Arizona DCS email to relieve shelter overcrowding raises foster parents’ brows

PHOENIX — Some Valley foster parents feel the Arizona Department of Child Safety director overstepped his bounds last weekend when he contacted them directly to take kids from an overcrowded emergency shelter.

The department called an after-hours licensing agency to find out whether there were enough beds in foster homes to house 25 kids. When it was told that there weren’t, Director Gregory McKay side-stepped the agency and sent an e-mail to 2,500 foster parents on Sept. 11.

“He asked us that if we had our beds on hold for any reason other than an investigation, if we would consider opening them and taking in some of these kids who were at the shelter,” foster parent Dr. Lynette Austin said.

Austin said she understands why McKay contacted the parents directly, but said it went around the typical process: DCS informs a licensing agency it needs to house children, which then contacts foster parents. She said the current structure prevents the violation of confidentiality laws.

“He (McKay) listed every child’s initials, sex, and their age, for all of the kids between 0 and 5 years old,” Austin said. “Those are the ones that they most like to get out of the placement center as quickly as possible.”

DCS spokesman Doug Nick called the “unique” email strategy — which began with a tale about the African Masai tribe — very effective.

“The children’s welfare is paramount here,” he said. “When we have an opportunity to get them out of a placement center and into a home in a much more rapid time frame, we are going to do that.”

Austin said the system works to protect children. By circumventing it, she alleged in an email to foster parents that McKay risked putting children in a possibly bad situation and may have set a dangerous precedent.

“Children were just getting shoved into homes really quickly, without any due process of the way things should work, and that is going to cause safety risks and safety issues,” she said.

However, Nick said there were no security concerns on the department’s end.

“Every foster family that we contacted are already licensed and have passed a background check,” he said. “We were able to share information with these people. They are already part of our system, so that concern is simply unwarranted.”

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