Kansas lawmaker: Don’t let unmarried couples be foster parents

Rep. Jan Pauls wants to prohibit people with live-in boyfriends or girlfriends from serving as foster parents.

Pauls, R-Hutchinson, introduced the bill as a concept Thursday during a meeting of the House Federal and State Affairs Committee, which she chairs. The bill, which has not yet been assigned a number, would not bar single people from serving as foster parents, Pauls said.

The bill would require that any other adults living in a foster parent’s home be a spouse or other relative.

“It would just prohibit an unmarried couple,” Pauls said, asserting that live-in boyfriends pose a greater threat of abuse.

“A lot of times if you hear about a murder, it’s the live-in boyfriend. And we’ve even had a few cases where a live-in girlfriend who’s killed a baby,” Pauls said. She clarified that she was talking about overall statistics, not about Kansas foster care specifically. “…So statistically that’s a real problem.”

Federal data backs up that stance. A 2010 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which tracked child abuse from 2004 through 2009, found that children who lived with a single parent and live-in partner were 10 times more likely to experience abuse compared with children living with married biological parents.

Her bill comes a day after a legislative panel approved an audit into safety and other issues in the state’s foster care system. It also comes at a time when some same-sex couples are accusing the agency of showing preference to heterosexual couples in foster care and adoption placements.

This story was originally published January 14, 2016 at 1:22 PM with the headline "Kansas lawmaker: Don’t let unmarried couples be foster parents."