The head of Washington State’s family police agency explains his agency’s approach to families.

 

Washington State DCYF Secretary Ross Hunter

It boils down to: We don’t do a damn thing to keep families together and you can’t make us!

Here’s the thing about Ross Hunter, secretary of Washington State’s family police agency, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families. He’s not good at sugarcoating the cruelty of some of his actions. 

● Recall how, when the COVID pandemic began he rushed to pander to the state’s worst, most selfish foster parents, at children’s expense. 

● Recall his callous response to KING-TV’s expose of how workers were treating some children in ways international human rights organizations describe as torture. 

● Recall how a majority of his own unionized employees said they want Hunter fired but they fell short of the two-thirds required to initiate a formal no-confidence vote.  (The state advisory board on juvenile justice also wants Hunter fired.) 

And now, in an interview with The Imprint he makes clear that his response to legal requirements to try to keep families together is the equivalent of giving those families the middle finger.  And while he’s at it, he makes a not-so-subtle effort to set one oppressed group against another. 

At issue is how much of an effort his agency should have to make to spare children from the chaos of needless placement in foster care, the high risk of abuse in foster care itself and, of course, the occasional allegation of conduct equivalent to torture.  Hunter’s answer: Almost none. This in a state that tears apart families at a rate 30% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in.

To understand what’s required we need to go back 46 years. 

In 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act.  Among its many excellent provisions is one that requires states to make “active efforts” to keep Native American families together before resorting to foster care.  The term is not defined in the law itself.  There is a definition in federal regulations, but it’s vague, with lots of wiggle room for family police agencies, a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies. 

But the law does NOT say that you only have to make active efforts if you can afford it.  It does NOT say you only have to make active efforts if you already have the services available.  It says make active efforts, period.  If you don’t have the services it’s your job, state and/or local governments, to create them and fund them. 

Two years later, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act.  That law applies to all families, but it doesn’t go as far as ICWA.  It requires only “reasonable efforts” to keep families together.  Once again the term is not defined in law, and this time not in regulation either. 

But the law does NOT say that you only have to make reasonable efforts if you can afford it.  It does NOT say you only have to make reasonable efforts if you already have the services available.  It says make reasonable efforts, period.  If you don’t have the services it’s your job, state and/or local governments, to create them and fund them. 

To some extent the entire debate exists only in the realm of the theoretical – because neither law has ever been seriously, systematically enforced. 

We document the failure to make reasonable efforts extensively in this NCCPR Issue Paper.  But I’ll highlight one example: 

A survey of Michigan judges found that 20 percent of the judges said they always concluded that reasonable efforts had been made – in other words, their child welfare agencies were perfect.  Another 70 percent said they rarely concluded otherwise. 

But even more significant: 40 percent of judges admitted that they lied and said the state child welfare agency made “reasonable efforts” in cases where the judges really didn’t believe it.  In half of those cases, the judges admitted they lied because, if they didn’t, the state would not get federal aid for holding the child in foster care, and their counties would have to pick up the extra costs. 

And if that’s the proportion who will admit it on a survey … 

As for “active efforts,” the failure to follow that provision of ICWA can be seen in the extreme racial disproportionality in American child welfare when it comes to states with significant Native American populations.  

In Minnesota, Native children enter foster care at 14 times their rate in the general population.  In South
Dakota Native Children are 12% of the child population – and 57% of the foster child population.  The appalling treatment of Native children by the state’s family police agency was exposed by NPR in 2010, and again by South Dakota Searchlight and the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader in 2024. 

The extent to which family police agencies have gotten away with ignoring these laws can be seen in the extent to which even proponents of helping families have lowered their standards.  

And that brings us back to Washington State, where, as The Imprint explains,

three years ago, the Washington State Supreme Court Commission on Children in Foster Care recommended draft legislation “to require active efforts for all children” before and after they were removed from home. The commission described active efforts as necessary to ensure social workers take extra steps, and provide services in a “trauma responsive manner.” As an example, they stated that rather than just giving parents a service provider’s phone number, a CPS worker would offer assistance in scheduling appointments necessary to keep the family intact.  

So just to be clear: In Washington State, as far as this Commission is concerned, you can meet the "reasonable efforts" requirement by giving parents a service provider’s phone number!  In other words, you can meet the standard without doing a damn thing for a family. 

Even the Washington State Commission’s definition of "active efforts" is pretty lame.  What if the family doesn’t need an “appointment” for anything? What if they need someone to repair their home so a child isn’t taken because of unsafe housing?  What if they need a voucher to pay for child care so the child isn’t taken due to “lack of supervision”?  And if they really do need an appointment what good is scheduling if they have no car (or don’t have the money to repair their car) and there’s no public transportation? 

"Reasonable efforts," let alone "active efforts" should require the family police to deal with all of this – because that’s what’s most likely to keep children safe and promote their “well-being.” 

But Ross Hunter wants no part of any of it.  His excuse is cost.  He says making "active efforts" on behalf of all children at risk of foster care 

would be very expensive to do, and would require a service array that is much larger than what we have today … [Y]ou have to do it in a way where you’re not requiring something you don’t have the services to provide.” 

No, Ross, you’ve got it backwards. Whether it’s “reasonable efforts” or “active efforts,” these laws require you to do whatever is necessary to create the services and provide them. 

He’s also wrong about the cost.  The great paradox of child welfare is the worse the option the more it costs.  Safe proven alternatives to foster care cost less than foster homes (often, as in the case of rent subsidies and childcare vouchers) a lot less.  The foster homes cost less than group homes which cost less than institutions. 

The reason Washington State hasn’t followed the law requiring "reasonable efforts" or the law requiring "active efforts" is simple.  Contempt for birth families, especially nonwhite birth families, runs so deep in Washington State (and much of the rest of the country) that many people either don’t realize or don’t care that when the family police take a swing at so-called “bad parents” the blow almost always lands on their children. 

But that isn’t even the worst of  Hunter’s behavior on this issue.  There is some nervousness among some – though not all – Native American leaders about what has been called “ICWA for all” legislation.  But it takes a powerful white guy to exploit it. 

Because it sure sounds like Ross Hunter is attempting to play off one oppressed group against another.  As he told The Imprint: 

“Before we will do active efforts for all, I want to make sure that we’re 100% delivering active efforts for the children who have experienced unbelievable historical harm as a result of child welfare practices in the past.” 

That sure sounds like setting the descendants of survivors of genocide against descendants of survivors of slavery – while doing virtually nothing for either. 

And since right now Washington State doesn’t appear to be delivering active efforts for Native families at all – they enter foster care at triple their rate in the state child population -- waiting until they’re  “100% delivering active efforts” for Native families means waiting forever. 

That seems to be just the way Ross Hunter wants it.

Officials in two states that routinely destroy Native American families make their position clear: We don’t care, we don’t have to.

South Dakota tears apart families at a rate well above the national average. Native American children are 13% of the child population and 74% of the foster child population.  But hey, a slogan is a slogan, right?

There were two important news stories last week from states that destroy astounding numbers of Native American families every year.  The stories make one thing clear: State officials and many state lawmakers don’t give a damn about it. 

● Montana continually vies with West Virginia for the title Child Removal Capital of America.  In Montana that’s partly because the state family police agency tears apart so many Native families.  The Montana Free Press reports that Native children are 10% of the state’s child population and one-third of the foster child population.  The Free Press story is filled with such data – and filled with bland, boilerplate, buck-passing responses from state officials like this one from the head of the state family police agency: “I think it’s really about continuing to have the conversation.”  The closest thing she has to a concrete solution is no solution at all – making it easier to place Native children in hidden foster care. 

● It’s even worse in South Dakota, another state that takes away children at a rate well above the national average.  In South Dakota, Native Americans are 13 percent of the child population and nearly three-quarters of the foster-child population, an issue first exposed in 2010 by NPR.  South Dakota Searchlight and the Sioux Falls Argus Leader returned to the subject with an excellent series last year, documenting how the state cuts a swath of destruction through Native families.  Now they’ve followed up with a story about legislative proposals for change.  

One of those proposals is one that most state legislatures would routinely approve, since it delays actually doing anything: creating a task force.  But those who want to see change are having trouble getting the South Dakota Legislature to do even that much. 

More substantive legislation already has been defeated.  Under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, states are supposed to make “active efforts” to keep families together, a higher standard than the “reasonable efforts” required un federal law (but almost universally ignored) for other families.  A bill to require active efforts for all South Dakota children – and to explain exactly what that term means – was defeated yesterday.  

Even the head of a local Court-Appointed Special Advocates program, herself a Native American, favored the bill.  As the Argus-Leader reported: 

For example, if a parent needs to overcome substance abuse, an active effort would be helping that parent with a ride to a treatment class, said Kehala Two Bulls, the executive director of the 7th Circuit Court CASA program. A reasonable effort would be giving that parent a list of treatment programs. 

I would disagree that a list of treatment programs is anywhere near reasonable as an effort – it’s pretty typical of the failure to make reasonable efforts -- but you get the idea.  Getting the parent to the program is a reasonable effort.  Bringing home-based drug treatment to the parent, as Connecticut does in some cases, is an active effort. 

But the head of South Dakota’s family police agency, Matt Althoff said, presumably with a straight face, that they’re already making “active efforts” in the cases of Native American children who, again, make up 74% of the state’s foster care population.

An opponent of the bill said: “How do we put something in into law when everybody is interpreting this differently?”  And here I’d been operating under what is, apparently, the absurd notion that this is why you put things into law in the first place.