for a year, though the juvenile judges say they differ on how strictly parents must meet that requirement.

A high number -- 85% -- of parents accused of abuse or neglect have problems with drug or alcohol addictions.

It's up for interpretation whether the standards are too strict, or just strict enough.

"We do know anecdotally that the judges there (Sedgwick County) do have very high expectations for reintegrating families," said Joyce Allegrucci, SRS' assistant secretary for children and family policy. "Lutheran Social Service (the state's adoption contractor) has raised this as a concern with us, that there may be children who are having their parental rights prematurely terminated."

Lawyers who represent the biological parents of foster children agree with Allegrucci. They say their clients are disproportionately poor. Some battle addictions or mental illness. Some have a criminal past that haunts them. Some may be trying to hold down a job; others may not have a car or a telephone.

"I think they do require a little too much of these people; I think they become frustrated. It's not like paying a fine and everything's taken care of," said a local lawyer who has worked in the juvenile court system. He asked not to be named.

But parents who appeal parental rights terminations to higher courts do not often succeed. That supports the juvenile court judges' original conclusions, said county Juvenile Court Judge James Burgess.

And judges say they are especially troubled by the number of parents who willingly gave up children. County parents relinquished their rights to 171 children last year -- a trend that disturbs Judge Jennifer Jones. She questions all parents about why they want to give up their kids.

"Most say, 'Because I can't take care of my kids and I know I can't,' " she said. "If they tell me they're having trouble getting help from an agency, I will talk with them a little more, but then they often say, 'No, I don't want to be bothered by this anymore.' So what do you do but take their relinquishment?"

Law increases numbers

Officials expected more children to be put up for adoption nationwide under the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act. The law, which took effect in Kansas in March 1999, required courts to decide a child's fate within a year after he or she entered foster care. It was intended to minimize foster care "drift," where foster children are lost to the system, often until they become adults.

Because Sedgwick County had a backlog of cases, it was hit particularly hard, officials say.

Many of the cases in which parental rights were terminated last year involved children already in the system when the federal law went into effect, said Tim Henderson, a lawyer for the state Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.

In 1997, he said, 63 children were permanently separated from parents; in 1999, 143 were.

"I always tell my staff, it is always a tragedy when you have to file a termination motion," Henderson said about SRS' role in severing parental rights. "It's even a greater tragedy for a child to remain in a neglectful or abusive home, and to drift while they are in foster care."

Adoption drift?

Some of the children being moved out of foster care have nowhere to go. The number of children referred for adoption continued to increase to 892 statewide last year, but the number placed in adoptive homes remained steady at 529.

The rest remained in the system.

While they wait for a second family, the children find themselves permanently disconnected from the people and places with which they are most familiar.

Although foster care drift may have been minimized, adoption drift is growing -- and that worries many people, including Burgess.

"We've got kids coming in on permanency hearings who aren't getting adopted, so we're looking at independent living programs for them," he said. "You can say there's definitely been a flood on the market, and it's the older kids we are probably having the hardest time to place."

The growth in cases strains the social work system. "If the number is increasing, you have to be sure that you're recruiting enough families that are strong enough to parent the children," said Bernice Karstensen, executive director of Lutheran Social Service.

Looking for answers

In an attempt to learn what's behind the increase in children put up for adoption, the state is re-examining two years of statistics, looking for contributing factors.

Then, the community must examine its own ability to help fragile families. Everything from the effectiveness in community substance abuse rehabilitation programs for parents to the availability of Early Head Start child care could be adding to the problem. "We're trying to put it all together, to see what SRS can tell us, then we'll branch out to the community partners," Allegrucci said. "We want them to help us understand if there's something amiss, or if other circumstances will explain it all."

These is no easy answer, said Karstensen.

"I suspect it's much more complex than just one agency or the juvenile courts. And it probably doesn't have one solution. I imagine it's a very complex answer."
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