The News record SERVING THE PEOPLE OF MADISON COUNTY On thm fniid* County School Calendar For 1980-81 Year ... Turn To Page 2 79th Year No. 18 PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE COUNTY SEAT AT MARSHALL. N.C. THURSDAY, May 1, 1980 15' Per Copy Foster Care Experiment Draws High Praise The problem of footer children ? finding hornet for them, helping footer portent* adjust to them, dealing with the problems of the natural parents ? is ooe of the moot difficult facing any social agency. Perhaps the moat serious difficulty is "drift" - the movement of a foster child from one home to another, with intermediate stops in the court system. Permanency planning for each foster child takes time, patience and discussion among Judges, at torneys, social worker*, parents and cUkha ? and (tare is seldom enough time, due to heavy case loads. . The Department of Social Services in Madison County is typical in this respect. Just over a year ago, Sandy Marler, in charge of the faster care program, had more than 30 cases to handle ? far too many to give careful attention to any one of them. Then the state chose Madison County, along with seven other counties in the state, to participate in a year long pilot program in per- i manency planning The goal was to determine whether, by reducing the caae toad of the footer care worker, mora footer children could be placed in permanent homes. Madison was the only western county selected. "We were very eager to get into the program," said DSS Director Anita Davie. "We knew that with Sandy's case load, which was X when the program started, there was no way to deal effectively with each child. We also knew that she could do more if the load were reduced. Of course every agency tella the state this same story, so we needed a chance to prove it is really true." They had their chance, for a trial year ending in February 1980. Sandy's case load was reduced to S3, (really somewhat lower, because some of the children were sibl ings). Some of her clients were shifted to several col leagues at DSS, who gamely shouldered the additional burden for the sake of the ex periment They are adoption worker Judy Briggs and pro tective services worker Sarawill Bellamy. At year's end, the results were unmistakably positive. As the DSS people told their colleagues at the state Depart ment of Human Services recently, six of the 23 children had been returned home to their natural parents ? the preferred plan in the case of foster children. In addition, two children were cleared for adoption and seven more were pending adoption. By comparison, DSS had been unable to dear any foster children for adoption during the previous 24 years. Of the rest, seven were pen ding adoptive placement, six were placed in long-term foster care and one left the project. "We think the project was very effective," said Anita Davie. "We were able to move children out of foster homes into permanent homes or back to their natural parents. This is just too difficult when the caseload is too high." Abo, of IS more children ad ded after the beginning of the project, eight have been returned home, and there are plans to return four more home. One has been cleared for adoption. "The project has ended," said Sandy Marler, "but we are continuing. We are so ex cited to find that permanency planning can work that we don't intend to stop." DSS does need some addi tional money to continue the project, to pay some addi tional salary expense. But already the state has in dicated that at least a small amount of money is