State sues to recover costs from Canadian mom

A Canadian woman whose son was kept by the state of Oregon in foster care in Lane County against her wishes for almost two years says Oregon is suing her to recoup the expenses the state ran up keeping him here.

“It’s like I rescued my son from his kidnappers and now they’re suing me and asking me to pay the ransom,” Calgary resident Lisa Kirkman told the Calgary Herald, according to a Monday story in that newspaper.

Former Lane County Juvenile Court Judge Kip Leonard, who recently retired, ordered in May that the state return Kirkman’s 12-year-old son, Noah, to Calgary to live with his maternal grandparents. The boy had been living in a Springfield foster home and attending Thurston Middle School. Noah Kirkman had been under the custody of the state Department of Human Services since fall 2008.

Leonard said Lisa Kirkman had “abandoned” her son in Oakridge that summer when she left him with his stepfather, John Kirkman. Oakridge police had called the DHS after finding the boy alone and unsupervised a couple of times. Lisa Kirkman, however, argued that she had simply left her son in Oregon for a summer vacation and that state authorities refused to let her take him back to Canada.

The case ended up drawing substantial media coverage on both sides of the border as Kirkman persisted in trying to get her son back, and Oregon authorities resisted, saying Kirkman was not a fit mother.

A hearing on the cost-recouping case is scheduled today in a family court of the Provincial Court of Alberta, said Tony Merchant, a Regina, Saskatchewan, attorney who represents Lisa Kirkman.

Oregon Department of Justice spokesman Tony Green said Monday that he could not comment on the case, citing foster care privacy concerns.

“It’s state policy that the state seeks to recover the cost of (caring for the child) when the child is in foster care,” state DHS spokesman Gene Evans said.

“It’s the standard operating procedure for many states,” Evans said.

It’s unclear how much DHS is seeking to recoup from Kirkman, but it would likely be in the tens of thousands of dollars for the 21 or so months Noah Kirkman was in foster care in Lane County.

Kirkman did not return a phone call from The Register-Guard seeking comment.

According to DHS policy provided by Evans, parents are to be informed by a caseworker of their financial obligations and referred to the agency’s Child Support Program when their children are placed in foster care. A parent’s financial responsibility to pay for the foster care is waived only in certain circumstances, according to the policy, including if the legal parent is dead; if their parental rights are terminated by the court; or if legal proceedings for adoption are pending and establishing paternity would be detrimental to the child.

The basic rate Oregon pays foster parents for food, clothing, housing and other expenses depends on the age of the child and whether he or she has “special needs.” Foster parents of children ages 6 to 12 receive a monthly payment of $728. Payment rates for special needs are based on three levels that pay an additional $212, $414 or $815. Noah Kirkman was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, and was also seeing a psychologist while in foster care and taking certain prescription medications, according to court records provided to The Register-Guard by his mother last winter.

Merchant, who said Oregon has hired an Alberta attorney to represent the state today, said he could find no precedent in which any U.S. state had ever tried to recoup foster care costs for keeping a Canadian child in America.

“This is an opportunity for the great state of Oregon to cure its budgetary problems,” Merchant said, sarcastically.

Lisa Kirkman, a marijuana activist who once ran a medical pot dispensary in British Columbia before being convicted in Canada of growing the drug illegally, is not a wealthy person, Merchant said. So, trying to get $20,000 to $40,000 out of her could not possibly be a good thing for Noah Kirkman’s well-being, he said.

Richard Wexler, executive director of the Virginia-based National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, which advocates “family preservation” in all but the most extreme cases and seeks comprehensive changes in America’s child welfare system, agreed.

“If DHS is supposed to do everything it does ‘in the best interests of the child,’ how is it in this child’s best interests to make his family poorer and inflict even more stress?” Wexler asked. “This is basically in lieu of a pound of flesh,” Wexler said. “DHS is going for the money.”