BY MICHON LINDSTROM | KENTUCKY

 

FRANKFORT, Ky. –  Kentucky’s foster care system is improving but there is still a lot of work to be done.

That was the message members of the Child Welfare Oversight and Advisory Committee heard Tuesday. The Department for Community Based Services and private foster care and service agency Necco testified in front of the committee about the background check process for foster care and adoptive parent applicants and the reevaluation process and procedures.

For private agency Necco, they expressed concern over the waiting to get background checks back through the current fingerprint process. The average applicant, regardless if there is a hit on prior offenses takes on average 30 days. Chief Strategy Officer Pamela Priddy says the agency would like to move toward a mobile FBI background check system that is currently in use in Ohio. Priddy says with a mobile fingerprint system the agency can receive background checks in about a day.

“For us having the convenience of knowing right off the bat is very important,” Priddy said. “The benefit for us of the portable FBI checks I think I can sum it up in 3 separate ways, safety, time and money.”

When foster parents go through the state they receive background checks faster, Kentucky State Police say the average time for fingerprint analysis is between 1-4 days. However, DCBS is looking into having electronic background checks at locations to streamline the process further—but the cost to implement this has still not been determined.

Once foster applicants have been approved they must go through training before they receive a child. The pre-service training requirement is 15 hours and then ongoing training must complete 30 hours of training the first two years after the pre-service training.

The pre-service training is to prepare foster parents for the situation they are going to embark in.

“Preparing them for that moment to care for that child because it’s the hardest thing that they will ever do,” said Mary Carpenter, Assistant Director of the Division of Protection & Permanency for DCBS. “Preparing them for meeting the needs of a traumatized child because that is not something they should take lightly.”

Since the implementation of 2018’s House Bill 1, the foster care and adoption system have been streamlined in hopes of creating more of an interest in foster care in the state. The legislation allowed more processes to be completed online and allowed more placements with relatives and fictive kin. HB 1 also amped up foster home recruitment which has been working to increase the number of foster homes in Kentucky.

“In the past year we have seen a dramatic spike in the number of homes and we have the most approved homes in the agencies history statewide both public and privately approved” Elizabeth Caywood, Deputy Commissioner of DCBS said. “This is a good thing to have available homes willing, quality homes, willing and able to take children in the custody of the cabinet.”

DCBS is attributing the improvement in the foster system to the cabinet, executive branch and legislative branch working together.

Speaker Pro Temp David Meade, R-Stanford, said after the committee he’s still not sure what if any changes will be made to HB 1 in the upcoming 2020 session.

“We haven’t really gotten into discussion on any tweaks or anything we’re going to do yet as we’ve been going through this process the past three-four months in this committee,” Meade said. “We’re more gathering data and information right now we’ll be compiling that within the next couple months. Most of the time we take December to compile all that data and see where we’re going to stand coming into the session.”