Foster-Care Inflexibility Hurts State's Children

For Cora Featherson , a 54-year-old Memphis woman who is raising her granddaughter and six nieces, nephews and cousins, taking care of family is more than a responsibility.

"If you can find room in your house and your heart, you have to help," says Featherson. "I've come this far, and I can't let these kids down."

Since she took in her first child almost 20 years ago, Featherson has worked hard to keep her family out of foster care, relying on her modest income, occasional help from her church and monthly food stamps.

Although all seven children qualify for Families First, Tennessee's cash assistance program for families with children, Featherson has been able to obtain benefits for only three of them using an application process that has sometimes taken up to six months.

Three of the children -- ages 14, 12 and 8 -- were placed with her after their parents neglected them, but the state Department of Children's Services (DCS) provided little help. Social workers asked Featherson if she wanted to become a foster parent, an option that would provide an extra $1,200 a month, but she was too afraid.

"No money is worth losing these kids," says Featherson, "and the state told me they could take them whenever they wanted."

Featherson's story is all too common among the large numbers of grandparents and other relatives caring for children whose parents struggle with substance abuse, incarceration, mental illness, domestic violence or sheer poverty. More than 61,252 Tennessee grandparents report they are responsible for grandchildren living with them -- almost 10,000 in Shelby County alone.

In 42 percent of relative caregiver households, no parents are present to help with child-rearing responsibilities or to contribute to the family income, a particular burden for disabled relatives, retired grandparents on a fixed income, and the one-fifth of Tennessee grandparent caregivers who live below the poverty line.

In large part, the lack of adequate services for Tennessee kinship families is caused by an inflexible national foster care financing system which provides the state with more than $155 million per year, but places significant restrictions on how the state can spend the money.

This means, for example, that DCS can use Title IV E dollars, the main source of federal child welfare support, to fund room and board for children in foster care, but cannot use them for preventive and post-permanency services.

As a result, programs designed to help grandparents and other relatives who come forward to take care of their abused, neglected or abandoned kin remain chronically under-funded. Among these is the excellent Shelby County Relative Caregiver Program operated by the University of Tennessee.

Recently the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, a national panel of child welfare experts, laid out some promising solutions to reform the national child welfare financing structure.

The commission recommends that states should be permitted to reinvest the federal money they don't spend on foster care in programs that keep children out of foster care or that help them leave foster care more quickly for safe and permanent homes.

In Featherson's case, for example, the state would have the flexibility to use foster care dollars to get her children the help they need, such as clothing, quality child care, and extra money for food and school expenses.

Relatives also may be willing to assume permanent legal custody of some of the 1,400 Tennessee children who are currently in state custody but in their care.

However, because they do not want to undermine family and cultural norms many are hesitant to adopt, a legal proceeding that requires the termination of parental rights.

Under the Pew proposal, states would be able to use federal funding to create a subsidized guardianship program, an option that would allow relatives to obtain legal guardianship of the children in their care and receive ongoing financial assistance.

In spite of continuing challenges, Tennessee has made considerable progress in improving the lives of kinship care families. In partnership with national and local organizations, the Tennessee legislature established the Relative Caregiver Program to provide support groups, recreational activities and other services to caregivers in 16 counties, including Shelby.

In addition, Tennessee recently passed a law to make it easier for relative caregivers to get the decision-making authority they need through a "power of attorney" in order to enroll children under their care in school, consent to medical care and obtain other vital services.

Until the necessary changes are made at the federal and state levels, however, too many grandparents and other relative caregivers will have to choose between keeping their families together and getting their children the services they need.

The Shelby County Relative Caregiver Program and AARP will hold a free resource summit on Nov. 16 at Holiday Inn-University of Memphis for grandparents and other family members who are raising children.