Foster Care: A Home Away From Home

Henry and Tasha Wertin’s indoctrination into parenthood wasn’t quite what they thought it would be.

For three years, the Lawrence couple had tried to conceive. Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. And the cost and uncertainty of an adoption agency didn’t seem worth it. So they decided to become foster care parents.

They took the classes, made the necessary changes to their home and went through background checks.

Red Cross Backs Off Intrusive Background Checks

The American Red Cross in 2006 announced that it would perform intrusive background checks on volunteers, including credit checks and mode-of-living checks. ARRL, supporting many hams who were Red Cross volunteers, protested. And like many others, I'm sure, I started finding other disaster-relief organizations to send money to rather than Red Cross.

ARRL now says that ARC's background-check policy has been moderated. There is a permission form, and it allows a check of name, SSN, and criminal background, and nothing else.

Application Asks for Your Salary, But Is It Better to List a Range?

Many candidates still try to get away with falsehoods on applications, says Mr. Morris, president of Background Information Services Inc. in Cleveland. Of job applicants it has screened during the past seven years, 56% have misstated their salaries by $1,000 or more, were a month or more inaccurate about their employment dates, or listed positions different than the ones they actually held, he says.

Besides using screening firms to check on candidates' backgrounds, some companies ask for final pay stubs or W-2 tax forms to verify salary, adds Jim Pappas, manager of corporate staffing for the Barnes Group Inc., an international diversified manufacturing-and-distribution company based in Bristol, Conn.