Lawmakers Question How Foster Kids Placed

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- State lawmakers had some questions for the Department of Children's Services Wednesday about how children are placed in foster homes.

Video: Lawmakers Question DCS About Child Placement Policy

Some lawmakers said that too often, children fall through the cracks.

"A tremendous amount of the blame should be laid right at the front door of the Tennessee Department of Children Services,” said Dickson County Juvenile Judge Andrew Jackson.

Jackson’s words came after 15-year-old Jeffrey Johnson and 17-year-old James Garrett were charged with murder in the slayings of two women in White Bluff. He said the teens should not have been placed with the Dickson County foster family because of their violent past.

The boys’ foster mother Mary Clark, 39, and her mother-in-law, 66-year-old Gail Clark, were found shot to death in the home where Mary Clark and her husband, Bill, were running a level-2 care facility.

"When these horrible things happen, and we know no matter how good we are, they will happen. We owe it to the public and to these families to learn anything we can learn from that event,” said DCS Commissioner Viola Miller.

DCS was asked questions about how foster children are placed, and Miller defended the department and said that it is an easy scapegoat.

“Everybody wants somebody to blame, DCS is a very easy target,” she said.

State Rep. Thelma Harper, who chairs the government operations committee, said she wants more oversight from DCS, especially how they award contracts to foster care agencies.

Right now, Miller has the only and final say by using a special delegated authority. That means the fiscal review committee who bids out contracts for other state agencies is not a part of it.

“We're not blaming, we're asking for accountability. I think you heard that they have never been reviewed, and they are supposed to turn that in to the (inaudible) within 30 days after the consumation of contract and it has never been done,” Harper said.

Bill Clark said that Garrett had requested to be moved from the home days before his wife and mother were shot. He said he was told the process took about 15 days.

Miller said one of the first questions that DCS, or the foster care agency in this case, Phoenix Homes, will ask is, “Are you in danger?” The DCS said it doesn't believe the teenager was in any danger.

The DCS has 155 contracts with foster care agencies, and out of the $539 million the state has authorized to spend for placing children, more than $431 million has been obligated to the private foster care agencies.