The lovely Madelyn Simone is sitting at my feet as I write, drawing triangles, circles and donuts and sneaking in a line or two on her leg when she thinks I'm not looking. The days when I could tuck her tiny body in her crib, knowing she was safe and sound, are long gone. This 3-year-old is an explorer, resembli...ng our first (and last) family dog, Spartacus.
If the door of the house was left ajar, Spartacus was out like a shot, ready to roam the neighborhood to see what trouble he could stir up. Madelyn has a touch of that spirit, and that's why there's a special device on the front doorknob at her house so she can't open it on her own.
If she does manage to escape in the aisles of Walmart or wanders next door while we're picking beans in the garden, what does that say about my grandparenting skills? Could I be charged with neglect, her parents accused of leaving their child with unfit supervision? What constitutes neglect? That question is a vital one for the Ashland County community. Here's why.
The large font on the front page of the Times-Gazette on Wednesday, July 24 asked, "Why so many kids?" According to Missy Loar's report, Ashland County has more children in county custody than other counties and it's putting a strain on the general fund budget.
Ah, yes, the money. The legally mandated needs of children's services in the county's Department of Job and Family Services are soaring, causing our cash-strapped county to propose a designated tax levy. According to the Times-Gazette reports, children's services initially had a $500,000 projected budget increase over last year -- that's more than 40 percent, if my rusty math skills are correct.
Yet the money isn't the issue here. Why are more children removed from their homes in Ashland County, and why is it taking so long for them to be returned to their families? Where is the line between keeping children safe, and unnecessarily ripping children away from their families?
"Taking custody of a child and achieving reunification or adoption is a continuum," according to Cassandra Holtzmann, Job and Family Services director, "but Ashland has children who are coming into the cycle who aren't leaving on time. We've got something of a bottleneck that's happening here."
Yes, you do. In my role as the director of the Salvation Army in Ashland for six years, I heard the stories from clients and our caseworkers. Stories of children being removed because they wandered out the back door a second time, stories of homeless families afraid to seek services for fear of losing their children in this county, and more.
Stories are stories, and I had no way of knowing if they were embellished or there were mitigating circumstances. However, my firsthand involvement in one case absolutely baffled me.
Children initially were removed from a home because there was abuse by the father. The injury to the child occurred when the mother was completing her mandated hours for her cash assistance, documented by police reports and court findings. Yes, she left the children with their father (we've all done that), but she had done nothing to endanger the children, yet they were removed from her custody, and she had to work through a reunification plan that took months to complete, while the county was footing the bill for foster care. The same months the children were separated from the loving care of their mother.
Might this kind of bottleneck be a common one? I can't imagine being separated from the lovely Madelyn Simone for months on end because of a bureaucratic bottleneck, and I'm not even her mother. Foster care should be the last resort for children. What would it take to get these bottlenecked children out of the county's custody and back home?
Before we throw another blank check at Job and Family Services, is it time for a trained ombudsman or a panel of wise, impartial professionals to review every single case and get the bottleneck opened up so our county's children can safely return home now instead of in three months? It's time to do something. It's time for at least some of our children to come home.
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