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DHS to drop ban on foster parenting by unwed couples Friday, Oct 10, 2008 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - The state Department of Human Services announced Thursday it will do away with its policy prohibiting unmarried couples living together from serving as foster parents. Though the policy has been in place since 2005, DHS only recently began the process of formalizing it. At an Oct. 2 public hearing, 18 people spoke in support of the policy and two spoke against it. "After all the input provided not only from the hearing ... but the input provided from our stakeholders with whom we work every day and the general public, and after having some internal discussions, we decided that the best approach to take is to look at these on a case-by-case basis and to retain that flexibility," DHS spokeswoman Julie Munsell said. Gov. Mike Beebe also weighed in on the issue, Munsell said. "One of the things he urged us to do was to consider what's in the best interest of the child," she said. Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said the governor met with DHS officials Monday to discuss the policy. "What the governor wants is to find all the ways that we can to find more good, qualified foster homes for the kids that need them," DeCample said. "Everyone we've talked to in the foster care system, whether it's the workers at DCFS (the Division of Children and Family Services), whether it's parents, whether it's judges ... they all have the same mantra, which is, we need more good homes right now, not less, and a blanket policy like that would confine us as far as where we could look." Munsell said DHS will propose a new policy that gives workers flexibility to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. The proposed new policy will go through a public-comment period, she said. The policy change comes less than a month before voters are to decide on a proposed initiated act that would put into law a ban on foster parenting and adoption by unmarried couples. The head of the group that put the measure on the ballot said DHS' action Thursday demonstrates why proposed Initiated Act 1 needs to pass. "That ought to be a wake-up call to the people of Arkansas that there really is a gay agenda at work here, and this is evidence of it," said Jerry Cox, executive director of the Family Council. He has said his group's ballot initiative is aimed primarily at keeping adoptive and foster children out of the homes of gay and lesbian couples, though the measure also would affect unmarried heterosexuals who live together. Cox said Thursday it was "troublesome and disappointing" that DHS chose to change its foster parenting policy in advance of the election and before the public-comment period had ended. The agency previously said it would accept comments through Oct. 18. "It is as if their mind was already made up before hearings ever started, and I think it was," Cox said. Munsell the agency saw no need to wait any longer before making a change. "Based on what we had already heard and the people that we had already talked to from both sides of the issue, we really felt like we should just go ahead and stop the existing promulgation process and put in some new language," she said. |
