Foster Children

The Baltimore City Department of Social Services office at 301 N. Gay St. was never intended to house children - but lots of them have spent nights there. More than 100 foster children have slept in the office since January, when social workers began using it as a de facto shelter, according to lawyers who represent the city's foster children. The list includes a 16-year-old girl who slept there 20 nights in row and a 15-year-old boy who stayed there 11 nights. The youngest guest was an 8-year-old girl, the lawyers say. The illegal shelter outraged foster care advocates when it became public last week.

Audit reveals deadly dangers in foster care Thanks to The Sun for spotlighting the findings of a recent child welfare audit that indicates widespread failures to provide children with the services they need ("Child-welfare advocates press for reform of Md. DHR," April 6). One point should be underlined: Although some of the problems identified in foster care won't be life-threatening - perhaps life-blighting, but not fatal - others are indeed dangerous to children's very survival. For example, in about one-third of cases, there was no evidence that the required criminal background checks for adults living in a home with foster children had been performed.

Pointing to a blistering audit of the department responsible for the state's foster care system, the House of Delegates pushed through a bill yesterday that intends to rein in an agency that critics say fails the state's most vulnerable children. The bill would require the Department of Human Resources to better track and monitor foster children, measure the effectiveness of its foster care program, create a training academy for social workers and reduce the child-to-caseworker ratio to meet national standards, among other provisions.

Funeral services have been held for Grace Turner, who worked to make a better life for the state's foster children and those who provided care for them. Mrs. Turner, who was 71, died of a blood clot Feb. 7 at her Randallstown home. Services were held Monday in Randallstown. "There are thousands of foster kids in Maryland today whose lives are better off as a result of Grace building a strong network of programs to serve them," said Kevin M. Keegan, executive director of New Pathways Inc., a Baltimore foster care program.

WASHINGTON - In a setback for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court refused yesterday to hear a challenge to a unique Florida law that bars gays and lesbians from adopting children. Lawyers said it is the only state law that flatly prohibits gays and lesbians from adopting children, although Mississippi bans adoptions by same-sex couples. It was enacted in 1977 when singer Anita Bryant led a statewide campaign against homosexuals. Florida does not prohibit gays and lesbians from caring for foster children, and its ban on formal adoptions was challenged as irrational and unconstitutional by several gay men who cared for foster children.

Criticized for neglecting foster children and covering up the problems, the Baltimore Department of Social Services has promised to reduce caseloads and hire an independent auditor to boost the public's trust in the agency, according to a report released yesterday. The improvements are outlined in U.S. District Court in Baltimore as part of a court-ordered evaluation of the department's progress toward meeting the requirements of a 15-year- old consent decree. That agreement, part of a class action lawsuit known as L.J. vs. Massinga, requires the state to provide better health care, education and protection for the city's foster children.

More than 20 years ago, a Baltimore school counselor noticed something disturbing in a classroom: a 6-year-old boy was sticking tacks into his hands, calling himself ugly and stupid. As it turned out, the boy was a foster child who had been placed in the home of a violent alcoholic by the Baltimore Department of Social Services. Lifting up his shirt revealed that nearly every inch of his chest, back, arms and stomach was crisscrossed with scars. The child was placed in a psychiatric hospital, and his case inspired a 1984 class action lawsuit that resulted in a consent decree demanding a comprehensive overhaul of the city's dangerously mismanaged foster care system.

SHAMEFUL IS too nice a word for how Maryland treats its most fragile wards -- and how Marylanders continue to stand by while it happens. The last half of 2002 alone brought plenty of stories of critical holes in the child welfare system, many listed in the latest report filed this month as part of an ongoing class-action settlement. A girl was repeatedly sexually abused in a therapeutic foster care home that had been the setting of two earlier incidents of alleged abuse; not only did she not get counseling, but the incident wasn't reported to her attorney until a year later.

Lawmakers grilled state officials yesterday about monitoring the progress of foster children in schools, in psychological therapy and in substance abuse treatment. "You clearly have an inability to track how the kids are doing. Maybe it's time to look at another system," said Del. Robert A. Zirkin, an Owings Mills Democrat, who plans to propose legislation to address the gap. State officials from the agencies dealing with foster children in group homes said they check regularly on the places where the children live, but acknowledged that they don't follow how they are doing otherwise.

WASHINGTON -- "Audit Finds Lapses in Maryland Child Care." So announced the Washington Post front page on Thursday. The headline scarcely captures the scandalous content of the story. It seems that the agency responsible for ensuring the safety and health of abused, neglected and abandoned children has lost track of many of them for months at time, failed to ensure that they were attending school or getting medical attention and in one case, placed a child in foster care with an accused sex offender.