New Foster Care Legislation Causes Problems In Michigan

Added: 08/14/2007

There is a new foster care legislation bill being tried in the Senate for Michigan. They want twenty percent of all public foster care to be changed over to a private sector. This has caused a major up roar in the foster care community. Is this the right choice for the children, or is the state only looking to save money. This question is causing foster care parents to lose sleep at night. That is your choice to make.

A new foster car bill was set forth declaring that twenty percent more of Michigan’s foster care systems will be changed over from public to a private sector. Private sectors only deal with less than one third of the adoption cases in that state. This new foster care legislation is sending foster care and adoptive parents of Michigan into an uproar. Their main concerns would be that are that the private sectors are not going to be able to do the job caring for these kids, and are they going to do it well. With all the kids from public sectors moving to private sectors there is going to be humongous serge of kids moving to a new place. All these children who have been shuffled around from home to home are going to be moved yet again! Does this seem fare? With the private sectors only being use to around one hundred kids, how are they going to handle five hundred? This is a main concern of the public sectors and foster parents.
This new piece of foster care legislation is still in the Senate, but people are very worried. The foster care parents and public sector representatives have held protests at the state capitol building. Foster parents from all around the state came to protest this new foster care legislation.
The Senate bill 232, which is the new foster care legislation, is believed to save the state up to $19 million dollars. But will that really help. With this bill passed at least three hundred people will lose their jobs working for the state, and more than eighteen thousand foster care children will be directly affected if the foster care legislation is passed. So yes, they are saving money, but they are also costing other people their way of earning money, which could at most put even more children in foster care because former workers will not be able to support their own children.
What is private foster care anyway? Private foster care is when a child under the age of sixteen is put into the care of someone who is not the child's guardian, or close relative, by private arrangement between parent and care giver for over 28 days. The age will increase with the needs of the children. Special needs children can stay in the program up to the age on twenty-two.
So as you can see, that is bad because they are not pre-approved and care given to relatives who could easily give the child back to the parent from whom they were taken away. The foster parents in private sectors do not require a back ground check, or any of the other safety precautions that a public foster care parent does.
The main concerns from everyone do not lie in the money increases, or how many people will get fired. The main concern is the children. Foster care is like a safe haven to these children, and changing it could be a turn for the worst. Many people see it in a way that change is NO good.
Once this bill is passed in Michigan, who knows what will happen next. This foster care legislation could be coming to your home state. Do you think that it is right? What will you do to stop it? The decision is all up to you. Stand for what you believe in. Protest for what is right.

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