CHILDREN HELD HOSTAGE DSS is big business; children are its capital
"Everywhere I go, somebody gets money to keep me from having
a mom and dad." By David Pratt
Maximizing revenue is sound business policy. It's also a wise course for government
to pursue to get the most out of its budget. But when a state agency like the Department of Social Services reaches for the
dollars at the expense of children, it's time to rethink the policy.
Mounting evidence suggests the primary motivation
of DSS is money and not the welfare of children, despite the agency's most basic mandate. Even worse, it is argued that children
are being used as the means to that end, used as an expanding capital base to maintain DSS' $500 million annual state budget
and to increase its federal funding levels.
"The issue is about greed. It's about feeding children into a gargantuan
money machine," said Barnstable resident Nev Moore, founder of Justice for Families. "The money machine is about two-bit junk
psychologists forming multi-million-dollar contracts with DSS. It's about massive Medicaid fraud, and it's about bringing
federal dollars into the state."
Weighty charges, to be sure, and yet difficult to discount when the evidence is considered.
By
its own admission, DSS is interested in "maximizing federal revenues." The agency even has a contract with a financial consultant
to advise it on how to do just that.
Unfortunately, the most effective mechanism to increase federal funding is for
DSS to increase its case load by taking advantage of lower-class families who lack the power, money and knowledge to stop
the state from tearing them apart. That's because children eligible for Medicaid and Social Security, as well as those with
special needs, bring in the most federal dollars.
According to a report by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts,
which uses Massachusetts as an example of how to maximize federal funding, "States typically obtain more revenue from the
federal foster care program by increasing the number of cases that are eligible for federal reimbursement... Massachusetts
raised its percentage of children's eligible cases for reimbursement from 23 percent of all children receiving services to
nearly 65 percent in 1996."
Virginia-based researcher Emerich Thoma says, "There is a little known formula employed
by child welfare agencies...Before its system is considered fiscally well-managed, it has to have a minimum ratio of 50 percent
of its children eligible for SSI." He adds that by taking such a child into custody agencies can receive six to eight times
more funding than what is needed for foster placement.
"Two Massachusetts studies serve to demonstrate the inextricable
link between poverty and child removal," according to Thoma. One study of injured children brought into emergency rooms found
that the predictor of removal from their homes by DSS is not based on the seriousness or cause of the injury.
"Specifically,
the researchers found that the highest predictor of removal was not the extent of a given physical injury, but rather whether
or not the family was Medicaid eligible," Thoma reports.
It doesn't matter how badly DSS needs funding. Targeting low-income
families is hardly an acceptable prejudice, even if one assumes that all children taken into state custody actually suffer
abuse and neglect. The truth is, many children taken from truly abusive situations are not always better off. Nationally,
28 percent experience abuse while in foster homes or other facilities. The fatality rate of children in state care is nine
times higher than that of children in the general population.
According to Nev Moore, 2,500 children are seized every
day by child protective services in this country. Of those, only 400 are for "substantiated abuse." Inexplicably and incredibly,
studies by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect found that 61 percent of the "substantiated" cases it looked at
did not even qualify as child maltreatment by the center's standards!
Fifty-four percent were related to poverty or
"deprivation of necessities," which suggests the need for a more constructive use of state and federal money.
Moore
estimates that 1.5 million parents are falsely accused of child neglect or abuse each year in the United States. She says
she has evidence that DSS has engaged in deliberate fabrication to tap into the $12 billion federal budget for child protective
services.
"By seizing children illegally...via the filing of false and fraudulent documents...DSS is defrauding the
federal government with deliberate intent," charges Moore, who is helping to organize a federal class action suit against
the state agency.
Moore says the "money machine" includes exclusive multi-million dollar contracts that DSS has with
service providers such as psychologists, therapists and institutional facilities. She claims Medicaid is charged inflated
rates for DSS-mandated services that are often unnecessary or irrelevant to a particular case. There are twice as many families
receiving services as there are children in foster care.
The federal government also provides financial incentives
for getting children adopted after being in state custody for only a year, despite stipulations in both federal law and DSS'
own policy that, first and foremost, every effort should be made to keep families together. Moore points out that the entire
structure of the child protective services system encourages just the opposite.
Moore further suggests that money is
not the only motivation. She alludes to a statement by Hillary Clinton calling for "a social worker in every home," and to
Goals 2000, a masterpiece in social engineering signed into law in 1994 that deals with more than just educational goals.
Moore interprets the phasing in of the various provisions of Goals 2000 as a restructuring of society in which government
agencies take precedence over family in determining the proper way to raise children.
This may all seem too darkly
paranoid to dare give any credence to, but there is certainly enough evidence to warrant an investigation of DSS practices.
Like the song says, "just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you."
BabyFold an adoption placement
agency: The BabyFold in Bloomington Illinois advertizes adoption placement. They also state that they are Foster Care Placement,
Residental Treatment Center and they are funded by the state. The Hammit school there in Bloomington is where the children
fron the Residental Center go to school at. Most kids there are there because there are no foster homes for them. They tell
the kids that they will go and be on tv so they might get adopted. This is sick. I don't know how many kids there have been
placed ther by DCFS. but I do know there are quite a few
July 4, 2004 From a lawyer-
What
incentive do the Feds give the states to reunify the families?
If the Feds gave cash to the states for every kid that
went home more kids would go home instead of to adoption wouldn't they??
The states consistently say "we don't get
money for services from the feds unless the kids are in custody" so little effort to prevent removal is made -unless it's
free, or inexpensive. Also I've noticed an incredible number of parents are "cured" as soon as the fed $$$ runs out. If the
states had X number of dollars per child or "unlimited cash" for 12 months but then the states had to foot the bill (or a
large part of the bill) for the time after 12 months until adoption is completed, the states would be less eager to let kids
"hang out" (languish is the fed word) in foster care forever).
The feds do not pay $$$ for kids (families) receiving
services until "jeopardy" is established by a court. What incentive do the states have to offer (pay for) services prior to
jeopardy. And because adoption and reunification can occur at the same time the states tend to use the "before jeopardy" time
to locate an adoptive placement (they get paid for this). If the States put as much effort into families the first 120 days
as they do adoption assistance, there would likely be many families that would be "cured" within 120 days and jeopardy finding
would be necessary.
If the feds gave "incentives" for family placements equal or similar to adoptive placements perhaps
the states would be inclined to place with relatives.
In short the FEDS ARE RESPONSIBLE the "incentives" are all directed
toward "jeopardy" and adoption. What we need are "incentives" for reunification efforts. If the Feds paid, as example, 100%
(or even 110%) of family service costs prior to a jeopardy finding, and only 80% after the finding the states would be a little
slower about bringing petitions to the court before working with the families to resolve the state's concerns.
Laws
and words are fine but federal cash speaks louder than any law. The laws say reunify families but the federal cash says kill
the parents, quickly.
A Critical Look At The Foster Care System How Great the Need?
HOW GREAT THE NEED?
Today, over half a million children are in foster care in the
United States. The vast majority of these children have been removed from their homes without legal excuse or justification.
Psychologist and author Dr. Seth Farber explains:
Only a small minority of these children have been
separated from parents who are dangerous to them. The overwhelming majority have been separated from loving and responsible
parents. One does not need to be a child psychologist to realize the devastating effect of removing a child from parents with
whom he or she is deeply bonded.[1]
The number of children removed from their homes is staggering, and by many accounts
continues to increase. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, for example, confirms that it removes over
1,000 children per month from their homes.[2]
Do these children really all come from families who are so abusive and
neglectful of their children that they need to be removed from their homes?
"The majority of parents who come before
our court love their children," explained Denise Kane, Inspector General of the Illinois Department of Children and Family
Services, to a Congressional subcommittee. "Their children look to them with love and seek the attention and nurturing of
their parents."[3]
A 1990 study conducted in Illinois by the Chapin Hall Center for Children would bear this out. At
least 40% of the children in foster care found the reasons for placement confusing, while one-third of them did not even know
why they had a caseworker.[4]
In Los Angeles County, California, 26,947 children entered the foster care system for
the first time in 1995.[5]
Did these children all arrive from abusive or neglectful households? Just as in Illinois,
many could safely have been left in their own homes, according to the testimony of Department head Peter Digre.
Under
questioning by a Congressional subcommittee, Digre admitted to legislators that about half of the removals of children from
their homes in his system are due to poverty, and not abuse or neglect.
"It gets down to those very specific issues
about a place to live, food on the table, medical care, and thing like that," he explained, adding, "about half of the families
are not physical abusers, not sexual abusers, not people with propensities to violence but simply people who are struggling
to keep ends pulled together and are eminently salvagable."
This was too much for a frustrated Congressman Herger,
who replied: "Evidently, it is your department's practice to remove children from families in about 50 percent of the cases
because they don't have enough money."[6]
In Sacramento, California, child protective services caseworkers currently
remove an estimated 400 children per month--up from previous levels of 200 per month. Authorities are reviewing cases which
in some instances may stem from five-year-old reports, and conducting random sweeps of homes late at night, conducting their
sweeps without search warrants.
The majority of the children removed in these midnight raids have not necessarily been
abused or neglected, rather they are determined to be "at risk" of abuse or neglect at some point in the future.[7]
How
did it come to pass that so many children could be unnecessarily be removed from salvagable and loving homes without inspiring
public outrage? Professor of social work Leroy Pelton explains:
In the 1960s and 1970s, a child
abuse crusade, based upon the discovery of the "battered child syndrome," and the social construction of child abuse as a
social problem of "epidemic" proportions, served to drive the explosion in foster care placements, fueled by new child abuse
and neglect reporting laws, public awareness campaigns, and increased funding for social services, much of which was used
for foster care.[8]
"Increased reporting has led to a dramatic rise in the number of children who are taken away from
their parents and placed into foster care," writes the founding director of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect,
Douglas Besharov.
In 1963, no state had a law mandating the reporting of suspected child abuse or neglect. By the 1980s,
all 50 states had such laws in place, and as a result of these new reporting laws, scores of children have been inappropriately
removed from their homes. Besharov explains:
In 1963, about 75,000 children were put in foster care
because of abuse or neglect. In 1980, the figure had ballooned to more than 300,000. Of these children about half had been
in care for at least two years, and roughly one-third for over six years. Yet, according to data collected for the federal
government, it appears that up to half of these children were in no immediate danger and could have been safely left in the
care of their parents.
Vague laws "set no limits on intervention and provide no guidelines for decision making," Besharov
explains, adding that they are "a prime reason for the system's inability to protect obviously endangered children even as
it intervenes in family life on a massive scale." Without exception, efforts to develop more precise laws have been met with
resistance and hence have been unsuccessful.[9]
"County child protection agencies differ somewhat in their definitions
of what constitutes maltreatment," explains the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor. "The result is a system of widely
varying practices and standards, sometimes operating without the full confidence of the public or the professionals who make
many reports of maltreatment." The lack of clear definitions also leads to widely differing substantiation and child removal
rates among county agencies, as the Auditor explains:
some county agencies require evidence of an
injury "such as a bruise" before determining that maltreatment has occurred, while other agencies do not. Some county agencies
think it is acceptable for children ages seven or older to be left unsupervised, while others do not. Some counties rarely
if ever determine that caregivers have caused "mental injuries," while other counties frequently--and sometimes without psychiatric
or psychological diagnoses--justify maltreatment determinations on the basis of mental injury.[10]
Federal financial
incentives contribute to the crisis. While federal funds for the maintenance of children in foster care have historically
been unlimited, monies that could have been used to provide in-home services have been appropriated at levels far below that
authorized by Congress. And, many of those funds appropriated by the states for in-home services have historically been diverted
instead to foster care.[11]
Current child welfare policies extract a high fiscal cost, in addition to the toll they
extract on innocent families and children. As veteran journalist and author Richard Wexler explains:
Half the children now in foster care could safely be in their own homes if proper services were provided. Now, the federal
government spends eight times more on children in foster care than on services to keep children out of foster care.[12]
Indeed,
a recent Los Angeles Grand Jury investigation reveals that it costs up to $10,000 to maintain a child in the County's emergency
shelter for one month of time.[13]
The tragic reality is that while a small fraction of this amount would serve well
to eliminate the "issues about a place to live, food on the table, medical care" and other factors leading to placement which
Los Angeles' director Peter Digre described, his Department continues to remove children from their homes at an astounding
rate.
"There are no family oriented, preventive services to keep children from coming into State care and no reunification
services for children who come into State care," explained District of Columbia Bar Association Attorney Diane Weinroth to
a Congressional committee.
Not only is this appalling in terms of the emotional costs to the children and families,
she said, but "it is ridiculous because the cost of keeping children in State care is enormous."
"The cost of providing
services to children in family settings, or with their natural families, is a fraction of the cost, generally speaking, than
it takes to keep a child in the care of the State."[14]
AVERTING UNNECESSARY PLACEMENTS
Perhaps the best indication of how many children could be averted from inappropriate placement is suggested by
a diversion program established in Nashville-Davidson County, Tennessee.
In a study sponsored by the Urban Institute
during the early 1970s, it was found that children were often inappropriately entering state care. Child welfare services
consisted of a hodgepodge of different agencies lacking in coordination.
Professor of social work Duncan Lindsey describes
what happened once these children entered the system:
Once in, the bureaucratic door closed behind
them, and they found it hard to get out. Bureaucratic inertia suddenly asserted itself. Procedures had to be followed. Forms
filled out. Hearings held. Interviews. More forms. No one wanted to take responsibility for releasing children back to a possibly
dangerous home environment. The burden of proof shifted from the agency, which, in its view, had acted correctly in removing
the children, to the parents who must now prove definitively why their children should be allowed to return home. The system
designed to serve children and families had lost sight of its mission.[15]
As a result of this study, and through
a joint initiative between federal, state and local government, the Comprehensive Emergency Services program was established,
the first objective of which was to "reduce the number of dependency petitions filed and the number of children entering into
they system by screening out those cases where a petition was not justified."
Through a combination of screening, coordination
and provision of services, remarkable results were obtained.
As a result of the CES program, the number of dependency
petitions dropped sharply--from 602 before the program started to 226 two years later. "This was achieved largely by screening
the number of petitions sworn out and averting or preventing the inappropriate placement of children in care," notes Lindsey.
What
is even more remarkable is that the number of cases coming to the attention of the system increased from 770 to 2,156 during
the course of the program--an increase of 180 percent. Thus, while the number of potential entrants increased threefold during
the course of the program, the number of actual admissions into care dropped by two-thirds.
The number of children
removed from their homes and placed into care declined from 353 to 174, a decline of about 50 percent. The number of children
placed in residential facilities was reduced from 262 to 35, a decrease of more than 85 percent. Perhaps most significantly,
the number of children under six who were admitted dropped from 180 to zero.
But diverting placement would prove to
be futile if the child showed up again due to continuing abuse or neglect. This did not appear to happen. The number of children
for whom petitions were initially filed and who turned up again by the end of the following year due to abuse or neglect declined
from 196 to 23.
The remarkable success of this program notwithstanding, it has yet to be replicated on any meaningful
scale.
THE CONFUSION OF POVERTY WITH NEGLECT
The inability on the part of many child protective services caseworkers to differentiate between poverty and neglect
is a major contributing factor to the continued inappropriate removals of children from their homes, argue many system critics.[16]
Close
to 85 per cent of the cases agencies label as neglect are actually poverty cases, says Trevor Grant, former Director of Social
Services of the New York City Child Welfare Administration, and removing children from their homes is often the safest course
of action for a caseworker to take:
For the most trivial reasons families are destroyed. If the
furniture is broken down or the house is messy, CWA workers will remove the child. When in doubt, the safest practice for
the workers is to remove the children and then to file neglect charges that never have to be proved in court.[17]
Two
Massachusetts studies serve to demonstrate the inextricable link between poverty and child removal.
Contrary to the
results one might expect, in a study of abused and neglected children entering a hospital emergency room it was found that
the severity of a physical injury served to decrease the likelihood of a child being placed outside of the home.
Specifically,
the researchers found that the highest predictor of removal was not the extent of a given physical injury, but rather whether
or not the family was Medicaid-eligible.[18]
In a follow-up study of 805 children, researchers found that the degree
of physical injury to a child only became statistically significant in the reporting of child abuse when the family's income
was excluded from the analysis.[19]
The consequences of vague statutes, increased reporting, and poor decision making
among child protective services caseworkers are everywhere to be found.
In Los Angeles, lawyers at the office of Public
Counsel reviewed every abuse and neglect petition filed in the county during one week in 1987. They found 30% of the petitions
to be so groundless that they should never have been filed at all.[20]
Two years later in Seattle, Washington, the
Governor's Commission on Children came to the same conclusion, finding that 30% of the petitions filed were for children who
did not need to be in foster care.[21]
In Illinois, researchers for the Child Welfare Institute in Atlanta examined
cases in three Illinois cities in 1994, conducting interviews with parents, foster parents, and caseworkers. Again, the researchers
reached exactly the same conclusion. Reports the Chicago Tribune:
The Child Welfare Institute determined
that in one-third of the cases, there was absolutely no reason for the children not to be home with their parents. The children
were in foster care for the protection of their caseworker, not for their own safety.[22]
Defensive social work of
the variety identified by the Child Welfare Institute would appear to permeate the field. In 1997, for example, removals of
children from their homes in the Tampa Bay area of Florida reportedly doubled after a child known to the CPS system died.[23]
Similarly,
according to Faye Moore, a senior official with the New York Social Services Employees Union Local 371, many of the removals
of children from their homes that followed the tragic death of Elisa Izquierdo were unnecessary:
People are working not to make mistakes, and that may not necessarily be in the best interests of the children. How so? Unnecessary
removals.[24]
If the vague statutes, increases in reporting, defensive social work and poor decision making in the
field aren't enough to ensure that a large number of children will be unnecessarily removed from their homes, one other factor
is certain to do it.
The Children's Defense Fund undertook a comprehensive review of the child welfare system. Project
coordinator Jane Knitzer explained the studies findings to a Congressional committee, identifying as a major finding that
"there is an antifamily bias that pervades the policies and practices of the child welfare system. The system works against
families, not for them."
The children in care are subject to continuing neglect at the hands of public officials, she
explained, adding that the federal role exacerbates both the antifamily bias and the public neglect of children.
This
antifamily bias is "reflected at all points in the placement process," she explained, adding that as a result: "Children are
inappropriately removed from their families."[25]
Worse, as child protective services caseworkers lack a knowledge
base to guide them in their decision making, they often fall back on hunches, or gut instinct. A user manual for child protective
services supervisors issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services encourages the case manager to "analyze intuition
without stifling creativity and spontaneity," explaining:
As caseworkers gain confidence, they begin
to act on hunches, common sense, and intuition. Supervisors should assist caseworkers to validate these instincts by helping
them analyze what led to the intuition.[26]
POVERTY CODIFIED
Responding to mounting criticism on one side
about the high number of wrongful removals, and criticism on the other about the large number of children who manage each
year to die under the watchful eye of child protective servises, the industry devised another gimmick to aid the social worker
in making appropriate decisions.[27]
Enter the risk-assessment matrix--a checklist of "risk factors" typically used
to aid the caseworker in predicting the likelihood of abuse or neglect at some point in the future.
"Risk assessment
can be defined as the systematic collection of information to determine the degree to which a child is likely to be abused
or neglected at some future point in time," researchers explain.[28]
Reseachers have identified dozens of variants
as being in use throughout the states. Some have as few as a handful of risk factors, while some others have several dozens
of factors grouped together in various ways. These assessment tools are typically experimental and unvalidated in design,
with some researchers having identified only half of the factors typically employed in their design as having been subjected
to any empirical testing whatsoever.[29]
Like others among the many "solutions" devised to improve the severe deficiencies
that plague the child welfare system, the risk assessment device would only appear to have made things far worse.
"Many
agencies have acted prematurely, implementing risk assessment instruments that have not been adequately designed or researched,"
writes Stanford University Law Professor Michael Wald with Maria Woolverton in the industry journal Child Welfare.
"It
is not possible to to make highly accurate predictions of risk with existing instruments." Nevertheless, they have gained
an almost uncritical acceptance in the field of child welfare, as Wald and Woolverton explain:
Unfortunately,
some child protective services (CPS) agencies appear to be using risk-assessment instruments in an unjustifiable manner, given
the limited knowledge base regarding the validity of these instruments. Moreover, we are concerned that many agencies are
adopting risk-assessment instruments in lieu of addressing fundamental problems in existing child protection systems, such
as the excessive number of inexperienced or incompetent workers and the lack of adequate resources. In fact, use of inadequately
designed or researched risk-assessment instruments may result in poorer decisions, because workers will rely on mechanical
rules and procedures instead of trying to develop greater clinical experience.[30]
But if there is one thing these
assessment tools would appear to have in common, it is that they virtually define poverty conditions as indicating "neglect"
on the part of parents. Among the countless factors typically included are such things as "dirty or unkempt home," "children's
clothing torn or dirty," "lack of pride in neighborhood," "poor and unsafe living conditions," "family can only afford inadequate
housing," "leaky faucets," and "exposed wiring."[31]
Hence, it should come as no surprise that whenever a close review
of the foster care population is undertaken, it is revealed that a significant portion of children in care should never have
entered the system to begin with, and that the majority of children in the foster care system come from poor families.
Sociologist
John Hagedorn, a reform-minded administrator who spent two and a half years trying to reform the Milwaukee social services
bureaucracy explains the results of one recent analysis:
After foster care cases were categorized
by social workers and reviewed by a panel of experts, we found that most children did not need to be in foster care at all.
The social workers and our expert panel agreed that a third of all children in foster care could immediately reunited with
their families, if family preservation services were available . . .
The panel found another third of all children
in foster care were in placement with relatives and in need of few services, and that only one-sixth of these cases could
legitimately be categorized as having no chance of reunification.[32]
Consistent with these findings is a 1992 report
issued by the Little Hoover Commission in California, which determined that only 19.9% of removals of children were due to
allegations of physical or sexual abuse. The report concluded:
The Commission finds that the State's
foster care system runs contrary to the preservation of families by unnecessarily removing an increasing number of children
from their homes each year. Moreover, the children in the foster care system are staying in the system longer. As a result,
the State's costs continue to skyrocket and children continue to be harmed by the removal from their families.[33]
The
Philadelphia Daily News reports that a recent study sponsored by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation concluded that for every
1,000 children placed in the state's care, only 30 were victims of actual abuse.[34]
The 3 percent figure mirrors reporting
trends, as only 3 percent of the the millions of reports frequently represented as "reports of child abuse and neglect" actually
involve allegations of severe physical abuse.[35]
How can so many hundreds of thousands of children be needlessly torn
from their homes? Aren't reasonable efforts to prevent removal required? Don't child protective workers first have to visit
the home and conduct an investigation?
Not according to Dennis Lepak, a Deputy Probation Officer from California, who
told a Congressional subcommittee:
Most tragically, children are placed with little or no services
to prevent their removal from families. Children are often removed from homes that no representative of the removing agency
has even visited.
"Decisions to remove children are based on information from old reports, office interviews, and
phone calls. Caseload sizes dictate this approach," adds Lepak. "We cannot deliver the child the required services, or the
family, so we deliver the child alone to the group homes."[36]
Marcia Robinson Lowry, an attorney with the Children's
Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, identified failure to provide reasonable efforts to prevent placement
as a nationwide problem, having told a Congressional subcommittee: "reasonable efforts are not made in hundreds and hundreds
of thousands of cases across the country."[37]
The modest requirement to provide some reasonable effort to prevent
placement in foster care was the result of hearings held over a period of several years, over the course of which it was found
that children were often being unnecessarily removed from their homes.[38]
"In fact, there were many instances then,
as now, of children being removed unnecessarily from families. It is important to recognize that children almost always are
traumatized by removal from their own family," explained the Child Welfare League of America during more recent hearings.[39]
BEYOND
THE NUMBERS
"A 1986 federal study evaluating child welfare caseworkers found that up to two-thirds of substantiated
cases of child maltreatment involved no actual wrongdoing on the part of parents," writes author Dana Mack.
Many removals
of children into foster care are "capricious actions of 'preventive intervention' -- undertaken on a caseworker's presumption
that though a child's home situation poses no immediate dangers or deprivations, it might sometime in the future," argues
Mack.
In examining studies conducted by the American Humane Association during the mid-1980s, Mack found that half
of the families child welfare agencies compelled to undergo therapeutic services for child maltreatment had never mistreated
their children at all.[40]
And these therapeutic services are foisted on families on a massive scale. Douglas Besharov
notes that even after the extensive screening of reports that takes place, as of the mid-1980s, roughly 400,000 families across
the country were being "supervised" by child protective agencies, compelled to accept such "treatment services" under threat
of court action.[41]
Beyond these numbers are very real children. How do these figures translate into human terms?
One
foster mother from Utah has had 40 children in her care. She recounts: "Sometimes it's real rewarding to see them get back
to where they should be. I only had one child that was really physically abused."
If only one of the foster children
she cared for had been abused, what of the other thirty-nine that had passed through her home? ". . . I have a problem when
parents repeatedly fail treatment plans and kids bounce back and forth. Luckily, we've had only two or three of those."[42]
In
other words, most or all of the other thirty-nine children who were not abused had been removed from their homes in order
to coerce their parents into complying with the "treatment plans" imposed by the Department of Social Services.
In
a case which the 1991-92 Santa Clara Grand Jury reviewed, the principal of a school reported suspected "emotional abuse" to
the local Department of Family and Children's Services, based on a comment a student had made. The parent was given one hour's
notice of the detention hearing, and as a result failed to attend. His daughter was taken from his care. This occurred in
1991 and the Jury found, as of May 1993, that the student still remained out of her home.
In its
review of this case the Grand Jury did not find any reasonable evidence of abuse on the part of the parent. What was found
was a parent who appeared to care greatly for his daughter and her welfare but would not admit to something he did not do.
His refusal to admit to abuse was viewed as a lack of cooperation on his part; therefore, his child was not returned.[43]
The
children know they belong with their families, and not in the hands of strangers.
According a recent article in the
Los Angeles Times, lengthy interviews conducted with children and parents from 200 randomly sampled cases revealed no surprises.
Parents who were separated from their children felt they had been unfairly separated. As for their children, the article continues:
At
least 80% of the children, asked to name three wishes, mentioned that they wanted to be with their mother or father. Many
tended to believe that the separation was their fault.
Not only are child protective workers quick to tear children
away from their families, but they are slow to return them as well.
The same article cites a 1992 University of Southern
Maine study of the state of Kansas, which found that in 86.8 per cent of cases where a child was put in foster care, the state
failed to make the required reasonable effort to reunite him with his parents.[44]
A similar situation is to be found
in the District of Columbia. In a landmark suit initiated by the Children's Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties
Union, the Court determined that the agency had:
consistently failed to provide services or otherwise use "reasonable
efforts" to prevent placement. The result has been an increased risk of arbitrary or inappropriate placements as well as an
increased cost to the District.
Just as the agency often failed to provide any services to prevent the removal of children
from their homes, the Court found the agency "consistently failed to provide services once children are removed from their
homes and placed in foster care."
Based on case records of the children in foster care as of December 1989 whose goal
was return home and who had entered into care through voluntary placement, the Court found the agency "had failed to provide
services in 77 percent of their cases."[45]
In Illinois, Cook County Juvenile Court Judge Robert A. Smierciak chided
child welfare officials for failing to rectify a lingering problem of child-care workers--failing to show up for scheduled
court appearances without explanation.
According to statistics compiled by the Cook County public guardian's office,
during three weeks in May of 1994, 106 child welfare workers failed to appear for cases assigned to courtrooms that handle
abuse and neglect cases. As a result, several children remained separated from their families, remaining instead in dangerous
foster care placements.[46]
Douglas Besharov was invited to testify before the Select Committee on Children, Youth,
and Families in 1987, in his capacity of director of the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect.
During his testimony,
Besharov called for better screening procedures and improved intake methods. He also cited the need for training and educational
programs that would set clear definitions of abuse and neglect. He continued, defining the standards that ought be applied
in cases of state intervention:
[S]tates should be required to demonstrate that they are making
efforts to prevent children from being removed from their homes without an appropriate investigation--unless they appear to
be in imminent danger.[47]
This is not to suggest that there is no need for foster care. Sadly, some children do require
a safe haven from chronic abuse or neglect. The greatest tragedy is that those children in true need of placement often are
not identified--even in the event that they come to the attention of the system--while those for whom placement is inappropriate
are removed from their homes by the hundreds of thousands. As professor of social work Leroy Pelton explains:
It is my belief that not only are there many children in foster care who should not have been placed there, but that there
are other children who are being wrongfully left in their natural homes. In short, children are being removed from their homes
in the wrong cases and being left at home in the wrong cases. Furthermore, it is my belief that if only those children were
placed in foster care who actually need it, we would have very few children in foster care.[48]
CONCLUSION
The
press plays its role in the molding of public perception. That perception is one largely based on sensationalized accounts
of relatively infrequent occurrences of brutality at the hands of parents. Benjamin Wolf, an attorney with the American Civil
Liberties Union who filed a landmark suit against the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, responds to such
sensationalized coverage as provided by the Chicago Tribune, writing:
Incredibly, there is another
side which often is at least as bad and is rarely reported by the media. Those are the tragic situations in which children
are needlessly removed from their homes or not reunited with their families when more appropriate, less expensive services
would keep the family together.
"The cases that grab headlines and the attention of columnists are of course the ones
in which the unrehabilitated parent regains custody only to inflict injury again," writes Wolf.
"But by not telling
about the often silent suffering of perhaps thousands of children who could be reunited with their families with just a little
bit of help, we all reinforce an atmosphere in which case workers will be forced needlessly to shatter families contrary to
the best interests of the children."[49]
Foster care was never intended as a holding ground for children while caseworkers
conduct an investigation, or as a coercive tool to enforce compliance with social worker demands. It was intended to offer
an alternative home-like environment for those relatively few unfortunate children who are truly subject to an abusive home
environment.
The sad reality is that it is all-too-often misused by child protective services caseworkers who are less
than capable of conducting an adequate assessment, or who fear liability for their failure to remove a child who is subsequently
injured. As professor of social work Duncan Lindsey points out: "Caseworkers in doubt about a child's situation make the safe
decision to remove a child."[50]
As a result, the number of children removed from their homes has reached staggering
proportions. It is precisely because the system is so flooded with children who don't belong there that tragedies in state
care continue to mount.
Copyright © 1996 - 2002 Rick Thomas
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