Cranking up the foster care to prison pipeline in Missouri

 

In an interview, the new head of Missouri’s Children’s Division spewed out a gish-gallop of misinformation to try to justify her take-the-child-and-run approach.  We set the record straight.

In an interview with the Missouri Independent, the new head of the Missouri Children’s Division, one of the two agencies (notwithstanding its denials – see below) that take away children and hold them in foster care, said “she wants to bring the Children’s Division back to basics, which she defines as ensuring safety for children.”  

In just those few words, Sara Smith is already out to mislead us; it’s the start of a gish-gallop of misinformation.  So let’s parse the interview, starting with that claim. 

The claim implies that under Smith’s predecessor, Darrell Missey, the Children’s Division became part of a Vast Family Preservation Conspiracy, fanatically devoted to reducing foster care – indeed, she’s come close to saying it outright. 

Well, if that was Missey’s nefarious plan, he wasn’t able to execute it. Yes, foster care numbers declined, but they declined from obscene to merely outrageous. As of 2023, the most recent year for which data are available, Missouri tore apart families at a rate nearly 50% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in.  

ENTRIES INTO FOSTER CARE 

PER THOUSAND IMPOVERISHED CHILDREN

And those are only the cases we know about. Missouri loves hidden foster care; placements in which families are, in effect, blackmailed into surrendering their children “voluntarily.” These “Temporary Alternative Placement Arrangements” have no court involvement – and they are not recorded as entries into foster care.  What little data are available suggest that if such placements were included, the total number of children the Children’s Division admits to taking would be at least 20% higher. 

But Smith says she wants even more of them. 

So Missouri is an extreme outlier not in keeping families together but in tearing them apart. The consequences can be seen in cases like this one, and this one, and this one, or this one. But Smith has made clear she wants to make Missouri a worse outlier still.  

This, even though study after study shows that in typical cases, children left in their own homes typically fare better in later life even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care. This in spite of the fact that, though Smith equates child safety with child removal, the rate of abuse in foster care itself is sky-high. 

Where do those children end up? Some will succeed in spite of everything the system does to them. But as the Kansas City Star pointed out, young people in foster care are more likely to end up in prison than in college. Darrell Missey couldn’t do much about it, but at least he understood it. Now Sara Smith is out to turn up the foster-care-to-prison pipeline to full blast. 

● It can be seen in one of her first acts upon taking the job. She handed out stickers that effectively equate child removal with child safety. Of course, she doesn’t use those words. But, the message to the frontlines is clear: I’m handing out stickers that say “centered on safety” because your old boss wasn’t. So if you want to please the new boss, take away more children! 

● It can be seen in her slick, subtle efforts to fearbomb a foundation-funded initiative to curb the confusion of poverty with neglect.  

● And it can be seen again in the facile, disingenuous way Smith ducked the question when asked flar-out if Missouri takes away too many children.  Here’s what she said: 

I think we’re lucky in Missouri to have what I would call kind of a bifurcated system. It’s something that a lot of other states don’t have. Children’s Division cannot remove a child. We would recommend removal to the juvenile office. So the juvenile office that’s receiving that referral, they’re making sure that it’s legally sufficient and that we should be recommending removal. 

And we have those [referrals] denied from Children’s Division where, Children’s Division might think that there’s a safety threat, the child can’t remain in the home. And the juvenile office might look at it and help us understand why that’s not a legally sufficient avenue. 

They’ve been really great partners to us in that space, but having that other look to make sure that you know whatever the concerns are, do meet legal standards, I think helps make me feel better, especially with our turnover rate, that the kids that are in care are actually there for a reason that is legally supported. 

Here are the facts: 

● First, of course, she never actually answers the question. She never explains why, apparently, she sees Missouri as such a cesspool of depravity that even tearing apart families at a rate 50% above the national average isn’t enough.  (Good news, Missouri: You’re not.) 

But the disingenuousness meter goes off the scale when she suggests that Missouri’s notorious fifth wheel, the Juvenile Office, is a check on wrongful removal. 

● For starters, she does not claim that the Juvenile Office actually rejects removals because they are unnecessary – only if they can’t meet the extremely low standards for getting a judge to rubber-stamp what the Children’s Division wants.  Notice how Smith never says how often the Juvenile Office actually does that.  Smith then says she’s confident all that family destruction is “legally supported” – which is not the same thing as: good for the children. 

● Second, Smith never explains that, contrary to her claim, every state has some version of this. Every state either has its own in-house lawyers or relies on a state attorney general’s office or equivalent to check if a case is legally adequate and then decide whether to file it. 

● What makes the Juvenile Office different – and quite possibly unconstitutional – is that it is run by the courts itself.  As Prof. Josh Gupta-Kagan has written: 

By granting juvenile officers, who are subject to judges’ supervision, exclusive power to file child abuse and neglect and juvenile delinquency cases, Missouri law concentrates power into the hands of one branch of government.  Missouri law thus empowers individual judges to set child welfare and juvenile justice policy by managerial decree. Subordinate judicial branch officials face pressure to file and litigate cases to please their boss, the judge, who hired them, supervises them, and has power to fire them. 

● Just as the juvenile office can reject a Children’s Division recommendation to remove, it can proceed to court to take away a child even when the Children’s Division doesn’t think that’s necessary. That probably happens more often than the scenario Smith describes, and it’s probably one of the reasons for Missouri’s high rate of removal. In fact, the juvenile office doesn’t even have to wait for the Children’s Division because … 

● The Juvenile Office acts as, in effect, a second family police agency – and that is unique to Missouri. Anyone who calls the Children’s Division and doesn’t get them to investigate and/or seek to take away a child can simply call the Juvenile Office and try their luck there.  Or they can just call the Juvenile Office first. So the number of times this second front door leads to taking a child who, in other states, would have stayed home, likely far outstrips the number of cases in which they deny a Children’s Division request because it’s legally insufficient. 

Indeed, the Juvenile Office’s reputation long has been that of one more thumb tilting the scales of justice against families – as in this case, for example.  So it’s no wonder Sara Smith loves the Juvenile Office. 

● The claim that only a Juvenile Officer can take away children isn’t true either. You might need to call a juvenile officer if you actually plan to let the family have minimal due process by going to court. But remember those blackmail placements (Temporary Alternative Placement Arrangements)? For those, there’s no court, no Juvenile Office and no pesky due process for families. The Children’s Division can coerce the parent into surrendering the child and then, for Orwellian good measure, call it voluntary. No wonder Sara Smith loves this as well. 

● And finally, if the Juvenile Office is such a great check on needless removal, why do so many other states, none of which has a juvenile office, take proportionately fewer children? 

Hostility to families in every answer 

It’s not just when the topic is rates of removal that Smith’s profound hostility to families seeps through – though always, you have to look closely: 

Take a look at this exchange from the interview: 

[Q:]Do you see training as potentially helping remedy some of the federal issues outlined in the Performance Improvement Plan, such as family engagement? 

[A]: If you’re not meeting with families, how are you moving the needle towards permanence here, or identifying safety threats? I don’t think we can hang our hat there and not do any other work around things, but I do think solid training is going to set us up for a lot better success. 

Family engagement typically means working with the family so they can reunite with their children – because, in the overwhelming majority of cases, that’s what’s best for those children. But in Sara Smith’s world, “family engagement” seems to be just a means of surveillance –“identifying safety threats” – to build a case for termination of parental rights, which sounds like what she means by “moving the needle toward permanence.” 

Teeing up the veto of silence 

One of the reasons it's so hard for families to get attention to their stories is a tactic agencies use that should be called the veto of silence: A family complains that their children were needlessly taken by an agency like the Children’s Division. They tell their story to a reporter. The reporter calls the child welfare agency and is immediately referred to their flack who says: “Oh, well, there’s really so much more to the story and we wish we could tell you, truly we do, but we just can’t; confidentiality, you know.” 

Sadly, that’s often been enough to scare reporters off. But not always – those stories cited earlier by excellent Missouri journalists are examples of overriding the veto of silence.  But Smith makes clear she’ll be trying to invoke that veto whenever she can. Here’s how she tees it up: 

I think there’s a lot to Children’s Division. Being in it for so long, it’s complicated, and it’s a space that — we respect families’ privacy, and we can only share certain things, and there’s a lot that we can’t share about the work that happens. And that’s really hard sometimes, because you want to be able to share all the complicating factors that are happening and the ins and outs of different pieces. But we can only talk about how the process should work in a best case scenario. 

And I don’t think we should necessarily talk about case specifics, because that is a family’s right to privacy. A child’s right to his or her information being kept close to the vest for Children’s Division, but then having the opportunity to be transparent with our stakeholders about what’s happening, what the pain points are and using those systemic things and trends to be able to work with them to create some change. 

What that gobbledygook really means is: We love confidentiality laws, because they let us hide what we do to families and persuade you not to write about it!  Of course, some information is legitimately confidential, but when a family comes forward to tell its story, at least two states, New York and Arizona allow their equivalent of the Children’s Division to respond. The reason other states don’t is simple: Their child welfare agencies don’t want that right; it takes away their ability to invoke the veto of silence. 

And, of course, thanks to some outstanding reporting decades ago by the Springfield News-Leader,  most portions of court hearings themselves are open in Missouri. But the sky hasn’t fallen, because, just as in the case of adult victims of sexual assault, reporters are good about protecting the privacy of children – as opposed to the interests of agencies. 

This is why NCCPR favors a rebuttable presumption that all court hearings and almost all documents in these cases be open.  Lawyers for children and lawyers for parents could go to court to rebut the presumption and keep closed any records the disclosure of which might harm a child.  The Children’s Division and the Juvenile Office should not even be able to ask for secrecy  - because they have no interest in secrecy except to cover their failings and try to impose the veto of silence. 

One thing Smith got right 

Smith repeatedly invoked her long, long tenure at the Children’s Division as some kind of asset. I’m not sure why anyone would say being a lifer in an agency that has done such a lousy job for so long is a job qualification, but be that as it may, she did say one thing that’s right on the mark: 

I think I’ve had nine [directors] since I started Children’s Division. And I’ve heard this from Children’s Division team members: ‘We’re just going to wait it out. There’ll be somebody else coming in with a different philosophical view.’ 

That would certainly help explain why Darrell Missey had so little success.  As for long-timers waiting it out until someone comes along “with a different philosophical point of view” – I wonder who Smith had in mind?