The family service plan should be for parents who've lost their children to foster care what bread crumbs were for Hansel and Gretel — a guided pathway for children to return home.

The plan is supposed to list all the things violent or inept parents must do to get their children back. And it's supposed to specify what the child welfare agency will do to help.

Most in Allegheny County, however, and many in other places, are not unique but simply Xeroxes of each other. The names are changed, but the requirements are virtually the same. Typically, they are:

Parents will get decent, stable housing.

Parents will attend classes to improve their skills in dealing with children.

Parents will get drug and alcohol testing and treatment if tests are positive.

Parents will be tested for mental illness and get treatment if necessary.

Often, no specific requirement is placed on caseworkers to help parents do these things. Frequently their "help" is limited in the plan to determining at six-month intervals whether parents have done what is required and reporting that information to a judge who has the power to return the children or leave them in foster care.

Pennsylvania does not even specify how often the caseworker must visit parents whose children have been taken from them. Allegheny County rules say it must be quarterly. Some parents contend they see caseworkers only at the mandated six-month court review hearings.

Even when caseworkers are actively helpful, however, their success may be limited by the scarcity of services such as drug-treatment programs and money to pay for them.

The federal General Accounting Office told Congress of these problems in a 1995 report called, "Complex Needs Strain Capacity to Provide Services."

It says that as the number of children in foster care increased over the past decade, "Resources for child welfare services failed to keep pace with the needs of troubled children and their families."

While the federal government continued to spend more money to keep children in foster care — $3.8 billion last year — the amount it allocated for services necessary for parents to meet their goals and get their children back shrank proportionately, according to the report.

In 1983, for every $1 the federal government paid for foster care, it spent 40 cents on services to help parents. A decade later, the federal money spent on services dropped to 12 cents for every foster care dollar.

The report also says social workers may be so overwhelmed with cases that they're unable to arrange what minimal services are available for families.

And that's a problem, according to the GAO, because "families may lack the sophistication and resources necessary to arrange services on their own behalf."