Foster care: Bill would create new category

By Adam Wilson | The Olympian • Published November 28, 2007

Washington would recognize a highly trained class of foster parents under a bill to be introduced in January.

"I do think we will see some sort of legislation about coming up with a specialized foster parent category," said Rep. Ruth Kagi, chairwoman of the House Children's Services Committee.

The state Children's Administration, lawmakers and foster parent representatives have been discussing the possibility of professionalizing some foster parenting. The meetings were part of a foster-care-reform bill Kagi sponsored this year.

In the next few weeks, the work group should come to agreement on a proposal that would place the parents who deal with the most-troubled children in their own class, advocate Daryl Daugs said.

Daugs works for Washington Federation of State Employees, the union that joined with the Foster Parent Association of Washington last year to push for policy changes.

"We'll be proposing a certain group of foster parents that will get prior training and be held accountable for their performance in handling mentally fragile kids and the toughest kids," Daugs said.

Most of the approximately 6,000 state foster parents care for a few foster children at a time, or take them with the intention of adopting them. But a minority serve as foster parents for a living, accepting monthly state reimbursement for the children's expenses while taking in kids who suffer from neglect or abuse.

Those children often require physical and/or mental therapy, and often act out, in ways such as such as running away or hoarding food, officials say.

Parents who care for such high-needs children are reimbursed at a higher rate.

The majority of foster parents still will be volunteers, he added. He said their level of training and the needs of the children they accept would define the new class.

Kagi said the new class of parents may not be called "professionals" because the term was somewhat controversial in the committee's meetings. They would not be state employees.

Daugs also is running for the Legislature in 2008 and proposed calling the highly trained group a "fostercorps" at a recent campaign event.