A conversation on the Senate floor on Monday pivoted from being about a measure requiring the state to provide luggage to kids in foster care rather than trash bags into a larger bipartisan discussion about why the agency charged with kids in its care has struggled for so long.
The measure, Senate Bill 1016, would prevent Oregon’s child welfare agency from putting kids’ belongings in trash bags as they move placements and make it explicit that luggage must be provided. The measure passed the Senate and now heads to the House.
People who've been through foster care systems, like the Oregon Department of Human Services, are more likely to suffer from chronic health conditions later in life, according to a new study.
Bradley W. Parks / OPB
Sen. Mark Meek, a Democrat from Gladstone, noted he was once a kid in foster care.
He said the agency is causing “irreparable harm and damage” to the kids placed in care, and when they are moved from place to place using a trash bag, it sends a message. “You’re garbage. You’re trash, and we’re gonna take you to this other place to see if we can house you a little longer,” he said.
When Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, first introduced the bill during the 2023 session, she thought eradicating the use of plastic bags and providing duffels for the 4,500 children placed in state care would be straightforward.
Turns out, it wasn’t. Sollman’s latest push is an effort to make the language more explicit: no trash bags, no exceptions.
It was an “absolute travesty,” Sollman told her colleagues, that another bill was needed to make sure lawmakers’ intentions were clear to the agency.
A Republican senator, Mike McLane, of Powell Butte, was also direct, saying he was bewildered Gov. Tina Kotek has not acted. ”I would ask Gov. Kotek, why do we need this bill when you have complete authority to get this done? An executive order? Or a good old-fashioned dressing down of the director of DHS would have done the job.”
McLane noted the incompetence of the agency had been on display for years.
Sen. Noah Robinson, a Republican from Cave Junction, said the trash bags seem to illustrate a larger problem at DHS.
“It’s a symptom,” he said. “If you’re moving a child’s belongings, you’re moving a child, and we don’t care enough about the child to provide them with decent carriers, that is not good. And I don’t know if you can fix it by just removing the trash bags.”
Jake Sunderland, a DHS spokesman, told OPB in February that since the 2023 legislation passed, the department has dramatically cut down on the use of plastic bags. Sunderland said out of the more than 17,000 moves, only 17 times did agency officials rely on a plastic bag since the law was enacted.
The agency said the reasons varied. For example, there were times when a foster youth’s items were unsanitary (lice, mold or soiled), the duffels weren’t large enough to carry all their items, so a trash bag was also used, or once an ice storm prevented the pickup of luggage.
The state settled a sweeping class-action lawsuit last year and has promised to work with an outside expert to oversee the foster care system. The state has also promised to reduce the rate of mistreatment and improve the quality of placements.
