PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - The Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families uses more than 320 unlicensed foster homes, and in more than 100 cases, they’ve been unlicensed for more than six months in violation of state law, according to a report released by the state’s child advocate Friday.
Regina M. Costa, who’s been the child advocate since 2011, recently convened a team to investigate after four children in state custody died last year, according to the Providence Journal (https://bit.ly/1RThDPV). Two of the children were living in unlicensed foster homes. It’s unclear how long they’d been there. Their deaths remain under investigation.
The report says two siblings of the deceased children remain in unlicensed kinship foster homes and that one home has been unlicensed for over a year. State law allows a child to be in an unlicensed foster home of a relative for only six months.
The report also says the homes where the children died had been flagged for a “caretaker with an elevated risk factor as a perpetrator of abuse and neglect in multiple families” as well as unresolved fire inspections.
Jamia McDonald, who leads DCYF, said the report doesn’t account for the full depth of reform underway at the agency.
In response to the number of unlicensed foster homes, McDonald said the agency has been trying to determine the difference between safety concerns and bureaucratic holdups. But she acknowledged children are left there longer than is allowed under the law in many cases.
DCYF has had a deficit in five of the past six years and was about $16 million over budget when Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo took office in January 2015. Raimondo chose McDonald to lead an overhaul of the agency following the resignation of its former director.
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