As City Limits went to press, ACS officials were honing the final plan. The agency is expected to start seeking formal bids for new contracts this spring. If we wait for total agreement, we will never get the system to where it needs to be, Scoppetta told his audience at the Salvation Army. Adam Fifield is a frequent contributor to City Limits. The Family To Family component of Scoppetta s plan would require foster parents to serve as mentors for a child s natural parents.
Advocates say it is on target philosophically but there are some very big obstacles.
Foster parents create a lot of friction with the bio parents, argues Edward Richardson, a single father who lost and regained custody of his four children. Ninety percent of the time, foster parents would rather keep the child than release the child. But in Brooklyn s Sunset Park, the Center for Family Life has long since established a system in which foster parents have a responsibility to work closely with a child s family, helping them achieve stability and learn parenting skills. We will not license any foster parent who is not going to be part of the work toward reunification, says the organization s cofounder, Sister Mary Paul Janchill. There have been many foster parents who have worked very well with birth parents.