COLUMBUS (November 30, 2005) Governor Bob Taft today announced a series of reforms to the state's adoption and foster care laws and administrative rules to ensure the safety of Ohio's adopted and foster children. After recent events in Huron County brought deficiencies in the current law to light, Taft asked the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) to make recommendations for change. Today's proposals are based on those recommendations.

"We have an obligation to ensure that every child in Ohio's adoption and foster care system has a family where they can be loved, cared for and kept safe," said Taft. "Today my administration has outlined changes that will make sure that our system works as it should to ensure that every child has a loving, stable and secure home."

Earlier this month ODJFS released a comprehensive review of Ohio's adoption and foster care system and found that communications between public and private social services agencies are often insufficiently coordinated, state adoption guidelines are not consistently followed, and statutory definitions of child abuse, neglect and dependency are ill-defined.

In a letter to House Speaker Jon Husted and Senate President Bill Harris, the Governor called upon the Ohio General Assembly to swiftly pass the following changes to statute:

• Require adoption agencies to complete a special assessment of families which have, or will have, five or more children in the home;
• Give ODJFS authority to establish procedures to search a confidential, statewide registry of individuals who have abused or neglected a child prior to placing a child in an adoptive home and establish procedures for an individual to challenge the listing;
• Include respite care and home health agencies as mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect;
• Require adoption agencies to notify the county children services agency of pending placements and any special needs of a child;
• Require foster care applicants to disclose any prior removal of a child from the home and add criminal penalties for withholding or falsifying this information; and
• Expand the current mandatory training requirements for public children services agency caseworkers and supervisors to include training about how to appropriately accept reports of child abuse, neglect and dependency.

• Establishing guidelines for agency visits and contacts with a child prior to adoption;
• Increasing staff who monitor interstate child placement to ensure the required records are complete and correct; and
• Proceeding with the plan to implement a state automated child welfare information system in 2006, which will enable ODJFS staff to cross-reference cases in which multiple placements.

Governor Taft also urged ODJFS to hold an Adoption Partnership Forum in December. This forum will update child-placing agencies about policy changes and best practice methods and provide opportunities for local agencies and private adoption services providers to communicate their needs to ODJFS staff.

In addition, the Governor issued a letter to Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer in support of the court's efforts to more clearly define the statutory definitions of child abuse, neglect and dependency through its Advisory Committee on Children, Families and the Court's subcommittee, chaired by ODJFS Director Barbara Riley.

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