Bills debated in Legislature could expand churches’ role in foster care

Lawmakers reviewed two bills meant to provide alternatives to the state’s current foster care system that would potentially expand the role of churches and other faith organizations in providing care to children in need at a hearing Thursday.

Senate Bill 158, proposed by Sen. Forrest Knox, R-Altoona, would set up a new CARE family program, which Knox describes as a higher tier of foster care.

To qualify, couples would have to be heterosexual, be married for seven years, abstain from sex outside marriage, have no alcohol or tobacco in their home, have no history of drug use and belong to either a church or similar social group that meets regularly.

At least one of the parents could not work outside the home.

Knox said his bill was not a judgment against current foster care parents but is designed to set up ideal situations for high-needs children. His bill would give these parents more flexibility from regulations than other foster parents.

“This is a home-centered as opposed to an institutional-centered program,” Knox said.

The current foster care system treats foster parents as babysitters, while his bill is meant to enable them to “actually parent,” he said.

The bill says that families fitting this description would qualify for significantly higher pay than other foster homes. Sen. Pat Pettey, D-Kansas City, noted that the bill came with a fiscal impact of $26 million and asked if that was feasible when the state faces budget problems.

Knox said he planned to strike the pay section and suggested that couples could volunteer. The Department for Children and Families would determine whether couples met the requirements.

Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, asked if Knox would be willing to add firearms alongside alcohol and tobacco as items that could not be inside the home, noting that many children nationwide have been injured by guns.

Knox said current foster care regulations require that any weapons in the home be in a secure location. Haley asked why the same couldn’t be done for a bottle of alcohol.

Phyllis Gilmore, the secretary of DCF, submitted written testimony that said Knox’s move to make a tiered foster care system could have “unintended consequences” and suggested that language needed to be added to set up “an accountability system” for the program.

DCF was officially neutral on the bill.

Germaine Hall, a social worker from Andover, submitted testimony in opposition, saying she was “appalled that our great state of Kansas would even consider putting our children at risk in non-licensed foster homes.”

A separate bill, pushed by Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, R-Shawnee, seeks to create an alternative for foster care before kids enter the system.

Senate Bill 148, called the Safe Families Act and based on a program started in Illinois, would allow parents to temporarily give up most of their power-of-attorney rights over their children so that another family in the community could care for them during a period of crisis, for up to a year.

Pilcher-Cook said the legislation would “empower families in the community who want to step up.”

Churches and other organizations could place the children in families that volunteer. These families would fall outside the regulations of the foster care system.

David Anderson, founder of Safe Families for Children, the Illinois-based nonprofit organization that created the program, said 92 percent of children who go through the temporary placements are later reunited with their parents or relatives.

The program already exists in Shawnee County, where it has been administered by Lifeline Children’s Services, an affiliate of Safe Families, for five years. Pilcher-Cook’s bill would allow it to spread statewide.

This story was originally published February 12, 2015 at 2:07 PM with the headline "Bills debated in Legislature could expand churches’ role in foster care."