Child welfare advocates critical of 'hidden foster care'

The circumstances surrounding the death of 9-year-old Renesmay Eutsey in Fayette County have played out in similar fashion throughout Pennsylvania, said Cathleen Palm, founder of the Center for Children’s Justice.

Adults, whether biologically related or not, are accused of sometimes horrific abuse of children. As in Renesmay’s case, there may have been involvement of child welfare agencies at some point. It makes Palm wonder if there are lessons to be learned or discussions to be had to better protect children in what can be a complex system.

“This is not an anomaly,” Palm said.

Renesmay was living in Dunbar Borough with two women, both her cousins, up to the time her body was found Sept. 4 in a garbage bag along with six rocks in the Youghiogheny River near Smithton. The two caregivers, one of whom had legal guardianship of the girl, are charged with killing her and abusing two of four other children in their care, none of whom were biologically theirs.

Either one or both women were legal custodians of the remaining four children. There was no active involvement by Fayette County Children & Youth Services at the time of Renesmay’s death, authorities said.

Advocates in Pennsylvania and across the nation have been pushing for reforms of child welfare practices that they say would improve safety for children. Legislation has been passed in a couple of states to better track what some call “hidden foster care,” an unregulated practice when a child is placed in an informal living arrangement, often with family members, that is not subject to court and child welfare oversight.

“They’re doing it without due process rights for parents and without the checks and balances,” said Josh Gupta-­Kagan, clinical professor of law at Columbia University who authored a 2020 article in the Stanford Law Review about the practice. “It’s hidden from court oversight, it’s hidden from legislative oversight.”

An average of 225,000 children entered foster care annually nationwide between 2018 and 2022, according to federal statistics. An analysis from research organization Child Trends estimated thousands more, possibly 100,000 to 300,000 children annually, are placed with relatives, a move that can be seen as a way to keep a child out of the foster care system. But without concrete statistics and tracking of what happens in those situations, advocates say there’s no way to know the outcome or whether the placements are appropriate.

“We just don’t know if kids come home,” said Gupta-­Kagan, who is part of the Coalition to End Hidden Foster Care.

An informal arrangement can leave parents feeling coerced and without legal representation, he said. The lack of statistics related to informal arrangements makes it impossible to understand the impact on overall placement numbers and if cases were closed appropriately, Palm said.

“We need better tracking and data,” she said.

Most states, including Pennsylvania, don’t have formal statistics about the practice. Advocates have been pushing in recent years to change that, according to a 2021 letter to the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

A bill introduced last year in the U.S. Senate, the Foster Care Placement Transparency Act, would have required states to track and provide data on the use of “hidden foster care” arrangements. The measure died in committee.

A similar bill introduced in September in Congress was again referred to committee. In proposing the measure, lawmakers pointed to 2023 Texas legislation that added accountability to child welfare agencies when it came to tracking and reporting informal arrangements there.

A bill passed by both chambers in New York this summer would require child welfare agencies to track “alternative living arrangements” for children separated from their parents and the outcomes of those cases. It had yet to be signed by the governor.

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In Pennsylvania, Palm and other advocates have been pushing for the creation of an independent ombudsman that she said could provide guidance and add structure and accountability to what is a complicated system.

A letter was sent in September in light of Renesmay’s death to the state Intergovernmental Workgroup for Child Safety and Stability requesting that the Office of Child Advocate/Ombudsman be established. The matter has been proposed repeatedly over about two decades but never passed, according to the letter.

Currently, the state Department of Human Services investigates complaints against county child welfare agencies, which it also licenses, funds and regulates through the Office of Children, Youth and Families.

“That’s a problem,” Palm said.

Fayette County state Rep. Charity Grimm Krupa is seeking co-sponsors for legislation to create the ombudsman office as a way to eliminate what she described as a conflict of interest. She sees the proposal as an independent watchdog, one that would investigate complaints and shine light on failures while providing information to lawmakers and the public.

“An ombudsman office would not be another layer of bureaucracy; it would be a trusted advocate, an impartial referee, and a safeguard to ensure that no child falls through the cracks because of agency neglect, mismanagement or abuse,” Grimm Krupa wrote in the co-sponsorship memo.

Palm lobbied last month for a similar measure at the federal level during a meeting with Alex Adams, assistant secretary for family support at the Administration for Children and Families, which is under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He established a child welfare ombudsman during his time in Idaho running a similar department there.

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Grimm Krupa is joined by fellow Fayette County Republican state Rep. Ryan Warner in seeking legislation in light of Renesmay’s death.

In addition to the proposed ombudsman bill, Grimm Krupa wants to see three other measures enacted:

• Requirements that adults living in a foster or kinship home undergo a psychological screening and get a doctor’s approval.

• Requirements that foster and kinship children attend a public or licensed private school, unless a judge determines homeschooling is in their best interest.

• Stiffer penalties for parents, guardians and caregivers convicted of abuse.

Warner is seeking co-sponsors for “Renesmay’s Law” that he said would make improvements to the state’s child welfare system by increasing accountability and oversight of county agencies, addressing caseworker support and workload management, and strengthening record keeping and in-home services.

“While no law can eliminate evil, we have a duty to ensure that the systems designed to protect children are as strong and responsive as possible,” he wrote in the co-sponsorship memo.

Neither Grimm Krupa nor Warner responded to multiple messages from TribLive.