OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2016
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
OUR VIEW
Foster care is
an urgent issue
for Legislature
A
cross Oregon, foster care for children is considered in
crisis and has urgent needs.
Troubling state and federal studies of Oregon’s
system, as recently reported by The Oregonian and others,
show the basic cause of the crisis is capacity for children in
need of foster care. Statewide, according to Oregon Public
Broadcasting, 11,000 children spend at least one day a year in
foster care. Some deeply disturbing reports show that across
Oregon, on average, six children who need foster care per week
end up spending the night at a human services office or a hotel.
In Clatsop County, the lack of capacity is also an issue. As
The Daily Astorian reported last week, there is a current short-
age of certified care providers for children authorities have
removed from unsafe and dysfunctional households, and the
local Child Welfare District office, which is part of the state
Department of Human Services, has launched a campaign to
recruit more foster parents.
Currently in the county there are 37 foster homes for chil-
dren, and in 19 of those the foster parent is a relative and is only
certified to care for that one child. Local child welfare officials
hope to recruit at least 10 more foster providers to help ease the
capacity crunch, and they know it will be a difficult task with
challenges to overcome. They also know it can provide worthy
and fulfilling results for those they recruit.
The process
Foster care is a complicated process where, as the state and
federal reports show, the goals don’t always equal the realities.
One goal all child welfare officers have is to keep as much nor-
malcy as they can for the foster children by keeping them in
their same school districts. They also work hard to prevent sib-
lings from being separated.
But because of the lack of capacity, it isn’t always possi-
ble in either case because often times there isn’t capacity in the
area where the children are from,
or the capacity for the siblings to be
Clearly the
together in the same home. The prob-
lem is even more amplified when it
system
comes to care for children with sig-
is broken
nificant trauma and other intensive
and needs
needs.
Recruiting foster care provid-
to be
ers isn’t easy because it requires
fixed.
that the care providers be certified,
must pass a background check and
home inspection, and must take a class through the Department
of Human Services that covers a variety of foster care topics
including how to take care for abused children. The certification
is a vital and takes time.
Shortcuts, obviously, aren’t acceptable when a child’s wel-
fare is at stake. Unfortunately, though, one of the most upset-
ting shortcomings of the system that the reports revealed is the
state has sometimes compromised those standards, which led
to disastrous results for some of the children the state sought to
protect and had the duty to do so.
The Legislature’s role
A year ago, Gov. Kate Brown commissioned an independent
review of the state’s child welfare system, and its preliminary
findings released in August mirrored that of federal findings that
documented the same long-standing problems that date back a
decade.
Clearly the system is broken and needs to be fixed. If it isn’t,
it may also put federal children’s welfare funding for Oregon at
risk.
According to state Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, a longtime
advocate for child welfare reforms, the Department of Human
Service’s current budget only allows it to employ 83 percent
of the caseworkers the agency says it needs. That is a shameful
shortcoming and certainly isn’t in the best interest of the chil-
dren. It creates unacceptable caseloads that lead to burnout and
even further aggravates staffing problems.
Correcting the funding will be a necessary start, but money
isn’t the only problem. The Legislature must also address the
capacity issue and the agency’s processes for reporting, investi-
gating and tracking abuse claims. Additionally, it must require
accountability of those in leadership positions to ensure the cor-
rections are made.
Across the state, residents should let their legislators know
that whether to fix the system or not isn’t an option, it’s a
requirement. It demands the Legislature’s attention in its next
session.
Forthefirsttime,
homeless in America
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times News Service
I
began election night writing a
column that started with words
from an immigrant, my friend
Lesley Goldwasser, who came to
America from Zimbabwe in the
1980s. Surveying
our political scene
a few years ago,
Lesley remarked
to me: “You Amer-
icans kick around
your country like
it’s a football. But it’s not a foot-
ball. It’s a Fabergé egg. You can
break it.”
With Donald Trump now elected
president, I have more fear than
I’ve ever had in my 63 years that
we could do just that — break our
country, that we could become so
irreparably divided that our national
government will not function.
From the moment Trump
emerged as a candidate, I’ve taken
seriously the possibility that he
could win; this column never pre-
dicted otherwise, although it cer-
tainly wished for it. That doesn’t
mean the reality of it is not shock-
ing to me.
As much as I knew that it was
a possibility, the stark fact that a
majority of Americans wanted rad-
ical, disruptive change so badly
and simply did not care who the
change agent was, what sort of role
model he could be for our children,
whether he really had any ability to
execute on his plan — or even really
had a plan to execute on — is pro-
foundly disturbing.
Silver lining?
Before I lay out all my fears, is
there any silver lining to be found
in this vote? I’ve been searching for
hours, and the only one I can find is
this: I don’t think Trump was truly
committed to a single word or pol-
icy he offered during the campaign,
except one phrase: “I want to win.”
But Donald Trump cannot be a
winner unless he undergoes a rad-
ical change in personality and pol-
itics and becomes everything he
was not in this campaign. He has to
become a healer instead of a divider;
a compulsive truth-teller rather than
a compulsive liar; someone ready to
study problems and make decisions
based on evidence, not someone
who just shoots from the hip; some-
one who tells people what they need
to hear, not what they want to hear;
and someone who appreciates that
an interdependent world can thrive
only on win-win relationships, not
zero-sum ones.
I can only hope that he does.
Because if he doesn’t, all of you
who voted for him — overlooking
all of his obvious flaws — because
you wanted radical, disruptive
change, well, you’re going to get it.
I assume that Trump will not
want to go down as the worst pres-
ident in history, let alone the one
who presided over the deepest frac-
turing of our country since the Civil
War. It would shake the whole
world. Therefore, I can only hope
that he will, as president, seek to
surround himself with the best peo-
ple he can, which surely doesn’t
include the likes of Rudy Giuliani
or Newt Gingrich, let alone the alt-
right extremists who energized his
campaign.
Zero-sum game
But there is also a deeply worry-
ing side to Trump’s obsession with
“winning.” For him, life is always
a zero-sum game: I win, you lose.
But when you’re running the United
States of America, everything can’t
be a zero-sum game.
“The world only stays stable
when countries are embedded in
win-win relationships, in healthy
interdependencies,” observed Dov
Seidman, the CEO of LRN, which
advises companies on leadership,
and the author of the book “How.”
For instance, America undertook
the Marshall Plan after World War
II — giving millions of dollars to
Europe — to build it up into a trad-
ing partner and into a relationship
that turned out to be of great mutual
benefit. Does Trump understand
that? Do those who voted for him
understand how many of their jobs
depend on America being embedded
in healthy interdependencies around
the world?
Homelessness
How do I explain Trump’s vic-
tory? Way too soon to say for sure,
but my gut tells me that it has much
less to do with trade or income gaps
and much more to do with culture
and many Americans’ feeling of
“homelessness.”
There is nothing that can make
people more angry or disoriented
than feeling they have lost their
home. For some it is because Amer-
ica is becoming a minority-majority
country and this has threatened the
sense of community of many mid-
dle-class whites, particularly those
living outside the more cosmopoli-
tan urban areas.
For others it is the dizzying
whirlwind of technological change
we’re now caught up in. It has either
wiped out their job or transformed
their workplace in ways they find
disorienting — or has put stressful
demands on them for lifelong learn-
ing. When the two most import-
ant things in your life are upended
— the workplace and community
that anchor you and give you iden-
tity — it’s not surprising that peo-
ple are disoriented and reach for
the simplistic solutions touted by a
would-be strongman.
What I do know for certain is
this: The Republican Party and Don-
ald Trump will have control of all
the levers of government, from the
courts to the Congress to the White
House. That is an awesome respon-
sibility, and it is all going to be on
them. Do they understand that?
Personally, I will not wish them
ill. Too much is at stake for my
country and my children. Unlike the
Republican Party for the last eight
years, I am not going to try to make
my president fail. If he fails, we all
fail. So yes, I will hope that a bet-
ter man emerges than we saw in this
campaign.
But at the moment I am in
anguish, frightened for my country
and for our unity. And for the first
time, I feel homeless in America.
What should be the next step?
By DAVID LEONHARDT
New York Times News Service
M
any Americans felt sick
Wednesday. The country
they thought they knew
doesn’t seem to exist. Many of
them are worried
in a way they never
have been before. I
share a lot of those
worries.
But what now?
Here’s
my
immediate answer: No task has
become more important than per-
suading a much larger number of
Republicans that the health of the
planet matters for their children and
grandchildren too.
Yes, of course, there are other
vital issues, especially the constitu-
tional and civil rights that Donald
Trump has at times disdained. And,
yes, Democrats need to begin plot-
ting their comeback for 2018 and
beyond. Yet we also need to recog-
nize that the climate is like nothing
else.
Most issues are part of the his-
torical push-and-pull of politics.
One side makes gains; the other can
reverse them later.
The state of the planet is differ-
ent. We can’t unmelt the Arctic or
magically remove carbon emissions
from the atmosphere. We make
decisions today that future genera-
tions must live with. Already, we’re
beginning to live with the conse-
quences of climate change: Coastal
flooding, heat waves and droughts
have all become more frequent and
damaging.
The potential future conse-
quences — the likely future con-
sequences — are awesomely
frightening.
To take Trump and the Republi-
can majorities in Congress at their
word, they don’t care. But here’s
the thing: Eventually, they or their
successors will care. The damage
from climate change will not spare
Republicans. It won’t spare anyone.
Nothing matters more than find-
ing ways to accelerate the arrival of
the day when more Republicans do
care.
For legal scholars, it means look-
ing for the arguments and prece-
dents to persuade Justice Anthony
Kennedy that the government’s
recent steps to reduce pollution
are indeed constitutional (as schol-
ars have so successfully done on
other issues). Once Trump fills the
Supreme Court’s open seat, presum-
ably with a hard-core conservative,
Kennedy becomes the swing vote on
the climate.
For Democrats and climate activ-
ists, it means looking for other ver-
sions of Kennedy: Republicans, at
the national and state level, who
have a healthy fear for the planet’s
future or who can plausibly be won
over.
And for the rest of us, it means try-
ing to understand many Americans’
skepticism about climate change. It
is misplaced but honest. Most Amer-
icans are not shills for energy com-
panies and their short-term profits.
Yelling ever more loudly, or swamp-
ing them with ever more scientific
detail, seems unlikely to do the trick.
Figuring out what can work —
and what the rest of us can do about
the planet in the meantime — is the
most productive way to channel
the heartsickness and anger that so
many people feel.