Foster Care

She has been an Air Force switchboard operator, a prison guard and the owner of a day-care center, but Lois Coby didn't find her true calling until a certain Thanksgiving dinner guest showed up at her door.Gerald Eley, a young man with a developmental disability, had no place to go for the holiday. Purely by chance, a social worker asked Coby if she would mind taking him in -- just for the long weekend.Nearly 12 years later, Gerald's photograph can be found in the family's photo albums -- along with pictures of at least two dozen foster-care children who discovered the love and comfort they needed.

Nine-year-old Nadja arrived at Lynette York's North Baltimore doorstep last May with the clothes on her back and fear on her face.She'd been brought straight from school after social workers began to suspect that the lanky girl with the shy, hesitant smile was having problems in her foster home. A few of her belongings arrived the next day: a torn pair of sweat pants, a few old, pitiful toys and some underclothes.It was Nadja's third foster home in less than three years and York's first time being a foster parent, but the chemistry between the two seems genuine.

After its first six months, a Howard County courts program in which jurors can donate daily stipends to aid foster care children has not yielded nearly as much money as expected -- so officials are preparing a publicity blitz.Before the program began, county officials conducted a survey that indicated that 50 percent of jurors would be willing to donate their fees of $10 to $20 a day. But so far, court officials say, only about 25 percent of those called for jury duty opt to participate.Since May, only about $3,000 has been collected.

David first attempted suicide when he was 4 years old. One moment, he was playing with his Legos on the kitchen floor. The next, his fingers were wrapped around a paring knife as he went for his wrists.He'd been a ward of Baltimore's foster-care system nearly his whole life, and its efforts had brought him to this point: sobbing at the kitchen sink, his small face red with anguish, his blond curls damp with sweat, insisting that he wanted to die.He belonged to no one, and perhaps never would.

Saving FamiliesEditor: The Maryland Department of Human Resources totally supports the concept of redirecting funds from foster-care placements to expand services to families that will prevent the need for out-of-home care, ("The Foster Care Solution," May 12).We are also staunch advocates for the expansion of the Intensive Family Services Program, which we began in 1986 and is now operating in 15 jurisdictions. This is not just a test program. It is a model which has received national recognition, including the American Public Welfare Association's innovative programming award, and has been replicated in a dozen other states.

Ps and QsEditor: President Bush uses quotas to get the votes of the prejudiced. In this respect he certainly knows his Ps and Qs.Incidentally when do the war crime trials against Saddam Hussein begin?Grayson Holland.Cockeysville.Skewed JusticeEditor: By refusing to review a 1990 ruling by a federal appeals court in the Oliver North case, the Reagan-Bush Supreme Court has made the prosecution of high ranking law-breakers in Washington increasingly difficult.A review of the court's decisions over recent years has shown a constant stripping away of the constitutional rights of those accused of common crimes, including the decision on May 30 to deny the influence of media publicity on jury convictions.

Tamara Lee spends her days trying to fix broken families. As a state foster-care caseworker in Baltimore, she spends hours talking with abused and neglected children and asking gentle but probing questions to gauge health, happiness and healing. She is a human face in an enormous state agency tasked with caring for more than 10,000 children who have been removed from dysfunctional living conditions. In recent years, the Maryland Department of Human Resources has been criticized for mishandling implementation of a mammoth computer system, housing foster children in a downtown office building overnight and failing to provide proper medical and dental care.

Adoptions from foster care have risen sharply in Maryland over the past year, leaving state officials hopeful that they can find even more homes for children without them. The biggest increase was in Baltimore, where 514 children were adopted from the foster-care system between July 2000 and July 2001 - 40 percent more than the year before, state officials said yesterday. Over the past five years, the number adopted in Baltimore has more than tripled. The increases have been spurred by the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act, officials said, which in 1997 imposed new time limits for moving children into permanent homes and provided incentive payments for states that increased adoptions.

Even as state officials prepare to track Baltimore foster children with a new $67 million computer system today, they are contemplating $10 million worth of repairs to fix serious glitches and shortcomings that have already surfaced. Baltimore's Department of Social Services will be the last of the state's 24 jurisdictions to implement "Chessie," the Children's Electronic Social Services Information Exchange. The city agency is also the largest, with 6,500 foster children and 800 caseworkers, making it more prone to chaos should the new system falter.

It looks like a typical three-bedroom home, with a nursery, a teen game room and fully stocked refrigerator in the kitchen - the works. The only thing different about Harmony House is that no one will live there. On Tuesday, the Anne Arundel County Department of Social Services will reopen the old parsonage of a Pasadena church as a place where birth parents can spend supervised time with their children in a homelike environment, receive training in being better parents and learn how to put their families back together.

The Baltimore Sun's August 5 editorial "A Breach of Trust" reflected several inaccurate conclusions about the state's continued commitment to reforming the foster care system in Baltimore City; the legal duties of attorneys; and the level of public accountability for the Maryland Department of Human Resources (DHR). Shortly after Gov. Martin O'Malley appointed me Secretary of DHR in February of 2007, I began implementing a comprehensive child welfare reform agenda called Place Matters.

A hard-fought agreement that promised to settle a decades-old lawsuit over the way Maryland treats Baltimore's foster children is in jeopardy as state lawyers now push for an outright dismissal of the federal oversight. A federal court hearing today was expected to make official a carefully constructed exit strategy in the case, marking a major turning point in the case. It was the first time since 1988, when a consent decree placed the Maryland Department of Human Resources under judicial watch, that the agency and attorneys representing more than 5,000 city children in foster care were in harmony.

The Baltimore Department of Social Services found families for 384 children during fiscal 2009, beating its adoption goal for the first time since 2002. Baltimore children count for almost half of Maryland's total adoptions, according to the state Department of Human Resources. Statewide, the department finalized 770 adoptions, topping its goal of 707. "It's a huge accomplishment for our local departments and particularly Baltimore City, which has struggled before to achieve its adoptions goal," Brenda Donald, DHR secretary, said.

Kathleen Parker trades in conspiracy theories In her June 24 column "Iran's revolution now has a name and a symbol," Kathleen Parker writes that Neda Agha-Soltan might have been shot by one of her protesting comrades, not by an Iranian militiaman. She goes on to suggest that Ms. Agha-Soltan might have willingly participated in her execution and its haunting videotaping, in order to create a backlash against the Ahmadinejad regime. In like fashion, entertainer David Letterman's recent smear of Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter was secretly undertaken on behalf of the Republican Party, to drum up sympathy for Ms. Palin.

The stories were horrifying and heart-wrenching: a boy beaten bloody while in foster care; a 15-year-old girl tortured and starved to death by a mentally ill guardian; a 5-year-old fatally scalded by his mother after state officials removed him from a safe foster home. It's no wonder such egregious cases of abuse and neglect have helped drive a 25-year-old lawsuit over how the Maryland Department of Human Resources and the Baltimore Department of Social Services care for the state's most vulnerable children and adolescents.

May is a special month for my family and me - not only because of Mother's Day but because it's also Foster Parent Appreciation Month. My husband and I are proud to have raised four biological children, adopted one other and opened our home to more than 30 foster children over the last 11 years. Some of those children couldn't live at their original home because their parents or caretakers were dealing with substance abuse or mental health issues. Some were neglected. Others had been abused.

Foster care in Maryland is brought into sharp focus tonight on MPT through a documentary produced by Academy Award-winning filmmaker William A. Whiteford. Foster Care Stories: A Place to Be will air in conjunction with a live phone bank that viewers can call (800-222-1292) to get more information about the state's foster care resources. Whiteford, who shares an Oscar and Peabody Award with Susan Hannah Hadary for their 1999 HBO film, King Gimp, is one of the most sensitive storytellers working in film.

Each mom got a single red rose. Each child, whether toddler or teenager, got a brown teddy bear. Fifteen children in all, most living in foster homes, got permanent families. As a procession of adoptions came through Baltimore County Circuit Court yesterday, the new mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, friends, and even the judge wiped tears from their eyes. "One of the most pleasant duties we do as judges is adoption," said Circuit Judge John O. Hennegan, who presided over a county ceremony marking National Adoption Day. "It's the most rewarding and satisfying of all our duties.

The troubled and costly implementation of "Chessie," a statewide computer system to monitor child services, hampered the Department of Human Resources' ability to ensure compliance with state and federal foster care service requirements, according to a legislative audit released yesterday. Chessie - the Children's Electronic Social Services Information Exchange - is designed to help keep track of nearly 10,000 foster children and 6,000 child protective services investigations. It cost more than $67 million in state and federal funds, including about $10 million to fix flaws.

Wine tasting to aid foster care KidsPeace will hold its third Wine Tasting from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday at Corridor Fine Wines, 3321 Corridor Marketplace, Laurel. Proceeds will benefits the organization's efforts to help local youth in foster care develop skills for independent living. Eight tasting stations will feature wines from Europe, Australia, South Africa, South America and California. Wine experts will be on hand to answer questions. A silent auction, prize raffle and goody bags with purchases are also planned.