What about the PEW recommendations and advocating for the voice of the child?

Bill would alter foster care process
Aims to protect parental rights.
Honeycutt Spears, Valarie. Feb. 23, 2008.

FRANKFORT --In Jefferson County, attorneys volunteer to help indigent families at a crucial first hearing to determine whether a child must live in foster care or can stay with an appropriate family member.

Parents in the rest of the state aren't as lucky -- indigent parents go to court without a lawyer initially.

Jefferson Family Court Judge Patricia Walker Fitzgerald takes it on herself to make sure that all families are educated about complex and confusing court procedures. She tells them in clear terms that if their child has been removed by a social worker, the child could be headed for a state adoption. As a result, according to Fitzgerald, "more children are able to stay with their families."

Elsewhere in Kentucky, many parents don't realize that they can lose their child forever until it's too late.

State Rep. Darryl Owens' House Bill 151 would require that the entire state embrace the policies Jefferson County officials voluntarily carry out.

"What we have now is not a system, it's just luck," said Robin Cornette, a Lexington lawyer who often works as a court-appointed attorney. "If we are serious about holding social workers accountable for their work, about ensuring that parents' rights to their children are not unjustly terminated, then we have to create a real system, one which does not rely solely on the luck of finding free or underpaid lawyers."

House Bill 151 requires attorneys to be appointed before the first hearing in child protection cases, called the temporary removal hearing. It directs judges to tell families in writing and orally that they stand to lose their children permanently. The bill was drafted by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services' Blue Ribbon Task Force on Adoption after 16 months of hearings.

John Hamlet, a court-appointed attorney in Jefferson County, said the bill "provides some protection for the most vulnerable families."

House Bill 151 would give court-appointed attorneys in child protection courts the first raises they've had since the 1980s. Now, court-appointed attorneys in child protection cases are paid a maximum of $500, and in some jurisdictions, only $250 -- no matter how long the case goes on, how complicated the case is, or how many hours are required. The bill would raise that amount to $1,000.

It would require that an attorney be appointed for indigent parents who want to appeal the termination of their parental rights.

State Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, said she will call the bill for a vote next week in the House Judiciary Committee, which she chairs. She will also call House Bill 421, promoted by Chief Justice Joseph E. Lambert, which would make child protection hearings open in selected courts across Kentucky in a four-year pilot program. Child protection courts in most states are open to some degree.

Rep. Susan Westrom, a Lexington Democrat who introduced House Bill 421 and is a co-sponsor of House Bill 151, thinks Senate leaders will realize the importance of the reform legislation.

After multiple hearings and investigations into allegations that children were being improperly removed from their families, Westrom said she believes people expect results.

"We've got to prove that we listened, so that no family or child will be abused by the system," she said.

But Stein's counterpart in the Senate, Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, isn't making any promises. Stivers, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he has had only a brief conversation with Lambert's aides about the open court bill and hadn't read it or other legislation concerning child protection courts because the bills aren't yet moving in the House.

"It would be premature for me to comment on the chances for passage," Stivers said this week.

With the state's budget constraints, David Richart of the Louisville-based Institute on Children, Youth and Families thinks the likelihood that lawmakers will increase fees for court-appointed attorneys "is not great." But he said lawmakers could save the parts of the bill that give families an attorney earlier in the process, that supervise court-appointed attorneys and that educate families to the fact that the state could arrange an adoption for their children.

"Even if the fee increase is cut," Richart said, "there are still some substantial things we can do to improve child protection court procedures."

Meanwhile, Leigh Anne Hiatt, a spokeswoman for Lambert, says that he will soon be meeting with Stivers.

"We are continuing to educate legislators about the purpose of the bill and how it will be implemented," Hiatt said.