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While organizing our filing system, I ran across my adoption papers. My mother gave them to me a couple of years ago for my own records. The cost of my adoption was a 300.00 donation to Catholic Charities in Chicago, I was six days old. I am blessed to be in the family, in which I was placed. My mother tells me there were lots of rules to comply with. The agency wanted to make sure I had a stable and secure home. In reality, no one can predict how a family will one day turn out. Ours certainly had...

Admitting for the first time what critics have claimed for years, state child-welfare authorities say caregivers for children in state custody frequently use powerful mind-altering drugs to manage unruly kids, rather than treat their anger and sadness. A panel of child-welfare experts, including two top administrators from the state Department of Children & Families, examined the death of a 7-year-old Broward foster child who was on psychotropic medications — without the required consent — when he hanged himself in a Margate home. The panel's report, expected to be released publicly later this month, says child welfare authorities too often rely...

Caught in the System Over half a million kids live in foster care, and many are neglected, unloved and viewed as a paycheck by their new family. Dr. Phil takes a hard look at the harsh realities these forgotten kids face and sends an urgent message about the need to repair this ailing system. Jessica, 24, aged out of foster care six years ago after bouncing from one home to another. She says her childhood was so horrific that she witnessed the murder of her 5-year-old sister … by her mother and stepfather. Will Jessica find the strength to overcome...

A bevy of bipartisan California legislators vowed Monday to be better parents to the state's foster youth, pledging to extend their life-sustaining benefits through age 21 rather than casting them off as teenagers. Currently, most youth "aging out" of foster care are bounced off state support at 18, a tender age for a vulnerable population that often has nowhere to go and no one to rely on. But an assembly bill written by Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Jim Beall, D-San Jose, would draw on newly available federal funds to support relative caregivers and transitional living programs through...

NOTE FROM A FOSTER MOTHERA FReeper mom who doesn't have time to post, has shared her experience with me and graciously given me permission to post her thoughts. Here is the first note from her:"Here’s my deal. I am totally transfixed on this polygamous cult issue but don’t have the time or inclination to actively participate on the board. It must have something to do with my six kids, one of whom is disabled. I am a foster mom BTW so I’m sorta torked out of shape about all the shoddy accusations against foster parents. I know that for...

Imagine: One day you're frolicking in the open air on a large compound, doing your daily chores and feasting on hearty homegrown fare; the next you're gagging on a diet of T&A courtesy of MTV and fast-food compliments of your fat foster mom. As the makeshift mom hollers at you to swallow your zombifying meds – the Texas foster care system is notorious for pumping its charges full of psychotropic drugs – her flaccid live-in lover eyes you lustily. As I write, many of the kids kidnapped by Texas rangers from the Yearning for Zion ranch are being scattered across...

Psychologists have long believed that growing up in an institution like an orphanage stunts children’s mental development but have never had direct evidence to back it up. Now they do, from an extraordinary years-long experiment in Romania that compared the effects of foster care with those of institutional child-rearing. The study, being published on Friday in the journal Science, found that toddlers placed in foster families developed significantly higher I.Q.’s by age 4, on average, than peers who spent those years in an orphanage. The difference was large — eight points — and the study found that the earlier children...

Sixty percent of the American children in foster care are black. Let me repeat that. In the United States, of all the children in foster care, 60 percent are black. African-Americans are 60 percent of the foster children and 12 percent of the general population. That’s a 500-percent over representation. In ballpark terms, that means a black child is five times more likely to end up in foster care than the average American child. When you take black children out of the national average, blacks are in the neighborhood of 11 times more likely to be foster children than non-blacks....

AP) The father of a 5-year-old Cuban girl at the center of an international custody battle did not abandon or neglect her, so he should get her back, a judge ruled Thursday. Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen said she would not immediately return the girl to her father, Cuban farmer Rafael Izquierdo, who wants to take her back to Cuba. The girl went into foster care after her mother brought her to the U.S. in 2005 and then attempted suicide days before Christmas. She has been living with foster parents in Miami for the past 18 months and they want...

WAKEFIELD, UK, September 6, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A report by an independent panel has laid the blame in a homosexual child sex abuse case squarely on the culture of political correctness among British civil authorities. It was a local Council's fear of offending the homosexual movement or being labeled homophobic that allowed two men to continue to sexually abuse boys placed in their care as foster parents. Ian Wathey, 40, and Craig Faunch, 32 were convicted in May 2006, of molesting and filming eight-year-old twins and two 14 year-old boys placed in their care by the Wakefield Council. Since...

Among children in foster care, minorities are in the majority. Disproportionate numbers of black and Hispanic households are referred to foster-care officials, are investigated for abuse and have complaints against them upheld by investigators. Such intuitively obvious facts, gleaned from a recent federal report, are not only news to The Hartford Courant, they're the stuff of banner, front-page headlines. And according to the state Department of Children and its attendant special interests, racism — what else? — is behind these imbalances. To try to reverse them, the DCF spent two years and lots of money developing and implementing a plan...

15-year-old suspect is the sister, daughter of victims Portage - A criminal complaint filed Wednesday details the depraved torture of an 11-year-old boy and murder of his mother, accusing a collection of transients who said they came to Portage in February because they wanted to "see snow." The unexplained abuse of the boy - some by his own mother - evolved into the beating and eventual murder of that woman by a group of young people from Florida and Kentucky who were running from authorities there and in Colorado, according to a criminal complaint and records filed in Columbia County...

When the Archbishop of Canterbury supported the Catholic Church in the gay adoption row last week, many were surprised. [snip] Now it has emerged that Dr Williams may have been influenced by his close involvement with a remarkable couple who rescued a boy brutalised by a notorious social services paedophile ring. Horrified by the inference that the Archbishop is homophobic, the couple have spoken for the first time of their friend's 'immeasurable' help as they struggled to save a child driven to despair by abuse while in the care of the London borough of Islington. And they described how Dr...

Institute for Justice Vows to Defend Arizona’s Scholarships for Disabled and Foster Care Students From Unprecedented Legal Attack Arlington, Va.-The Institute for Justice and its Arizona Chapter today pledged to defend Arizona’s two new publicly funded scholarship programs from legal attack. The programs are designed to help especially vulnerable students-those with disabilities and those in foster care-secure quality educational opportunities in private schools. A coalition of special interest groups filed their legal challenge today, skipping the trial court and asking for a resolution of the case by the Arizona Supreme Court. “This is an unprecedented and unconscionable effort to block...

'Abused' girl sent back to Belarus Barbara McMahon in Rome Monday October 2, 2006 The Guardian A 10-year-old girl, who said she was sexually abused and beaten at an orphanage in her native Belarus, has been sent back to the former Soviet republic from Italy amid bitter recriminations from the couple who had hoped to adopt her. Alessandro Giusto and his wife, Chiara Bornacin, denounced the Italian authorities for agreeing to the repatriation. The child has been at the centre of a case that has strained relations between the two countries. "They took her away like thieves, hidden, without even...

CINCINNATI — Investigators recovered 18 bone fragments near an old chimney where investigators believe the body of a developmentally disabled 3-year-old foster child was burned, a county coroner said Thursday. The boy's foster parents, charged with killing him, pleaded not guilty Thursday to murder. The bone fragments were from a child 2 to 4 years old, said Dr. O'dell Owens, the Hamilton County coroner. Each was less than inch long and found in soil in rural Brown County, east of Cincinnati. "The DNA that is being processed came from a small piece of tissue that was found," Owens said. Authorities...

A congressional committee has included a local Islamic charity in a new round of inquiries into suspected ties between not-for-profit groups and terrorists. The U.S. Senate Finance Committee has requested the financial records of 25 Islamic charities, including the Columbia-based Islamic American Relief Agency, or IARA. In particular, the request included donor lists that are reported to the IRS but protected under a privacy statute. The request comes two years after FBI, Department of the Treasury and other federal agency investigations into charities suspected of having ties to international terrorists. Since 2001, the United States has frozen more than $136...

Missouri Lifts Restrictions On Gay Foster Parents Judge Ruled In February State Could Not Reject Applications JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Following a court mandate, Missouri officials said Tuesday that they have lifted regulations that automatically prevented homosexuals from becoming foster parents. But while the decision clears the way for gays to get licensed to care for foster children, officials with the Department of Social Services said it might still be difficult for a gay person to become a foster parent. "We're considering the biological parents' preferences, and we're also considering the abuse and neglect that occurred to the child and...

Arkansas governor optimistic on reinstatement of gay parent ban CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is optimistic the Legislature quickly will reinstate a ban on same-sex couples serving as foster parents in his state. "What we are talking about is whether the state should place a child in a relationship that is not recognized by the state as a marriage," the Republican governor, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, told The Associated Press on Saturday. The Arkansas Supreme Court last month struck down regulations banning the placement of foster children with same sex couples. The court said state...

Ark governor says Legislature should impose gay-foster-parent ban LITTLE ROCK - Gov. Mike Huckabee on Friday said he hoped legislators would consider reimposing a ban on gay foster parents that was struck down by the state Supreme Court. "I'm very disappointed that the court seems more interested in what's good for gay couples than what's good for children needing foster care," Huckabee said through his spokeswoman Alice Stewart. Arkansas voters in 2004 approved an anti-gay marriage amendment to the state constitution, and Huckabee said Friday, "I would expect the Legislature to deal with this since the state constitution _ by...

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday said that gays can qualify as foster parents and that barring them from parenting foster children was based on one group's view of morality. In a unanimous ruling upholding a lower court decision that a state ban was unconstitutional, the high court said that no connection exists between a foster child's well-being and the sexual orientation of that child's foster parents. Justices agreed with Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox's ruling that the ban seeks to regulate "public morality" _ something the board was not given the authority to do. And the high court...

Gay couple jailed for abusing their foster children Two homosexual men who sexually abused young children placed in their foster care were jailed yesterday. Ian Wathey, 41, and his partner Craig Faunch, 32, were found guilty of a string of offences against four boys aged between eight and 14. The pair used the boys for sexual gratification within months of being approved as foster carers by Wakefield council. A mother of eight-year-old twins raised concerns about them with social services after finding a photograph of one of the boys as he used the lavatory. The authorities chose to take no...

State should know that 2 dads are better than none They're a busy family this summer, the girls off to horse camp and gymnastics camp, to family field trips at the botanical gardens and the aquarium, to the beach. They have loud laughing dinners around the table. Sometimes, the girls fight like the sisters they are: She's looking at me. Make her stop. Sundays it's church. "Who?'' Dad asks when I mention Ronda Storms. Storms is the Hillsborough commissioner who made political hay out of her crusade to keep the county from recognizing gay pride events. Most recently, she said...

Ark. defends gay foster parent ban LITTLE ROCK - Saying it's in Arkansas' interest to protect the moral and spiritual welfare of foster children, a state attorney on Thursday defended before the Arkansas Supreme Court a policy that bans gays from becoming foster parents. The Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services is appealing a 2004 decision by Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Tim Fox, who said it was unconstitutional for the state's Child Welfare Agency Review Board to bar homosexuals from becoming foster parents. Kathy L. Hall, an attorney for the state agency, told justices that the state already...

Against governor's objections, Missouri to drop suit against lesbian foster parent KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The state plans to drop its legal challenge to a lesbian's efforts to become a foster parent because a new state law makes the appeal impossible, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon said. A spokesman for Gov. Matt Blunt called the decision "outrageous" and said the governor wants the appeal to continue. Both men are running for governor in 2008, and exchanges between Nixon, a Democrat, and Blunt, a Republican, have become increasingly pointed in recent months. Nixon said the law, which Blunt signed this...

Gay foster parents abused young boys A council was condemned yesterday for failing to prevent a paedophile homosexual couple from abusing young boys even after being alerted by one of the victim's parents. Foster parents Ian Wathey, 40, and Craig Faunch, 32, face long terms in jail after being convicted of molesting and filming eight-year-old twins and two boys aged 14. The twins were video-taped as they showered together, while one of the older boys was sexually abused by Wathey in his bedroom. Both men "hurt" him, he told Leeds Crown Court. "I do not like them any more. I...

The $131,000-a-year administrator of San Francisco's troubled foster child care program has gone out on indefinite "stress leave'' -- checking out just as she was about to be suspended. The sudden departure of Department of Human Services deputy director Janice Anderson-Santos came just as she was facing a two-week benching for what her bosses concluded was her failure to do her job over the past couple of years. Among the accusations: that she fell woefully behind in keeping a list of eligible foster-care parents up to date. At one point, department sources say, the backlog of parents waiting to be...

San Francisco's Department of Human Services wants to fire a child welfare supervisor accused of downloading and passing around gay S&M porn pix -- hot shots that starred a psychiatrist from the city's foster care program. .... As far as the department is concerned, however, the doctor didn't do anything that violated the city's work rules by appearing on an S&M Web site. He's not facing any disciplinary action. Sources inside the department say the case started several months back when an employee in the child welfare division showed pictures to her supervisor of the psychiatrist from the XXX adult...

A 7-week-old child is in intensive care after his foster mother repeatedly slapped, shook and dropped him, the U.S. Attorney's Office said yesterday. Authorities charged Tanya Jenkins, of the unit block of Bass Circle in Southeast, with first-degree cruelty to children after she acknowledged what she had done to try to quiet the child. Miss Jenkins was arrested Tuesday by Metropolitan Police Department officers and is expected to appear this morning before D.C. Superior Court Judge Wendell Gardner Jr. Miss Jenkins said she dropped the child six or seven times while trying to change him or after giving him a...

A Douglas County judge on Tuesday characterized the possible reunification of a 3-year-old and his father as a Catch-22. The boy needs to spend more time with his biological father so the two can interact and bond, said Juvenile Court Judge Elizabeth Crnkovich. Yet no one wants to "experiment" with a young child who is struggling to understand this new father figure in his life, she said.

Betting that larger investment in drug treatment, after-school activities and other programs can reduce incarceration, foster care and remedial education, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is expected to sign an agreement today with business and philanthropic leaders designed to shift millions in state spending in the coming years. The central idea of the More for Maryland program, the first phase of which is scheduled to be agreed to today, is that spending on prevention programs with proven track records not only improves the lives of children but also saves money. In what advocates say could be a national model, the...

After taking in more than 70 foster children over 40 years, the Nikolaisens fell in love again. Tyrese, a preemie born with cocaine in his blood, learned to sit up, crawl, then run in their Issaquah home. Two years went by before they asked their state social worker what they considered an innocent question: When we adopt, can we rename him Tyler? Tyrese is half black, so his case was handled by an experimental child-welfare office responsible for African-American kids in King County. The Nikolaisens' question ignited racial tensions in a way they'd never expected. How can a white couple...

LINCOLN, Neb., May 12 (AP) - A federal judge on Thursday struck down Nebraska's ban on same-sex marriage, saying the measure interfered not only with the rights of gay couples but also with those of foster parents, adopted children and people in a variety of other living arrangements. The amendment to the state's Constitution, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman, was passed overwhelmingly by the voters in November 2000. The Nebraska ruling is the first in which a federal court has struck down a state ban on same-sex marriage, and conservatives in the United...

New York City's Administration for Children’s Services has announced an "independent review" of the controversial AIDS-drug trials conducted between 1988 and 2001 on children in its foster care. The highly experimental and toxic drugs were administered to infants as young as 4-months old. For over a year, medical-rights watchdogs and some media voices have demanded transparency on the experimental drug trials. Why has it taken so long? Transparency is the key to dissolving criticism, but transparency is precisely what has been lacking. Perhaps because disclosure is a slippery slope into accountability. On Feb. 29, 2004, The New York Post ran...

Birth Parents Blame DCF, System POSTED: 3:31 pm EDT April 22, 2005 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A family whose child was taken away from them by the Florida Department of Children & Families is blaming the system for allowing their 23-month-old son to die. Christina Mantooth and her husband are mourning Gregory Love, who died while living in foster care after his parents failed a drug test."He's never been sick," Mantooth said of her youngest child. "He was in perfect health. He was a perfect child." Christina Mantooth with her husband and four children. Mantooth had her four children taken away...

A six-year study of sexual abuse committed by foster parents in Illinois found a highly disproportionate percentage of the cases were homosexual in nature. About one-third were same-sex while estimates are that no more than 3 percent of people in the general population say they engage in homosexual acts. An article in the March issue of the peer-reviewed publication Psychological Reports presented data analyzed by Dr. Paul Cameron, chairman of the Colorado-based Family Research Institute. Cameron believes it's likely the Illinois figures reflect the situation among the nation's estimated half-million foster children. "What's shocking, is that 34 percent of the...

After 233 Kids, Foster Parents Quit By BILL POOVEY, Associated Press Writer CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - The walls and tabletops in Roger and Imogene Gorsuch's home are lined with photos of their extra children — all 233 of them. After 45 years as foster parents, taking in mostly infants and toddlers of many nationalities and skin colors, the 86-year-old couple finally decided to call it quits. "It's all been good," said Roger Gorsuch, a retired printer. Of course he would say that, his wife of 67 years jokes. "He was gone most of the time." The state Children's Services Department does...

Judge Orders N.Y. Couple Not to Conceive By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: May 8, 2004 Filed at 12:14 a.m. ET ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- A couple has been ordered not to conceive any more children until the ones they already have are no longer in foster care. A civil liberties advocate said the court ruling unsealed Friday was ``blatantly unconstitutional.'' Monroe County Family Court Judge Marilyn O'Connor ruled March 31 that both parents ``should not have yet another child which must be cared for at public expense.'' ``The facts of this case and the reality of parenthood cry out for...

Loving Hispanic woman is a state agency's ideal Thursday, May 13, 2004 "It means so much to them to have a home, to have some stability," says Margaret Quintana, surrounded by four of her five foster children. Margaret Quintana's most prized possessions include the mementos of a typically proud mother: pictures of smiling children, and letters, cards, and poems from them that describe the difference that her love made in their lives.They are not her biological children. They are the dozens of foster children, most of them Hispanic, whom Quintana has taken into her home during the last 16 years.Quintana...

PIERCE COUNTY - Prosecutors say Ronald Young, 41, used the email moniker "fosterdad" to post hundreds of pornographic pictures of his foster children on the internet. Police say Young took the photos inside his remote Pierce County home - victimizing every one of his six foster boys between the ages of 5 and 7. Court documents say "some images included the children having intercourse with an adult male." As prosecutor's charged Young with 44 counts of child rape, molestation and exploitation, detectives revealed Young admits he took pictures of his sexual acts with the boys using a digital camera and...

Police arrested a woman after a man’s security cameras intercepted images from her video camera showing her allegedly abusing foster children. William Brookins called police after he watched the images on a monitor from his home security cameras Sunday night. Brookins realized he was intercepting another camera’s images, which showed two young girls holding their hands overhead, he said. He said after 25 minutes, the 2-year-old’s arms began to sag. A woman rushed into the picture and hit the toddler in the abdomen and the face, knocking her to the floor. The girl then got back to her feet and...

1/16/04 12:39:00 AM To: City and State desks, Political Reporter Contact: Ricardo Davis of Constitution Party of Georgia 770-924-8546; ga@constitutionparty.com ATLANTA, Jan. 16 /U.S. Newswire/ -- In a public statement the Constitution Party of Georgia (CPGa) raised concerns over the current efforts of Gov. Perdue to amend the Georgia Constitution to encourage state funding of church ministries involved in charitable works. State Chairman Ricardo Davis of Woodstock stated that "Senate Resolution 560, the Faith-Based Initiative Amendment (FBIA), may undermine the ability of state-funded Christian ministries to communicate the life-changing message of the Gospel by limiting their Constitutionally-guaranteed right to free...

Leonard: In all my years in advocacy I have noticed a lot of people are like lawyers they try to horde their information and promote their own stories over others ignoring others in order to do so. As you know (evident from your candidness, a man after my own heart) we need to promote everyone's story and enlist everyone possible to get attention on the horrors. To that end everyone of us involved in opposition to the governments war on children and families should; promote this opportunity to get CBS 60 minutes to do a cover piece on the plight...

Judges slam foster care system Children move around too much, money is wasted, panel says By Dave Ranney, Journal-World Thursday, October 30, 2003 Topeka — Several Kansas judges who oversee child welfare cases took aim Wednesday at inadequacies in the state's foster care and adoption systems. advertisement "Most of the children (in custody) in Leavenworth County are in foster homes in other parts of the state -- in western Kansas, in southeast Kansas," said Leavenworth County Judge Robert Bednar. "Transportation is a huge problem; I've got a lot of kids making five-hour trips." Many times, Bednar said, children in foster...

<p>LINCOLN, Nebraska (AP) -- A Mayan Indian woman is relying on seven judges some 2,000 miles from her home in Guatemala to help her regain custody of her two young children who were placed in foster care after her arrest on immigration charges.</p>

Hadiya AbdulSalaam knew her children might not strictly adhere to their Muslim faith once they were put into foster care. But she never thought that they’d be encouraged to become Christians. Since July, three of her daughters have been attending Christian services, with her middle girl singing in the choir. She says her son told her he was forced to sit in his foster parents’ car when he refused to join them at Christian services. And none have been allowed to contact Islamic religious leaders that their mother suggested for spiritual guidance. "It’s like we’re being persecuted because of our...

DA Won't Charge Foster Mother  By Herbert LoweStaff WriterSeptember 29, 2003, 4:44 PM EDTThe Queens foster mother accused of dumping the body of a severely disabled 8-year-old girl in the trash will not face criminal charges, prosecutors said Monday. The office of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown had considered pursuing homicide and other charges against Renee Johnson, 50, of Rosedale, who put Stephanie Ramos in the garbage at East 91st Street and Second Avenue on July 8. Prosecutors have said their investigation spawned not only from the child's death, but also their fears that Stephanie died amid what authorities described...

<p>Prosecutors have brought embezzlement charges against a longtime caseworker in Stanislaus County's social services agency, accusing her of stealing more than $150,000 in foster care and adoption program funds. Colette K. DeLeon, 51, an eligibility worker in the Community Services Agency, stole the state and federal money from Aug. 1, 2000, to July 31, 2003, authorities said.</p>

3 girls in foster care take car; crash kills 1 VICTIM, 14, WAS DRIVING, FLEEING POLICE IN LONDON By Bill Estep SOUTH-CENTRAL KENTUCKY BUREAU LONDON - Three teen-age girls who took a car and ran away from a foster home fled from police early yesterday in a short high-speed chase before smashing into an embankment, killing the 14-year-old driver. Police fought a small fire in the engine compartment as they pulled two surviving girls from the crumpled wreck. But Holly Smith suffered massive head and chest injuries and died at the scene, Laurel County Coroner Doug Bowling said. "It is...

Court Returns Adopted Boy to Birth MomLANSING, Mich. (AP) -- The Michigan Supreme Court reversed the adoption of a 5-year-old boy by the couple who raised him for most of his life, saying the child should be returned to his birth mother.In a unanimous decision, the high court said Tuesday that the family judge who terminated Melissa Kucharski's parental rights lacked enough evidence. The court also said that the judge should never approved the adoption while Kucharski was fighting the termination."I'm excited, pretty happy, kind of anxious," Kucharski said. "I knew in my heart that if the right person heard...