By Christopher Phillips

In early 1995, child-welfare workers in Chicago placed the four Turner siblings in foster care. They had been severely neglected by their mother, a single parent who had a history of drug abuse and mental illness. The two boys, 8-year-old James and 7-year-old Robert, were put in a foster home together, but each of the two girls, 13-year-old Rhonda and 5-year-old Maria, were placed in separate homes.

Upon being put in foster care and separated from their siblings, the two boys, who in the past had generally been well behaved, despite their mother?s neglect, showed destructive, even violent behavior, and the youngest girl rarely stopped crying. The toll was also readily evident on Rhonda, the oldest: She had served as ?substitute mom? when the family was together, cooking, cleaning and taking them to school. Somehow, even with all these responsibilities, she?d been a good student. But now, in foster care, she experienced severe mood swings, and her performance in school declined dramatically.

Five months later, after all the children were placed together in a new foster home near their old neighborhood, Rhonda once again became her ?normal? self: outgoing, disciplined and motivated. Her brothers? bad behavior disappeared altogether. And her little sister resumed being in high spirits most of the time. They have been together in this new foster home for two years now, and they continue to flourish.

Such is the marked change that often occurs when initially separated siblings in foster care are reunited, say psychologists in the field.

?When we split up foster children from their brothers and sisters, we are taking away the only connection they still have to people they love,? says Gordon Johnson, chief executive officer of Jane Addams Hull House Association, a nonprofit social service agency in Chicago. ?This pain literally drives children crazy.?

Scope of the problem

Of the more than 500,000 children entering the foster-care system each year, 65 percent to 85 percent have at least one sibling. Virtually everyone involved in the child-welfare system agrees that siblings should be kept together?except when an abusive situation between siblings clearly exists. Yet, 75 percent of siblings wind up apart when they enter foster care.

Why aren?t siblings placed together? The foster-care system isn?t organized to do this, says John Mattingly, senior associate of Baltimore?s Annie E. Casey Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that provides support to disadvantaged children.

?There?s a severe shortage of foster-care homes, and so it?s extremely difficult to place siblings together,? Mattingly says. ?The system is simply overloaded.?

The ranks of children needing foster care continue to swell, from 260,000 in the 1980s to more than 500,000 today. Even more children are at risk of abuse and neglect because of rising poverty, escalating teen pregnancies, increased homelessness, community violence and a dramatic rise in substance abuse.

Meanwhile, the number of foster-homes continues to decline as more and more families have two wage earners to make ends meet. Also a factor is that foster care ?board rates??the amount paid to foster parents to provide basic care for a child?are too low to offset the costs. Thus, it?s often too expensive for a foster-care family to take on more than one child. Even foster homes licensed to care for two or more children tend to be filled up piecemeal with foster children from several birth homes.

?This inefficient use of resources traumatizes children,? says Gordon Johnson of Hull House. ?If the siblings are split apart, they don?t have an opportunity to grow and change together. And when they are reunified with their family, everyone, including the parents, is more in danger of slipping back into old roles.?

Programs that offer hope

But efforts are being made on a number of fronts to remedy the problem of separating siblings. Johnson, for instance, is the innovator of Hull House?s Neighbor- to-Neighbor foster-care program. The first of its kind in the country, the program recruits foster parents specifically to care for sibling groups and hires them as full-time employees, with a salary and benefits, so they have the capacity to care for large sibling groups.

?This not only professionalizes foster care, but also enables foster-care givers to provide the full-time, focused care that a group of at-risk, foster children need,? says Johnson.

Hull House?s program also places children in foster homes within their community, keeping them connected to their birth parents.

The Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation also is trying to change the way the foster-care system operates. It has begun an initiative called ?Family to Family? in five states and Los Angeles County. This initiative provides funding and technical assistance to help child-welfare agencies develop a foster-care model that, according to Mattingly, helps public agencies rebuild networks of foster families in the children?s local neighborhoods,allowing placement of sibling groups together.

Like Hull House?s Neighbor-to-Neighbor program, which has now been operating for more then three years, Family-to-Family?s community-based approach to foster care is serving some of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States.

Gordon Johnson says he can already attest to the effectiveness of such programs. ?Our program has a family reunification rate that is 10 times higher than the overall reunification rate for fos-ter children? in the Chicago area.

The psychological benefits

Besides keeping siblings together, Johnson notes that such programs also ?help provide stability for children coming from a chaotic situation.?

Judith Goodhand, director of the Cleveland-area Public Children Services Agency, says she believes many child-welfare agencies can find foster homes for sibling groups without making dramatic changes in the way they operate. ?We typically can keep sibling groups of up to five together, and in one case we were able to place seven together,? Goodhand says. Of the 995 youngsters in sibling groups her agency placed last year, only 90 had to be separated.

?We recruit families that can take more than one child,?says Good-hand, and the agency educates them on the importance of keeping siblings together. ?This helps compel families to do their utmost to accommodate sibling groups.?

Goodhand believes it is vital for the needs of foster families to be accommodated by child welfare agencies. Two initiatives have made a marked impact in retaining foster families that will accommodate sibling groups: more phone lines so that foster families can reach agency supervisors and a Medicaid hot line to help families deal with children?s health issues. ?The payback from these two simple things has been enormous,? said Goodhand.

A personal view

As far as Lynn Price is concerned, there are few bona fide excuses for separating siblings. Price and her sister were separated for 17 years while in foster care.

Price established Camp To Belong, a nonprofit volunteer organization based in Highlands Ranch, Color., that arranges regular but temporary visits for brothers and sisters who are placed in different foster homes.

?We have reunions for separated siblings, to encourage bonding and belonging,? she says. ?Just as important, we strive to educate the public about the plight of foster children who are separated from siblings.?

Price is the first to acknowledge that her program in itself is not enough to remedy the problems. ?The foster-care system needs to take more time to try to place siblings together,? she says. ?I know that the system tries to find a stable yet temporary environment quickly for the children but sometimes it doesn?t take adequate time to seek out places that would take the entire sibling group.?

?Prospective foster families need to be educated about the need to keep siblings together,? she says. If they knew the importance of keeping siblings together, and if they were able to meet the entire sibling group, then I think they?d be much more inclined to take them all.?

Addendum

Kinship care: A viable option

Another promising long-term remedy to the problem of separating siblings in foster care is providing ?kinship care? in which children who are removed from home are placed with relatives?grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, even ?kin? who are not biologically related.

?Research clearly has shown that siblings are more likely to be placed together through kinship care than through traditional foster homes,? says Rebecca Hager, an associate professor at the School of Social Work at the University of Texas-Arlington and an authority on kinship care. ?Kinship care has become a viable option for a growing number of children.?

In the larger states, she says, 50 percent of the foster-care placements are now through kinship care.

The problem with most foster homes is that they are licensed to care for no more than six children, and almost always they are filled close to capacity, explains Hager, who is co-editing a new book on kinship care to be published by Oxford University Press next spring. ?So when a sibling group needs to be placed, quite often it just isn?t possible to place them together. That?s where kinship care comes in.

Relatives of the children are much more likely to make a commitment to care for a family group. Because they?re part of the extended family, children maintain a sense of connection and continuity. ?Children tend to feel much more comfortable and thus much less traumatized if they?re placed with relatives,? Hager says.