Myra Holman helps a foster child and a child she a gaurdian for with their homework after school at her home in the Metro East on Aug. 30, 2011. Holman is a foster parent with Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois. (David Carson/Post-Dispatch)
Though Myra Holman is Baptist, she might not have ever become a foster parent if she hadn't been recruited by Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois. Over the past decade or so, she's lost count of how many children she's taken in, perhaps a dozen.
One child hoarded food. Another, already a teenage mother, snuck a man into the house at night. Then there was the time somebody held a dull knife to his own neck and screamed from the front porch that he was going to kill himself.
Still, Holman and her husband continue to welcome abused and neglected children into their Metro East home.
"I have a need for helping children," said Holman, 52, who currently has three foster kids through the Catholic agency, ages 10, 11 and 19. "I think this is what God wants me to do."
Holman is one of many foster parents drawn to the work by her faith and faith-based agencies with state contracts. But soon, her relationship with Catholic Social Services could be severed.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has stopped referring foster care and adoption cases to Catholic charitable groups and said it is planning to move all existing cases to other agencies. The action stems from a clash between Catholic doctrine and the state's new law granting the right for same-sex couples to seek civil unions. Catholic agencies have refused to license same-sex couples in civil unions as foster parents -- a position state officials say is a deal breaker.
"It would not be lawful for us to contract with private agencies who could not comply with Illinois law," said DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe. "And that is no different if the contractor is a foster care provider or a supplier of other products and services."
The Catholic Charities agency in Rockford, Ill., opted to pull out of the state's foster care and adoption system on its own in response to the Illinois decision. Catholic agencies in Washington and Boston took similar steps in the wake of same-sex marriage laws.
But the bulk of Illinois Catholic agencies are fighting to hang on to foster care case management.
In a hearing recently set for Friday, attorneys representing agencies in the Roman Catholic dioceses of Belleville, Springfield, Peoria and Joliet are expected to ask a Sangamon County circuit judge to reconsider his ruling that the state need not contract with them.
Meanwhile, a massive transition of foster kids to different agencies looms and scores of caseworkers are uncertain about their jobs.
Gary Huelsmann, director of Catholic Social Services in Belleville, which has 630 foster care cases that account for much of its $13 million budget, said the swift changes stand to harm youths, particularly those who live in counties with few options with other agencies.
"These children need our help," said Huelsmann, voice cracking. "They want us to check our values at the door. Our values are what drive us to care for the children in an extremely caring way."
Click here to continue reading.Source: http://www.urbanchristiannews.com/ucn/2011/09/illinois-civil-union-law-foster-agency-dont-mix.html
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