This story originially appeared in the Nov. 2, 1995 edition of The Boston Globe.
The state's foster care system is so ineffective that some children would be better off staying with their troubled families than being placed in state care, according to a legislative report released yesterday.
The report, the result of a five-month investigation by the bipartisan Senate Post Audit and Oversight Committee, blasts the Department of Social Services for not providing enough stability or services to foster children, and calls for the creation of a new, more independent agency.
Based on hundreds of interviews with DSS workers, court personnel and families, the committee found that "the foster care system often provides less stability than was provided by the dysfunctional family from which the child was removed."
"Children placed in the care and protection of the state," the report goes on to say, "fail to thrive."
The report's recommendations -- which will likely be modified after additional public hearings and meetings with Weld administration officials -- will be drafted into legislation by January. Unlike numerous other critical studies of DSS, this report will carry the weight of law if passed by the full Legislature and signed by Gov. Weld.
The Senate committee began its review of DSS after a Dorchester man was accused of raping one of his teen-age foster sons in May. Since then, several other children in state care have died or allegedly been abused by their foster parents.
DSS Commissioner Linda Carlisle said she agreed with many of the committee's recommendations, but said most had already been addressed by the governor's two recent requests for extra money for DSS, as well as his plans for reorganizing government, unveiled Wednesday.
"I feel {the report} has validated many of the same great things we've already been working on," she said. "I assume we'll be able to anticipate the Legislature's support."
Carlisle called the committee's assertion that foster care is often worse than the child's original abusive or neglectful home, however, "inflammatory."
"We try to use foster care and placement as a last resort," she said. "We have a system that tries to do its best."
Among the report's findings:
-"The department is unable to answer simple questions that ordinary parents would ask about their children, i.e., `Are they healthy? Are their emotional needs being met? Are they living a stable life?' "
-DSS does not collect data to show "how foster children are doing in school, whether they go on to college, or if they are capable of moving . . . into productive adulthood."
-Twenty percent of all DSS children, and 30 percent of the adolescents, have moved at least three times in DSS custody.
-There is a lack of coordination between DSS and the mental health, public health and juvenile-offender agencies. This means DSS workers "frequently" can't find services to preserve troubled families or support foster families.
Among the report's recommendations:
-Create an independent Children's Services Commission to oversee four children's agencies, including DSS. The commission chairman would report directly to the governor, rather than to Health and Human Services. Weld on Wednesday also proposed consolidating children's agencies.
-Establish multidisciplinary teams that would be available to review and determine where children should be placed.
-Develop enough group homes so that children are not hastily placed before they can be assessed.
-Expand criminal-record checks on care providers.
-Limit foster homes to four foster children; six total children.
"We've decided that foster care isn't necessarily the best way to place our children," said Sen. Therese Murray (D-Plymouth), vice chairwoman of the committee. "We're talking about bridge homes, group homes and preserving the family with more money."
"The system doesn't just need more money. We think we should do something different," said Sen. Thomas Norton (D-Fall River), chairman of the Post Audit Committee. "We believe this part of the administration has failed and we want it to be corrected. Even the governor's own party is with us on this."