Special Needs Adoptions

Thank you for “Special Children, Special Needs” (July 27). Here are a few additional sad realities.

Children do not always get to “tote their teddy bears from foster home to foster home.” Commonly, the caregivers and even the social workers do not attend to the importance of these valued possessions, and these items are lost.

Supporting a child in long-term foster care can easily cost much more than the cited $14,000 a year. These children often end up in group homes, which cost about $53,000 a year.

My job as a Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services social worker is to facilitate legal permanency, i.e. adoption or legal guardianship, for children in long-term foster care. However, neither I nor most of my colleagues were aware of the positive policy change in April of not cutting assistance when a child moves from foster care to adoption.

DORIS LEMIEUX

North Hollywood

Whether parents provide foster care for a child with a developmental disability or adopt such a child, they can get legally mandated services through their local regional center. Twenty-one nonprofit regional centers throughout the state have contracted with the Department of Developmental Services to arrange individualized programs that can include education in community schools, after-school care, respite for parents, vocation training and much more. Regional centers can also advocate for their clients, often easing them through the red tape.

MIKE DANNEKER, Director

Westside Regional Center

Culver City

The state government system that services children with disabilities and their parents has been rendered inoperative by a faceless, ineffective bureaucracy. The system uses taxpayer dollars to fight taxpayers who are trying to help their disabled child. Frustrated parents usually just give up or are forced to engage in expensive administrative appeals. Many of these children can become productive members of society with the appropriate supports. If the present system is allowed to go unchecked, these children’s future will hold nothing more than a monthly government check.

LINDA M. GILMORE

Long Beach