ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 29, 1996 TAG: 9612310069
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
FOSTER homes - and loving, caring foster parents - have been the temporary refuge and salvation of many children whose lives with their own parents are rudely disrupted by circumstances beyond the youngsters' control.
But for far too many children who enter the foster-care system, it is not a short-term sanctuary. It's an unnecessary exile in which they languish for years, for the duration of their childhood.
This is a cruel system, though certainly it was not intended as such. President Clinton and several members of Congress are to be commended for plans to spring more children from the system's trap.
Often, kids placed in foster care are never returned to their biological parents because their parents don't want them. Or are unable to correct the ``circumstances'' - substance abuse, domestic violence, etc. - that led to the children's removal from their custody.
Meanwhile, however, these parents may refuse to relinquish their ``rights'' to the children so that others might adopt them. And, without the natural parents' consent, legal obstacles make it exceedingly difficult to free a child for adoption, even if the child has been subject to severe physical or sexual abuse at the hands of the natural parents.
Thousands of kids, as a result, are bounced around from foster home to foster home. They grow up as drifters, in and out of others' families, never having a family to call their own.
Clinton has ordered administration officials to find ways to double by 2002 the number of children adopted from foster homes; several federal lawmakers also are working on legislation toward that end.
Among possible changes are financial bonuses to states that move children out of long-term foster care into permanent adoptive families. Accompanying these would be requirements that state social-service agencies evaluate the status of children in foster homes earlier than is now customary, and that they make the evaluations more often.
Social workers should, of course, make every effort to reunite foster children with their biological parents whenever reasonably possible, as soon as is reasonably possible. But some biological parents will never be ready, willing and/or able to care responsibly for their kids. The children would be better off with adoptive parents. And there are plenty of couples who desperately want to adopt such children, only to be frustrated by bureaucratic (not to mention financial) barriers.
It's time for change. The law's bias for reunification should no longer serve to hold children hostage in the foster-care system. Neither should the law be so weighted in favor of biological parents' ``rights'' that it ignores the best interest of children and crushes their hopes for a normal, happier childhood.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 linesby CNB