re: #79 Right mind left

There is a PDF sample of the long form but also this article claims the intent 2010 is to use the short form, only there is heated debate about what will go into the form. I don’t think it is decided quite yet:

[Link: www.usatoday.com…]

The government wants to keep the “short form” as short as possible. It dropped the foster care category in favor of asking whether anyone in the household sometimes lives elsewhere — children away at college, for example.

That means there won’t be a way to know whether the financial status of more than 500,000 children in foster care is improving, says William O’Hare, senior fellow at the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count program. “That’s the big issue for us.”

I’m a foster parent. The state already has excruciating details about me for the foster care license. How many rooms, how big the rooms are, whether I have window shade cords in child safe reels, if my meds are locked up. Not only did I fill out the forms the licenser checks.

It’s also been a fight to keep those documents confidential, a recent move wanted to make licensing files public records among other things. Available even to the biological parents of the kids.

The state better know where all it’s foster kids are.

It’s a stupid waste of parent and ink on the census form.