Posted on 12/06/2006 6:21:58 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
Foster parents who smoke can no longer light up around the children they care for in their homes beginning Jan. 1.
A new policy, adopted by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, aims to reduce health risks for children in foster care, said Sasha Rasco, the agency's director of policy and program operations for child care licensing.
Another new rule taking effect next year requires foster families to completely enclose backyard pools and ponds with fences to prevent accidental drownings.
Since the state already prohibits smoking in day care centers, Rasco said, it was only natural to extend the same protection from secondhand smoke to foster homes. Many of the children who are placed in foster homes are medically fragile and suffer health problems, she said.
"They need every opportunity they can to thrive physically with good nutrition, good health care and as few risk factors as possible," she said.
As a result of the new policy, Texas will become one of a handful of states to prohibit smoking in foster parents' homes and in cars where foster children are present. Washington and Vermont have similar restrictions.
Dana Janczak, a foster parent in Liberty County, said she applauds the new rule.
"I have asthma, and I have four children with severe asthma," said Janczak, who has adopted three of the four foster children. "I don't want them around smoke, and I don't want them around anybody that's been smoking."
Pasadena foster parent Kent Farr said he chews and smokes cigars, but he always goes outside when he lights up.
"I've never smoked around the children," he said. "It's not good policy. It's unhealthy, and my wife wouldn't allow it anyway."
An earlier version of the state rule would have prevented foster parents from even possessing tobacco around the children. Farr, who is involved with several state and regional foster parent organizations, said that proposal drew resistance from some who thought it went too far.
Rasco said the agency will rely on foster parents to voluntarily comply with the rules, although families with foster children are always subject to unannounced inspections.
"We are regulated so strictly it's hard to breathe, but I think this particular regulation is in the best interest of the children in our care," said Rebecca Harper, a Pearland foster mother and a nonsmoker.
The rule requiring fences around swimming pools is designed to keep toddlers from wandering outside a back door and falling into the pool. Some areas of the country, including Maricopa County, Ariz., have begun requiring all pool owners to install fences that enclose the water.
As a result of a strict pool fence law in the Phoenix area, the child drowning rate, once the highest in the nation, has been declining, statistics show.
This year in the Houston area, 27 children have drowned, many in backyard pools that weren't fenced.
Jim Shields,executive director of Justice for Children in Houston, said he considers the pool fence rule "a no-brainer" for families with foster children.
"Anyone who would object to having a fence around the pool should not be a foster parent, in my opinion," he said.
I cant smoke in my own home. I got out voted one to one.
good.
Puff
"Another new rule taking effect next year requires foster families to completely enclose backyard pools and ponds with fences to prevent accidental drownings."
Someone needs to sue the state for not fencing every lake and pond that they own access on. That would put an end to that stupid law.
"No smoking in your home if ANY children are present."Foster children, natural born children, whatever. No Smoking!
And she needs a law to do that?????????
I wonder about someone so needy being capable of even being a foster parent.
Next is smoking in the same house as one's children.
Okay, how do fences prevent drownings? Is this some new technology that I'm unaware of?
Adolf Hitler didn't smoke and that should be good enough for the rest of us. (LOL)
"Okay, how do fences prevent drownings? Is this some new technology that I'm unaware of?"
Did you even read my post?
I said it a stupid law and if the state was sued to waste millions to fence every lake and pond they would know how stupid it was.
BINGO.
If this woman is supposedly responsibile enough to be a foster parent to asthmatic chidren, I would have assumed she was responsible enough to take precautions to protect them WITHOUT needing the government getting further involved.
As some horrible tragedies recently have made clear, while the majority of FP's are truly angels on this earth, not all people in the sytem are good, altruistic people doing it for the welfare of kids. There are some creeps out there just doing it for the check & these laws are aimed at them.
What I find a bit shocking is that foster parents had been able to care for kids all this time in homes without pool enclosures before this change in the law in TX.
Given the often absurd home inspection & evaluation hoops adoptive parents have to jump through in order to get permission to keep their kids, why was it ok before this to let them stay in foster homes with open pools?
They can drown just as easily & quickly at their temporary homes as they can at their permanent ones.
I wonder about someone so needy being capable of even being a foster parent.
Maine did this to our state in February of 2004................
Maine: Do not smoke if your a foster parent! The DHS says so! It's ok if you sprawl on the couch at night drunk though!
DHS creates smoking rules for foster homes, vehicles
2-26-04 - article here
Sure, why not?
You're preaching to the choir!!!!!
Everything you state just proves this really has nothing to do with smoking and everything to do with controlling every aspect of everyone's lives.
Bingo.
I can easily see a time when the state will say, "No guns in the homes where foster kids are present".
After that, the State will go a step further and declare what?
"No guns in the home where ANY children are present."
Only the government is fit to raise your child.
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