Study targets smoking in foster homes

Jackie Sparks is used to landing in foster homes where the adults smoke.

Smoke makes her eyes burn. When her foster parents' cars filled with cigarette haze, she worried about her little brother breathing secondhand smoke.

"Whenever I smell cigarette smoke, it kills me," she said.

Asking for nonsmoking homes didn't work. So when Sparks' foster parents reached for their lighters, she retreated to her room.

But Sparks, 16, saw opportunity to push for smoke-free foster homes last year when she worked as a legislative page and met Rep. Tricia Cotham, a Charlotte Democrat.

"She actually cares about foster kids, not like 'whatever, we'll forget about them,' " Sparks said.

Cotham wants to consider a ban on smoking in foster homes. But first she has filed a bill requesting a study to see whether prohibiting foster parents' smoking would reduce available foster homes.

The proposal she sponsored is in a House committee and, if approved, would be rolled into a big bill at the end of the session that authorizes legislative studies on dozens of issues.

The proposal's adult supporters are trying to walk a line between protecting children's health and not making the foster home shortage worse by driving out smokers.

"That's why the bill is written the way it is, to see if it would be a problem," Cotham said. "Hopefully, we will find that it is not a problem."

The state Division of Social Services does not have numbers on the shortage, because counties do their own recruiting. But it's generally agreed that the state needs more foster homes. Foster homes are licensed to care for children in the custody of county social service departments. Foster parents are paid to cover children's room and board.

No simple trek

Banning smoking is not as simple as it seems, said Karen McLeod, president of the Children and Family Services Association-NC, a trade group of child-care agencies, and a member of the advocacy group Covenant with North Carolina's Children. Some Covenant members suggested a study before trying to impose a ban. Counties look to place children with relatives. What if they smoke? What about foster homes where adults are specially trained to handle children with severe emotional problems?

"Everyone would like children to be in foster homes where there's no smoking," McLeod said. "We have to be realistic about what this meant."

Many proposed laws the legislature considers are suggested by lobbyists or state agencies, though a few ideas from residents under 18 leak through. Sparks and other foster children who worked as pages, members of a group called Sayso -- for Strong Able Youth Speaking Out -- paid attention last year to legislative debates over proposed limits on smoking in public buildings and adult-care homes.

Sparks is in a nonsmoking home now, but most of those she has lived in had a foster parent who smoked. Some foster children don't think a nonsmoking home is important, she said, because they smoke themselves. But minors who are in the custody of departments of social services should not be put in homes that jeopardize their health, she said.

"If a foster parent really wants to be a foster parent, they should be willing to smoke outside or give up smoking," said Sparks, of Haywood County. "To me it's a very big deal."

Thirteen states prohibit smoking in foster homes, and a few recommend against it, according to the Hunter College School of Social Work in New York, which surveys state foster home policies. Three states are working on rules to limit smoking around foster children. Thirty states, including North Carolina, have no policy.

Cotham has an affinity for foster children's concerns. As an assistant principal in a Charlotte high school, Cotham was the administrator responsible for special needs students, many of whom were in foster care. She worked with foster children on weekends.

Cotham helped give Sayso pages a quick course last year on how the legislature works and asked them for ideas. Last summer, she attended the Sayso convention, where she got an earful about foster homes with smokers.

"It was something I never really considered," she said. "To hear from them and for them to explain it, it made perfect sense."