CYF challenged for more help with troubled children

Sunday, January 18, 2004

By Barbara White Stack, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Paulette Blakey, 49, a widow with multiple sclerosis, adopted seven foster children. Six are honor students, polite, obedient, active in their schools and community.

One, Javon, is not. He is violent, mouthy and, for almost two months, missing.

He ran away just before Thanksgiving, and Blakey hasn't heard from the 15-year-old since. She's worried about him and furious at Allegheny County's Office of Children, Youth and Families for refusing her help when she begged for it in the months before Javon fled.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Paulette Blakey, center, with her children and two grand-children. From left: Anna, 17; Ray (in back), 16; Jaelynn, 11; grandson D'Andre Caviness-Blakey (seated), 8; Jausha (standing), 8; grandson Tyree Spencer, 2, and Ericka, 16.

Now she's talking child welfare blasphemy: Adoption isn't necessarily a good idea.

The words defy the conventional wisdom that adoption is the ultimate goal for all foster children who cannot return to their birth parents, that every child should have the comfort and stability of a permanent family, no matter how old, mentally ill or physically disabled.

Parents such as Blakey are challenging the wisdom of adoption because it means losing services and financial support. Most adoptive parents receive subsidies, similar to foster care payments, but experts say that money doesn't come close to covering the cost of services, especially mental health care, that will be needed by many of these children.

The dozen parents who attended last week's meeting of the Allegheny County Adoptive and Foster Parents Association agreed that the loss of services and support after adoption means it's not the right solution for some foster children.

And Common Pleas Judge Cheryl Allen, who has the longest tenure of any jurist in juvenile court, where these adoptions are handled, agrees. Despite the strong incentives for states to increase adoptions with passage of the Adoption and Safe Family Act of 1997, Allen has remained intent on ensuring individual children's best interests. And if that's not adoption, she won't permit it.

The 1997 law sets deadlines for terminating the rights of parents who abuse or neglect their children, increasing, as a result, the number of orphans, and, of course, the pressure to complete adoptions. As an incentive, the law created bonuses paid annually to states that increase adoptions. But it provided no new money to help adoptive parents.

Since 1997, the number of adoptions rose from 31,000 nationwide to 50,000 in 2002. But the law produced orphans at a faster rate. The number of children awaiting adoption increased from about 100,000 in 1997 to 126,000 in 2002. There are 3,600 now waiting in Pennsylvania.

Adoptions in Pennsylvania rose to 2,020 in 2002, earning for the state a total of $3.4 million in adoption bonuses over three years. All that money is to be spent on recruiting new adoptive parents; not a cent is designated to help parents such as Blakey whose adoptions enabled the state to get the bonus.

That's just not right, she says; the child welfare agency should help adoptive parents when children have problems. Because it's not, she advises foster parents to look twice before crossing that legal road to adopt.

Blakey took Javon and his two little sisters as foster children when he was 6. It was a year after he'd witnessed his father die of a drug overdose. But, she says, CYF never mentioned that. She'd learn it later, when Javon was in therapy.

At first, Javon was not much trouble. He would try to please adults, even running to complete chores Blakey had asked another child to do. The real trouble began when he was 13. It was just about three years after Blakey had adopted him and his sisters at the urging of a CYF caseworker who warned that the agency might have to split up the three for adoption if she didn't do it.

Though extremely intelligent, Javon caused problems in class, fighting with both students and teachers. Blakey moved him from school to special school in attempts to find the right setting.

	Javon Blakey

When he began hitting his little sisters and defying Blakey's rules, she got him into intensive therapy. But, after a while, he refused to go.

Blakey, a former president of the Adoptive and Foster Parent Association, first called CYF for help about 18 months ago. "They told me they couldn't do anything because he was adopted," she recounts. She was on her own.

She did the best she could. But Javon ran away.

Blakey, who lives in Homewood, went to the Pittsburgh police. Based on her description of Javon's behavior, the officer filed a petition with juvenile court, asking the state to take custody of the boy when he's found. This is the kind of petition filed by CYF when a parent abuses or neglects a child. But the agency also can do it when a teenager is out of control. A judge then orders CYF to arrange treatment.

That is what Blakey wanted when she called CYF. But the agency refused to act. Other adoptive parents say the same thing has happened to them.

Shirley Daniels, of Pleasant Hills, adopted four foster children, including two boys later diagnosed with severe mental illness. One kicked her so hard in the stomach that she needed surgery to repair the damage. But CYF investigated her for abuse because she scratched his neck while defending herself.

Daniels said CYF pays for such services as summer camp and after-school programs for foster children, but that that ends when a child is adopted, even though many adoptive parents can't afford to pay themselves.

Similarly, foster payments continue until graduation for adolescents who turn 18 several months before the June ceremonies. For adopted children, subsidies end the day before they turn 18.

In addition, all of the parents at last week's meeting who adopted before 2000 were furious with CYF because their adoption subsidies are $2 a day less than the agency pays foster parents. They said they were promised the subsidy would keep pace with foster payments. That small amount is significant to the many low-income parents who adopt, including Blakey, who can't work because of her disability.

More important than the money, though, the parents said, is the periodic court hearings required for foster children. Foster parents can speak directly to the court about problems, and often the judge will order CYF to resolve them. That option is foreclosed to adoptive parents.

Allen recalled a case in which a woman declined to adopt for that very reason. The foster mother wanted to be able to turn to Allen for help, and she knew adoption meant losing CYF aid in getting her foster son to desperately needed mental health services.

The boy, who'd been in numerous foster homes, told Allen he wanted to stay with this foster mother and would commit suicide if moved again. Despite that, the caseworker kept trying to find an adoptive home for him until Allen ordered her to stop.

"We need to look at each child on a case by case basis," Allen said. "Some needs cannot be met through adoption."

The petition filed by Pittsburgh police asking the state to take custody of Javon forced CYF to investigate, but that didn't turn out well for Blakey, either. She, her son, Richard, 28, and the first child she adopted, Karm, 20, said the caseworker's attitude was that if something had gone wrong with Javon, then Blakey was to blame.

"It seemed like it was a witch hunt," Richard Blakey said. "She talked to CYF several times, and they told her there was nothing they could do. Once she adopted the kids, it was like, 'It's your problem. You deal with it.' "

Officials with the state Department of Public Welfare and CYF said that was not the way it's supposed to be.

Marc Cherna, Allegheny County's director of Human Services, said adoptive parents should be helped when they call CYF, and caseworkers shouldn't be accusing them of wrongdoing. "That is not acceptable behavior," he said. "That should not occur."

He insisted that, in most cases, CYF does aid adoptive parents.

None at the Adoptive and Foster Parent Association got that kind of help, though, and none got referrals from CYF to the Statewide Adoption Network Helpline -- 800-585-SWAN. The Helpline can link adoptive parents to programs SWAN created for them last January.

Those include support groups, respite care for the children, assessment of needs and referrals to agencies in the community that can help. More than a third of the organizations approved statewide to provide these services are in Allegheny County.

But SWAN, which is funded by the state Department of Public Welfare to facilitate adoption of foster children, did not provide any new money for these services, and its director, Sandy Gallagher concedes they're grossly inadequate to meet the state's needs right now.

As a result, SWAN did not actively advertise their availability, which may explain why adoptive parents and the CYF caseworkers they called for help did not seem to know about calling the Helpline.

The services SWAN created are recommended by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a national organization devoted to improving the lives of disadvantaged children and families.

Casey Family Services advises agencies to continue assisting parents after adoption to prevent dissolutions, meaning the return of children to the state. This often occurs in cases such as Blakey's and Daniels' when adoptive parents can't handle out-of-control children and can't get help.

In addition to the services created by SWAN, Casey also recommends crisis intervention and comprehensive mental health services.

Often, the mental health needs of children adopted from the child welfare system are so overwhelming that there's no way the adoption subsidy and the federal medical insurance these children receive can cover them all, said Sarah Greenblatt, director of the Casey Center for Effective Child Welfare Practice.

These are children who suffered abuse or neglect, who were traumatized by removal from their families and communities and who continued to be emotionally damaged by shifts from foster family to foster family. "Adoption is only the beginning of a long adjustment," Greenblatt said.

Her agency strongly urges states to provide long-term services to parents after adoption and plans to soon release a report detailing how federal funds can be used to pay for them, including extensive mental health care.

That is what Blakey says she needed for Javon.

Like most foster parents, she was blinded by love when CYF asked her to adopt her foster children. "I never thought it through," she said. "I thought it would work out. But my faith is getting thin because you cannot depend on the agency."

Still, while cautioning foster parents to take care before adopting, she wants Javon to return.

She and Javon's sisters, ages 8 and 11, miss him. The older children prefer the currently peaceful household and wonder why their mother pines for Javon.

"Of course, I do," she said, "This is my son."

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