August 17, 2005
Kansas City Star

Foster children let down by Blunt

Gov. Matt Blunt put abused foster children with troubling emotional and physical problems at risk of never being adopted when he signed Senate Bill 539.

He and the legislature took away the state financial help that encourages middle-income families to adopt these children.

The governor also broke the state’s word to many parents. Those who have adopted children out of Missouri’s foster-care system have operated under state contracts that made the financial assistance available until their children reached 18.

Thousands of those parents are suddenly cut off. Others won’t be able to afford to adopt. Callous decisions like this contribute to the low approval rating that the governor received in one recent poll.

A lawsuit filed by children’s advocates in U.S. District Court in Kansas City this week challenges the new law, which takes effect Aug. 28. The lawsuit restores hope to families who have generously taken foster children, often including sibling groups, into their families.

Meanwhile, the Blunt administration tries to make these parents look like money grubbers. Spokesman Spence Jackson said Missouri has already been very generous to them. He cited health care and child-care coverage.
But people who lose adoption subsidies likely won’t qualify for state health-care coverage. The legislature, with Blunt’s blessing, also cut Medicaid benefits this year.

Missouri’s subsidies also aren’t all that generous. When compared to those in other states, they are low.

Adoption subsidies in Missouri start at $225 a month and go as high as $650 a month. The highest amounts help parents whose children have the greatest disabilities.

Rarely are perfect newborns available for adoption in foster care. Children who are wards of the state are likely to have suffered abuse or neglect. By the time they are eligible for adoption, they are often disturbed or physically scarred from mistreatment and emotional detachment.

Often these children arrive in their new families with difficult health problems. They need tutoring because they are far behind their peers in reading and math skills. They need counseling to overcome fears and to restore trust. Special therapies and interventions may be required.

Little of this is covered by insurance.

The state cannot make these children whole again; a loving family offers the best hope for them.

It’s time someone made the state stick by its promises to such families.

Kansas City Star, Sept. 21, 2005

As I See It
Missouri is breaking adoption promises

By Pam Robinson

Special to The Star

Every child deserves to live in a safe and loving home. Unfortunately, in Missouri more than 11,000 children are in foster care today because of severe abuse or neglect in their own homes. Two thousand sit waiting for an adoptive family. The services necessary for these children to overcome the trauma of abuse are extensive and costly.

Prospective adoptive parents in Missouri sign contracts laying out their responsibilities to their newly adopted children. In return, Missouri offers subsidies in these contracts for child care, medical coverage and maintenance payments. Gov. Matt Blunt originally attempted to cut the child-care subsidy from all former foster children over the age of 5 but was stopped in conference committee at the end of the session. He has effectively ended the Medicaid program by January of 2008 with no plan to replace this coverage.

Monthly maintenance is intended to assist adoptive families with children’s special needs. The average rate is $250, or approximately $8.30 per day. This daily rate is lower than that paid for prisoners in Missouri and lower than that paid for animals in shelters in Missouri. All 50 states offer adoption subsidy, but Missouri’s “generous program” is the second lowest. Under the new law signed by Blunt, this contracted subsidy will be stopped, based on the parent’s income, with no consideration at all for the child’s needs. A family of four will be limited to an income of less than $48,400 a year to continue receiving this assistance despite any major medical, mental or emotional needs that the child may have.

Since Blunt has, in his own words, “no higher priority as governor than looking out for the well-being of all Missouri children,” we wonder how he can justify abandoning abused and neglected children. Not only will his changes hurt the program, they will hurt real children.

The governor needs to look at the facts. In the last six months with these changes pending, Missouri’s adoption rates have steadily declined.

While adoptive families are generous in spirit, abused children’s needs cannot be met by love alone. Adoption subsidies enable families to adopt children who desperately need them.

As Blunt said on Jan. 10, 2005, “Missourians deserve a government that promises no more than it can deliver and delivers everything it promises.” Missouri promised to assist families as they promised to raise abused children. The families are keeping their promises. The state needs to do the same.