OGDEN -- The state Division of Child and Family Services has adopted a policy to ban unmarried couples from providing state-sponsored foster care.
The new policy, adopted Friday by a 5-2 vote by the DCFS board, defies standards set by the Child Welfare League of America, a professional association representing more than 1,000 voluntary and public agencies.Board chairman Scott Clark, the driving force behind the decision, said unmarried, unrelated adults living together abuse children more often than married men and women.
"I read in the newspaper just last night of two cases in which boyfriends abused the children in their girlfriends' homes," Clark said.
In the past, Clark has also referred to gay couples -- who, because they cannot marry, will be banned from foster care -- as contributing to "gender confusion" of children in their care.
Only two board members, Regnal Garff and Virginia Higbee, opposed Clark's recommendations. They argued the new rule would narrow the field of foster parents, who are already outnumbered nearly 2-to-1 by children in state custody who need homes.
Garff, a retired juvenile court judge, also criticized Clark's example because neither of the cases cited involved foster children.
"I am reiterating my opposition to this whole thing . . . that example is poorly conceived and poorly argued," he said.
The change matches similar state restrictions passed earlier this year for adoptive parents.
But groups like the Child Welfare League of America, the American Bar Association and the American Civil Liberties Union have opposed such policies.
Opponents say too many questions are left unanswered by the policy. For example, there is no provision for common-law marriages, which go into effect after seven years.
The Child Welfare League is so staunch in its opposition that the association recently sent DCFS director Ken Patterson a letter asking its endorsement be removed from the agency's policy manual. The board swiftly accommodated that request by removing the phrase that refers to DCFS policy as "in accordance with the standards of the Child Welfare League of America."