Tuesday, March 8, 2005 | 9:07 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- Chris Brooks entered the foster care system at age 5, and by the time he left, he had gone through 35 different foster homes.
Now 23 years old, Brooks mentors children in foster care through the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth. He said Monday that Assembly Bills 42 and 43 could have protected him from some of the trauma he went through as a child.
On his 10th birthday, for example, Brooks was separated from his brother, he said. Assembly Bill 42 calls for siblings to be placed in the same foster home so that they can remain together.
While social workers try to keep siblings together, it's often difficult, especially if there are many children in a family, said Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, who introduced the bill.
A legislative study found that of the 429 sibling groups in foster care in Clark County last April, 270 were placed together. The other 159 groups were broken up.
Assembly Bill 43 would give foster children a bill of rights covering everything from a child's rights to choose their own religion to how far a foster parent can go in disciplining a foster child.
"It protects you against the bad foster parents," Brooks said.
Some advocates, however, worried that foster parents already live in a fish bowl. Adding restrictions might discourage people from a job that's already difficult, said foster parent Frank Schnorbus, who also helps inspect foster homes.
"You really do open your life to just total outside scrutiny," he said. "It's very intimidating; it's very scary as a parent. And as an inspector, I can assure you this is going to have very negative impacts on foster parenting."
Schnorbus said he's had to call the sheriff four or five times because of problems with his foster children. He said the bill would prevent him from monitoring his foster children's phone calls or checking their backpacks or dressers if he thinks something is wrong.
Brooks said he lived in homes with a range of religions and sometimes was punished for not subscribing to a family's religion.
"It should be up to me to decide whether I want to be religious, what type of religion I want to be in," Brooks said. "It shouldn't be forced upon me to decide that."
Janine Hansen, president of the Nevada Eagle Forum, worried that a provision saying foster children have the right to receive medical and dental care "without limitation" could be taken out of hand if children want elective surgery or other non-essential services.
Even a provision stopping parents from locking foster children in a room could have ramifications, she said. She said some children might have to be locked in rooms while they're in time out because they otherwise would escape.
"Shall we do away with parents and just have providers for physical needs?" she asked. "What parent who really cares about a child would have a home with unlimited freedom?"
Similar foster children bills of rights in other states haven't yielded a crop of lawsuits against foster parents, Buckley said.
"By and large what I think we're doing here is to set forth a standard of how we want children to be treated," she said.
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