2024 AFCARS data are up – and they suggest a huge foster-care panic in Indiana

 

We’re breaking a little news on the blog today:

The federal Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families yesterday released the annual “AFCARS Report,” vital data on foster care for Federal Fiscal Year 2024. 

In an email to NCCPR this afternoon, HHS explained that the data went live yesterday, but the formal announcement didn't come until today, after we posted an earlier version of this blog. That's because, HHS says, they needed to be sure the dashboard would work. (Previous versions of this post noted that we were not sure if the release was intentional or complete. It was both.)

Here are some of the key data points:

 ● The number of children torn from their families in 2024 declined slightly compared with the previous year.  There were 170,993 known entries into foster care in FFY 2024, down from 174,112 in FFY 2023.  (I use the term known entries because, by definition, this does not include “hidden foster care,” in which parents are coerced into surrendering custody but the placement is never reported in official figures.) 

● There were 328,947 children known to be trapped in foster care on September 30, 2024, down from 340,050 on September 30, 2023. 

Both these figures leave out Washington State and Wyoming, because they still haven’t managed the basic task of submitting these data for 2024 or even 2023. 

As usual, most states saw relatively small decreases in the number of children taken away; a few saw relatively small increases. But there were two alarming exceptions: 

● In Indiana, a state which, year after year, tears apart families at rates well above the national average, things got even worse – much worse. The number of children taken skyrocketed by 30%. Indiana now tears apart families at the sixth-highest rate in the country, even when rates of family poverty are factored in. That’s a rate nearly triple the national average. 

Just a few days ago, we posted to this blog about an example of how Indiana confuses poverty with neglect.  At the end of that post, we included some context on other dismal data from that state.  I’ve added that context at the end of this post as well. 

● There was an even worse rate of increase in the District of Columbia – 46%. But the raw numbers are relatively low, so it doesn’t take as much of a change to get a huge percentage difference. Nevertheless, this should alarm the D.C. Council, which needs to ask what’s going wrong at the city’s family police agency. 

● But there was also some good news: The biggest year-to-year decrease in entries into foster care was in Idaho, down 18.3% between 2023 and 2024. That’s particularly good news since, at the time, the Idaho child welfare agency was run by Alex Adams, who has been nominated to run the federal Administration for Children and Families.  

● Entries into foster care in Missouri declined by nearly 11%. That left  Missouri tearing apart families at a rate 35% above the national average. For Missouri, that was real progress.  But it’s not likely to last. The improvement came when the state family police agency was led by Darrell Missey, who understood the enormous harm of needless foster care. But he retired, and his replacement has made clear she wants to reverse all of Missey’s progress.

The reasons family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies) give for taking the children haven’t changed much. Once again, 87% of children were not taken because of even an accusation of physical or sexual abuse. And though the take-the-child-and-run crowd wants us to believe every parent who loses a child to foster care is a hopeless drug addict, 62% were not taken because of parental drug or alcohol abuse – not just no proof of such abuse, not even an accusation of any drug use of any kind. 

In contrast, the number of children taken in cases in which the family police agency admits the problem was housing equals the number involving physical abuse. 

Racial disparities haven’t changed much either: 

● Black children made up 22% of those placed in foster care, compared with 14% of the total child population. 

● Native American children made up 3% of foster children – triple their representation in the general child population. 

For the first time, the report separately lists data for eight Indian tribes.  Some tribes run their own systems. The numbers are small, fewer than 600 entries total, and it’s not clear if these data are complete. Nor is it clear whether or not these entries also are included in the entry figures for their respective states.

Here’s how bad Indiana was even before 2024:

● Nationwide, 37% of children will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18.  In Indiana, it’s 58%.  Nationwide, 53% of Black children will have to endure this trauma. In Indiana, it’s 79% - the highest rate in America. 

● In any given year, among all children, Indiana takes them from their homes at a rate 66% above the national average, even when rates of family poverty are factored in. 

● When going up against this family police juggernaut, families often are almost literally defense-less – because their lawyers often have so little time and so many clients. Many Indiana counties want to keep it that way. One in five actually turns down federal funds to improve representation for parents and also for children. One county court administrator explained that county’s refusal this way: “[T]he system we have works well.” 

None of this is because Indiana is a cesspool of depravity with vastly more child abuse than the national average.  In fact, in Indiana in 2024, 87% of the time, when children were thrown into foster care, their parents were not even accused of physical or sexual abuse. Forty-one percent of the time, there wasn’t even an allegation of drug abuse.

 

Child welfare in Maine: The price of mediocre leadership

Maine State Capitol

There are some really awful leaders of state and local family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies). There are a few over the years who have been outstanding.  And then there is the broad range in between, including many who may know the right thing to do but may lack the courage to do it. 

In Maine, the current director of the Office of Child and Family Services, Bobbi Johnson, is a big improvement over her predecessor – but then, her predecessor was this guy who somehow got hired in Maine after compiling a dismal record in Nebraska. 

There is nothing cruel in Bobbi Johnson’s approach. But there is nothing courageous either. Two examples were on display in September. 

● One of the few things everyone in child welfare agrees about is that multiple placement – throwing children into one home then uprooting them all over again to be placed in another, and another, and another - is terrible for children.  So what is Bobbi Johnson’s idea of innovation? So-called “short-term foster homes” from which the children will be promptly uprooted to be placed elsewhere. 

Johnson is selling it with an argument that amounts to: Well, at least it’s better than a hotel room or an emergency room, right?  But the reason Maine stashes children in hotel rooms and emergency rooms is because it tears apart families at the ninth highest rate in the country, more than double the national average – even when rates of child poverty are factored in.  That creates an artificial “shortage” of foster homes. If Maine would stop doing that, there would be no need to deliberately set up a system that compounds the problem of multiple placement. 

                        National Average          Maine                     

● Johnson already is making excuses for why a commendable change in state law to discourage confusion of poverty with neglect may not change much.  Of course, she’s not blaming her agency. It’s because, she says, it’s just so darn hard to get the word out to all those “mandatory reporters” that they should stop doing this. 

Oh, come on – really?  When states want to encourage reporting anything and everything, they pull out all the stops. News conferences!  Posters! Public service announcements!  But when one wants to finally urge some caution, it supposedly can’t be done except every four years through formal training? 

How many schools are there in Maine? Surely it would be possible to email all the principals with information about the new law and tell them to circulate it to all staff, right? Follow up with snail mail, including great big posters that say POVERTY IS NOT NEGLECT, and go on to explain what to report and what not to report.  Do the same with every pediatrician’s office and every police department. 

OCFS did update its online mandatory reporter training – but mandatory reporters are required to take that training only every four years. 

But that’s not the only problem with Johnson’s excuse. 

Just because someone calls a child abuse hotline does not mean the hotline has to accept the call.  All states screen out some calls.  Surely OCFS can train its own hotline operators to ask the right questions to determine if what the reporter saw is poverty or neglect – and screen in or screen out accordingly. 

But the biggest problem here is that, to the extent that anyone is unclear about what the law requires, it’s a problem partly of Johnson’s own making. This year, the Maine Legislature considered two bills addressing this issue.  While the bill that passed is a good first step, the bill that failed, LD 891, was far better.  That bill made far clearer the difference between poverty and neglect; it made clear the obligations OCFS had to fulfill to distinguish between the two, and it made clear what judges had to demand of OCFS. 

Bobbi Johnson opposed it.

Meet the family police agency so arrogant, and so sure of its near-absolute power, that it can admit it tears apart families because of poverty – and check out the consequences

The Indiana State Capitol. Photo by Warren LeMay

In the face of overwhelming evidence that family police agencies – a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies – routinely confuse family poverty with neglect, consigning the children to the chaos of foster care, system apologists have a standard mantra: Oh, it’s not just poverty, they say, and then they chant over and over again as if it’s one word drugsmentalhealthdomesticviolence, drugsmentalhealthdomesticviolence. 

Of course, some cases do indeed involve one or more of these. Many others do not.  And even when one of these factors is present, at bottom, it’s usually still a poverty case. 

I addressed this in detail in this presentation to a Kempe Center conference.  

I return to the topic now because one family police agency has effectively admitted it. The admission comes in this outstanding story from the Indianapolis Star. The story superbly weaves together a complex narrative that exposes a whole slew of family police failings. But I want to focus on how the story illustrates what the drugsmentalhealthdomesticviolence excuse overlooks. 

The story focuses on what happened to children placed in what was, if the allegations are true, a foster and adoptive home rife with horrific abuse; abuse the Indiana Department of Child Services managed to ignore year after year after year. 

It focuses promarily on one mother, Nikki Williams, and her children, a story that begins in 2011.  Statistically, it wasn’t a case of poverty alone. But take a closer look. 

● Yes, there was a tumultuous relationship – one that caseworkers might rush to label as domestic violence, though there is nothing in the story to indicate that. But Williams did exactly the right thing. 

As the story explains:

25-year-old Williams was working two jobs to support her five children and living with her boyfriend in Attica, a small town along the Wabash River in Fountain County. But after growing tired of his drinking and frequent arguing, she said she decided to leave him, bouncing between the homes of family members instead. 

As is often the case when a woman leaves a lousy relationship, it becomes harder for her to support her family – so it’s a poverty case.

● Yes, there was drug use: marijuana. You know, the drug that’s celebrated when affluent mothers use it but makes you suspect if you’re also, uh, poor. So it’s a poverty case. 

It was the pot that first brought the family police into Williams’ life.  But it was the poverty that caused her to lose her children for their entire childhoods.  They were placed in the alleged house of horrors of Brian and Sonja Stafford in May 2011. Just two months later, DCF was looking to terminate the Williams children’s rights to live with their mother. 

Again from the story: 

The agency first got involved in her life because they suspected drug use; she admitted to smoking weed and submitted to a drug test to prove she was free of any hard drugs. She thought her willingness to be forthcoming would help her case, but instead it gave the agency more evidence to intervene.  

From that point on, nearly every aspect of Williams’ life was analyzed by welfare officials. DCS officials told her at a case conference in July 2011 that they were considering terminating her parental rights.  

Williams had completed nearly all of the requirements DCS had asked of her, DCS records she provided to IndyStar show, receiving glowing reviews from caseworkers on her parenting skills and love for her children.   

But then we see a family police agency so secure in its near absolute power that it can admit what such agencies usually deny. The story continues: 

But the agency was worried about her ability to provide for her children while making just $7.25 an hour at Arby’s, writing in the documents that she wouldn’t be able to find stable housing without a better job. 

 “(The Fountain County DCS supervisor) told me that anyone can be a good mom, but if I'm not financially stable, being a good mom didn't count,” she said.   

Indiana DCS said it could not comment on the specifics of the case, but said the decision to terminate parental rights comes down to a family's unique circumstances, including a parent's ability to provide basic necessities for their children. [Emphasis added.] 

As for that concern about not being able to find housing: that’s something of an obsession at Indiana DCS. In 2023, DCS took away more children because of “lack of housing” than for physical and sexual abuse combined. 

Williams herself ultimately succumbed to these claims, surrendering her parental rights on the assumption that the children were bound to be better off in the foster home. 

And then, with her children permanently separated from her, her grief and despair were so deep that she turned to methamphetamine. So congratulations, Indiana DCS: You got your drug abuse problem -- because you created it. 

For the children it was so much worse. The alleged horrors in the foster and adoptive home are outlined in detail in the Star story. 

Most of Williams’ children are now adults. As is so often the case when children age out of the system, they found their way home and are reunited with their mother. 

But the cruelty of Indiana DCS seems to know no bounds. Consider what the story tells us about the fate of the youngest child: 

Clean for a decade now, married and finally with stable housing, Williams has reconnected with all of her adult children but has yet to see her youngest daughter, who has been in the custody of another foster family since the start of the Stafford investigation.  

Though she’s a much different person than she was when she signed the papers terminating her rights in 2011, that signature effectively makes her a stranger in the eyes of the state. 

Her youngest daughter hardly knows her as her mom, Williams said. 

The Context: Family policing in Indiana

What happened to the Williams children could happen anywhere – but it’s more likely to happen in Indiana. In a previous post to this blog I summarized the data:

● Nationwide, 37% of children will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18.  In Indiana, it’s 58%.  Nationwide, 53% of Black children will have to endure this trauma. In Indiana, it’s 79% - the highest rate in America. 

● In any given year, among all children, Indiana takes them from their homes at a rate 66% above the national average, even when rates of family poverty are factored in. 

● When going up against this family police juggernaut, families often are almost literally defense-less – because their lawyers often have so little time and so many clients. Many Indiana counties want to keep it that way. One in five actually turns down federal funds to improve representation for parents and also for children. One county court administrator explained that county’s refusal this way: “[T]he system we have works well.” 

None of this is because Indiana is a cesspool of depravity with vastly more child abuse than the national average.  In fact, in Indiana in 2023, 86% of the time, when children were thrown into foster care, their parents were not even accused of physical or sexual abuse. Forty percent of the time, there wasn’t even an allegation of drug abuse.

And as we’ve just seen, when there is an allegation of drug abuse, it may not mean much.