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Indiana Child Support Hotline - As Indiana's foster care system is burdened by the opioid crisis, foster parents are fighting to protect themselves and the state's neglected children.

Posted by Taylor Telford ttelford@indiana.edu | @taylormtelford Photos by Sarah Miller sdm2@indiana.edu | Multimedia and Development @saramilleer Eman Mozaffar emozaffa@indiana.edu | @emanmozaffar

Indiana Child Support Hotline

Here, Christy Evans captures every single one of her pictures, so after they're ripped, they're still with her, often without warning.

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She could not have children of her own, so she became a foster parent to adopt. In four years, she gave birth to 14 children at her home in Mitchell, Indiana. He walked into hospitals with empty car seats and walked out with newborns shaking from heroin. He was hugging a baby whose ribs were broken due to violence. It calms babies who cannot scream for long enough to eat.

Evans, 46, has learned to live at the mercy of the Indiana Department of Child Services, where his days are filled with court dates, home visits and paperwork. But in the past few years, Evans has seen the agency get swept away in an unprecedented flood of business.

A year ago, she and her husband applied to adopt a little girl with two teeth. But the process took a long time. Case workers and attorneys quickly came in and left. His texts and emails often went unanswered. Meanwhile, bells were ringing and voices on the other end asking if there was room for another baby.

Evans believes in grace and making things all right. He tries to empathize with exhausted court clerks, lost biological parents, and cruel judges. But sometimes too much.

April 14, 2015

Since becoming a foster parent, Christy Evans has seen many babies come and go at her home. He talks about some of the challenges involved.

For years, DCS has struggled with high turnover, tight funding and numerous complaints from staff and foster parents.

Indiana has become a place where church signs deliver not only from evil, but also from addiction. Police stations and hospitals run out of overdose drugs. Where parents lean on the steering wheel of their cars and shoot heroin while their children scream in the back seat.

Opiate strangulation has not yet weakened. According to the DCS report, there were approximately 22,700 children in Indiana's foster care system in March. This is twice as much as the national indicator. The agency suffered a loss due to the shortage of foster carers. Children with nowhere to go sleep in DCS offices. Children's homes are overcrowded. However, many foster parents are waiting for an empty bed.

Indiana Center For The Prevention Of Youth Abuse & Suicide

In December, longtime DCS director Mary Beth Bonaventura resigned as governor, claiming cutbacks and politics had gotten in the way of her effective management. In his resignation letter, Bonaventura warned that continued cuts would "do nothing but ensure that children die."

His warning was too late—that was it. In August 2017, a 2-month-old boy died of malnutrition within hours of being brought home by four DCS workers. A custodial parent concerned about the child's safety made three calls to the Marion County DCS hotline.

When the news broke, Kara Cook felt a familiar pang of anger. A few months ago, a 1-year-old boy she was caring for became weak and lifeless after riding with a DCS contractor. He died nine days later. The child's biological parents sued the driver and the contractor, claiming that the child died because they were not properly strapped into the car seat.

"The bottom hinges were not attached, and the position of the car seats made it hinged," Cook said.

Child Abuse Indiana: How To Report Suspected Abuse Or Neglect

Now she keeps molds of the baby's handprints on a shelf in her house. Hospital staff made them for him before taking him off life support.

On a wet fall Saturday, bleary-eyed foster parents arrived at the Monroe County DCS office. They've left their partners with their children or ditched the nannies so they can be here for one of the many training courses required to become licensed as foster parents.

Christy Evans and her husband, Greg, sat together, eating ice cream from McDonald's, flipping through the pages of a workbook.

Cara Cook and her foster 1-year-old son hold one of the boy's favorite toys as he lies in his hospital bed. Boy dies after riding with DCS contractor. His biological parents sued the driver for improperly securing the child in a car seat. Gift photo.

Injuries Among Children And Teens

At the front of the room, the foster carer sat at the table and kicked her legs back and forth. Behind him was a board with his name and the title of the course, Darren Wilkinson: Self Care. Wilkinson, a former caseworker and foster carer, has hours to teach these parents how to help themselves so they can continue to help Indiana's children.

Wilkinson repeatedly spoke of "Planetary Chaos," his term for the unstable environments in which foster children live, where they acquire survival skills and scars. In these homes, abandoned children learn to take care of babies. Frequent brushes with the police teach children to hide from sirens.

Evans and the other foster parents live on "Planet Normal," Wilkinson said. But Planet Chaos ensues when the foster children, who have lived their entire lives in garbage bags, first arrive. It seeps into their instincts and resurfaces as they navigate between new and old lives. At this point, foster parents are caught between two worlds, tasked with loving and caring for these children.

Tales of chaos spread through tears and hushed voices. A woman says police rescued her children from a home where they were injecting a Doc McStuffins doll. Another woman said that her children's angry parents forgot to give them food, so they ran around naked on the street begging for food. The man said that his daughter's drug addict mother, who gave up her child, fed the child so much that when the child came home, his body was swollen and his skin was as tight as a sausage casing.

How Can I Check My Child Support Payments Online In Indiana?

The Evans' adopted children over the years came to them broken and wounded, not knowing what it meant to be children. Christie says she is trying to give these kids back their innocence.

Wilkinson, 53, showed them ways to prevent burns and manage second hand injuries. But as the class progressed, many parents became angry about DCS, not about difficult days or dealing with difficult children and biological parents.

They lamented the lack of support and very little compensation. They resented the organization's emphasis on reuniting children with biological families, a policy that placed parental rights ahead of children's stability and safety. They often complained about overworked workers who were unprepared and seemingly unattainable.

The adoptive parents nodded and exchanged knowing glances. They changed the stories of the employees who were hurt by their mistakes. One woman said a court official fired her adopted daughter's therapist and returned to the way she was when she first got him — withdrawn and emotionless. The couple said that despite DCS emailing foster parents in their county almost daily about their needs, caseworkers blacklisted them after disagreements.

Child Support Services Program

Wilkinson saw the anger on the foster parents' faces. He asked if growing frustration had prompted them to abandon the system.

"I can't imagine giving up on any of them," Evans said. Her husband took her hand before speaking.

In 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union sued DCS and Bonaventura on behalf of Indianapolis family case manager Mary Price and all other DCS family case managers. The lawsuit alleges that Price and other DCS employees are dealing with workloads that far exceed state standards.

State law says family case managers can only assign 17 ongoing cases or 12 initial evaluation assignments at a time. During the trial, Price handled 43 cases. Price's attorneys said her workload, as well as that of other family case managers, has been high for years, and nothing has changed despite DCS often saying it is hiring enough new staff to meet state standards.

A Better Way

Mary Beth Bonaventura resigned as director of DCS in December 2017. Click the image above to read his full resignation letter.

The case ended up in the Indiana Supreme Court, and in August 2017, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the agency. In its ruling, the court said it could not compel DCS to comply with the law because, while the law sets caseload limits, it does not specify what steps DCS must take to comply with them.

"Granting relief here risks intruding the judiciary into the day-to-day operations of the Department — a time-consuming intrusion beyond our institutional authority," the ruling said.

DCS is divided into 19 regions in Indiana. In the 2016 fiscal year assessment, only one district maintained its workload within state standards.

Nj Child Support Lawyers

When Bonaventura resigned in December, he said children were suffering from staffing problems at the agency.

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