Comments on: Paltry foster parent reimbursements cost kids

By: Wildflower

Wildflower — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:58:18 +0000

This was very informative. I had no idea foster parents were paid so little.
It is OUTRAGEOUS that a state that is 8th in income is at the bottom of the heap for paying for our precious children who have suffered so much.
Perhaps that is why social services fails to remove children from the home, they have no place to put them. But that is no excuse for not following up on reported cases, as in the deaths of two children recently in our city.
We must do better by our children.
“Suffer the little children to come unto me”..
God bless Sister Allegri.

By: usersuz

usersuz — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:27:29 +0000

Which raises a question that’s been nagging at me for a while: where the heck DOES our money go? It’s apparently not going to higher education, K-12 schools, mental health care, the developmentally disabled, and a dozen other essential services. Where does it go? Who gets the big slice and why?

By: Wildflower

Wildflower — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:39:36 +0000

Usersuz, as always you have great insight. Those are excellent questions. I wish I knew also…Who do we get these answers from?
Our state has never spent on mental health, developmentally disabled, social services.
In the 70’s there were two main institutions for the mentally retarded, Ridge and one in Grand Junction. I visited each of them. These kids/adults were housed in large wards drugged into oblivion.
You could see needle marks on their arms.
They were no more than zombies, you could see them draped across the tables after they ate, barely able to hold their heads up, some dozing, I almost suspect they may have got their “medicine” in their food also. I can’t even describe the hell they lived in but I can still see it in my mind.
Things eventually got better, and I’m sure it was because of federal mandates, not because our state saw the light. Now there are group homes and they’ve cleaned the institutions out and the state care is very good. They are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve and given a purposeful life.

In 1985 Social Services was crying about how many other cases they had so they couldn’t check on the well-being of a baby living with alcoholic parents, where glass and other objects regularly flew through the air and the child lived in terror. And they’re still doing it obviously, since we had two more children die in Denver recently who could have been saved if only social services had followed through. So they haven’t cleaned up their act at all.
What do they do with the money?Good question.

By: Keith

Keith — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:52:16 +0000

Ah, the dilema. Pay so much that taking in a foster child is good profit and what is the motivation to care and raise that child responsibly. Isn’t this where so many abused foster kids we hear about come from? These adults are in it for the $, not the self-satisfaction to contribut to society. Pay too little, and some families won’t consider fostering. Institutions can do it more cost-effective, but is this the environment these kids should have; institutions vs a small family environment?

Mean while most of the right and all of the religious right are executing bad adults and sending soldiers to war to die, but protecting the life of the stem cells and the unborn to heap more unwanted children on a society, that they don’t want to support with their taxes. Maybe it should be required if you’re pro-life, against gov’t supported health care, welfare, and services to support our indigent society - maybe you should be required to foster one of these kids? So you sow, so shall you reap.

By: Mom 2 Five

Mom 2 Five — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:17:37 +0000

The foster care rates quoted here are for children placed in state licensed homes. Most foster children in Colorado are place through private CPA’s (Child Placement Agencies.) These agencies license their own foster parents, and most of these agencies are paid upward of $2,000 per month from the state. Foster care in Colorado is big business. The state receives additional money from the Federal Government (Title IV-E) for each child placed in out of home placement. Colorado has one of the highest rates of out of home placement in the country. Again, foster care is big business in Colorado, and most, but not all of the foster parents do it for one thing, the money.