Doing what's right for troubled youths is a lot easier when there is sufficient funding. The choice between what's best and what budgetary circumstances allow is something the state Division of Child and Family Services wrestles with regularly.
Monetary woes are resulting in DCFS moving children out of expensive treatment centers and into lower-cost foster homes.
DCFS found itself in an $8 million hole last December, due in part to an influx of children who require specialized care in residential or professional foster programs that cost as much as $265 per day. DCFS Director Ken Patterson argues that many of those children, mostly teenagers, shouldn't be in state custody anyway because they were not abused or neglected but were placed in the system after a judge deemed them ungovernable or troubled.
The alternative is placing the children into lower-cost foster homes. That needs to be monitored very carefully as the foster care program has its own struggles. There are not enough foster care families to meet the demand. Compounding that problem are regulations and proposals that reduce the foster care pool.
For example, the Board of Child and Family Services is considering a measure that would raise the minimum age requirement for Utahns to become foster parents to 23. That proposal was sent to it by the state Office of Licensing board. Foster parents must currently be at least 21.
Why, with such a shortage, is that change being considered? The reason, as a licensing board member told the Deseret News, is that a 21-year-old woman who had two foster children and two of her own, all under age 4, was criminally charged with abuse.
Sorry, that's not a good enough reason. Nor is it logical. What if the woman had been 30. Would that mean nobody under 30 should be foster parents?
Foster care, like care for biological children, is very much an individual matter. Some people who are 30 aren't mature enough to care for children while others who are 21 are.
Those involved in selecting foster care parents are the ones who need to make the evaluations, with age being just one of the criteria.
The state needs to provide sufficient funding so that decisions are primarily based on what is best for the child. The various agencies then need to use wisdom in adopting standards that allow for the best care for each child.