PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

If I was governor of the State of Oregon – perish the thought some of you may say – I would do something definitive and aggressive about the foster care problem in the state.

That could even involve changing leadership at the culprit agency, the Department of Human Services.

But, in some ways, it’s already too late to get a handle on the problem that, over the years, has resulted in so many tragedies for “our children.”

The fact is that state officials have placed foster children in out-of-state locations that failed to guard the safety of the children. Then, in at least one case, when there was a death of a foster child, state officials failed to announce that very unfortunate fact.

Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) reported more trouble this week under this headline:

Advocacy Groups Fire Back After Oregon Officials Move To Dismiss Federal Foster Care Lawsuit

According to OPB, advocacy groups who filed a class-action lawsuit against Oregon’s Department of Human Services say the state can’t be relied upon to fix the problems plaguing the system on its own.

“The state has demonstrated that it is a constitutionally inadequate parent to the most vulnerable children in its care,” according to Thursday’s filing from the advocacy groups.

“At this point, given the history of what’s happened to foster kids in Oregon, it’s way too late for the state to say, ‘Trust us.’’’

In April, A Better Childhood, a national advocacy group, and Disability Rights Oregon filed a lawsuit against the DHS, alleging the agency re-victimizes children in its foster care system and has failed to address documented problems for at least a decade.

An attempt to reach a settlement failed earlier this summer. In response, the state and Governor Kate Brown filed a motion in July, asserting the state is already in the midst of overhauling the state’s child welfare system and a federal judge should not oversee the state’s decisions when it comes to foster care.

When I was a lobbyist, I got involved in the foster care issue through my firm’s representation of Youth Villages and its predecessor agencies. Like many others, I knew then that the state’s foster care efforts were in jeopardy of failing and that was about five years ago.

Since then, not a whole lot appears to have been done – at least not much with a beneficial effect. The governor has appointed task forces – two of them, in fact, one on top of the other — to oversee DHS’s work, but, from my perspective, this is no time for task forces.

It is a time for the state to get its act together on behalf of one of the most important resources under its care – foster care children.

Past time, in fact.