News
Page 8
Street Roots •
Feb. 3-9, 2017
Street Roots •
Oregon foster youths have created
a bill that would make sibling
contact a legally binding right
BY EMILY GREEN
STAFF W R IT E R
I
t’s been two years since DeAnna Baker has
seen or heard from h er two little brothers.
Baker, 16, and her younger siblings have
been in and out of Oregon’s foster care system
since they were infants, moving back and forth
between foster homes and living with their
parents on the outer west edges of the
Portland metro area.
During the final year that they lived in their
parents’ home, their mother and two older
siblings were n& longer in the picture.
That’s when Baker began to assume a
parental role. A child herself, she was the most
dependable person in her little brothers’ lives.
“I’d make them food. I’d get them dressed.
I’d pick out their clothes - that kind of thing,”
she said.
After they were removed from their father’s
custody for the last time, the three were placed
in a foster home in Newberg, but the
placement wasn’t right for Baker.
She eventually moved back north, to Forest
Grove, to live with h er grandparents. She was
25 miles away from her little brothers, but she
made sure to stay in contact with them.
At first, visits were twice a month, then once
a month, but her access to them slowly
dwindled, she said.
It was after her former foster parents
formally adopted her brothers, Baker said, that
she was cut off from them completely.
“It’s hard - really, really hard,” she said.
D eA nna Baker, 16, belongs to Oregon Foster Youth Connection, a youth-led advocacy group. She and three other foster youths helped create a policy recommendation fo r a Sibling B ill o f Rights.
“How would it feel to have yo.ur arm chopped
off? Like they are always there, and then all of
a sudden, they’re not. I miss seeing their faces.
They are going through puberty, and I don’t
know what they look like.”
When Baker joined Oregon Foster Youth
Connection in the summer, she wanted to find
a way to ensure that other foster kids wouldn’t
be cut off from their siblings the way she was
from hers.
Oregon Foster Youth Connection, founded by
a former foster youth in 2008, is a program of
Children First for Oregon. OFYC is a statewide,
youth-led advocacy group with roughly 50
active members, all current and former foster
youths ages 14 to 25.
When it comes to getting legislation passed,
OFYC is a heavy hitter; every bill its youthful
members have had introduced into the Oregon
Legislature has eventually been signed into law.
Before Oregon’s 2017 legislative session
officially began, OFYC’s bill to create a Foster
Children’s Sibling Bill of Rights had already
been introduced as House Bill 2216.
Baker was one of four foster youths who
created the policy recommendation for a
Sibling Bill of Rights at OFYC’s 2016 Policy
Conference in July. At the end of the four-day
gathering, the youths presented their work to
lawmakers and service providers at their
annual luncheon. The words they shared that
day are represented nearly word-for-word in the
bill, said Lisa McMahon, OFYC’s program
director.
A recent survey of 525 current and former
foster youths in six states, including Oregon,
asked participants to pick the top five issues
they felt were most important and in need of
change in the foster care system.
The most-selected issue was “seeing
siblings,” with 52 percent of the foster youths
naming it as one of their priorities.
In Oregon, 60 percent of youths selected
“seeing siblings,” and 60 percent also selected
“preventing homelessness.”
Oregon and Massachusetts were the only
two states where more than 40 percent of
survey takers also selected “foster parent
training” as a top priority.
While OFYC members decided to move
forward with siblings’ rights, there were other
policy recommendations they drafted at the
2016 Policy Conference that they hope will
move forward outside of the legislative
process.
McMahon said Oregon Department of
Human Services has been receptive to working
with the youths in her program on these other
policy recommendations.
Those recommendations include conflict
resolution training for foster parents and
caseworkers, better communication with each
foster child at the start of his or her placement,
better screening of potential foster homes and
parents, and a mandate that a DHS employee
conduct monthly visits of foster homes “using a
physical checklist to inspect the living
environment”
They also want DHS to be more supportive
of LGBTQ foster youths, enabling them to
open up to care providers without obstacles
such as “religion and judgment,” and better
access to LGBTQ resources.
Finally, the youths indicated they wanted
specialized training for caseworkers working
with youths ages 18 to 21 that will better equip
them to help the foster youths transition
successfully out of foster care.
“We need to be doing a better job of
listening directly to the people7 that services
impact; in this case, foster youth,” said Sen.
Sara Gelser (D-Corvallis).
That’s why she’s signed on as one of several
chief co-sponsors of the Foster Children’s
Sibling Bill of Rights.
“The connection between siblings is critical,
and unfortunately, our current system is very
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News
Feb. 3-9, 2017
focused on what is convenient for the system,”
Gelser said.
McMahon said that for the foster kids,
maintaining contact with their siblings helps
ensure that they have family members who are
there for them as they move into adulthood.
For the kids, it’s a no-brainer.
“I want siblings to be able to have contact
with each other. It’s not right for them to be
separated just because their parents mess up,”
Baker said.
If approved, the bill would write into state
statute foster youths’ right to maintain contact
and visits with siblings and their right to be
provided with transportation so visits can take
place. Additionally, it would require that foster
parents receive training on the importance of
sibling relationships.
When asked if she was concerned about
adding requirements foster parents must meet,
given the state’s crisis-level shortage of foster
homes, Gelser said it shouldn’t be a
compromise.
“The foster care system needs to be solely
focused on the needs of youth,” she said. “I
believe that quality foster parents that are
stepping up and opening their homes to love
and support young people in their time of need
will want to ensure that they are connected
with their siblings. It’s just the right thing to
do.”
A spokesperson for DHS declined Street
Roots’ request to speak with someone about
how this bill might affect current practices,
citing expected amendments, but said the
agency works closely with OFYC and values its
work.
The current version of the bill includes a
provision that would have helped Baker stay in
contact with her little brothers. It mandates
that any adoptive placement must include
term s ensuring that contact with siblings is
encouraged and maintained.
However, McMahon said OFYC’s youth
members will add an amendment to that
provision, changing the language so that it’s a
strong suggestion rather than a mandate.
“They don’t want one of their siblings to
possibly not get adopted if the family doesn’t
feel like they can handle having a relationship
with all current and future
siblings,” McMahon said.
Also included in the bill
" I want siblings to be
is a requirement that foster
able to have contact with
youths be “immediately and
timely notified of placement each other. St's not right
for them to be separated
changes or catastrophic
events affecting a sibling.”
just because their parents
This element is crucial to mess up."
19-year-old OFYC member
DEANNA BAKER
Raven Bowman, who also
.1
-FOSTER Y O U T H t
helped draft the policy
recommendation.
When her younger brother was killed in a car
crash in November 2014, no one thought to
notify his siblings. Her older sister didn’t learn
of his death until the day before his memorial.
Bowman said her brother’s death was
especially difficult for her little sister because
the two were “like twins.”
Like Baker, Bowman also felt she was a
protector of her younger siblings.
She described being separated from her
siblings while in foster care as being like
torture. Because she made the decision to
leave a foster home where she was being
bullied, she felt like she had failed h er younger
siblings.
“I didn’t know if they were OR, and it was
fear. It grew every single time I couldn’t talk to
them or didn’t know what was going on,” she
said. “When I moved away, it got very difficult
(to contact them). There were restrictions on
phone access; I couldn’t make connections with
them. I often didn’t know when visits were. I
wasn’t allowed on social media, so I couldn’t
contact them that way.”
Now she’s able to talk to them from where
she’s living in Creswell, but she rarely sees
them because they live an hour south in
Lebanon.
When Street Roots spoke with Bowman in
mid-January, she said she still hadn’t been able
to give her siblings the Christmas presents she
had purchased for them.
“When you are in the foster care system,
siblings are all the connection that you have,”
she said. “They know what you are going
through; they know everything. They want to
help you: They want to stick by you.”
emily@streetroots. org