N.Y. Bill Places Responsibility on Jewish Groups for Placing Foster Childrenin Jewish Homes

The sponsor of a bill requiring major changes in child welfare practices in New York State, which has been approved by both houses of the Legislature, stressed today that the measure placed on Jewish organizations the responsibility for ending the placement of Jewish children in non-Jewish foster homes.

Assemblyman Howard Lasher (D. Brooklyn), himself an Orthodox Jew, introduced the New York State Child Welfare Act of 1979 in the Assembly. An identical bill was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Joseph Pisani (R. New Rochelle). Gov. Hugh Carey was expected to sign the measure into law promptly.

Lasher said the measure emphasizes preventive services to help keep children in their natural homes, as well as efforts to find permanent adoptive homes if keeping them in their natural homes is not possible, thus de-emphasizing foster care. Lasher said the new legislation establishes a framework which provides both the opportunity and the responsibility of the Jewish community to find Jewish families “willing to adopt hard-to-place Jewish children, many with severe physical or emotional handicaps.”

The new measure requires the state Department of Social Service to issue regulations providing the procedures “reasonably necessary for the placement of children” in accordance with the measure’s requirements that children be placed in adoptive homes of their own religious background “where practicable.”

‘UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY’ OFFERED

In a letter to Jewish leaders about the new legislation, Lasher declared that while the measure was long needed in the child care field, “it also presents a unique opportunity to permit the addressing” of the problem of placement of Jewish children in non-Jewish homes a longtime scandal in the Jewish community.

Lasher said the language in the measure providing for maximum efforts to place Jewish children in Jewish homes was inserted in consultation with the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA). Lasher said that procedures in the placement process developing over many years and the lack of a large pool of Jewish families available in which to place hard-to-place children had led to no more than lip service being paid to the legal requirement that placements be made within the faith “where practicable.”

Howard Zuckerman, COLPA president, said the goal of the Jewish groups was to seek to put some teeth into the “where practicable” element of the law. COLPA took part in both the drafting of the language and in meetings with Commissioner Barbara. Blum of the Social Services Department on behalf of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Young Israel the Rabbinical Council of America and Agudath Israel.

Lasher said he had had several meetings, since the drafting of the new measure, with Blum and Dennis Rapps, COLPA executive director, when the major concepts of the regulations mandated by the new legislation were developed.

Lasher said one of the major points agreed on was that “religious matching” would become an integral element of the entire placement process. Another key point agreed on was that personnel involved in the placement process must be appropriately trained and monitored. Also agreed to was creation of some kind of coordinating council, to be made up of representatives of all Jewish social work agencies, to be the working agency to find the needed homes and to persuade Jewish parents to adopt the children.

Zuckerman said a key element to be incorporated in the rules to be promulgated by the Social Service Department is one to provide additional support including psychological counseling, therapy, homemaker service and caseworkers to help the natural parents keep their children.

SEEK WILLING JEWISH HOMES

If that fails, Zuckerman said, an effort will be made to place the child in a permanent adoptive home of that child’s faith. The strategy worked out by the Jewish groups is aimed at creating a broad and sustained effort to find willing Jewish homes for such children. That effort will be made by the projected coordinating council, on which representatives of interested Jewish agencies will serve at the invitation of the Social Services Department, Zuckerman said.

Under the regulations agreed to at the meeting between Blum, Lahser and Rapps, whenever a Jewish child is under consideration for placement in an adoptive or institutional foster care agency, notice will be required to be given to the coordinating council, which will have the function of locating a Jewish home for the child, by use of such modern systems as computer listings and matching. The coordinating council’s work will be funded under the new legislation.

COLPA officials said they had been informed by Jewish agencies that the agencies were convinced there are Jewish parents who would be willing to accept such children if they were sought out and that the problem is not lack of such parents but lack of knowledge as to where they exist, a gap which the coordinating council will seek to fill in a scientific rather than by the present haphazard approach.

Zuckerman said promulgation of the rules to implement the new legislation will take several months and that formation of the projected coordinating council will not take place until after the rules have been issued and put into effect. Meanwhile, he said. COLPA has been consulting, on behalf of the other Orthodox organizations, with the Ohel Children’s Home, the federation of Jewish Philanthropies and the Mishkan Home for additional information and evaluation of the major changes the new legislation requires.