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.

Pushing back on a child welfare poll full of loaded questions

A new poll reveals that even when the questions are rigged, Americans are less likely to buy the snake oil the family police establishment has been selling.

The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and the Adoption and Safe Families Act
 have destroyed the lives of millions of children and families. 
But the "Bipartisan Policy Center" thinks they're models of a glorious era of bipartisanship.

Two new polls, one of them with questions that appear rigged to produce answers favorable to family policing, are bringing some good news to families, and some bad news to the family police. 

The polls make clear that even after growing up on decades of “health terrorism” – the exploitation of horror stories to misinform the public about who typically gets caught up in the system and why – the reality of family policing is starting to break through in the public mind. 

In this post I’ll look at the results, and at the group behind the poll with the loaded questions. 

The poll that wasn’t rigged 

Back in the 19^th Century, the white racists who stole Native American children and forced them into hideous boarding schools, and tore apart impoverished immigrant families and forced the children onto so-called “orphan trains” grandly called themselves “child savers.”  So it’s hard to imagine that in the 21^st Century there could be a group that actually calls itself “Kidsave.”  But there is.  And they commissioned a poll from Gallup, which appears to have been geared toward encouraging more Black families to foster and adopt. 

But the questions appear to be unbiased.  The results are broken down by Black adults and adults of all other races.  

It found that a majority of people of all races now recognize that the system is profoundly biased and doesn’t even try to keep families together.  And of course, the recognition is greater among those who, as a group, have had far more personal experience with that system.  Have a look:

The only good news for the family police came from the fact that, apparently, only a minority of respondents agreed with the statement “Overall, the foster care system harms more than helps the children in its care.”  But while Gallup reveals how many agreed with the statement, it doesn’t say how many disagreed.  Did the majority disagree or did the majority say some equivalent of no opinion / I don’t know. 

The poll that was rigged 

In politics they’re called “push polls” – polls in which the true objective is to sway voters using loaded or manipulative questions. 

Was that the intent of this poll done by Harris for a group calling itself the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) as part of its new child welfare initiative?  I don’t know.  But some of the questions sure sound like push polling. 

The poll was conducted as part of a BPC initiative that appears intended to thwart real change.  Indeed, the initiative’s home page explicitly states that they want to recreate the same bipartisanship that prompted Congress to pass two of the most hideous anti-family “child welfare” laws now on the books: the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and the Adoption and Safe Families Act.  

These laws have destroyed millions of lives.  

These laws have formed the foundation for a child welfare surveillance state that will subject more than one-third of all children, and more than half of Black children to the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18.  And almost always, it will be in response to a false report.  These laws have channeled millions into the lifelong emotional trauma inflicted by needless foster care.  One-quarter to one-third of them, and probably many more, will be subjected to abuse in foster care itself. 

And these laws have so overwhelmed the system with false allegations, trivial cases and cases in which family poverty is confused with neglect that the system has little time to find the relatively few children in real danger. 

Equally revealing: The one excellent anti-racist law passed by Congress in the past 50 years is not celebrated by BPC. There is no mention of seeking to recapture the spirit of the Indian Child Welfare Act.  Even the current Supreme Court recognized the importance of ICWA, and the vote to uphold it was bipartisan! 

The bipartisanship of CAPTA and ASFA is the bipartisanship for which the Bipartisan Policy Center is nostalgic.  So of course they wring their hands about “polarization.”  But in this case, opposition to their agenda is not polarization – it’s families fighting back.  It’s foster youth refusing to be shut out and silenced.  It’s a refusal to label repression as consensus. 

The BPC’s initiative is an attempt to hold back the tide of change.  It is led by Rob Geen, who was a longtime apparatchik at the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  His arrival coincided with a significant turn for the worse at Casey as it largely abandoned any concern about needless removal of children. (In contrast there already is a real bipartisan initiative pressing for real changes in family policing that would make all children safer.  It’s called United Family Advocates.) 

BPC is kicking off its initiative with what sure seems like a push poll.  It’s got lots of questions that stack the deck and encourage particular answers.  In question after question, they do this by embracing the Big Lie of American child welfare – the false claim that child safety and family preservation are opposites that need to be “balanced.”  According to the Big Lie, when the system falsely accuses families, traumatizes children with needless interrogations and stripsearches and forces them needlessly into foster care somehow only adults are harmed. 

Indeed, BPC’s publication releasing the poll results explicitly characterizes support for massive overinvestigation of families as “err[ing] on the safe side.”  On the contrary, the massive child welfare surveillance state built on the very laws BPC loves has made all children less safe. 

In spite of the rigged wording, discussed in detail below, the poll produced some extraordinary numbers: 

● By a wide majority, respondents believe children’s well-being is best ensured by “heavily favor[ing] parents' authority” rather than “heavily favoring the government’s interest in ensuring children’s well-being.”  (Notice the subtle stacking of the deck: The question is not balanced. It does not repeat the line about children’s well-being in the part favoring parents, only in the part favoring government.) 

● Americans are realizing that racial and class bias permeate family policing.  Sixty percent agree that “Too often, decisions on whether the child welfare system should intervene in families are influenced by racial biases.”  (That’s the figure for all of those surveyed.  So far, BPC has not  released any results broken down by race.)  And 73% agree that “Too often, decisions on whether the child welfare system should intervene in families are influenced by socioeconomic/poverty biases.” 

● And despite the best efforts of the pollsters and the Bipartisan Policy Center, Americans understand how harmful it is for children to be consigned to the chaos of foster care. 

The poll found that 39% of respondents “Heavily favor the system removing the child from their home, even if removal might not be absolutely necessary”   But 53% “Heavily favor the system keeping the child with their family, even if the risk of future harm is unclear.” 

Now, let’s consider the more flagrant examples of loaded questions: 

● Consider this muddled mess of a question that led to seemingly contradictory responses 

In your opinion, which of the following statements most closely reflects your position on how the U.S. child welfare system should work when deciding whether to investigate reports of abuse or neglect in these scenarios?

-- Investigate every report, even if that means that some parents might be investigated unnecessarily. 

-- Only investigate reports where there is compelling evidence that abuse or neglect has occurred, or is occurring, even if some legitimate reports aren't investigated.

 The question is framed to leave the false impression that only parents might be harmed by unnecessary investigations.  So, not surprisingly, when questioned this way, a strong majority favors investigating every report.   

But what would happen if the options were phrased this way? 

-- Investigate every report even if it leaves some children emotionally traumatized for life after being interrogated about the most intimate aspects of their lives – and then being stripsearched – while also overloading workers so they have less time to find children in real danger. 

-- Only investigate reports where there is compelling evidence that abuse and neglect has occurred or is occurring in order to spare children needless trauma and increase the odds that workers will find children in real danger before it’s too late. 

And here’s where it gets weird.  In spite of the stacked deck nature of the actual poll question, the BPC publication discussing the poll also notes what apparently was a response to another question.  Before the family police begin an investigation 

60% of Americans think that authorities should need reports detailing first-hand knowledge or a strong reason to suspect a child has been or is being harmed.

So according to this poll, before the family police launch an investigation, a  majority of Americans oppose requiring “compelling evidence that abuse or neglect has occurred” but favor requiring “first-hand knowledge or a strong reason to suspect a child has been or is being harmed.”  (And by the way, either of those would be a higher standard than child abuse hotlines apply today.) 

Another question once again tries to stack the deck: 

 In an ideal world, which of the following statements most closely reflects your position on what the primary purpose of the child welfare system in this country should be?

They were given two options: 

44% said: 

Primarily protecting children at risk of abuse or neglect by their families. 

But 51% said: 

Primarily strengthening families' ability to care for their children.

So despite the false framing in which “protecting children” and “strengthening families” are presented as opposites, a majority wasn’t fooled.  A majority apparently understood that the primary way to protect children is strengthening families. 

But imagine how much greater the margin would be had the options been phrased honestly, and respondents had been asked if the system’s role should be 

Primarily protecting children at risk of abuse or neglect by investigating their families and removing the children 

or 

Primarily protecting children at risk of abuse or neglect by strengthening their families. 

Why were the results here so different from the very similar question about investigations?  Perhaps because people don’t realize how traumatic investigations, in and of themselves, are for children.  In contrast, this question speaks of the entire “child welfare system,” which might conjure up visions of the harm of child removal. 

The question that was really about ASFA 

As you read about this next question, keep in mind that BPC specifically cites the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) as the kind of glorious achievement their new initiative hopes to replicate. 

● Another example of pushback against the push polling comes in a question about timelines.  With certain exceptions, ASFA requires states to seek termination of children’s rights to their parents (a more accurate term than termination of parental rights) if they have been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22 months – no matter what the reason.  Even if the child never should have been taken in the first place.  Even if the family police agency did nothing real to help the family reunify.  

Congress was persuaded to pass this thanks to another Big Lie: the false claim that a vast family preservation conspiracy was forcing children to languish in foster care while the same agencies that took them away in the first place lavished chance after chance on horrible parents.  Impose strict timelines, they said, and all these children would be “freed” for adoption, taken in immediately by hordes of couples desperate to receive them and all would live happily ever after. 

None of it was true.  The primary purpose of ASFA was to encourage taking away more children.  One of those who claimed responsibility for writing ASFA, the late Richard Gelles, couldn’t resist gloating about this. In 2000 he told the New York City publication Child Welfare Watch: 

"Initially, this was just supposed to be a safe families bill, not really an adoption bill at all. The adoption component was a way of sanitizing the bill, to make it more appealing to a broader group of people. Adoption is a very popular concept in the country right now." 

In fact, not only was ASFA not responsible for reducing length of stay in foster care it may have impeded it.  ASFA also led to an increase in children aging out of foster care with no home at all, many of them legal orphans with no ties to their birth families and no magical adoptive home either. 

The best way to reduce time in foster care is to reduce it to zero by not taking children needlessly in the first place.  The next best way is to finally get serious about providing families with the concrete help they need to reunite.  

But BPC’s push poll-type question offers a false choice in keeping with the ASFA false narrative.  Respondents were asked: 

In your opinion, which of the following statements most closely reflects your position on how the U.S. foster care system should work when deciding how long parents should be given to address challenges? 

Heavily favor the system giving parents more time to address challenges and reunify with their children, even if it means that children spend more time in foster care. 

Heavily favor the system minimizing the amount of time that children remain in foster care, even if it means that parents and children are less likely to be reunited. 

Despite this loaded language, respondents weren’t hoodwinked.  By a remarkably strong majority 55 to 36% they favored “giving parents more time.” 

And what might have happened had the question been framed more honestly, with the options presented as: 

Heavily favor the system giving parents more time to address challenges and reunify with their children, because research shows children do best when they maintain ties to their families. 

Heavily favor the system minimizing the amount of time until termination of parental rights, even if it means children may become legal orphans with no ties to any family. 

They’re not evil, but they sure are sick! 

A key defense used by family policing agencies boils down to: You don’t understand.  We’re not police, we’re helpers!  We don’t think parents are evil (even though we gladly use horror stories about extremely rare cases where they are evil to stampede you into supporting us). No, we don’t think they’re evil, but they’re sick! Sick! Sick!  So we must be free to bestow upon them our counseling and parent education while we hold their children in foster care. 

This ugly, patronizing narrative pervades BPC’s and Harris’ discussion of the poll results.  And it’s straight out of the health terrorists’ playbook.  Compare: 

In the 1980s Prevent Child Abuse America, the group that admits to having practiced health terrorism – they even used the phrase – said this about neglect: 

“Whatever the causes of physical child neglect – and they are multiple – the heart of the problem is always an emotional lacking in the parents … The community and the caseworkers see parental behavior as the problem and they are, of course, right …

In 2023, here’s how BPC and Harris sum up the answers to one of their poll questions: 

While child abuse is largely seen as an outcome of parents who want to harm their child, there is more room for redemption and second chances for neglectful parents. 

Given this kind of framing, it’s amazing that, in another question, “parents lack of financial resources” makes it to #5 in the top five “contributors to child neglect.”  At no point are respondents asked if poverty is confused with neglect.  

The work still to be done 

After all those years of health terrorism, it’s remarkable that we’ve come so far.  But the poll still reveals how much work there is to be done.  Respondents believe the #1 contributor to neglect is “Parents who don’t want to care for their child” – almost exactly the message the health terrorists at PCAA were selling decades ago.  Number three, which will be music to the ears of the family policing establishment, is “Parents who are uninformed or uneducated about how to parent.”  

Majorities support family police investigation of almost anything bad that might happen to a child. But I’m betting all those respondents who said the family police should investigate “evidence of a child’s parent(s) abusing substances” weren’t thinking of the “cannamoms” of Massachusetts. 

Would they be so quick to call for investigation of any parent with substance use issues or mental health problems if they were told first that Betty Ford suffered from both? 

And would they be so quick to call for investigating any instance of domestic violence in the home if they knew that the threat of just such an investigation drives domestic violence victims away from seeking help and keeps them, and their children, trapped with the abuser? 

The only good news in this part of the poll is that a majority did not think homelessness was cause for a family police investigation. 

So if we really want to keep children safe, safe from abuse, safe from neglect, safe from needless investigation and safe from the enormous harm of needless foster care, we still have our work cut out for us – including fighting the misdirection from Rob Geen’s project at BPC and supporting the real bipartisan solutions coming from United Family Advocates. 

But I am heartened to see how far we have come.

NCCPR statement on the ICWA decision: A joyful surprise: The Supreme Court refuses to give family police the green light to revert to policies that fit the UN definition of genocide.

Now, let’s get serious about enforcement

The United Nations defines genocide as “a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.”  In the decades, indeed in the centuries before passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, U.S. “child welfare” policy toward Native Americans fit that definition.  

It’s not as if anyone tried to hide it.  From the superintendent of a notorious 19^th Century “boarding school” – more like a prison – who said the purpose was to “kill the Indian in him and save the man” to the Child Welfare League of America’s Indian Adoption Project which had as its explicit aim  “to stimulate adoption of American Indian children by Caucasian families on a nationwide basis,” they said the quiet part out loud.  (CWLA’s subsequent apology rings hollow, since they continue to support racist laws like the Adoption and Safe Families Act and the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.)

 The Indian Child Welfare Act is a recognition that it’s not too much to ask of America’s “child welfare” agencies that they not commit acts that fit the definition of genocide in international law.  We are thrilled that the United States Supreme Court agrees.  

ICWA is often described as the “gold standard” for “child welfare” law and policy.  As such its biggest flaw is not in the law itself but the failure to enforce it – indeed, ProPublica reminded us of that failure in a story published just today (June 15)..  The story focuses on the atrocious record of South Dakota, the same state exposed by NPR more than a decade ago. 

Other nations are doing better.

 In Australia, there is a National Sorry Day, to apologize to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for what Australia calls “the stolen generations.”  In Canada, governments are paying reparations to First Nations for what was done to them.  While other nations slowly move forward, we must build on today’s Supreme Court decision to force America’s family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies) to do the same.  And we must provide tribal nations with the resources they need to enforce their families’ rights under ICWA.

News and commentary round-up, week ending August 20, 2019

Once again, there’s been a lot of news:

● Can anyone think of a field other than child welfare in which so-called professionals go around urging their colleagues to think LESS before taking action that could hurt people?  That’s not some kind of inference. As this op-ed in The Hill explains, they’re literally telling their colleagues to think less!

● The Herald, in Everett, Washington decided to take an approach to the Snohomish County CASA scandal that is unusual for Washington State media: They covered it – and the story is excellent. Up to now, only KING-TV has reported on it.  I’ve updated the latest NCCPR Blog Post about the scandal.

● The New York Times Upshot column has a story with profound implications as Congress prepares to reauthorize the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.  As I’ve written before, the CAPTA approach is all about coercing parents – turning them in to child protective services, supposedly for “help,” but the CPS agency gets to decide that, and we all know what that means.  But the Times reports on a new study, confirming earlier research, that this only drives pregnant women away from prenatal care.  The researchers even quantify the harm to children’s health:

They found that policies that defined alcohol use during pregnancy as child abuse or neglect were associated with an increase of more than 12,000 preterm births. The cost of these were more than $580 million in the first year of life. Policies mandating warning signs where alcohol was sold were associated with an increase of more than 7,000 babies born at low birth weight, at a cost of more than $150 million.

● You’re killing kids! No, YOU’RE killing kids!  That’s how low the debate about child welfare has sunk in Los Angeles County.  I have a blog post about it.

● The New York Daily News has a good editorial about why Gov. Andrew Cuomo should sign the Preserving Family Bonds Act.

● Newsday has a good story about how Nassau and Suffolk Counties, on New York’s Long Island, have significantly reduced the number of children in foster care. Nassau’s approach includes reducing racial bias through Blind Removal Meetings.

● Indianz.com has a good analysis of a good court decision – the one upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act.  The story includes a guide, from the Native American Journalists Association, for reporting on ICWA.

● Suppose, hypothetically, the straight teenage daughter of gay parents embraced conservative Catholicism, causing a lot of stress within a family.  The daughter’s school compounds the stress, and then calls the Child Protective Services agency – which takes the youth away and places her in foster care with one of her gym coaches.  Anyone who is appalled by that should be equally appalled by the reverse – as in this actual case from Connecticut.

● It shouldn’t be necessary for the federal government to have to issue an entire information memorandum to explain to child welfare systems why “family and youth voice are critical to a well-functioning child welfare system…”  But remember, this is the field in which professionals are urging less thinking (see first item above.)  And the memo isn’t just a general exhortation. It offers specific examples of ways to do this, including investing in high-quality legal counsel for youth and families.

Jerry Milner, head of the Children’s Bureau at the federal Administration for Children and Families, writes about the importance of listening to youth and families – and acting on what one hears – in this column for the Rethinking Foster Care blog.

● And in Washington State, the King County Department of Public Defense has created a short video to help guide parents through the first crucial days after a child has been removed.  State laws vary, so many of the specifics may apply only to Washington State, but some parts may be useful elsewhere as well.

NCCPR News and commentary round-up, week ending August 14, 2019

Lots of news this week, starting with two important court decisions.

● An appellate court in Washington State blasted the scandal-plagued Snohomish County CASA program – that’s the one a judge found engaged in “the blatant withholding and destruction of evidence … rampant, continuing lying …” and “pervasive and egregious” misconduct. 

The appellate court also blasted the Snohomish County Superior Court for making a fair termination of parental rights trial impossible – because court employees actually worked with the CASA program instead of remaining neutral.  Through it all, the National CASA Association has remained silent.  Do they actually approve of the Snohomish County CASA program’s actions?  Details on all of this, and a link to the decision, in this NCCPR Blog Post.

● A federal appellate court also brought good news last week: It upheld the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Here’s the National Indian Child Welfare Association statement on the decision.

● In Youth Today, I review recent studies that all have one thing in common:  They demonstrate that, when it comes to reducing child abuse, there’s nothing like the transformative power of cash.  And, great news! In the same column, I reveal the apparently up-to-now secret way to target child abuse prevention without resorting to Big-Brother, privacy-invading predictive analytics!

● I have long argued that the so-called Family First act has been vastly overhyped. The funds can be used on only a few types of services and they have to meet criteria for being “evidence-based” that are vastly higher than the criteria for say, foster care or residential treatment (which have no real evidence base).  But now comes word that the federal government will be studying whether to allow funding under Family First for programs that follow the Homebuilders model for Intensive Family Preservation Services.  That alone would make Family First vastly more useful.  Here’s how Homebuilders works.  And here’s a summary of the impressive evidence base for it.

● In the Chronicle of Social Change, Vivek Sankaran writes about the need for judges to behave like – you know, judges, and enforce the law. He writes:

[T]hroughout my career, I’ve heard judges chide lawyers and parents when they emphasize the law. One frustrated judge said to a colleague, “I see you’re going down the statutory road again.” Another said to a parent, “I know there’s a legal right to ask for more visits. But if I gave it to you, then I’d have to give it to every parent.” A third said, “I know the law says that corporal punishment is allowed. But in my courtroom, this is what we do.”

And I would argue that, at its most extreme, this attitude helps explain what happened in Snohomish County (see first item above).

● Another Chronicle story looks at how “In Aftermath of Latest Child Death, L.A. Contends with Potential Foster Care Panic.”  I’ll have some thoughts on this one soon.

● In Talk Poverty Elizabeth Brico writes about how “State Laws Punish Pregnant People Just For Seeking Drug Treatment.” And of course, they also punish the children.  Ms. Brico cites an Amnesty International report documenting how such laws drive women away from treatment and away from prenatal care.

● When a parent who has lost a child to foster care – or is at risk of it – can get help from another parent who’s been through the same ordeal it can help prevent the placement, or shorten it, lessening the trauma for children.  So, Rise, a magazine written by parents who have been in this position, asks: Why aren’t more of them working in NYC? This is, of course, an excellent question for the rest of the country as well.

● Also in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has on his desk a bill that could significantly ease the trauma for children who have lost their parents forever due to termination of parental rights.  The bill would allow judges to continue contact between these children and their parents if the judge is persuaded it’s in the child’s best interests. 

In the New York Daily News, Chris Gottlieb, co-director of the Family Defense Clinic at New York University School of Law, explains why the governor should sign the bill.  And family defense attorney Amy Mulzer has a letter to the editor about the bill in the Albany Times Union.

● Until it was surpassed in 2017 by Montana, Wyoming had the dubious distinction of child removal capital of America. (It’s still #2 in that regard.)  So it’s encouraging that the legislature in that state is considering a bill that would bolster family defense.  The story illustrates the importance of both the new study showing that high-quality family defense safely reduces foster care and the change in federal rules that allows some of the cost of such defense to be reimbursed with federal funds.

● I have a guest commentary in the Times of Northwest Indiana about how the latest McLawsuit filed by the latest group founded by Marcia Lowry, A Better Childhood, may well make that state’s dismal child welfare system even worse.

● And finally, though not related directly to child protective services, Vice News has a disturbing story about how the private adoption industry coerces parents into giving up their children.  The common denominator shared by these cases and those involving CPS is poverty. The Vice story cites a survey which found that “most women … put up their babies for adoption at least in part because of financial concerns.

News and commentary round-up, week ending July 9, 2019

● What is it like to be innocent, yet trapped on a massive blacklist of alleged child abusers? What does it do to a family? It happened to Hope Lyzette Newton.  She fought her way off the blacklist. She tells her story in this essay from the Rethinking Foster Care blog.

● Another moving essay comes from Kelly Buffalo-Quinn, a Native American woman who writes: “I Lost Control of My Baby’s Adoption Because of the Indian Child Welfare Act. And I’m Glad It Happened.”   An excerpt:

We are the originals and it’s laws like ICWA and decisions like my Tribal Council’s that protect our bodies, our descendants, our language and our way of life. The preservation of indigenous cultures is the only reason we have survived for so long. Continued preservation is the only way we will keep surviving. … It took me years to come to terms with, but ICWA did its job. It preserved this native child just as it was intended. And because of that, I know he will always have a home — a true home — in his a place among my people.

 You can see Ms. Buffalo-Quinn tell her story in this video:

 ● On this blog: Last month the head of New York City’s child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, told a City Council hearing that they didn’t have aggregate data on the use of psychiatric medication on foster children.  He said that was some other agency’s job.  What he apparently didn’t tell the Council is that, more than ten years ago, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services urged – but did not require – ACS and its upstate counterparts to gather and track these data themselves.

● Still, one can always feel better about child welfare in New York City by looking at child welfare in Philadelphia. Here’s another case in point.

New columns on confessions of a caseworker and the state where kangaroo court is always in session

Of all the crimes against children committed in the name of “child protection,” none is worse than when white America weaponized child welfare in an effort to destroy the culture of Native Americans.

Today, of course, people no longer say that the goal of child welfare is to “kill the Indian, save the man.” But whatever the intent, a series of federal court rulings from South Dakota make clear that Native children remain in danger from a state child welfare system out of control.

Read our column in Youth Today about South Dakota Child Welfare: Where Kangaroo Court is Always in Session.

One of the things caseworkers often say is just not true. Caseworkers often claim they are “damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t.” But when it comes to taking away children, caseworkers are only damned if they don’t. It’s one of the reasons so many children are needlessly consigned to the chaos of foster care.

Now, a leader of a union representing caseworkers has admitted as much.  

Read our column in Youth Today: Confessions of a Caseworker: We Remove Kids to Protect Ourselves

Congratulations, Alaska: You’re the foster care capital of America

At the end of 2016, the federal government finally released state-by-state foster care numbers for 2015.

Congratulations, Alaska: You’re number one!

The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform uses a “Rate of Removal Index” to determine each state’s propensity to place children in foster care. The index compares the number of children entering care over the course of a year and in care on the last day of the federal fiscal year to the number of impoverished children in each state.

In 2015, Alaska had proportionately more children in foster care than any other state. Have a look.

We believe the fairest comparison factors in rates of child poverty. But when you instead compare the number of children in foster care to the total child population, Alaska still has proportionately more children in foster care than any other state.

As for the number of children taken from their homes over the course of the year, Alaska’s rate of removal is only the third highest in the nation – again, that ranking holds whether comparing to the number of impoverished children in each state or the total child population.

Alaska’s rate of child removal in 2015 was more than triple the national average, and more than quadruple the rate in states that are, relatively speaking, models for keeping children safe.

There is no evidence that Alaska children are three times safer from abuse and neglect than the national average. And check out this dismal trend: Between 2012 and 2015 the number of children taken from their homes over the course of a year in Alaska soared by 65 percent – with most of that increase between 2014 and 2015. Nationwide, there also was an increase during this time of less than 8 percent.

But then, why should anyone expect anything different when the head of the Alaska child welfare agency, the Office of Children’s Services (OCS), confuses child removal with child safety, and almost brags about breaking federal law requiring “reasonable efforts” to keep families together?

I’m sure the OCS will rush to blame the latest “drug plague.” That’s what child welfare agencies always do.  That’s what Arkansas tried to do. That state also had a spike in foster care numbers. So their child welfare agency hired consultants to tell them what they wanted to hear – that it was all because of drugs and budget cuts.

But the consultants didn’t go along. They found the problem was the culture of their child welfare agency and the courts. Imagine what they’d find in Alaska, where the rate of removal is well over double the rate in Arkansas.

You can be sure something else is happening in Alaska as well: Children in real danger, children who really should be removed from their homes, are being overlooked.  Because the more a system is overloaded with false allegations, trivial cases and cases in which family poverty is confused with neglect, the less time caseworkers have to investigate any case properly. So they make more errors in all directions.

Who is Targeted in Alaska

Although the most famous dysfunctional family in Alaska is white, they don’t seem to have been the subject of so much as an investigation (nor should they be). But imagine if that family were Native American. In Alaska, 18 percent of children are Native American or Native Alaskan. They represent 42 percent of foster children. But then, in a state where the “reasonable efforts” requirement is treated as a joke, it should come as no surprise that the Indian Child Welfare Act is ignored.

You can’t blame all this on money.

I’m a tax-and-spend liberal, and proud of it. And there is nothing at which I’d rather throw money than child welfare. I’d be glad to see all states spend more. But Alaska’s already spending a lot.  As of 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, Alaska was spending on child welfare at the third highest rate in the country, well over double the national average.

Even when you factor in the cost of living and vast travel distances in Alaska, it’s hard to make a case that the problem is lack of money.

The real problem is the great paradox of child welfare: The worse the option, the more it costs. Safe, proven alternatives to foster homes cost less than foster homes, which cost less than group homes, which cost less than institutions. So Alaska winds up spending on child welfare at one of the highest rates in the country — and getting dismal results.