Foster care restrictions to be lifted

Opponent: Repeal shows law needed

By Seth Blomeley (Contact)

LITTLE ROCK — The state will discontinue its ban on unmarried cohabiting couples being foster parents, the Department of Human Services announced Thursday, days after Gov. Mike Beebe said he was having reservations about the ban.

The change, to be implemented within months, will reverse a policy instituted in 2005 after a judge rejected a previous policy that specifically banned gay people from adopting.

In effect, the switch Thursday would allow unmarried heterosexual couples and gay couples to foster children as long as caseworkers judged them to be suitable parents, said department Director John Selig and Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample.

“We’ve had conversations with the governor, and his direction to us was ‘I want you do to what’s best for these children. I want you to go back and look at [the ban] and see if it does that,’” Selig said. “He felt comfortable [with the change].”

A supporter of the ban said that the announcement by the department emphasizes the need for a law to make sure the ban stays intact.

The governor has shifted positions on the question. In March 2007, he said that fosterchildren are “already fragile” and that they shouldn’t be in “gay foster homes because I believe that with today’s society it’s not their best interest.”

Beebe said on his radio show Friday he was rethinking the ban.

Beebe remains concerned about foster children having a societal “stigma” by having gay foster parents, DeCample said.

“Those are factors that should be taken into consideration,” De-Cample said. “But those shouldn’t be factors that prevent anyone from going through [the foster parent application] process. The need is so great in Arkansas for qualified foster homes.”

Currently, on any given day, about 3,700 foster children are in state custody with roughly 1,100 foster homes.

A proposed initiated act on the Nov. 4 ballot, sponsored by the Family Council, would place into law the current regulatory ban on cohabiting unmarried foster parents and also placeinto law a ban on them adopting children.

“Really, wow,” was the reaction of Jerry Cox, Family Council president, to the news from the Human Services Department.

“This magnifies the need for voters to pass Initiated Act 1 and write what was DHS policy into law,” Cox said. “Apparently, DHS must have for a long time believed in their heart it was a good policy, or they wouldn’t have had it. I think unfortunately they are trying to change policy in the face of opposition from a small and narrow group of individuals in Little Rock. It sounds like the Department of Human Services has wilted in the face of a little bit of pressure. Now it’s going to be up to the voters to protect foster children.”

If the initiated act is defeated, Selig said he thinks the rule could be in place by December. Under state law, such a rule must be set out so that the public can know about it. Then there must be a 30-day period in which people may comment on it pro or con and the Legislature’s Rules and Regulations Committee mustreview it.

Also, Selig said the state Child Welfare Licensing Agency Review Board, which is made up of gubernatorial appointees, would have to change its regulations in a similar manner for the repeal to take effect.

Three of the seven board members are Beebe appointees. Of the four appointed by former Gov. Mike Huckabee, under whose administration the ban was instituted, the term of one has expired. Beebe is looking to fill that position soon, DeCample said.

Selig said he’s confident the board would change its rule.

Selig, who was deputy director at DHS when that rule went into effect, declined to say whether the department was wrong to do so.

“It was a different time back then,” he said. “I wasn’t involved in those discussions. But I think we’re right now.”

It’s unclear how many more people would apply to be foster parents under the rule change,Selig said.

“I have no idea,” he said. “We’ve never kept any statistics, certainly not over how many people who didn’t apply because of the rule. It may be small but we’re trying to [add] as many options as possible there to placethese kids with families.”

The ban was set out in a department directive after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Fox struck down a similar state ban against homosexuals in 2004. Two years later, the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld Fox’s ruling.

After the ruling, Huckabee referred to a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Now Amendment 83, it was adopted in 2004 by a vote of 753,770 to 251,914.

The ruling defied “the very vote that put that provision in the constitution,” Huckabee said. That amendment had the effect of banning gay marriage. It did not address whether gays could be foster parents.

Beebe in recent months has made revamping the state’s foster-care system a top priority in light of serious problems that have surfaced, including the death of four children in foster care and placement of children with an abusive foster parent. And, legislators have questioned the state’s failure to recognize danger in a foster parent in Bella Vista who was convicted of molesting his foster children.

Pat Page, the director of the department’s Children andFamily Services Division, which handles foster children, resigned suddenly Monday, expressing frustration, saying she hadn’t been given the support she needed to do her job.

Beebe last month assigned Human Services Deputy Director Janie Huddleston to oversee that division. On Monday, Beebe met with her about repealing the ban.

“Janie told us this is the direction we’re looking at going,” De-Cample said. “The governor wanted to make sure there was specific language in there looking after the best interest of the child.”

Cox has said his group wants to protect children from a “gay agenda” that seeks to expand rights for gays.

Rep. Kathy Webb, D-Little Rock, the state’s only openly gay legislator, said that’s not what the rule change, or opposition to the proposed initiated act, is about.

“I think this rule has to do with children,” Webb said.

She said she has spoken in “casual conversation” with Beebe about changing the rule. Shesaid she doesn’t think there is a stigma for a child living with gay foster parents but doesn’t fault the governor for thinking that.

“I appreciate the governor’s movement on this issue and willingness to talk about it,” Webb said.

Retired state Supreme Court Justice David Newbern, a spokesman for a group of retired judges who on Monday publiclyannounced their opposition to the proposed initiated act, said the initiated act would override the rule change.

“Hopefully, [the initiated act] will be defeated, and our statement will contribute to that,” Newbern said.

The judges have said it would be wrong to institute a “blanket” law that could keep potentially good foster and adoptive parents from helping children because it would limit options available tojudges in doing what’s best for each child.

Newbern declined to comment as to whether the judges had a “gay agenda.”

“In my personal opinion,there should be no discrimination” against gays who want to be foster or adoptive parents, he said.

Fox, after listening to numerous witnesses during the 2004trial, found no evidence that gays were unfit to be foster parents. The Supreme Court upheld that finding.

The Human Services Department held a hearing Friday on theban. Department officials said an “oversight” since its inception in 2005 kept it from being submitted to the Legislative Council or subject to a public hearing until then. Eighteen of the 20 speakers opposed the ban.

Roy Kindle, Page’s predecessor at the Children and Family Services Division, said in 2007 that the rule was instituted in 2005 because unmarried cohabiting couples “didn’t present, in our view, a good home for foster kids.”

Kindle said he didn’t recall if there was discussion of the specific threat that unmarried couples supposedly posed. But he said there was at the time a lot of discussion among state officials who believed that married couples offered the ideal family environment.

Front Section, Pages 1, 7 on 10/10/2008