Three Little Words: A Must-Read for Child Welfare Professionals

The odds seemed to be stacked against Ashley Rhodes Carter. Born to a teenage mother in Florida in 1985 and removed from her mother at the age of three, she spent ten years in 14 different homes, surviving abuse, neglect, and separation from her brother.

But Ashley defeated the odds. Adopted at the age of 12, Ashley completed high school, went to college on a full scholarship, and obtained a master’s in social work. In 2008, Ashley published Three Little Words, chronicling her harrowing journey through the child welfare system and her eventual adoption by a family whose loving care enabled her to blossom into an accomplished and successful adult.

I just discovered this book, which is surprisingly classified as Young Adult. ButThree Little Words should be required reading for any child welfare professional. Ashley’s story illustrates some ways that things have improved and some ways they haven’t, and casts light on debates that are still raging.

Unhelpful Front End

Ashley and her brother were removed from their mother after she was arrested for writing a bad check. She was cleared and released in six days, but the children were not returned. Ashley’s mother was told she needed to provide for her children, but her applications for financial assistance and food stamps were denied because she did not have custody of them at the time.

Today, almost 30 years after Ashley’s removal, the field places a high priority on keeping kids at home and getting them back home as soon as possible with agency assistance. Nevertheless, children often stay in foster care long after they could be returned if the right help was available. Perhaps new legislation introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to change the financing of child welfare will help. It will give states the flexibility to use federal foster care funds on preventive services to keep kids at home.

But changes also need to be made in the culture of child welfare agencies and government agencies that interact with low-income people. Just last weekend, the New York Times carried the story of a woman who left her baby with a friend in the domestic violence shelter where they were living in order to purchase diapers after the official curfew. When she returned, the police were taking her baby away. She spent two weeks in jail and lost her shelter spot. Five months later, she was still fighting to get her child back.

Languishing in Foster Care

Ashley’s mother also had a problem with drugs and alcohol. Perhaps she would have received more help today, but she did not take advantage of the opportunities available at the time. She did not make herself available for visits and was often in jail. Despite that disinterest, Ashley was in foster care for over five years before her mother’s rights were terminated and she was freed for adoption.

Federal legislation passed in 1996 attempted to prevent children languishing in foster care for years. It requires agencies to initiate the termination of parents’ rights for children who have been in care for 15 of the last 22 months, with certain exceptions. This has certainly improved the chances for many children like Ashley to achieve permanency. However, in my experience in the District of Columbia, judges often did not cooperate with attempts to terminate parental rights, insisting that parents be given additional months or even years to regain their kids.

Safety vs. Well-Being

After Ashley had been in four different foster homes, she and her brother found a loving home with her grandfather and his common-law wife in South Carolina. But the children were eventually sent back to Florida to live with strangers. Ashley was never able to find out why they were sent back. There were apparently safety concerns regarding her grandfather’s lifestyle but Ashley felt that this was beside the point.

“It seemed logical to me that Luke and I would be safest with someone who actually loved us,” she writes in Three Little Words.

The conflict between safety and well-being for foster children still plagues the system today. There are no easy answers, but social workers need to understand the importance of a loving home to a child’s well-being and healthy development.

Bad Foster Homes

If safety really was the concern in the removal of Ashley from her relatives, the system truly failed when she was placed in the nightmarish home of the Moss family. In the Moss home, the husband stood by while his wife punished the children by pouring hot sauce in their mouths, requiring them to run and squat, dragging them by the hair, and in Ashley’s case, pushing her face into her own vomit.

The Mosses were investigated three times, but the charges were never substantiated because their word was taken over that of the children. It was only years later that Ms. Moss was arrested for abuse and neglect of children she adopted.

When she obtained their file, Ashley learned that the staff who originally licensed them had overlooked numerous red flags that should have prevented their being licensed at all. The file was full of praise for their great work as foster parents even as negative reports were ignored.

Horror stories like this exist but more common are the people who foster for the money and provide little more than room and board. This type of neglect may be less traumatic than horrific abuse, but it can be very harmful to children who need special attention.

The perennial shortage of foster parents means that agencies are extremely unlikely to fire bad ones. And one reason for this shortage is that the government is unwilling to spend the money it takes to pay for professional, full-time foster parents or family-style group homes. Which brings us to the next point…

Benefits of Group Homes

After many foster homes, Ashley was placed in a group home, where she stayed until she was adopted. Ashley’s tale makes clear the drawbacks of group homes: the institutional celebration of holidays, the lack of normalcy, and worst of all, the transience of staff.

But Ashley grew and matured in this home, and formed a close relationship with two staff members, who became lifelong connections. It seems clear that she got better care in the group home than she did in many of her foster homes. It was only in the group home that she found stability and relationships with caring adults, as well as the therapeutic services she needed. From the group home, she was adopted at the age of 12 by the Courter family, whose love and support enabled her to fulfill her great potential.

An Attorney for Every Child

Ashley’s book illustrates the necessity that every foster child have an advocate in court. It was only after a volunteer Guardian Ad Litem was appointed that the government moved to terminate her mother’s rights.

The only way to make sure that every child has an advocate is to mandate that an attorney be appointed for every child in foster care. A 2008 report indicates that 31 states plus the District of Columbia mandated the appointment of an attorney. The other states—including Florida–need to follow suit. The appointment of an advocate should be a right, not a privilege. It may even save money if it leads to children exiting foster care sooner.

Ashley Rhodes-Courter went on to become a motivational speaker, author, foster parent, adoptive parent, and birth mother. She chronicles these experiences in her new memoir, Three More Words, just published this year.

This column was published in the Chronicle of Social Change on August 25, 2015.

Barrus Report Proves It: Group Homes Are Right for Some Kids

On August 5, The Chronicle highlighted the recommendations of Eric Barrus, one of 12 former foster youths participating in the Foster Youth Internship Program of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Barrus agrees with many experts that large group homes or institutions should not be used as long-term placements for foster youth. However, he proposes that small group homes run by families should be a preferred option for older, harder-to-place foster youth.

Barrus’s position is based on his personal experience. He was in foster care from age 16 through 19, and was initially placed in large group homes of up to 30 children where it was “next to impossible” to build the relationships with staff and peers that are important to healthy adolescent development. Finally, he was placed in an independent family group home in Montana called Open Gate Ranch. Eric thrived there, and was eventually adopted by the family that runs the home.

“The Ranch,” as it is affectionately known, is an independent family group home that houses up to eight boys at a time. Barrus stresses the family-like nature of the Ranch. “The parents live in the home 24/7, which creates a loving and accepting environment, where there are opportunities to develop trust, build relationships and be part of the family. They also…[make] every kid feel special by attending their extracurricular activities; …helping them attain a driver’s license; and celebrating birthdays, graduations, and other milestones.”

Residents of the home also enjoy weekly family nights, family vacations, theme park trips, and holiday celebrations, he wrote.

As a former foster care social worker, I know this is significantly more than I saw most foster parents do for their wards.

The Ranch is not alone in the provision of excellent family-based group care. In an earlier column, I described my visit to a Boys Town family group home in Washington, D.C. The dining room wall is covered with photos of former residents many of whom come back often to see the home’s “Teaching Parents,” who have been doing this for 20 years. Both the sparkling interior and the loving, dedicated full-time parents were in sharp contrast to many of the dark, dingy, loveless foster homes I have observed.

Group home opponents often cite research purportedly showing that foster care produces better outcomes than group care. But Dr. Bethany Lee, one of the nation’s leading experts on group care, questions the quality of this research. In an introduction to her own study, she notes several methodological problems with previous comparative studies between group care and foster care.

In their study, she and her co-author, Dr. Ronald Thompson, tried to minimize these limitations. Comparing youth who received foster care through Boys Town with youth who participated in Boys Town family-style group homes, they found that the youth in group care were more likely to be favorably discharged, more likely to return home and less likely to experience a subsequent formal placement than the foster care youth.

No differences were found in subsequent legal involvement or the likelihood of living in a homelike setting six months after discharge.

As Eric points out, family-style group homes are particularly needed in light of the foster parent shortages around the country, which can result in a prevalence of poor-quality foster homes. Agencies with a foster parent shortage are often reluctant to screen out or dismiss people who go into foster care for the money and provide nothing more than room and board. I described the results in an earlier column about bad foster homes.

Group home opponents often cite their expense, which is considerably greater than that of family foster care. Eric points out that some youth in foster care, especially older boys who have experienced trauma and failed in multiple family placements, simply cannot function in a foster home. The higher cost of group care for these youth might be a bargain if it enables the taxpayers to avoid future expenses on public assistance, homelessness, substance abuse, and incarceration.

Eric recommends that family group homes be made “a preferred placement option over non-family group home and institutional placements for “hard-to-place” teen boys.” He also suggests that “family group homes” should be considered a separate category between foster home care and group care.

Unfortunately, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has expressed his intention to restrict funding for group homes. It’s not clear whether Senator Hatch recognizes the distinction between large institutional group homes and smaller, family-style homes. As The Chronicle suggests in the article about Eric’s recommendations, we need more research into the outcomes of different types of group homes for different types of youth before Congress places restrictions on their funding.

This column was published in the Chronicle of Social Change on August 13, 2015

Class Action Consequences: The Dangers of Measuring Quantity Instead of Quality

Child welfare systems in many states are under court monitoring or receivership. Courts became involved due to class action lawsuits, such as the one recently filed against New York City’s child welfare agency.

Obviously, these legal advocates are trying to help children caught up in these systems. However, as a social worker in the District of Columbia for five years, I was surprised to learn that court oversight often hindered my ability to help my clients.

Class action settlements often emphasize quantifiable performance, even when this is not meaningful. Moreover, some standards are poorly defined, requiring staff to waste time in unnecessary activities.

In the District of Columbia, the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) is operating under an Implementation and Exit Plan (IEP) approved by the court. The IEP contains 83 requirements (with associated “exit standards”) that CFSA must meet to “exit” court oversight. A few examples will illustrate the problems.

The IEP prescribes that each child in a new placement be visited four times in the first month. It seems reasonable to require more visits during the first month so that the social worker can assess how placement is going and intervene if necessary. But mindless implementation of that standard can result in absurdity.

I had a client who was temporarily placed with a new foster family because her foster parent needed heart surgery. As required, I visited my client four times in the first month in her temporary placement. The ailing foster parent made a slow recovery and my client ended up staying at the “temporary” home. When the placement was changed from “respite” to long-term, it was treated as a new placement, and I had to visit four times in that month as well!

The IEP requires that children in foster care receive a full medical evaluation within 30 days of placement. This sounds reasonable. What could be wrong with requiring a medical evaluation?

Let’s start with the fact that CFSA requires that this evaluation be provided by its own clinic. That clinic does not give immunizations, so if the child needs immunizations, she will have to receive another physical from a real clinic.

What happens if the child has already had a physical within the past year and documentation of this physical is obtained? No dice, unless that physical happened within the past month.

No big deal? Remember that the hard-working social worker or case aide is required to transport the child. Counting transportation there and back, this may take up half a day, typically more than the amount of time a social worker has to spend on each case per week. Meanwhile, the child might miss a half-day of school in order to obtain a physical that may be unnecessary or insufficient.

The IEP calls for the reduction of multiple placements for children in care. Of the youths served in foster care during a current year, 83 percent of them must have two or fewer placements.

As a result, CFSA staff are extremely reluctant to approve new placements even when in the child’s interest. I had one client who was not thriving. His foster parent provided no support or supervision, and he was alone much of the time.

When I tried to get him a new placement, I was told that he would have to stay in the home. It was more important to the agency to avoid a new placement that would hurt the numbers than it was to meet the needs of my client.

The IEP requires that all youth 18 or older have a “Youth Transition Plan” to prepare them for adulthood. A simple, useful format was replaced some time ago by a cumbersome template which contains about 20 separate Word documents.

Hysteria gripped my office when the deadline approached for documenting that all of our older teens had plans. Daily emails made it clear that this documentation was to be our top priority, ahead of things that had much more relevance to children’s lives.

Clients often were not interested in attending the team meeting that was supposed to be held to develop the plan. In one case, I had the entire team assemble three times, to be stood up by the client every time.

The existence of a written plan is much less important than other factors such as the quality of foster parenting, mental health care, and education that the client receives. But the existence of a plan is much easier to measure—and it is much easier to produce a plan than to improve the quality of services that the client receives.

I do not wish to leave readers with the idea that court supervision or performance standards are necessarily bad. If the standards are meaningful, they can be an effective method for improving child welfare systems. But meaningful standards are often ones that cannot be measured quantitatively.

The IEP contains some qualitative standards. Assessing performance on these standards requires qualitative review, which is expensive and hard to do well. Perhaps that is why agencies and courts seem to be addicted to meaningless, easy-to-measure standards that often hinder, not help, the provision of quality service.

This column was published by the Chronicle of Social Change on August 4, 2015.

The Shortcomings of Structured Decision Making

As recently reported in The Chronicle of Social Change, Los Angeles County and other jurisdictions have been developing a new tool to help assess the risk to children who have been referred to the child welfare system.

Los Angeles, like many other jurisdictions, is using an earlier generation of risk and safety assessment tools. But at least in my experience in the District of Columbia, few professionals have any faith in the utility of these tools.

I am referring to the so-called Structured Decision Making (SDM) model for child protection, produced by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD). The model includes six different assessments conducted at different stages of a case.

According to NCCD, the model is in use in 33 jurisdictions in the United States and in a total of 48 jurisdictions worldwide. As recently as May of this year, Texas adopted the SDM assessments for investigations and is planning to adopt the remaining assessments for ongoing services in the fall.

SDM is based on checklists filled out by social workers based on their interviews and observations, as well as other data they might be able to obtain. Using this information, the computer uses “actuarial science” to generate a risk level or a recommended action.

Unfortunately, these SDM assessments rely on yes-or-no questions that do not capture many important factors. Speaking to The Chronicle‘s Holden Slattery, Los Angeles social workerRuby Guillen complained that the yes-no framework fails to distinguish between a mother experiencing depression after her husband’s death and a mother suffering from schizophrenia and refusing medication.

She added that the instrument also fails to incorporate important risk factors, including the risk posed by secondary caregivers such as a mother’s boyfriend—a major concern in child welfare.

The head of child welfare in Los Angeles, Philip Browning, expressed concern that, due to the manual nature of the process, workers could manipulate the process to provide the desired result. I know from personal experience that this is easy to do, especially since the checklists include poorly defined multiple-choice answers that leave workers no choice other than using their judgment.

Alternatively, the worker can simply override the system-generated result. However, I discovered that neither was necessary in the District of Columbia. In one case, I decided to leave the system-generated recommendation in place even though we had already decided to override it, just to see if anyone cared. Not surprisingly, nobody did.

So why are jurisdictions using these instruments if they are useless and ignored? In the District of Columbia, the SDM is so tightly integrated with the entire case management process within the electronic database that it might be costly to remove it. But if the costs in time spent by social workers were calculated, removing SDM would probably save money.

It is possible that in jurisdictions where social workers are not required to have a Master’s Degree or a license, the SDM provides some needed guidance in making decisions. But integration within the data system does not explain why the state system in Texas would be adopting the tool today.

Automated risk assessment algorithms (whether old or new) are supposed to improve upon the ability of the social worker to make child protection decisions. But the SDM risk assessments do not provide any such improvement in my experience. Whether a new generation of risk assessments can do better remains to be seen.

The risk modeling experiment conducted in Los Angeles used a wide variety of data including parents’ mental health and substance abuse history. Given privacy rules, I am not sure how the Department of Children and Family Services is going to get access to all this information.

Regardless of the answer to that question, I hope that those developing the new tools will field-test them extensively to make sure that they don’t suffer from the same problems as SDM.

But let’s not wait until new tools are adopted to throw out SDM and similar first-generation risk assessment tools, at least in jurisdictions where they are useless and ignored.

There is a real cost to having workers complete useless assessments, and it is measured in time: The time it takes workers to complete them; supervisors to review them (if they bother to); and trainers to train workers to use them.

Worst, perhaps, is the effect on worker morale of having to complete busywork when there is so much real work to be done.

This column was published in the Chronicle of Social Change on July 30, 2015.

Reducing Psychotropic Medications Requires Systemic Reform

 The over-reliance on psychotropic medication for children in foster care has been drawing a lot of attention both among policymakers and in the media. A recent study reports that in 2012, Pennsylvania’s foster children were nearly three times as likely to be prescribed psychotropic drugs for behavior problems as other children on Medicaid.

Proposals before Congress and various state legislatures attempt to address the excessive use of psychotropic drugs for foster children. But it is important to recognize that over-reliance on psychotropic medications is a symptom of larger problems.

In my five years as a foster care social worker in the District of Columbia, I saw several young people who were given too many psychotropic medications. In every one these cases, serious and general problems with the foster care system played a significant role.

One such problem is the lack of involvement of many foster parents in the care provided to their charges. In my practice as a social worker, it was very rare for foster parents to take children to the psychiatrist. The foster parent was not there to tell the psychiatrist what the child’s symptoms were, or how the child was responding to the medication already prescribed. Instead the social worker, with far less detailed information, was the liaison between the foster family and the psychiatrist.

Most foster parents did not take their child to the psychiatrist because they worked full-time and expected the social worker to take their children to appointments. “Real parents” know they have to take off from work for this purpose. If more foster parents treated their foster children as their own, there would be less reliance on inappropriate psychotropic medications.

Foster parents need to be part of a vigorous treatment team including the psychiatrist, therapist, social worker, Guardian ad Litem, and birth parent. Such a strong team, with the foster parent fully on board, is one way to prevent inappropriate medication. As I’ve argued before, in order to make sure foster parents are willing and able to do this for children with special needs, they need to be paid as professionals for whom parenting is a full-time job.

A major investigative report of California’s system found that of the 3,800 youths living in group homes, more than half were authorized to receive psychotropic drugs. One reason for this may be that group homes are serving the most troubled youth. But any group home relying on medication as a means of control rather than treatment clearly has serious problems.

Poor mental health care for Medicaid recipients is another root cause of the overuse of psychotropic medications. Because Medicaid reimbursement rates are so low, the quality of psychiatric services delivered through it is notoriously poor. One Medicaid psychiatrist would write my client’s prescriptions as we were walking into the office. She had no intention of talking to her patient before we left with the prescriptions, even though Medicaid was being billed for an office visit.

Another psychiatrist insisted on prescribing medication to a patient even though she had been doing well without it. He expressed the fear that in the absence of medicine, the judge on the case would blame him for any misbehavior by the client.

A reduction in the use of medication requires an increased reliance on therapy. President Obama’s plan to reduce psychotropic medications supports state efforts to come up with alternative, evidence-based practices such as trauma-informed therapies. But in the absence of increased Medicaid reimbursement rates, these new therapies will be administered mainly by poorly-reimbursed providers.

Because the poor quality of Medicaid therapists is widely recognized, the District of Columbia contracts with other providers to provide therapy to a small number of clients, the most troubled ones. But most foster children have to rely on mediocre Medicaid therapists.

In order to address the overuse of medication, we need to recognize the broader problems that contribute to it. It makes sense to monitor medication use among foster children and target group homes or psychiatrists who are out of line in their use of medication.

But adding layers of review without addressing the root causes of the problem might just reduce the amount of medication children receive. It will do nothing to ensure they receive the appropriate treatment to meet their needs.

This column was published in the Chronicle of Social Change on July 13, 2015.

Confidentiality Should Not Apply When a Young Child Disappears

On March 19, 2014, a school social worker in Washington, D.C. went to a homeless shelter to obtain a doctor’s note for a student. Eight-year-old Relisha Rudd had been absent from her classroom for almost three weeks without a written excuse. Her family had told school staff that Relisha was ill and under the care of a “Doctor Tatum.”

But when the social worker arrived at the shelter, he discovered that the supposed “doctor” was a janitor and the child was missing. This touched off a frantic hunt for the missing child, who was last seen on March 1.

Tatum, who police believe shot and killed his wife, was found dead of an apparent suicide in a park. Over a year later, the child has not been found and is feared dead. But despite the real fear that this young girl will never be found, records that could shed light on what happened here are being kept confidential.

Relisha’s case has been portrayed as a failure of the District’s crumbling family homeless shelter. To a secondary degree, the school has been held responsible for failing to report Relisha’s absence earlier to the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA). But the role of CFSA itself in this tragedy has received little attention.

Relisha’s family was known to CFSA. Not only had the family been the subject of several reports of abuse or neglect, but the most recent occurred only a few months before Relisha disappeared. The Washington Postreported that “a social worker noted a lack of supervision and abuse.” Unfortunately, the Post’s coverage did not clarify whether CFSA opened a case to provide services and supervision.

According to the Post, there were numerous indications that the family was in trouble. Relisha’s brothers had frequent behavior problems at school. School staff reported numerous warning signs, such as Relisha missing over 30 days of school and often showing up dirty, and Relisha and her brother waiting for a ride long after other children had left school.

If a case was open, then a social worker was required to see all the children at least twice a month. If there was no open case, then the question is: Why not?

The backdrop to this story is the dramatic decline in the District of Columbia’s foster care caseload: the number of children in care has decreased from 2,007 at the end of 2010 to 1,068 at the end of 2014. CFSA has been touting the success of its initiative to take fewer children into foster care. About 62 percent of its clients are now being served in-home.

That is good news indeed, as long as the children remaining with their families are receiving the monitoring and services that they need to be safe. However, Relisha’s story suggests that may not be the case.

Children who are remaining at home with their families are not receiving adequate services, according to the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP). CSSP monitors child welfare services for the court. Of the cases CSSP reviewed where a child
was receiving in-home services, “only 25 percent were rated as acceptable on ‘Implementing Supports and Services.’”  Moreover, only 30- to 51 percent of the cases reviewed each month had documentation that safety was fully assessed at two or more visits as required by the court. These results give reason to wonder how many potential Relishas are currently out there.

Unfortunately, confidentiality laws prevent the release of information that would let us know how the system broke down in Relisha’s case. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) requires that states preserve the confidentiality of child abuse reports and records except in the case of a fatality or near fatality. A “near-fatality” is currently interpreted to be an act that puts the child in serious or critical condition.

But remarkably, a young child who has been missing for over a year does not qualify as a “near fatality.” And citing confidentiality, CFSA has refused to issue any details about its handling of Relisha’s case. Instead, the agency posted a report on its interactions with Relisha Rudd and her family with large sections redacted. Many of these omissions appear to imply that there were gaps in the services provided by agencies including CFSA.

We cannot rely on child welfare agencies to take the necessary measures to prevent tragedies like Relisha’s in the absence of external scrutiny. CAPTA should be changed to require states to release otherwise confidential information in cases where children have been missing for some time and there is substantial reason to believe they are dead.

The safety of children in the system must take precedence over the right of confidentiality. Less than a month ago, volunteer divers were again searching the Anacostia River for Relisha’s body. The citizens of the District should not have to depend on the finding of her body in order to learn whether the government tried to protect her while she was alive.

This column was published in the Chronicle of Social Change on July 7, 2015. 

Educational Stability, Normalcy Best Served by Closer Placements

In the past, the trauma of being placed in foster care was often intensified by placement in a new school. But in 2008, Congress passed the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which required that a child who is placed in foster care (or in a new foster home) remain in the same school unless it is not in his or her best interest.

But as reported in The Chronicle of Social Change last week, implementation has been hampered by the lack of cooperation from schools. In response, Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have introduced a bill to improve education stability for kids in foster care by enhancing collaboration between child welfare agencies and schools.

Fostering Connections made a big difference, at least in the District of Columbia where I worked as a social worker. The first thing we used to do when a child came into care was to register him or her at a new school near the foster home, which was usually in Maryland. With the implementation of Fostering Connections, we were suddenly making arrangements to have our clients transported to their current school in D.C.

This change in practice was positive for many foster children. My first client to benefit was attending a high-performing charter school in the city. Rather than putting her in the low-performing school in the neighborhood of the foster home, we were able to transport her to her school, which was a great source of stability and support for her.

However, in many cases, school stability conflicts with another value that is currently gaining great currency: that of “normalcy” for foster children. Following the lead of several states, Congress recently enacted a law last year that requires states to allow foster children to engage in “extracurricular, enrichment, cultural and social activities.”

But when young people have long commutes that require private transportation, it is often difficult or impossible for them to participate in activities and visit friends. In many urban areas, children removed from families in the inner city go to foster homes in the suburbs because there are not enough foster families in central cities.

Over half of D.C.’s foster kids live in Maryland. Many of these children are being transported to their original D.C. school or to a Maryland school that they attended when they lived in a previous foster home. This trip can be as much as 40 miles for children in foster homes in the outer suburbs. Private transportation providers generally use a van transporting several children to and from different homes and schools, so many young people spend more than an hour in the van as they wait for others to be picked up or dropped off.

Children using private transportation are often unable to participate in extracurricular activities because transportation services rarely do pickups after 5 pm and often require that children be picked up at the same time every day. It is also difficult for foster children to visit friends (a big target of the normalcy law) because of distance and lack of public transportation.

Not only are long rides to school bad for kids, but they are also extremely expensive. Unfortunately, there is no data publicly available about how much governments are spending for school transportation. I know it was a major expense for the two private agencies for which I worked.

I also wonder if the benefit is worth the cost. The private agency I worked for most recently was paying a driver to pick up one of my clients and bring him to school daily. But my client was refusing to go to school about twice a week and was failing all his classes. I’m not sure this was a sensible investment.

There is only one way to meet the twin goals of normalcy and school stability. Rather than drive children all over the metropolitan area to get them to their original schools, we need to keep them close to home. This means trying to recruit more foster homes located in central cities.

The District of Columbia has launched a new recruiting campaign to do just that. But it is hard to believe this effort will succeed in the District and other cities where rapidly rising housing prices are driving away the people who are most likely to be foster parents. We may have to look at paying foster parents a salary or even providing them with housing in order to be able to keep our children where they belong: near their homes and schools.

This column was published in the Chronicle of Social Change on June 30, 2015.