Why did you leave the foster care system? You mentioned in your prior post that you were in the system until the birth of your daughter. Presuming that you were "well-qualified foster parents" -- and experienced -- what made you leave rather than "enter the system and stay in it?"

George - I try not to put out too much personal family information into the blog world, but you should know we're still in the system.

Kari - Your point is well taken. And I suppose it would apply the same to any state or private employees for that matter, and any state services too.

We might want to reverse the question. Why shouldn't people who provide an intensive practically full-time service for very traumatized kids be able to come together with one voice to bargain collectively to improve care?

Please see my prior post regarding Chip's prior post.

At the rate Oregon is going in its overall budget, we will be at the "Romania" level of social services, with no money left for foster care, within a few more years.

Chip is entirely off course, living in a bubble that denies all the external issues that affect foster care.

Most people don't know this, but since the late 1990's, it has been Oregon's policy and practice to cut lose older foster kids to homelessness. That age might just have to drop, or institutional warehouses be developed, to cope with the pending loss of foster care bed spaces.

When compared to the real world of Oregon's budgets, Chips issue with collective bargaining is moot. Like our auto makers, if there are no jobs, there are no Union jobs.

Steve - Your points are well taken. I would suggest simply that it is possible and necessary to work on more than one objective at once, and that there are long and short-term goals that should be pursued simultaneously.

Absolutely, this state is falling apart, and my record is one of addressing the issues you rightly bring to the fore. An example is HB 3272, which increases the top marginal tax bracket to 11% for those who make over $250,000. You can contact the Oregon Alliance for Children's to hear more about my efforts on increasing funding for Behavioral Rehabilitation Services providers, and no one in the legislature has devoted more effort to improving Measure 11. This isn't about me, but I felt your concerns asked for a response.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that having another strong voice advocating for better conditions for kids is likely to complement, not detract from, discussions about improving care of kids and will enhance discussions about creating more revenue for the state.

I think primarily what you are discussing is the long-term inadequacies in our revenue system, but in the short-term, people should know that this bill if passed this session, wouldn't become effective until January 2010, and foster parent bargaining probably wouldn't commence until the next bieuium. So the immediate financial crunch in the state won't be effected by this bill.

And what foster parents would be most concerned about, in my experience, is training and support rather than compensation.

I think the foster kids should have collective bargaining rights!

Chip -

Yes, it's possible to work on more than one issue at a time.

So, let's set aside that the State budget is structured by voter mandates in a manner that will decrease the available funds for social services such as foster care, eventually reaching zero funds available, and just talk about the very limited scope of what you are proposing.

The bottom line is that you would take away money from somewhere else in the budget to fund your foster care priority.

Would you take it from other youth treatment facilities? We know what happens when community based treatment is cut, we end up filling up the more expensiveState Training Schools (Hillcrest, MacLaren, the mini-prisons).

Would you go outside of the budgets for children and take this money from elsewhere? Would you further reduce the length of the school year? Would you reduce State Police on the highways? Would you close some State Parks?

In other words, you have a good cause, but to serve your cause without considering the funding environment you are dealing with, you have a host of bad choices. Many of the choices would cost more than you think. We are already up against the wall in Oregon on matching Federal funds. There are many areas of the Oregon budget where if you cut $1 of Oregon funds, you end up cutting $1 or more of matching funds.

It is a real problem that the "special interest groups", which you would have the foster parents become, run so much of the State budget as it is. It seems that everyone has a sacred cow in this budget, and to increase funding in one area, gores someone else's cow.

Chip - Oregon just can't afford to create more and more special interests, and have them compete for funding. We have just run out of room in the budget for this culture that has been going on for at least the last 36 years that I have followed the Oregon legislature.

Chip - Frankly, you represent the spirit at the core of the problem. "Let's just deal with this one problem, and someday we will get around to that big problem of the budget being limited by voter mandates." Well, someday was yesterday. The budget finally, after all these years of increasing mandates and reducing revenue, can't be fixed.

Oregon is broken.

I'd like to expand upon SCB's thoughts a bit:

The bottom line is that you would take away money from somewhere else in the budget to fund your foster care priority.

Or would you take it from programs like TANF-UN/a> that helps support families before they reach the point of being unable to care for their children and require foster care?

Or perhaps from drug and alcohol treatment that does the same?

It seems these programs are fair game for the chopping block...

I'm not against foster parents, but I'd really like to see more attention (and funding!) given to programs that help reduce the need for foster care in the first place.

For instance, the TANF grant for a family of 3 (a parent and two kids, regardless of their age) is a little more than $500, and has been raised only once since 1996, I believe. [Those were the numbers a couple years ago, at least).

In contrast, take those two kids from their mom - who can not afford to properly feed, clothe and shelter three people on that TANF grant and the Food Stamps she gets - and give them to a foster family. The foster parents get somewhere between $800-900 per month, depending on the age of the children. They get more if the kids have special needs, which many, many of them do.

Certainly there are many people who cannot care for their children no matter what their financial situation, and we will always need responsible foster homes for their children. But as I wrote before in another post:

Something like 30% of all children entering foster care were in families that received TANF in the previous year. Kulongoski had a TANF Children's Initiative (or some similarly named thing) a few years back to address this, but it puttered away without much fanfare. These children were not abused, their parents simply could not afford to house, clothe and feed them properly. That is stunning, in my opinion. And that was back when times were good and the economy wasn't in the tank. I shudder to think what these statistics look like now.

The other thing I'd like to note is that I fail to see the connection between this legislation and the horrific story about the twins. You wrote: "The story underlines for me that Oregon needs to recruit, and more importantly, retain, more and better foster parents."

Yet according to the Oregonian story, the foster parents, "[t]he Thompsons, both in their 60s, had successfully fostered scores of children, the state says."

It seems to me that on the face of it, the Thompsons would appear to be just the type of foster care providers this legislation would be attempting to support: long-term, "successful" foster parents.

It also seems to me that rather than create new legislation, we should just be enforcing the legislation we have - more and better face-to-face contact between the workers and the children the state is supposed to be protecting. That is what went wrong in this horrific case, not lack of support for the foster parents. The article states that "[t]he family went to elaborate lengths to hide the abuse."

BTW, how would this union deal with allegations of foster parent abuse? Whose side would they be gunning for? Do they protect the providers (and provide legal support, etc.) or do they protect the kids?

The Oregonian article said "the Thompsons were taking in as much as $90,000 a year tax-free for caring for up to six children at a time." That's $1,250 per month per kid. In contrast, TANF mom gets less than $200 per month per kid. Let me ask you, WHO really needs to organize and bargain collectively?

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