Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced Monday he has appointed a statewide advisory committee “to come up with bold new ideas” to improve the state’s child welfare and foster care systems.

With more than 58,000 reports of alleged child neglect, physical and sexual abuse and about 12,000 Ohio children in foster care, DeWine has charged the 20-member Foster Care Advisory Group to review the issues and submit recommendations by March 10.

The group will use a 17-page report released by DeWine that highlights a year-long study and eight child safety statewide summits that sought input from victims, families, advocates, law enforcement and elected officials to understand the issues affecting the state’s abused and neglected children.

“Everything in the report was something we heard time and time again and there got to be a pattern,” he said. “The most telling comments came from foster parents and young people who have been in foster care.”

The report identified six major issues that repeatedly came up during the summits: restrictions in foster parent participation; problems with the guardian ad litem program; lack of mentors for foster children; stigmas surrounding foster children; decreasing accountability and funding; and barriers to finding permanent homes.

The bi-partisan advisory group includes legislators, judges, prosecuting attorneys, foster parents and child welfare workers. DeWine said he asked the group to submit concrete recommendations within 90 days. He gave them wide latitude regarding possible solutions that range from potential legislation to changes in court procedures. “The group’s recommendations are not confined to what we found in these eight hearings,” DeWine said. “It’s a panel I am very proud of, because it’s people with diverse backgrounds who share an attitude that they care about kids. It’s not an easy task, because it’s not an easy area.”

State Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, who was selected to serve on the group, said: “This is an issue I’ve been following for a long time.”

One of the primary issues related to foster care is the lack of participation by foster parents in the court process. “Foster parents see these kids every day, and love these kids, but they are not consulted when it comes time for the courts or Children Services to make a decision whether or not to go back to the parents,” he said. “Many foster children would also say they are not consulted throughout the process.”

DeWine noted while reports of child abuse and neglect have declined in Ohio, that’s no reason for complacency. “We’re doing better in terms of the safety of kids, but we’re not doing better in terms of moving the kids out of legal limbo,” he said.

The reported concluded too many children are aging out of foster care without ever being adopted and face dire futures. For example, 25 percent of the foster care children do not receive a high school diploma, about 30 percent are incarcerated at some point and more than 50 percent will experience homelessness.

“The challenges these children face are immense,” the attorney general said. “They don’t have a home and don’t have someone close to them to be a mentor, they don’t have someone to support them emotionally and to help to guide them during a difficult time.”

Columbus State Community College student Dauntea Sledge welcomes his role as a consultant on the advisory commission. He was in the foster care system and said more mentors are needed to help children: “It’s not financial help that’s needed, it’s advice on school, jobs and relationships. The only relationships we’ve seen were dysfunctional.”

Sledge recalled the stigma of being in foster care, when even a simple sleepover with friends requires a background check: “Two points in my life were the hardest — when I entered care and exited care,” he said. “I simply didn’t know what I was getting into. I lay down at night with an overwhelming feeling of fear, and I didn’t know what to expect. I had the same feeling when I was emancipated from foster care.”

Sledge said he had nowhere to go when he aged out of the foster care system at 18. He moved in with his mother at first and ended up homeless for a time. “Even when I was homeless I was still working and going to school,” he said.”People assume that if a foster kid ended up homeless, the kid did something wrong, that he wasn’t productive. But that’s not the case. So many kids are in school or working and just had no place to go.”

Sledge said the advisory group is “heaven-sent for youth who want to be adopted. I think there are good people on this board who will make the right decisions.”

The foster care advisory group held its first meeting immediately after the announcement, engaging in a spirited and wide-ranging conversation about everything from problems in the guardian ad litem program to making it easier for foster children to live a normal life.

Marynell Townsend, executive director of the Ohio Family Care Association, said she is pleased the report suggested creating an independent ombudsman’s office for youth, similar to what already exists for Ohio’s aging population. The report stated, “Families often find themselves without recourse when they feel that a social worker or public children services agency is not acting in the best interest of a foster child in their care.”

“An ombudsman would offer the opportunity for an impartial review if the foster parent feels that something is going wrong,” she said.

Crystal Allen, executive director of the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, said while the advisory group’s first meeting was productive, she cautioned, however, that the recommendations cannot involve unfunded mandates or spending money that the state does not have.

“Funding is the barrier point around so many discussions,” Allen said. “We can’t just say, ‘Just more.’ We have to be innovative with funding and explore equity in funding.”