Ma'Khia Bryant's family among those paid less than state's foster parents to take in kids

Ohio officials agree with experts who say that children who must be removed from their homes do better when placed with relatives rather than foster parents.

But in a years-long defiance of a federal court order, and despite another pending federal lawsuit, the state still doesn’t award equal pay to “kinship caregivers,” the official term for relatives who take in children.

“Relatives are entitled to the full foster-care payments, and Ohio is not doing it,” said Richard Dawahare, a Lexington, Kentucky-based attorney who filed both the current lawsuit and the 2017 suit that resulted in the court order against the state.

The issue was elevated recently because Ma’Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old girl who was shot and killed by a Columbus police officer in April, had been in the state’s child-welfare system for more than three years.

She and her three siblings started out placed with a grandmother, Jeanene Hammonds, but were removed from her care and placed in a foster home after about 16 months — in part, state officials said, because Hammonds had lost her housing.

In the wake of Bryant’s death, child advocates questioned whether Ohio had done all it could to enable Hammonds to keep the children.

“The issue was they (the state system) didn’t provide the support and grandma lost her home,” said Barbara Turpin, secretary of the Ohio Grandparents/Kinship Care Coalition. “It all could have possibly been prevented.”

The lack of equitable payments has been a complaint for years among Ohio’s more than 4,000 kinship caregivers.

Ohio pays its roughly 8,000 licensed foster parents anywhere from $300 to $6,000 a month, per child, with additional funds paid for children with special needs.

Kinship caregivers, though, are paid $310 a month per child (and that’s after a recent increase). That support also is temporary, for a period of six to nine months.

After that, kinship caregivers have a variety of options, including federal programs available to anyone in need such, as food stamps and Medicaid, but in most cases, the funding does not match what licensed foster parents receive.

And that is done for a reason, state officials say. They want to incentivize kinship caregivers to go through the training and steps needed to become licensed foster parents.

“Certification is the key to ensuring safety and consistency for all children,” said Kristi Burre, head of Ohio’s Governor’s Office of Children’s Initiatives, who previously worked alongside the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services as head of a committee reviewing the state’s child-welfare system.

Burre formerly worked for children service agencies in both Franklin and Fairfield counties, and said she knows from experience the benefits that kids get from being placed with extended family during a tumultuous time.

Burre said the state has been trying to place more kids in kinship care, viewing it as the first option for placements.

“We’ve strengthened our focus on keeping kids in their culture and their background and paying attention to all the existing connections,” she said. “As much as possible, we want kids to stay with a family member who’s in their community and their school district. We have absolutely prioritized that work.”

Indeed, state records show that between 2012 and 2020, while kids in Ohio’s foster-care system increased by 34% (from 12,386 to 16,596), the number in kinship care increased by 126% (from 1,997 to 4,507).

The problem is that many relatives who take in children don’t want to become licensed foster-care providers. That process has been streamlined recently but still involves an extensive home study, as well as continuing training requirements. 

“Caregivers have enough to deal with on a day-to-day basis, they don’t need the pressure of being coerced into becoming something they don’t want to be,” Turpin said. “They don’t want to be involved in the child-welfare system if at all possible. The licensing process is fairly invasive and the requirements can be burdensome.”

The issue came to a head in 2017, when the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (governing Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee) ruled that kinship caregivers with whom the state places a child are deserving of the same payments that a licensed foster parent gets.

Last November, Dawahare filed another suit with the same federal court. He said he expects Judge Michael Barrett to issue a ruling on it very soon.

"We cannot comment on active litigation," Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services spokesman Bret Crow said in an email on Friday. "That being said, there are many programs — both established and proposed in the budget — to support kinship caregivers.

"Kinship caregivers are an essential part of Ohio’s children services system in providing safe and loving homes to nearly 4,000 children in the custody of a children services agency, and these programs provide a continuum of service to support them and the children in their care."

Whether another ruling against Ohio would force a change is another question. 

All Turpin knows is she thinks the state should put its money where its mouth is when it comes to supporting kinship caregivers.

“The state just doesn’t seem to get it,” Turpin said. “We want them to connect caregivers to all the support necessary, and not just `dump and run’ and leave the caregivers floundering.”

kgordon@dispatch.com

@kgdispatch