Foster 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.

Harriet S. Frenkil, a retired social worker who worked in foster care, died of respiratory failure Wednesday at Union Memorial Hospital. The Owings Mills resident was 84. Born Harriet Schwartzman in Baltimore, she was the daughter of Jean David and Henry Schwartzman, a manager of the Goucher Garment Co. She attended Forest Park High School and after moving to Florida graduated in 1946 from Miami Beach High School. She enrolled at the University of Florida in Gainesville and studied for a year before her marriage to Erwin "Buddy" Frenkil, an attorney she had known in Baltimore.

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.

Antwan Reddick leaned against the padded blue walls of the Owings Mills wrestling room and smiled. With a 26-1 record this season, the 152-pound senior hopes to win his third straight county title in this weekend's Baltimore County championships at Franklin. The first two came in Prince George's County while he wrestled at DuVal, and he finished as the Class 4A-3A runner-up last season at 138 pounds. Yet sometimes it's hard for him to smile. Since he was 5 years old, Reddick has been in foster care.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was gratified to read your article on the strides Maryland has made toward reducing the number of children in foster care ("Nothing matters more … than a place to call home," Dec. 26). Every child deserves a lifelong family, no matter their background or needs. Therapeutic foster care has been part of Maryland's child welfare system since 1986, and it serves some of the state's neediest and most disabled youth. We are able to do so at a fraction of the cost of group care, and when we achieve permanency for youth who historically have been less likely to be adopted or reunified with their birth families, we save the state tens of thousands of dollars a year while giving children with special needs "forever families.

Devontay Hudson moved from one foster home to another for years, but last month he was adopted by a Millford Mill family - another symbol of a statewide initiative that has sharply reduced the number of children in foster care. The Gilman School sophomore, an aspiring chemical engineer, can't remember how old he was when he entered foster care, and doesn't know much about his birth family. But ask him about his adopted family and the soft-spoken teen says he's glad to be home. "It was a blessing for me to be a part of a family," said Devontay, 15, whose adoption increased the family of Ronald Wilkins and Demetria Jackson-Wilkins to nine members.

The boy did not want to take a shower. After being asked to wash up, the 10-year-old began throwing glass cookware in the kitchen, turned on the stove and started a small fire, according to state records. His foster father wound up in the hospital with chest pains. The violent incident in Wicomico County was one of several detailed in documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun as it investigated foster home violence that gained increased attention after a 2-year-old's death this summer.

The age of majority in Maryland is 21. That's when childhood and adolescence officially end. But just because a young person reaches that age doesn't mean he or she is prepared to undertake all the responsibilities of adulthood. And the difficulties faced by youths venturing out into the world for the first time are only compounded when they have grown up in foster care without a family to call their own. Few young people are really prepared to make their way independently at that age, even if they have been lucky enough to have loving parents, a stable home, a fine education and opportunities to participate in sports, social events and other activities.

Recently, The Sun reported about a new state initiative to prepare youth for life after foster care ("Preparing foster teens for life," Aug. 20). While helping children in foster care gain the skills they need as adults is good thing, the right thing to do is help them find a permanent family. At the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, we are doing just that. Our child-focused recruitment model, Wendy's Wonderful Kids (WWK), works for all children who are waiting to be adopted from foster care.

Shalita O'Neale and the Maryland Foster Youth Resource Center deserve much praise for their work to assist youth to prepare for life after foster care ("Preparing foster teens for life," Aug. 20). "Ready by 21" is just one of a number of initiatives implemented by the Maryland Department of Human Resources to improve its services to foster youth since Ms. O'Neale's time in care. Ms. O'Neale is also to be commended for publicly acknowledging that a group home provided much needed stability and helped her find herself.

Contemporary Family Services, Maryland's second-largest foster care provider, has appealed the state's decision to terminate its license when it expires in mid-March. The appeal, which will be heard by a state administrative law judge, puts on hold a decision by the Department of Human Resources to terminate the state's relationship with Hyattsville-based Contemporary Family Services and require the company's foster parents to transfer to other providers. If the judge upholds the state's decision, the company must return its license and cease foster care services immediately, according to a Feb. 21 letter from the Department of Human Resources.

Gov. William Donald Schaefer ought to listen to his Foster Care Review Board. If he heeds the board's advice, he could save the state millions -- money that could be recycled into other social-service programs during this economic recession.The board's message is simple: Assign social workers to problem families where children are at risk of being placed in foster homes. Test programs since 1987 show that this preventive step has had phenomenal results: 90 percent of the children in these cases have stayed out of foster care.

Shalita O'Neale approached her 21st birthday with more dread than enthusiasm. Reaching the milestone meant she would officially age out of the state's foster care system. "To say I was terrified would be an understatement," she said. "I knew I had to find my own housing, health insurance and employment. I was coming from a system that had done all of that for me. At 21, you need help more than ever. " Nine years later, she is a college graduate established in a career with a home and family of her own. But she understands the desperation that comes with severing ties to a system that has filled in for absentee parents.

About 30 foster children in Baltimore stand to lose their social workers — for some the one constant in lives prone to turmoil — as the Annie E. Casey Foundation begins a new mission intended to extend its reach. The Baltimore-based foundation will close its Casey Family Services, a 36-year-old program that oversees the care of 400 foster children in seven states. Casey says the move will free up $18 million to $20 million a year to help increase adoptions and help other organizations that assist foster children.