By Nathan Leaf
Enquirer Columbus Bureau

COLUMBUS - Ohio programs intended to place children with adoptive parents are overwhelmed and underfunded, a group of county child welfare advocates says.

While Ohio has managed to place more neglected and abused children in permanent homes over the last five years, the number of children awaiting adoption has continued to grow, according to a study done by the Public Children Services Association of Ohio.

The state has seen a 38 percent rise in adoptions since 1997. Despite that, the number of children waiting for a permanent home has grown 9 percent.

"We've been very successful but we can't keep up," says Crystal Allen, the association's director. "We've got more and more kids needing permanent homes."

There were 32,954 children in state custody in 1997, a number that rose to 35,971 in 2001.

Meanwhile the number of adoptions completed rose from 1,461 to 2,019.

Ms. Allen says much of the problem can be attributed to a lack of state funding. She said the state provides only 9 cents out of every dollar spent for child services across Ohio. Local tax dollars and federal funds pick up the rest.

"The local burden of the taxpayer is huge because (Ohio's) resources are very uneven," Ms. Allen said.

The report recommends maintaining the current level of state funding for core child welfare services.

Department of Jobs and Family Services spokesman Jon Allen said although a scheduled increase of $4.6 million for child welfare was lost because of budget rollbacks, adoption programs were spared funding cuts suffered in other areas of the agency.

"We avoided any cuts to child welfare, and we'll continue to do everything we can to avoid cuts," Mr. Allen said.

He says the department is unable to do anything about the number of children in custody.

Laurie Petrie, spokeswoman for the Hamilton County Department of Jobs and Families, said an increase in older children and those with behavioral problems has led to longer stays in state custody.

"A lot of the new cases that we are getting are more serious than we have traditionally seen," Ms. Petrie said. "Children are staying in the system longer."

Ms. Petrie said children need to be moved through the system more quickly - but not at the expense of their safety.

Gayle Tenenbaum, legislative director for the children services association, attributes the rise in the amount of time children stay in custody to the lack of community-based programs that help get kids back to their parents.

"We can't get community-based services either for the children or for their families," she said.

This also leads to more children being put into a permanent placement because of time limits on how long children can remain in temporary programs.

"When agencies don't have the basic core funding that they need ... sometimes adoptions take a back seat," Ms. Tenenbaum said.