Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – Duane Bates

January 28, 2007

CREATING A PROFESSIONAL PARENTING CORPS

DUANE BATES M.A.

Oprah Winfrey has officially opened her $40 million boarding school for girls from poor families in South Africa.  The school, which will eventually have an enrollment of 450, opened with a class of 152 girls who were selected from 3,500 applicants.  The total family income of the selected girls could not exceed $787 per month. Educating girls is a proven approach to accomplish one of the goals Oprah has defined for this school: changing the culture of South Africa, a county that is still suffering from the effects of the years of white minority rule and apartheid.

While I can only applaud the money, time and effort Oprah has dedicated to this school and her continuing funding of college education for American kids, my work as a child and adolescent therapist and as a foster parent has convinced me we need the same type of educational opportunity for poor and abused children in our country. The girls selected for Oprah’s school in South Africa come from families that often have no running water or electricity in their homes and no money for tuition and uniforms so the kids can go to school. While the families are poor, they understand that education is the key to improving their lives, and instill the values of education and hard work in their children. In many respects they are in the same position as previous generations of immigrants to our country that arrived uneducated and poor, but used the public education system and employment opportunities to make a better life for their children and grand children.

When her plans were announced. Oprah was questioned by some South African officials as to why she insisted on providing girls that were used to living in “huts” with such luxurious facilities.  Her reply was that she wanted to offset the emotional and psychological effects of the poor living conditions the girls endured that created perceived limits on their future achievements. While it is difficult to criticize Oprah’s intentions, we can certainly question whether the project was conceived and implemented in the best way.  What about South African boys? Are they not a key component of the future of the country?  Could Oprah have used the $40 million to benefit boys as well as girls, or perhaps structured the school to benefit many more South African children?  Forty million dollars, wisely utilized, can educate and raise substantially more than 450 children out of poverty in almost any country.

My experiences as a child and adolescent therapist and foster parent has convinced me that the United States needs a new occupation to help our neglected and poorest children escape the poverty trap they are caught in: Professional Parents.  After my work with the Department of Mental Health, I decided to become a foster parent.  The agency I chose to work for placed children who had been removed from their homes to foster care.  Some of the kids that were removed had emotionally or mental health issues and needed foster parents that had a therapeutic background like myself.  Foster parents have to have a license issued by the department of social services after an extensive background check that includes state and federal law enforcement. 

 I received a monthly payment of $1,000 per child.  I had to pay all expenses for the child, with the exception of medical care, out of the $1,000.  Parenting children with emotional or physical limitations is a full-time job, so $1,000 does not really provide an incentive for families to become foster parents, and that reality is demonstrated by the difficulty in finding foster parents in most states. For children in DSS custody that are not considered emotionally disturbed or mentally ill, the monthly payment for foster parents is much less than the $1,000 per child I was receiving.  In some cases families take on foster children just for the additional money it brings in, sometimes warehousing five or six foster children in addition to their natural children.  There are regular reports of foster parents neglecting or actually abusing foster children in their care.  In short, the foster care system in the United States is failing to provide many of the children in its care the basic protection and care they need.

There is a foster care crisis in our country.  In 1995 there were 483,629 children in foster care in our country and 142.374 foster homes.  By 2005 the number of children had risen to 513,000, with over 100,000 available for adoption, and 37,628 in long-term foster care. The number of foster homes, however, had declined to about 112,000 by 2005. While the goal for many children in foster care is to reunite them with their parents or other related caregivers, my experience as a foster parent and a children’s mental health therapist is that many of the reunifications will only place the children back into a dysfunctional or dangerous environment.  My experience tells me that many more children should be removed from dysfunctional and dangerous homes, but political and financial considerations prevent this.  My experience also tells me that there are many children that are living in dysfunctional and dangerous homes that will never be removed by DSS because of under funded, under staffed conditions. Child protective services in most states are historically under funded and under staffed, limiting their ability to consistently accomplish their statutory mandate to protect children.

Excellent parents and parenting skills can be found in every socio-economic level of our country.  There are excellent parents who are economically poor and terrible parents who have the wealth and income many envy. Excellent parents have the emotional balance and skills to model and teach the values and attitudes that every child needs to succeed in adulthood.  Excellent parents are authoritative, not authoritarian or permissive. Excellent parents have the ability to teach their children how to avoid the destructive aspects of our culture.  Excellent parents know how to demonstrate the value of education to their children as the pathway to having control over their lives in the future.  Excellent parents teach their children tolerance, human rights, citizenship and how to share and care for others. Excellent parents know that, regardless of what school children attend, education begins and ends at home.

I believe there is a ready supply of couples who have excellent parenting skills and who would be interested in becoming foster parents if the system was structured in a way to make it economically feasible. By creating a Professional Parenting Corps, we could have significant short and long-term impacts on the lives of ten of thousands of kids who are currently in the foster care system, and a positive impact on our society.  The key to creating the Professional Parenting Corps is to recruit existing parents into the program, train and certify them, and provide them with the financial support they will need to dedicate themselves to a long-term commitment to the program.

In return, the parents would have to agree to be part of a network of Professional Parents, work closely with the schools, child protective services, health care professionals to ensure that their foster kids receive excellent care and education.  They would also have to accept close supervision of their homes including unannounced visits and regular reviews with professional child care workers to review the progress of each child and the family as a whole. The normal foster care certification process would be expanded to include a financial and credit check and a psychological evaluation for the parents.

An example of the process could as follows:  A married (marriage would be a requirement) couple with two natural children would agree to foster two additional children.  After they and their home were certified, they would begin receiving a monthly stipend of $1,500 per child for the first foster child and $1,000 for second and additional children.  This would provide annual income of $30,000 for two foster children, but would be reduced by any funds received from DSS and any savings from daycare costs associated with their birth children. One parent would not be allowed to work outside the home, providing the full-time care, education and supervision for their natural and foster children.  If conditions and skills allowed, the couple could foster up to four children, hiring qualified child-care as necessary out of their stipend.  The primary goal is to recreate the traditional family structure, with one parent providing the earned income and the other providing the full-time attention and care that growing children need.  The actual number of foster children allowed in a Professional Parent home would be determined by the ages of the natural and foster children, their physical, emotional and educational status and the skills and training of the foster parents. The Professional Parents would also have to agree to respect the religious beliefs of the children and to commit to allowing the children to continue to participate in their religious activities. Medical care would continue to be provided for the foster children through the Medicare system.

The current foster care system has children that are temporarily removed from the custody of their parents for issues that involve safety and health issues.  There are also children in the system available for adoption because the courts have ruled that the neglect and/or abuse by their birth parents was so severe that parental rights have been permanently revoked.  This process is referred to as Termination of Parental Rights (TPR).  If a Professional Parent couple would decide to formally adopt a TPR child, financial support would be required for a period of years, either in the form of a direct private or government subsidy or a tax credit.

Professional Parents would have to sign a written contract with the organization that would detail their rights and obligations, which would include detailed requirements about the home environment and rules.  Examples would be limiting television viewing hours and programming, eating evening meals together as a family, bedtimes, etc.

While I envision the Professional Parents Corps beginning with children already in foster care, I would hope that eventually it could be expanded to include children who are still living with the natural parents.  Birth parents who are unable, for a variety of reasons, to offer their children a positive educational and home environment could be allowed to apply to have their children placed in the Professional Parenting program.  This is essentially what Oprah’s boarding school in South Africa does.

Obviously there are major structural, financial, and psychological obstacles to overcome to make this type of system a reality.  The program could start as an expansion and enhancement of the existing foster care program operated by DSS.  Professional Parents could be recruited from among the existing foster parents and their income supplemented to bring their income up to the standards of the Professional Parents program.  The funding for the pilot Professional Parents Corps would most probably come from a non-profit that is heavily committed to family and children’s issues or Federal and State government grants. Special provisions to the Federal and State tax laws could also be considered to provide foster parents with a tax credit for each foster child, effectively raising their compensation.

 Like any other intervention program for children, it should begin at the earliest possible age, and gradually expand to the older children.  The pilot program, which would cost a minimum of $180,000 per year for six families, should start in a single geographical area to provide the families with the ability to interact and exchange information, build a mutual support network and for simplicity of administration and monitoring.

Duane Bates

batesduane@yahoo.com