By DAVE RANNEY
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — Nichole Hulaether has been a foster parent for 17 years. She’s cared for dozens of children.

“I consider myself to be a fierce advocate for the children in my care,” the 41-year-old Topeka woman told a panel of legislators today. “That’s my role, that’s my job.”

Hualaether, who spent a year in foster care herself when she was 12, told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that the state’s foster care system is broken.

Foster parents, she said, are “treated like babysitters,” allowed to have little or no say in what happens to a child in their care and are told keep quiet about the system’s shortcomings.

Foster parents who complain about being left out of the decision-making, she said, are punished for speaking out.

“I have a boy in my home now that has had four case managers in nine months,” she told KHI News Service later. “I won’t say anything about the latest (case manager) because he’s new, but the other three were worthless.”

Hulaether said when she complained to the third worker’s supervisors and directors, the worker arranged to have her monthly payment reduced by $300.

“She did it without talking to me, without telling me she was going to do it,” she said. “Keep in mind, this was for a child that I was paying a tutor $35 an hour for because when I got him, he couldn’t read or write.” The child, she said, was 8 years old.

Many foster parents, she said, fear similar punishment.

“I had 30 foster parents that were supposed to be here today,” Hulaether said. “And almost none of them showed up because they said they were afraid of what would happen if they spoke out. There’s this constant fear of retaliation” from the state’s foster care contractors or subcontractors.

‘Bill of rights’

Hulaether testified in favor of Senate Bill 394, which she and other supporters called the foster parents’ bill of rights.

Included in the bill are provisions for ensuring that foster parents:

• Have access to “all pertinent information” about a child placed in their care;
• Are allowed to participate in determining when a child should be returned to a parent or family member’s care;
• Can know what happens to a child after being removed from their care;
• Receive 30-days advance notice when a child is to be removed from their home, except in emergency; and
• Receive “appropriate preferential consideration” for being allowed to adopt children who’ve been in their care.

The bill also would create an eight- to 10-member board for advising DCF on foster care and adoption issues.

“This bill is designed to give foster parents a voice,” said Lori Ross, executive director at the Midwest Foster Care and Adoption Association, a group that represents more than 400 foster and adoptive parents in Kansas and Missouri.

Kansas privatized most of its foster care system in 1996.

Kathy Armstrong, DCF staff attorney in charge of prevention and protection services, said most of proposed “rights” in the proposed legislation already are spelled out in DCF policy.

“We value and appreciate the role that foster parents play in the lives of kids who, for various reasons, have been removed from their homes,” she said.

Armstrong said she wasn’t aware that some foster parents were afraid to challenge caseworkers’ decisions.

Complaints of that sort, she said, would warrant case-by-case investigation by DCF.

Most of the state’s foster care services, she said, are provided by two non-profit contractors: KVC Behavioral Health and St. Francis Community Services. Both agencies, she said, rely on several sub-contractors.

Armstrong said DCF was neutral on the bill.

Representatives of KVC and St. Francis attended the hearing but did not testify.

Shared frustration

Barbara Allen, a former legislator who became a foster parent four years ago, said she shared Hulaether’s frustration with the system.

Allen, an attorney whose husband is a district court judge in Johnson County, said she was being denied information on the whereabouts of a baby girl that had been in her care for about three months.

The child, she said, was moved to an unidentified relative’s home on Tuesday.

“I have no idea where she is or with whom she’s been placed,” Allen said. “Was it in our foster baby’s best interest to be moved to a relative placement? I don’t know because I don’t know anything about the placement.”

Allen said she felt like she and her husband had been taken for granted by the system.

“I’m an attorney, my husband is a judge,” she said. “If we feel this way, I don’t know that any of us can say we’re surprised when foster parents who’ve been doing this a while decide they don’t want to do it anymore.”