Foster parents express difficulties at hearing

Being a mom was the best job Beverly Eby ever had.

And she got paid 32 cents an hour to do it.

Eby acted as a foster parent for her two great nephews for seven months starting in July 2007. But she said the compensation she received from a private foster-care agency wasn't enough to cover food, diapers, transportation and other expenses for the two babies.

"You come out with the short end of the stick," Eby said. "If the state is going to remove children from their homes, then they better darn well be ready to pay for their care."

Eby was one of 13 proponents for Sen. Annette Dubas' LB 926, a bill designed to establish a minimum base rate for foster care payments and cut out the middle man of private agencies and subcontractors in the payment process. At the bill's hearing Thursday afternoon with the Health and Human Service Committee, Dubas said the state's average payments to foster parents, which vary for each agency, are among the lowest in the nation.

Teresa Aernie, a foster parent in the process of adopting the three children in her and her husband's care, said one child's $200 monthly stipend "didn't even cover her diapers." And when health problems entered the picture for the baby girl, who was born early and had a hole in her heart, monetary troubles worsened.

"I had to threaten going to the governor's door to get this child a heart surgery," Aernie said.

The child is now 2 years old and healthy. Soon, Aernie will be her legal parent.

But Melanie Williams-Smotherman, the lone testifying opponent of the bill, fears that not all foster parents are like Aernie. Williams-Smotherman, executive director of Family Advocacy Movement, said that foster care placements often remove children from well-meaning, but impoverished, homes. She said funding would be better spent assisting families who can't afford to adequately care for their children.

"If this bill passes, we are afraid it will attract the wrong kind of people," Williams-Smotherman said. "If foster parents are not doing it for the money, why is it unreasonable for them to receive a little less than necessary to take care of the children (whom) they claim to love as their own?"

Dubas acknowledged Williams-Smotherman's concerns but called her bill simply "one small component of a much bigger picture of child welfare reform."

With LB 926, Dubas also hopes to provide equal compensation for kinship placements — relatives or close acquaintances who assume care of foster children. Because kinship placements are uncertified for foster care, the state provides them with less compensation for the child's needs, which include food, clothing, education and transportation.

An agency director said the current maximum payment for kinship placements is $10 a day, while other foster parents are paid a minimum of $15 a day.

"I've never been able to make the connection as to why we pay them less," Dubas said. "Maybe they don't have the training that certified foster parents have, but they do bring other things to the table. I don't think we can undervalue those things."

An internal study by the Nebraska Foster Care Review Board in 2010 revealed that 50 percent of foster parents chose to discontinue their work, mainly because of inadequate reimbursement and difficulty working with the system, according to interim director Kathy Bigsby Moore.

Proponents of the bill said inadequate reimbursement fuels a never-ending cycle that passes children from household to household because of financial troubles.

"Even at $20 (a day), we are not meeting the basic needs of a two-year-old in foster care," said Leigh Esau, a former foster parent. "If we don't start paying attention to this, we will be in dire straits down the road."

Members of the Health and Human Services Committee expressed agreement with testifying proponents.

"You are preaching to the choir," Sen. Mike Gloor said to Esau at the end of her testimony.

While no foster care agency executives expressed opposition to Dubas' bill, they disagreed with her intention to pay stipends directly to the foster parents — a move that would cut the agencies out of the process. They argued that agencies serve as a buffer in the payment process, handling issues with inaccurate payments and working with the foster families to ensure adequate compensation.