Children Are Dying at Alarming Rates in Foster Care,

[humble3d]

Children Are Dying at Alarming Rates in Foster Care,

and Nobody Is Bothering to Investigate

Children in the for-profit foster care system are dying at alarming rates, but the deaths are not being investigated, and autopsies are not even being attached to the now-closed case files, a two-year investigation has found.

The investigation, conducted and released in rare bipartisan fashion by the Senate Finance Committee, looked closely at one of the largest private providers of foster care services, the MENTOR Network.

The companies and agencies charged with keeping foster children safe often failed to provide the most basic protections or take steps to prevent tragedies, the investigation found.

In the wake of the report, shares of the MENTOR Network’s parent company, Civitas Solutions, traded sharply downward, but quickly rebounded amid a lack of press coverage.

By pushing the report to colleagues, Sen. Ron Wyden, the committee’s top-ranking Democratic member, said he and panel chair Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, are trying to “light a big fire around” how important it is to fix the child welfare system’s flaws.

The report was prompted in part by a BuzzFeed investigation into the company two years ago.

 Fostering Profits

A BuzzFeed News investigation identified deaths, sex abuse, and blunders in screening, training, and overseeing foster parents at the nation’s largest for-profit foster care company...

In the master bedroom, there are sex toys everywhere," she said. "Oh god, it was nasty. And KY Jelly and Vaseline.

And in the woodshop there was Vaseline. Why do you need Vaseline in the woodshop?”...

The committee found that 86 children had died in the company’s care over a 10-year period, and the firm had conducted internal investigations in only 13 cases.

The political problem for foster children is a structural one.

It would be hard to think of a group with less lobbying power in Washington, D.C., while the group homes that warehouse children are making significant profits off each one and are loathe to see that income dry up.

 

Late last year, Hatch and Wyden made a push to reform the system with a bill that would privilege family settings over group homes, but a Baptist group home network in North Carolina persuaded its Senate delegation to block the legislation.

 

Meanwhile, state agencies and judges tend to be quick to pull a child from their home at the first sign of trouble, reasoning that the safest move is to act rather than leave them with a parent.

 

If tragedy strikes while a child is at home, media attention condemns the parents and the system that left the child there.

 

But when tragedy strikes a child who was hastily moved into a group home, the death often passes unnoticed.

 

The failure of the child welfare system is a “real moral blot on the country,” Wyden said, and children “aren’t going to have an army of lobbyists behind them,” so it’s up to lawmakers to show how serious the failures of the system are.

 

Wyden said he hopes this report shocks opponents of the Families First bill into taking a second look.

 

Roughly 1,600 children die each year due to abuse and neglect, the committee reported.

 

--MORE--
 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/aramroston/fostering-profits?utm_term=.atea3JD3o#.rbgvL1aLA



https://theintercept.com/2017/10/18/foster-care-children-deaths-mentor-network/

 

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