Questions for DHS

Iowa Council of Human Services Chairman Jim Miller wants answers from the state Department of Human Services.

Was policy or something else, he wants to know, behind two recent cases in which noncustodial parents apparently handed kids over to foster care, leaving the children's legal caregivers clueless about the placement and powerless to stop it?

“Is there a flaw?” he wondered out loud when we talked on the phone this week. “Why isn't there any appeals process? How can this happen?”

Questions a lot of us have been asking since learning state child protective services workers apparently have been allowing people with no legal or physical custody to sign agreements placing children in foster care.

That move leaves custodial parents in a legal no man's land: Since they didn't sign off on the agreement, they have no way to rescind it. Since the foster placements are voluntary, they have no right to an attorney or a hearing before a judge. In both cases that have come to light this year, parents say they had trouble getting even basic information from DHS caseworkers.

“Just on the surface, it seems egregious,” Miller told me. “You've got to give the person a chance to give their story.”

So he plans on getting the full story from DHS leaders such as outgoing DHS Director Charles Krogmeier and Wendy Rickman, the administrator in charge of child welfare programs, when the council meets today at the Hoover Building in Des Moines.

“I can certainly promise you that we'll get a response,” he said.

We're all eager to hear what that might be.

Miller is a pharmacist by trade, but he's served on the council overseeing DHS for about a decade. He admitted that news from the ground can be scarce up there at the council level.

“A lot of times the council hears what they want us to hear,” he said of DHS leadership. “You've got to have people who keep asking the questions.”

Questions, I've got. Here's a start:

Does DHS push informal tools like voluntary foster care placements and safety plans just to avoid the time and expense of a hearing?

When guardians sign these agreements, are they told about all the rights they're giving up?

Do overburdened caseworkers accept just anyone's signature on those documents?

Should we expect more cases like these as resources shrink (officials expect to replace only half the 600 positions opened up this summer)?

Can't we expect better?

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net