Children First leader surprised by DHR spending The head of a children's group says she's surprised an Alabama agency is spending all its tobacco settlement money on private specialized placement of abused and neglected children, and not on foster parents. Sue Bell Cobb, an Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals Court judge who chairs the Children First Foundation, said tobacco money distributed by Alabama's welfare agency should be used to increase payments to foster parents. "The foster parents in Alabama are literally taking the money and the food out of their own children's mouths to feed children that are the responsibility of the State of Alabama," Cobb told The Birmingham News. The Department of Human Resources is using its share of the state's tobacco money to expand programs for abused and neglected children as required in a federal court case. All the DHR tobacco money is being spent on private, therapeutic foster care for children with problems that require specialized care. "That's just amazing to me," Cobb said. "Every speech I gave, we always talked about increasing the stipend to foster parents." The Children First Foundation oversees spending of Alabama's tobacco money on children's programs. Ira Burnim, an attorney who filed the 1988 R.C. lawsuit on behalf of Alabama foster children with emotional and behavioral disorders, said money going to therapeutic homes is "well spent." While traditional foster parents are not receiving more money, they are getting more training and services, Burnim said. "You could spend millions of dollars giving $5 more a month to foster parents," he said. "What do you really buy?" Fuller said in April that DHR had received about $9 million from the national tobacco settlement and he expected to have a $7 million surplus in this year's budget to be used in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Officials in 1999 predicted Alabama would get a total of $3 billion over 25 years. A $25 million federal grant that DHR is in line to get for reporting a reduction in out-of-wedlock births cannot be used to increase payments to foster parents because it is not a continuing source of money, said Carrie Kurlander, the governor's press secretary.