Catch-22 in Kentucky: How “child welfare” conflates poverty with neglect: Maximum condescension, minimum understanding of its own role

I’ve often cited on this blog the excellent journalism of Steve Volk, a reporter for Resolve Philly; stories such as this one, and this one, and this one. Volk just finished teaching an online course for the Poynter Institute on how to cover child welfare. Some of the students have written essays for Poynter’s website about what they learned. 

Sarah Ladd of the States Newsroom site Kentucky Lantern wrote an essay that included a question she posed to advocates across the state.  It was a very good question. She got a very bad – but wonderfully revealing – answer: 

For a few weeks, I asked every child advocate I interviewed the same question: “Where is the line between true neglect — that is based in disregard or cruelty — and a family who loves each other, but lacks resources to fully care for their child?” 

All my sources said the same thing, nearly verbatim: The determining factor is if a family is reaching out to get support and resources necessary to fill gaps. 

This reflects exactly the patronizing attitude toward families that’s a key problem with the system: the notion that it’s on the parents to prove themselves worthy by reaching out to us!  Families must grovel! They must humble themselves! They must reach out to us so we can judge whether they are worthy of help or must have their children torn from their arms! 

This also puts the burden of proof in the wrong place – though it fits perfectly with the guilty-until-proven-innocent mentality that permeates family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies). Families should not be required to show that the fact that their children may not have enough food or adequate shelter is not due to “disregard or cruelty.”  The "child protective services" agency should be required to prove that it is. 

Aside from the condescension, there’s the practical problem: The child welfare system itself discourages families from reaching out for help. Families are afraid to share their problems with professionals and seek help precisely because those professionals usually are mandated reporters who might well turn them in to CPS.

Those "child advocates" in Kentucky have set up the ultimate Catch-22: To satisfy us that it's poverty and not neglect you must reach out to us. But if you reach out to us, we might decide it's neglect anyway and take away your children!  That's exactly what happened to the family discussed  in this recent previous post to this blog.  

One book addresses this issue brilliantly: Investigating Families, by Prof. Kelley Fong.  She embedded with CPS agencies – she had the ultimate all-access pass. The result is a book that combines a scholar’s rigor with a journalist’s eye. Much of it deals with the daily balancing act every poor parent must perform – how much to reveal to “helpers” who might help, or might take their children.  Yet this is the litmus test all those advocates in Kentucky demand. 

There is a much more accurate, much simpler answer to Ms. Ladd’s question: If the solution is money, the problem is poverty. The burden of reaching out should be on the powerful, not the powerless; on the system, not the family. And the help needs to be what families really need, which is more likely to be cash, rent subsidies, or childcare vouchers than the “counseling” and “parent education” that primarily make the helpers feel good.  

We saw how well this worked during the COVID pandemic. While the child welfare establishment was fearmongering about a “pandemic of child abuse” that never happened, impoverished communities were mobilizing to help themselves, and government provided exactly the help those families needed: no-strings-attached cash. The result: child safety improved. 

In that system, families were unafraid to seek the help they needed. 

But apparently, the thought of replacing wagging fingers with helping hands is more than “child advocates” in Kentucky, or most of the rest of the country, can handle.

And the winner of the Kentucky Irony Derby is …

The Kentucky Derby isn’t run until May 4.  But when it comes to the Kentucky Irony derby, we already have a winner! 

WDRB-TV in Louisville has a story with this headline: “Norton Children's opens new center combatting child abuse at the Home of the Innocents.”  For a split second, I thought: Wow! They’re putting in monitors to stop the child abuse at Home of the Innocents – abuse exposed in this story from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. 

No such luck.  The new center is just another “counseling” and “parent education” program.  But hey, when your state supposedly is a cesspool of depravity with vastly more child abuse than most, won’t anything help?  Except that is a myth, repeated over and over by those still wedded to promoting what’s been aptly called “health terrorism” in which horror stories and distorted data are used to stampede people away from real solutions.

NCCPR in The Lexington Herald-Leader: From Ian Sousis to Dovia Pernell, Ky Cabinet’s failures lead to tragedy

A year-and-a-half ago on these pages, I wrote about the tragic deaths of two children who had been institutionalized by the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, only to die while in the agency’s care. Here’s what I wrote about nine-year-old Ian Sousis, who drowned in the Ohio River after running away from a “residential treatment center.” 

His grandparents had custody since he was an infant. As a toddler, he was diagnosed with autism. No matter where he was, he ran away a lot. All the grandparents needed was therapy for the child and help to be sure he was never out of someone’s sight. Had they been rich they easily could have purchased both. But they’re not rich. So they had to turn to the Cabinet … which offered no alternatives except institutions – and took control of where Ian would live. 

Here’s how much Kentucky officials learned from that tragedy: 

Read the full column in the Herald-Leader

NCCPR in the Kentucky Lantern: The only way to end abuse in children’s institutions is to end the institutions

Recent news stories illustrate both the terrible harm Kentucky’s “child welfare” system inflicts upon its most vulnerable children and the root cause. Until the findings in these stories are examined together the harm will never stop. 

The ultimate harm can be seen in the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting’s expose of how the state systematically ignores abuse of children institutionalized in “residential treatment.”  Over and over children’s stories of vicious abuse were not believed. In more than half the “unsubstantiated” cases the children were not even interviewed before the cases were closed and their claims dismissed. The story also revealed that, remarkably often, the places where young people alleged abuse occurred were places where video cameras were not present or mysteriously didn’t work. 

The reason for this is no mystery. … 

Read the full column in the Kentucky Lantern

NCCPR in the Lexington Herald-Leader: Kentucky does not need to institutionalize young children. Too much goes wrong.

 On June 4, Ian Sousis, a foster child, ran away from a residential treatment center in Kentucky.  Four hours later, his body was found in the Ohio River.  He had accidentally drowned.  Ian was nine years old. 

On July 17, Ja'Ceon Terry, a foster child, died in another residential treatment center in Kentucky. The cause of death is unknown. [UPDATE, SEPT. 16, 2022: According to the Jefferson County Coroner, the cause was homicide - due to "positional asphyxia."]  But we do know this: Ja’Ceon was seven years old. 

People are asking lots of questions about these specific cases.  But so far, no one has asked the most important question of all: Why is Kentucky institutionalizing such young children?

Read the full column in the Lexington Herald-Leader

UPDATED: KENTUCKY FRIED DATA: Nobody knows which state has the “most” child abuse. So please, Kentucky media, could you stop claiming it’s Kentucky?

It’s at least as likely that what Kentucky really leads in is confusing poverty with neglect.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Child Maltreatment 2018

UPDATE, FEB. 3, 2021: This year, the Courier-Journal story (to which I am not going to link) headlined “Kentucky leads in child abuse for third year straight…” admits that the federal report they cite to back up that claim specifically warns against making comparisons.  Then the story proceeds to do it anyway. According to the story: 

The federal Child Maltreatment annual report, published in January, is based on data from the federal fiscal year 2019. While it cautions against state-by-state comparisons, because of varying reporting requirements within states, Kentucky has ranked consistently high, in the top 10 for more than a decade. 

In other words, if you make an invalid comparison often enough, it becomes valid!  

Of course, the story makes no mention of the fact that what Kentucky really may lead-in is confusing poverty with “neglect.”  But it does throw in a supportive nod to the widely-discredited, racist narrative about a supposed pandemic of child abuse because mostly white middle-class mandated reporters don’t constantly have their eyes on overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately nonwhite children. 

There’s even a swipe at grieving parents who lose their children to suicide.

 [O]n Thursday, we shared the shameful story that Kentucky is the worst in America at protecting its children.  The U.S. Department for [sic] Health and Human Services has slapped this dubious title on our state: The rate of child abuse and neglect in Kentucky is the worst in the country.                                   – Richard Green, Editor, Louisville Courier-Journal, 2019.

 Kentucky still ranks No. 1 in the nation in rates of child abuse and neglect

                                                            – Louisville Courier-Journal, 2020

Kentucky still has highest child abuse rate in U.S….– Sentinel Echo, London KY

 Report: Kentucky, Indiana have highest child abuse rate in U.S. – WLKY-TV

 New AG vows to fight child abuse (Ky. ranks No. 1 in it)– Kentucky Health News

           

            The first claim, about how a federal agency “slapped this dubious title” on Kentucky is simply false.  Some of the rest might be true. Then again, it might not – and neither the people who wrote the stories nor anyone else has the faintest idea. 

            In fact, the very report cited in all those stories specifically cautions against such comparisons.  So not only did the Department of Health and Human Services not slap any "dubious title" on anyone; Kentucky media have recklessly ignored HHS' warning about making any such comparison.

            It would be hard to read a story about child abuse in Kentucky that doesn’t include this claim – because it’s in the interest of so many people who write and promote the stories to make it.  Particularly in the state’s largest newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the claim often is paired with gruesome accounts of beatings torture and murder of children.  

That makes it easy for readers to jump to the mistaken conclusion that Kentucky is such a cesspool of depravity that the state is justified in tearing apart families a rate 70 percent above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in.*   

And if they don’t jump to that conclusion on their own, the Courier-Journal is glad to help.  Here’s how one news story summed it all up: 

The Courier Journal reported last year that Kentucky led the nation in abuse and neglect with increasingly violent, sometimes fatal injuries to children so severe an outside panel classified some cases as torture.

 

Full details and sources are available here.

So it’s no wonder anyone reading the stories would be likely to conclude that the rate at which Kentucky tears apart families should be even higher.  And it’s no wonder neither readers nor the authors of such stories would want to listen to concerns about the enormous emotional trauma and terrible life outcomes often inflicted on children needlessly consigned to the chaos of foster care, and the high risk of abuse in foster care itself.  (When the Courier-Journal touches on these outcomes the premise is that foster care can be “even worse” than those awful birth parents, and it’s a shame more kids aren’t adopted.) 

            Kentucky’s take-the-child-and-run approach is one of the reasons the child welfare system is overwhelmed.  It is that overwhelming of the system with false reports, trivial cases and cases in which family poverty is confused with neglect that almost always is the real reason children in real danger of brutality, torture and death - cases that are as rare as they are horrific -- sometimes are overlooked. 

            That’s because though each is the worst form of tragedy child abuse deaths and near deaths are needles in a very large haystack. 

            In 2017, using the larger of two different figures in Courier-Journal stories, we estimate there were between 29 and 58 child abuse deaths or near deaths in Kentucky.  (The graphic above assumes 58.) That year, Kentucky’s child abuse hotline received calls involving roughly 165,000 children.**  Clearly, making the haystack even larger by overloading workers with even more false reports, trivial cases, poverty cases and needless foster care, is only going to make it even harder to find the needles. 

            All this is why the misreading of key data by Kentucky media and advocates makes all Kentucky children less safe.

 Actually we DO need to “quibble about numbers.”

            Before I even start the process of analyzing the claim about child abuse in Kentucky, I need to repeat something I wrote recently about child abuse in Oregon when a data issue arose there:

When those pushing for more policing of overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately nonwhite families, more massive surveillance and more removal of children to foster care get caught hyping the numbers, they have a standard response. Usually it’s some variation of: “How dare you quibble about numbers! Children are dying!  Even one case is too many!”

            

 The second two sentences are, of course, correct.  But precisely because we’ve been suckered by fearmongering, hype and hysteria for decades (at least one organization responsible for it effectively admitted as much) we’ve spent those decades embracing “solutions” that only make things worse.

As I noted above, the horror stories represent a tiny fraction of the cases seen by workers for Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services.  To get that tiny fraction down to zero requires a vastly different approach than an ever-expanding child welfare surveillance state, and doing what Kentucky keeps doing - tearing apart families, and traumatizing children with needless foster care, at an obscene rate.

            The related hyper-defensive response from some journalists to any attempt to provide context is some variation of: “Oh, so you don’t want us to report on children dying!”

Bullshit. What those of us who have been working for decades to reduce child abuse in all forms to zero want is better reporting on child abuse deaths – and every other aspect of the child welfare system (Why, for example, has the Courier-Journal never, as far as I know, run a story such as this such as this?) because the problem of massive, needless removal of children and the problem of child welfare systems overlooking children in real danger are directly related. 

            We damn well do need to “quibble about numbers.” So let’s start quibbling:

The table that launched those hype-filled headlines

            Where does that “worst-in-the-nation” claim come from?  Well, contrary to what the editor of the Courier Journal implied, it does not come from any statement from the federal Department of Health and Human Services. There is no press release or other document that declares “Kentucky is number one in child abuse.”  There isn’t even a ranking.

             What there is is a single data point on a single table in on page 30 of a 274-page federal report.  That same report (right upfront on page 5) comes with a crucial warning:

[R]eaders should exercise caution in making state-to-state comparisons. Each state defines child abuse and neglect in its own statutes and policies and the child welfare agencies determine the appropriate response for the alleged maltreatment based on those statutes and policies.

             Here's why:

            What that table actually measures is the percentage of the child population for whom  child protective services workers check a box on a form saying they think it’s at least slightly more likely than not that a parent or caretaker abused or neglected a child.  This can be little more than a caseworker’s guess.  In Kentucky workers check the box for a higher proportion of the total child population than any other state. 

            Now, let’s unpack this. 

            For starters, all those stories that claim even the data table said Kentucky leads America in “child abuse” are false – the figure is for alleged abuse and alleged neglect combined.            

            And there are indications that, in Kentucky, we are talking almost entirely about so-called “neglect.” Another table in the same publication, on page 41, shows that, on average 60.8 percent of so-called substantiated reports are for “neglect only.” But in Kentucky it’s 88.1 percent – the second highest such proportion in America.  In contrast, physical abuse and sexual abuse combined account for, at most 11.2 percent.  That compares to a national average of 32 percent. 

            Of course some in Kentucky might say: Well, of course we have a higher proportion of neglect cases, we’re a poor state!  There are two problems with this: First, child welfare agencies say they never confuse poverty with neglect – so that should be largely irrelevant.  Second, there are seven states where the rate of child poverty is as high or higher than Kentucky.  In all of those states, the percentage of cases involving alleged neglect is lower than Kentucky. 

            Perhaps most notable among these is Alabama, a state which became, relatively speaking, a national leader in child welfare when a lawsuit settlement required the state to rebuild its system to emphasize safe, proven alternatives to tearing apart families.  (A member of NCCPR’s volunteer Board of Directors was co-counsel for plaintiffs in that lawsuit.)  So it's worth repeating the graphic at the top of this post:

Source: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Child Maltreatment 2018

There’s been some backsliding in recent years, but Alabama still takes away children at half the rate of Kentucky – and independent monitors found that child safety improved.  Alabama did this in part by dramatically reducing the confusion of poverty with neglect.  In Alabama of all “substantiated” cases only 31.3 percent involved “neglect only.”

             So if you were to disaggregate the data and actually look only at abuse, it’s quite possible that, even by this grossly flawed measure, Kentucky is not number one. 

Defining “neglect.” 

            That leaves the Courier-Journal, which, for all its other failings, at least says the figure is for “abuse and neglect.”

            So now let’s consider how states define neglect.  Most states have extremely broad, vague definitions that invite the confusion of poverty with neglect.  Kentucky’s is among the worst. Its definition includes a parent who 

“Does not provide the child with adequate care, supervision, food, clothing, shelter, education, or medical care necessary for the child's well-being.” 

            There is hardly a poor child in Kentucky who could not be deemed neglected at some point if a caseworker chose to do so.  That alone may well explain the so-called “worst in the nation” claim.  

But it’s not just the vagueness of the definition.  Different state and local child welfare agencies have different cultures.  As noted above in the discussion of Alabama, there are a few agencies that take seriously trying to avoid confusing poverty with neglect.  But Kentucky does not appear to be one of them. 

On the contrary, Kentucky child welfare’s contempt for families was the subject of a scathing report by the child welfare agency’s own inspector general in 2007. At about the same time the state made national headlines over rushing children needlessly to termination of parental rights.  Recent Kentucky court decisions suggest attitudes haven’t changed.  The Lexington Herald-Leader has covered all this extensively – it is they only news organization in the state I know of that has offered a measure of nuance in its child welfare coverage. 

Defining “substantiation”

             The federal report upon which Kentucky media rely does not, in fact, measure child abuse or neglect. Rather it counts the number of times caseworkers allege abuse or neglect.

             The allegation does not mean there was a comprehensive investigation followed by a decision from a neutral arbiter.  Rather it means only that an often overwhelmed, underprepared caseworker checked a box on a form.  In Kentucky, as in 37 other jurisdictions, workers check the box when they deem it at least slightly more likely than not that what the state defines as abuse or “neglect” occurred.  Seven jurisdictions have a higher standard, seven have a lower standard (D.C. and Puerto Rico bring the total to 52) – still another reason states can’t be compared. 

            We do know that, as of 2017, in Kentucky, in the cases where families manage to make their way through an appeals process, with the appeal decided by the same agency that made the initial determination, well over half the time the decision to “substantiate” the allegation is overturned. 

Other unknowns

             How deep in the weeds do you want to go? The rate at which people call child abuse hotlines and the proportion of those calls that are accepted for investigation also vary widely from state to state.  Both of these affect how many children caseworkers actually see, which may affect the proportion of the child population alleged by caseworkers to be abused or neglected.  (Depending on how you choose to interpret these data they can be used to bolster either side of the “worst-in-the-nation” argument.)

             So, does Kentucky have the more “child abuse” than any other state, or does Kentucky simply confuse poverty with neglect at one of the highest rates in America?

             Obviously, I think it’s more likely the latter.  But I don’t know that.  And, Kentucky journalists and advocates: Neither do you.

 _____________________

*- Normally, when I use that “cesspool of depravity” phrase I’m being sarcastic, but in Kentucky, one of the Courier Journal’s favorite sources for fearmongering quotes – a child abuse pediatrician – actually said "I think Kentucky continues in some areas to have a fairly significant culture of violence."  In fact, this is someone who, however well-intended, has no qualifications I know of to measure the culture of an entire state.  Rather, her job requires her to focus almost entirely on the worst of the worst – which may distort her perspective.  Problems with the perspective of some child abuse pediatricians, have been well documented in The Atlantic and The Marshall Project, and by NBC News and the Houston Chronicle .

            ** Courier Journal stories give two different figures (from different state agencies) for child abuse deaths and one for near deaths.  Using the larger figures, the total is 107. Nationwide, 27.3 percent of child abuse deaths involve children in some way “known to the system” – which can mean no more than that at one time there was a call to the child abuse hotline.  That would mean there were 29 such deaths or near deaths in Kentucky. But just for the sake of argument, I’ve doubled the number in the graphic. 

           State data in the annual Child Maltreatment reports count the number of calls hotlines receive, but not the number of children per call. Other data in the report suggest that calls to Kentucky’s hotline probably involve an average of 1.5 children per call.

UPDATED: “We move in silence”: Stories illustrate the constant threat to families from the child welfare surveillance state -- and how traumatizing children can be dismissed as just “an oopsy daisy.”

             

As schools start again, NPR is broadcasting a series of stories about how families are coping.  In one excellent story, Morning Edition anchor Rachel Martin interviewed a Black single mother struggling to hold down a job while her children learn online.

             “I have four children,” the mother told Martin.

 “Three boys and one daughter ranging from 13 - he's my oldest boy, you know, he likes to stay to himself, and he loves to draw, though; 11 - that's my sweetheart, my special little guy (laughter); 9 - that's my athlete, that's my busybody; and 7 - my daughter, that's my cheerleader.

             What emerges is a story of quiet heroism, as this mother, always poor and sometimes desperately so, moves heaven and earth for her children.  She’s also taking college courses online to earn a bachelor’s degree.  NPR wisely left in interruptions to the interview as the mother stopped to talk to one child’s dentist and help another get online; they were glimpses into how much this mother has to juggle.

             You can hear the story here:

             NPR did not use the names of the children – but they did use the full name of the mother and the city where the family lives.

             I wish they hadn’t.  Because the only thing standing between this family and the trauma of needless foster care for the children is random chance.  For six hours, while mom is working, the 13-year-old has to supervise the other three, including making sure they’re online for their classes.  The wrong caseworker could see that as “lack of supervision” or “educational neglect” or both.

           

 If someone, whether well-meaning or self-righteous or some combination, heeds the constant demands to report anything and everything to child abuse hotlines -- Go ahead and call!  Leave it to we professionals to decide!  You could be a hero! – and the wrong caseworker shows up, the children could be torn from their mother and consigned to the chaos of foster care.

 It’s clear from this excerpt from the interview that the mother knows the risk. She almost seemed to be speaking to child protective services:

 MARTIN: So there's a lot going on in your life and in your family's life. How does the school, the education part of it, complicate things, the fact that you don't have a safe place for kids to be during the day?

 [MOTHER]: Well, where we are is safe. It's just I don't have - like I say, my son is old enough to keep the kids, but it's not his total responsibility to make sure that everybody is doing what they're supposed to do. Now, I do have access, you know, to the phones, you know, so while I'm at work, I definitely call and do my check-ins. And at this point, you know, for me, that's the best that I can do, you know, because I don't look for handouts. I don't need no pity parties. I don't want nobody to feel, you know, sorry for me because there's so many other women and families out here that's going through the same thing, you know, and we move in silence.

 It could go the other way, of course. At least now the children can get online from home. They had to “borrow from the library to get internet access” until a local television station told their story and a donor stepped in.

 Perhaps the national attention will prompt someone to help the mother get a job she can do from home, or hire a sitter – if one can be found given the current risks. (That, after all would be in the grand American tradition of absolving ourselves of responsibility for what we do to millions by helping the one we hear about on radio or TV.)  And perhaps the national attention will protect the family if someone is callous enough or naïve enough to call CPS on them.

 But it’s a crapshoot. And because this family is poor and especially because this family also is nonwhite, every minute of every day this family has to worry about what the child welfare surveillance state might do to them.

 

The California case [See update]

 

If you think that’s farfetched, recall what’s happening in Massachusetts and New York City – or consider  What might be a strikingly similar case from California, as described  in this news account:

 A Taco Bell proved critical for two little girls who were briefly using its Wi-Fi for school -- something that almost proved tragic after the kids were nearly taken from their mother.

 A photo of two young girls sitting outside of a Taco Bell in Salinas, CA -- just outside of Monterey -- recently went viral ... which shows them plopped down on the concrete with their laptops and notepads out, while two TB employees come out to talk to them. … According to local community members who stepped in to help the family ... they were almost separated by cops and CPS officials, who apparently came knocking.

UPDATE: The original story has been updated with a statement from the police department saying they never had any contact with the family.  There is no word concerning CPS. 

When CPS is at the door

 

We also got a rare detailed look last month at what happens when CPS does come to the door, and how much harm it can do, even when they don’t walk out with the children.  We got that look as a result of a court decision in Kentucky.  The decision comes in a lawsuit by a Kentucky family, represented by the Home School Legal Defense Association.

 CPS agencies like to sell us on the idea that a child abuse investigation is no big deal – just a quick check if the family needs anything and, if there’s no problem, they go away. As the caseworker in the Kentucky case put it: “We’re just going to consider this an oopsy daisy.” Readers of this Lexington, (Kentucky) Herald-Leader story  might disagree.

 The Herald-Leader reports that it began in 2017 when Holly Curry left her six children in her minivan for five to ten minutes to run into a coffee shop and get muffins.  It was a cool day, the doors were locked and the engine and fan were running.  Someone called police. The officer did not charge the mother. But he did notify child protective services – something he now says he regrets.

 As the judge noted, when a Kentucky child abuse investigator, Jeanetta Childress and Hardin County sheriff’s Deputy Michael Furnish later showed up at the family home, “they knew the Curry children had been utterly unharmed while waiting in their climate-controlled car for the time it took Holly to run in a coffee shop.”

 Nevertheless, they got Curry to let them into the home – by threatening to come back and take away the children if she didn't.  Then, as the Herald-Leader reports:

 Writing in a court motion, Curry’s lawyers said that Childress “proceeded to strip search the children. Starting with the younger children, she pulled up their pant legs to look at their calves, then unbuttoned their pants, undid the buttons on their onesies, pulled them up to view their chests, stomachs and abdomen area, then undid their diapers and put her fingers down and looked inside.”

 For the older children who wore underwear, Childress pulled it aside, looked inside and put her hands down their underwear, the lawyers wrote.

 “Deputy Furnish was present while all six children were strip searched,” Curry’s lawyers wrote.

 Childress herself claimed such stripsearching is standard operating procedure.  As the judge noted: "Incredibly, Childress repeatedly testified that she believed she should ‘automatically’ strip search any child who was four or under.”  And well, if nothing is found, after all, it’s just “an oopsy daisy.”

The judge saw it differently:

 The judge wrote in his order last week that the social worker and deputy had no right to strip search the children in violation of their “fundamental dignity.”

 “Here, Childress lacked even a shadow of probable cause that the Currys physically abused their children,” the judge wrote.

 But, as the story notes, that didn’t stop Childress from allegedly issuing one last threat:

  “If we ever get a call against your family again, bad things will happen to you and we’ll take your children,” according to the Currys’ attorneys.

 The judge concluded his ruling this way:

 “Act One: An ‘attentive and loving’ mother gets muffins for her children.  Act Two: There’s a knock on her door and a threat by the government to take away her children. Act Three: Her children are strip searched without cause.”

 “America’s founding generation may never have imagined a Cabinet for Health and Family Services. But they knew their fair share of unwelcome constables. And they added a Fourth Amendment to our Constitution to protect against this three-act tragedy.”

But this drama has had a long, long run. And there’s no sign that the show is going to close anytime soon, unless we realize that, for the sake of millions of vulnerable children, it’s time to bring down the curtain.

New columns on malice and mandated reporters, child abuse "central registries" and why the foster-care-at-all-costs crowd will never give up their horror stories

How malicious does a "mandated reporter" of child abuse have to be before immunity from all accountability applies? I have a column about it here.

What about if a false report lands you on a state "central registry" of child abusers? The lack of accountability there is the topic of this column for the Louisville Courier Journal.

And you know how the foster-care industrial complex loves to scapegoat family preservation when a child is returned home from foster care over the objection of foster parents? What happens when it's the other way around?

Medicating kids in foster care: Turns out that’s arbitrary, capricious and cruel, too

            What are the odds that a foster child in Kentucky is two-and-a-half times more likely to need to be doped up on potent, sometimes dangerous psychiatric medications, than a foster child in Washington State?

            What are the odds that Kansas foster children really need those drugs nearly three times as often as Pennsylvania foster children?

            How likely is it, really, that a foster child in Texas is more than seven times more likely to need these risky drugs than a foster child in Hawaii?

            Common sense suggests the answer.  Yet these are some of the actual differences in rates at which these drugs are used, according to a recently-released study.

            The study, from PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, compared data on the use of “second generation antipsychotics” on foster children in 47 states and the District of Columbia between 2002 and 2007.  These drugs have become notorious in child welfare circles because, to use the genteel words of the study

these drugs are prescribed to address disruptive behaviors in children despite limited efficacy data and emerging evidence of metabolic side effects that have questioned their use in pediatric populations.

            In other words, their primary purpose often is to keep foster children doped up and docile for overloaded caretakers – notwithstanding the grave risks the drugs may pose to the children.

            The study also looked at the percentage of foster children taking multiple psychotropic medications at the same time.  Here, too, the study found wide variation among the states.

            Both the study and an accompanying press release focus largely on the trends – the extent to which the use of these medications has been increasing or decreasing.

            But at least as significant is the enormous variation among the states. 

We already know that the rate at which children are taken from their parents varies enormously by state.  For example, a child in Iowa is four times more likely to be taken away than a child in Illinois, even when rates of child poverty are factored in.  Yet independent monitors have found that Illinois’ efforts to curb needless foster care have improved child safety.  So either Iowa is a cesspool of depravity with four times the child abuse of its neighbor to the east, or Iowa tears apart far too many children.

The new study suggests that decisions on whether a foster child will be doped up with potentially dangerous psychiatric medication are just as arbitrary, capricious and cruel as decisions about whether to take a child in the first place.  Or as a summary of the study puts it: “…where a child lives seems to influence their chance of being prescribed a psychotropic drug at least as much as the child’s medical needs.”

Texas long as been notorious for the misuse of meds.  Take a look at the “before” and “after” pictures from this story by a Texas television station.  That was just one case.  A segment of the PBS series Need to Know gave an excellent overview of the problem in that state. 

Now, it turns out that the Texas is the doped up foster child capital of America.  More than one in five foster children was on just this one class of medication, second generation antipsychotics, in 2007.  In Hawaii, which uses these medications the least, the figure was 2.8 percent.

GRANDMA VS. THE RX PAD

Unfortunately, the researchers failed to draw one distinction which might explain part of the discrepancy.  The study does not compare the use of meds based on where a child is placed. 

It turns out that once a child is in foster care, the best protection against needless medication is – grandma.

As has been noted previously on this blog, when Florida started looking closely at the problem, the state found that, when foster children are institutionalized, 26 percent of them are medicated. When they're placed with strangers, it's 21 percent. But when foster children are placed in kinship care with extended family, usually a grandparent, only four percent are prescribed psychiatric meds.

It's not hard to figure out why: Grandparents and other relatives are more likely to love these children, and so will tolerate more difficult behavior before demanding a prescription. That's just one indication that the best solution to the misuse and overuse of meds on foster children is not a new law – it's grandma; or, better yet, keeping more children out of the system in the first place.
 

            According to this latest study, Hawaii does best at avoiding doping up foster kids.  Hawaii also is the national leader when it comes to placing those children with relatives.  Florida, which is second best in the nation on kinship care, also did better than all but five other states (of the 47-plus-DC measured) in avoiding using psychiatric meds on foster children – and that was in 2007, before the state began a concerted effort to curb overuse of these medications.  Illinois has the fifth best record on kinship care, and does better than all but nine of the measured jurisdictions when it comes to medication.

            Conversely, Arkansas, Delaware, Virginia and Kentucky all are among the worst both for medicating foster children and for using kinship care. 

            Of course the pattern doesn’t always hold.  Texas actually uses kinship care at a rate above the national average, even as it is worst-in-the-nation for medicating foster children.  But odds are that simply means the proportion of children placed with strangers and institutionalized is so obscenely high in Texas that the use of kinship care doesn’t make up for it.   

            It would have been helpful had the researchers broken down the medication rates  for each state by placement type, if such data were available.

            It also would have been helpful had the researchers thought more about the implications of their own findings.  The only solution they can think of is throwing more therapy and counseling at foster children as an alternative to medicating them.  But the fact that kinship caregivers, who typically get less help than what should properly be called “stranger-care parents,” still resort to drugs so much less often suggests another possibility.  The researchers need to consider whether, for many of these children, it’s foster care itself that’s causing their problems, and return to their own homes or, at least, placement with a relative, might be the best therapy of all.

They can’t fix foster care – but they sure have mastered doublethink

           One of the most, uh, remarkable things about Marcia Lowry and her colleagues at the group that so arrogantly calls itself “Children’s Rights” (CR) is their mastery of doublethink – the term George Orwell invented to describe “the power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accept both of them.”

            CR’s skill at doublethink is now on display in a series of reports and press releases about Oklahoma, where they’ve brought one of their class-action McLawsuits.

            In a previous post to this Blog, I noted that CR had issued a scathing report on the widespread abuse of children in Oklahoma foster care.  The problem, I said, was that CR isn’t lifting a finger to actually keep Oklahoma children out of foster care.

            Turns out I underestimated CR’s capacity for doublethink.  Now they’ve put out another press release about still another report.  Among the complaints this time: Oklahoma supposedly has gone too much to reduce the number of children in the very system CR itself says is a grave danger to those children.

            The report is written by Viola Miller, an odd choice given her mediocre record running child welfare systems in Kentucky and Tennessee.  Her report appears to be based in no small measure on reading other reports commissioned by CR.

            Miller agrees with what those other experts said about Oklahoma foster care.  She concludes that children are being harmed at an “alarmingly high rate” and until DHS cleans up its act, “the children in its care will continue to live in danger.”

            Then, in the very next paragraph, Miller launches into an attack on DHS for its success in getting more children out of this abysmal system.  Miller condemns DHS for using “differential response” an approach that now is used in many other states.  Every independent evaluation done of differential response shows it does not compromise safety; some have shown that child safety improves.

            And what evidence does Miller have that differential response is unsafe in Oklahoma?  The fact that it’s working.  Miller complains that the number of children in Oklahoma foster care is dropping too quickly.

            But that ignores one key fact: Oklahoma started out with, proportionately, vastly more children in foster care on any given day than the national average, and a vastly higher number of children taken away over the course of a year.  Even with the reductions in recent years – the very reductions Miller says have come too quickly – Oklahoma still tears apart families at a rate 40 percent above the national average and the number of children in foster care on any given day remains 50 percent above the national average.

            That means Oklahoma simply had vastly more cases that could suitably be diverted to differential response, and a sharp decline in the foster care population makes sense.

            Miller’s other “evidence” of a problem is that DHS offers voluntary safety plans to families who are assessed using differential response.  But that’s exactly what DHS is supposed to do.  That’s the whole point of differential response – in cases where the risk is believed to be low, you go out and offer voluntary help, not a coercive investigation.  What Miller appears to be arguing for is perverting differential response into child abuse investigations by another name.

ERRORS IN ALL DIRECTIONS

            There is, in fact, a case to be made for the possibility that DHS is not doing differential response as well as it should – but not based on the reasons Miller suggests.

People often point to horror stories about children dying in their own homes when they are “known to the system” as supposedly proving that the only error made by child welfare agencies is to leave the children in dangerous homes.  I usually reply by saying, among other things, that child welfare systems are arbitrary, capricious and cruel; they err in all directions.  Indeed, it makes no sense to think the errors go only way.

            But that also means a system that has screwed up foster care as royally as Oklahoma DHS has done is bound to be having problems getting alternatives right as well.  And, in fact, Miller found contradictions in various manuals for implementing differential response and responding to hotline calls.  That raises legitimate cause for concern.

            But nothing in Miller’s report suggests that the problems with differential response come anywhere near the scope and severity of the problems with foster care; nothing justifies any notion that there is equal danger.

            The credibility of Miller’s claims about differential response are further undermined because they are part of a pattern of CR seeking to undermine almost anything in almost any state that doesn’t involve subjecting every family to a full-scale child abuse investigation and traumatizing children with needless foster care.  CR also is going after differential response in Georgia, despite significant evidence that the Georgia program does not compromise safety.

            And back when Miller herself still was running the system in Tennessee, CR successfully bullied the Tennessee legislature into repealing a law that would have brought just a little bit of balance to the incentives judges face when making decisions about whether to remove children from their homes.

            A lot of this boils down to the whole bureaucratic mindset at CR.  Sure, foster care in Oklahoma is horrible for kids’ psyches and puts them in grave physical danger, but, they seem to believe, we’ll fix it – we’ll hire lots more workers and give them lots more bureaucratic forms and checklists and “training” and then everything will be fine.  And while we’re fixing foster care, we’ll just keep shoveling more kids into it and opposing efforts to divert kids to better options.

            Lowry likes to say that she doesn't know how to fix poverty, but she knows how to fix foster care. In fact, the results of her lawsuits suggest she doesn't know how to fix either one – and her efforts sometimes make the poverty worse.

            But even were it true, as Miller suggests, that the problems in Oklahoma foster care and Oklahoma’s efforts to avoid foster care are equivalent, that still raises a fundamental question: 

Miller writes that “children in Oklahoma are facing serious risk of harm both before and after they enter state custody.”

In that case, by tearing these children away from their families at a rate 40 percent above the national average, you accomplish exactly what?