More children dying in foster care, comptroller says
Strayhorn says governor's office is blocking her attempts to investigate foster system
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, June 24, 2006
The number of children who died in the
Joined by members of advocacy groups, Strayhorn told reporters that Gov. Rick Perry's administration has stonewalled her attempts to gather data that she needs to complete her investigation.
But Perry's camp said the claims by Strayhorn, who is challenging Perry in the November gubernatorial election, ignore legislation passed in 2005, well into her investigation, that calls for comprehensive reform of Child Protective Services. And state officials cited confidentiality concerns about releasing the data.
"With her support evaporating, her poll numbers dropping and her campaign stagnating, Carole Strayhorn seems desperate to change the subject and is sadly not above exploiting child tragedies to do it," said Robert Black, a Perry re-election campaign spokesman.
1 comment:
Very few children in America are genuine orphans. Most have relatives, family friends, neighbors or godparents who could, and are willing to, keep them if they must be moved temporarily or permanently from parental homes. As we know, there is such a halo around "adoption" and states have received financial incentives for finding "forever homes" for the children who are made Paper Orphans by a stroke of a judge's pen. The child is labeled as abused and/or neglected and therefore is "at risk" and usually that means more money goes to the people who adopt the child, usually the ones in the pre-adoptive home where most babies are placed immediately. Those people have a say and can make comments along the way, so they are very much involved and interested in interrupting any chance that the baby will be returned home. If the baby stays in a "foster" home for 15 of 22 months, as you know from reading, then the termination can be effectively automatic by federal law and state incorporation of its provisions and sometimes that's the excuse....
Foster care in America is a disaster: financially, legally, emotionally, physically and by nearly any other perspective or measure possible to consider it.
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