OxfordPress.com

MIDDLETOWN — Killed last summer in foster care, Marcus Fiesel could be the poster child for a recent unprecedented study that found children fare better staying with their troubled families than in foster care.

Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, has argued for nearly a year that Marcus should not have been removed and has argued for years that children like Marcus are better off at home.

The 3-year-old developmentally disabled boy was removed in April 2006 from his mother, Donna Trevino, after he was found wandering the streets alone and was almost hit by a car. Police said they found poor living conditions at his North Grimes Street home in Middletown. Nearly four months earlier, he fell from his home's second-story window.

Placed in a Clermont County foster home in May, Marcus was dead by Aug. 6 after being bound and locked in a playpen inside an upstairs closet for nearly two days while his foster parents, Liz and David Carroll Jr., went to a family reunion in Kentucky. His body was later burned and remains dumped into the Ohio River. The Carrolls are both serving life sentences for his death.

Now, Wexler said he has the evidence to prove children like Marcus should remain with their families.

A study released in March by Joseph Doyle, an economics professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management who studies social policy, focused on children whose cases could have gone either way. Cases of sexual abuse, drug exposure, and severe abuse and neglect were excluded because foster care likely is necessary in those circumstances.

Doyle found children who stayed with their families were less likely to become juvenile delinquents or teen mothers and were more likely to keep a job or earn a better salary. Doyle tracked 15,000 Illinois children ages 5 to 15 from 1990 to 2002 for the study funded by the National Science Foundation, which child welfare experts are calling the largest study conducted on the effects foster care.

The findings weigh in on the "in-between cases," Wexler said, "where the parent is neither all victim nor all villain; cases where there are real problems in the home, but wide disagreement over what should be done. In other words, I would argue, parents like Donna Trevino."

Butler County Children Services, which approved Marcus' placement, agree with Doyle's conclusions about these marginal cases of abuse, spokeswoman Denise Winkler said.

"It provides the first valuable empirical evidence for keeping children with their families," Winkler said. "Caseworkers know from their experience in this field that children are better off with their families if they can be there and be safe. What this does is supports that with numbers and data."

Regardless of the criticism that has surrounded Children Services since Marcus' death, Winkler said the study is important to look at — period. Copies of the study have been distributed to administrators to see if its lessons can be applied to the agency's polices, Winkler said.

County Commission President Gregory Jolivette said he's interested to see how Children Services will respond to the study. The agency is at a pivotal moment as it waits for the commissioners to select a new executive director.

Still, Jolivette said the philosophy of child welfare has been evolving from orphanages to group homes to foster care — and now foster care is being rethought.

"I don't think it's a one size fits all," he said.

Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester Twp., said he will see if the study has any application in Ohio. Meanwhile, he said he expects former care reform legislation, which he has co-sponsored, to be ratified in the fall. Senate Bills 163 and 164 focus on improved foster parent screening.