Michigan Foster Care Rates And Age Out Lies

Effective October 2012, Michigan has published its foster care rates.  This is how much it pays a day for the keep of a child under the auspices of the state.  It's about $20 bucks.

Upon examination there seems to be a slight issue with the payment plan.

See, there is this new program, well, it has been around for a minute and it is called Supervised Independent Living (SIL).  SIL is a unique program being used for Youth In Transition (YIT) and is not required to be licensed as a child welfare program due to its federal funding source. For a more readily understanding it can be referred to as a temporary answer to the issue of what to do with foster care youth who were either never adopted and are aging out the system.

In Michigan, and just about every other state, there are no data on what happens to youth who age out of foster care.  Wayne State University did a study a while back which produce some not too surprising results.  In a nutshell about 70% of foster youth who age out the system find themselves institutionalized again within the first three years.  

Institutionalized means homeless, welfare recipients, pregnant, incarceration, etc.  This is not a very good track record for the state or its foster care system.  Unfortunately the situation is even worse.

Right around that magical era of the end of Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reauthoriation Act (PRWORA) there was an anamolous event: a signifiant spike, an upward trend in the number of Child Protective Services cases.  Oddly enough there was a parallel trend in the federal funding of foster care while there was a converse trend in social assistance program funding.

Simply put, the States began to remove large amounts of children from certain zip codes with high concentrations of poverty.  Neighborhoods became baron to the sound of children playing in the street for fear of removal.  Grand Rapids is a good example.

I shall assume, from the apparent lack of obviation, that Michigan did not think very far on what would happen with the kids who end up never getting adopted out or going back home.  One reason why many of these kids were never placed out was because of what happened to them in the foster care system.  Let's briefly examine:

Mental health is poorly addressed.  Education in foster care virtually does not exist.  Then, foster youth have the tales of the other side to let them know they face a life of homelessness, prostitution, drugs once they age out.  Michigan had to do something so it came up with SIL.

Starting around the age of 16, Michigan will pay the absolute minimum to provide a youth a bed and a meal.  In return, the provider, according to the brochures, supervises.  What "supervises" means is a mystery.  What is expected is for the direct service provider to do the work of the agency and state workers.

SIL is not foster care and does not require a foster care license yet it applies foster care polices to its program.  Better yet, Michigan policy denotes that it cannot use foster care funding to fund SIL.  What is happening is that Michigan is jacking up a good thing because the state refuses to clean house of its moronic administrators, including the cover ups of Maura Corrigan.

I will be reporting more on the SIL program as I investigate its operations in Michigan.  Until then, ask yourself this question:  Would you take in a wild teenager, who no one wanted to adopt, who has a mental health record you know the workers will never share with you and who has a poor educational track record which is incomplete and fraudulently generated to make it look like the youth in on track for high school graduation, if you are lucky enough to be told about it, who has seen and experienced more trauma while in foster care than most will in a lifetime, who is probably using street drugs and drinking with possible violent and abnormal sexual tendencies, with a baby in another placement, while you, the direct service provider, never being allowed to leave your own home because the state is holding you under foster care standards without even telling you?  

Michigan SIL program pays a direct service provider less than $0.88 an hour to be locked in their home 24 hours a day to "supervise" a ward of the state under the stringent polices of an entirely different program called foster care.

It very clearly states that Title IV-E funds are not to be used for Independent Living or Supervised Living yet Michigan does it anyway.  That's right, Michigan uses foster care policy in SIL programs because the state is still trying to cover up how it neglected the kids in its own care.

So the next time you see a cute advertisement for being a foster parent for an older child, you just remember that it is a lie and it is called SIL.

And that ends another chapter of child welfare fraud in Michigan.

Michigan Foster Care Rates 10-12-2012
I will be submitting my own SIL program and policy to the state because Michigan will not get rid of its idiot administrators who continue to screw these kids over.

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