Growing concerns raised over State policies which impact parental rights

LOUISVILLE - While the state Office of Inspector General investigates whether children are appropriately being removed from their families, more women are speaking out about losing their parental rights.

A recent conference in Louisville Kentucky highlighted the difficulties parents face when losing their children to foster care and adoption.

Several reform advocates, mostly women, spoke-out at The Truth Commission, a conference sponsored by Women in Transition, an organization of welfare recipients and low-income women that advocates for better social welfare policies and more opportunities for families.

Parents and child advocates met as the state Office of Inspector General investigates whether domestic-violence victims and other parents are losing parental rights in order to increase state foster-care adoptions and federal financial bonuses.

The federal government is pressuring states to get children into adoptive homes quickly instead of leaving them in foster care.

Laws require that if a child was in foster care 15 of the previous 22 months, officials should start terminating the parents' rights.

Gov. Ernie Fletcher and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services are looking at the issue after it was revealed that the state removed the children of about 50 women served by the regional Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program in the past year.