The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) recently shared a report before Judge Nancy G. Edmunds of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan about the state’s foster care system. 

It’s part of the Modified Implementation, Sustainability, and Exit Plan, or MISEP, a process to get out-of-court oversight of the department since 2008. 

MDHHS Director Elizabeth Hertel says the department has been making improvements over the years. 

“The monitors as well as the plaintiffs agree that we’re making significant progress in those areas, and we are going to be able to move some of the requirements into a non-monitoring section,” she said.

Hertel said that will allow the department to focus on a few areas to get out of the consent decree. 

The report is a result of a 2006 lawsuit leading to a consent decree and federal court monitoring of foster care in Michigan. 

The department has passed five out of 26 points of compliance.

“We’re really proud to say that we’ve brought on almost 1,000 new foster families in the last year so that children are able to stay in a home environment instead of going to a residential facility.”

–MDHHS Director Elizabeth Hertel

The changes include: adding more foster parents to the system, reducing caseworker loads, increasing kinship care and improving services.

“We’re really proud to say that we’ve brought on almost 1,000 new foster families in the last year so that children are able to stay in a home environment instead of going to a residential facility,” Hertel said.

That’s to care for about 10,000 kids in the foster care system, with 200 youth seeking adoption.

Hertel said the department is monitoring maltreatment and care, keeping kids safe when they enter the foster care system.

“Sometimes families don’t understand the requirements when a child’s removed from biological parents that they need to have supervised visits or that sort of thing… Grandma will let mom take the child, and that really, maybe is against what the court order is,” she said.

Hertel says there is also an effort to keep kids in homes that are culturally sensitive to their unique needs, which she says usually happens when family members can step up to care for the youth.

“We know that there is a focus on whatever culturally appropriate needs they might have: the same religion, maybe the same school system,” she said. “Grandma, grandpa, aunt uncle may already know what that is.”

She says it’s important for children to feel physically, emotionally, and spiritually safe. 

“We continue to work toward that,” she added.

The state is also working to minimize the movement of foster care placements and to help keep kids out of the system in the first place.

“We want everyone to understand it is best for everyone if children can stay with their families, with their parents in a safe environment,” she said.

Hertel says the department is taking steps to leave federal monitoring.

“Our Children’s Services Administration, the governor, has prioritized ensuring that things are adequately funded, and we have service provision. We would really, really love to see that court oversight removed by the end of the governor’s tenure,” she said. “We really think that we have the momentum and the resources and the staffing to be able to do this.”

The focus, she said, is on keeping the kids safe.

“So we’ve really spent a lot of time thinking about where in the system these improvements can be made to ensure that families first are bypassing the system all along and staying safely together with some assistance, and if they do get to the point where they are entering the system, that they have the services that they should be getting to make sure that they can stay together safely.”