INDIANAPOLIS — State Senators, parents and advocates are trying to find any way they can to get a bill that will lessen the financial burden on foster and adoptive parents passed during this legislative session.
As one mother states, this is the only chance for some children to have a home.
Joshua Cole Beerbower, 14, has been in and out of the foster care system majority of his life. He was in foster care three different times for 1,414 days.
Joshua has spina bifida and was removed from his home because of domestic violence and medical neglect.
Emily Beerbower adopted him.
"It was such a nerve-racking process because here's this boy and I love him so much," Beerbower said. "He's been placed with me as a foster child. But if subsidy didn't work out, then what was I going to do?"
Beerbower - like others - are pushing to create a mandatory subsidy that gives money to foster parents for every day needs who adopt children from the welfare system.
The mother recently adopted another boy from Texas who also has spina bifida, and was offered 80% more in subsidy money than she was in Indiana.
"What ends up happening is people can't afford to take care of these kids so they just stay in the foster care system," Beerbower said.
The Department of Child Services uses a variety of factors when determining how much assistance families receive. But a bill circulating the statehouse would require the subsidy to be no less than 50 percent of what they'd receive as a foster parent.
"That's not a lot of money. We are talking dollars a day," Beerbower said. "Say a foster parent, or parents, may have been receiving $30 a day as subsidy to help with those needs. And then when it comes time to adopt, they say we are going to give you two dollars a day. It's not right!"
Sen. David Neizgodski, D-South Bend, introduced the bill that passed one senate committee, but didn't reach the next hurdle in time to get fiscal approval.
His hope is that there will be another way to not only help children with special needs, but kids who have experienced abuse and neglect.
"I am not going to stop trying," Sen. Neizgodski said. ""With our opioid crisis, babies born addicted to heroin that might affect them the rest of their lives."
Now, what you can do is call the chair of appropriations to add this to the budget once the Senate receives it from the house in the next couple weeks.
