Progress in South Dakota child welfare

There’s still a long way to go, but the NPR stories are getting results

           

           It’s been nearly 40 years since I first started following child welfare issues.  In all of that time, some of the finest journalism I’ve ever seen – or, in this case, heard - was a three part NPR series in October, 2011 by reporter Laura Sullivan and producer Amy Walters about the horrors inflicted on Native American children by the South Dakota Department of Social Services.

            If you haven’t heard the stories yet, by all means stop reading this and listen.  I’ll wait.

            See what I mean?

            With all the changes in the American media landscape in recent years, there’s been some debate over whether excellent journalism like this still can make a difference.  In this case, the odds against making a difference were made greater by the hyper-defensive response of state government and, sadly, by the response of some South Dakota media that rushed to defend that government. 

            Nevertheless, the NPR stories have produced significant change for the better, and more such change is likely.

            ● For starters, even as the state denied doing anything wrong, it changed what it was doing.  In the two years after the NPR stories aired, the number of children torn from their families by South Dakota authorities over the course of a year dropped by one-third.  Nationwide, during this same period, the rate at which children were taken from their families remained virtually unchanged. 

            That’s the good news.  The bad news is that South Dakota was such an extreme outlier that even with this improvement, in 2013, the state remains an outlier.  It still took away children at a rate 80 percent above the national average, when rates of child poverty are factored in.

(The data take us only to 2013, because that’s the most recent year for which the federal government makes state-by-state data available online.  The wait for these data used to be a little over one year, which was bad enough.  I don’t know why the federal Administration for Children and Families is taking so long to produce such basic figures.)

            ● More good news: The NPR stories got the attention of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union – which sued the state.  The ACLU joined the Lakota People’s Law Project, which had been fighting a lonely battle against the state for years.  They won.  As NPR reported:

A federal judge has ruled that the state Department of Social Services, prosecutors and judges "failed to protect Indian parents' fundamental rights" when they removed their children after short hearings and placed them largely in white foster care.

According to the suit, some of the hearings lasted less than 60 seconds. The suit says some parents were not allowed to speak at the hearings or in some cases hear why their children were being removed.

            These kinds of sham hearings are common across the country.  (See NCCPR’s Due Process Agenda for details.)  An official of the Indian Child Welfare Association told NPR the decision could affect how these cases are handled nationwide. 

            ● Still more good news: One of the ways to reduce racial bias in child welfare is to create a more diverse staff.  Apparently the South Dakota Department of Social Services has gone to great lengths to avoid this.  Such great lengths that now the federal government is suing DSS for systematically discriminating against Native American job applicants.

            Progress will come slowly.  The extent to which South Dakota officials hold Native Americans in contempt can be seen by what happened in connection with another response to the NPR stories.  In 2013, the federal government sent top officials from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to South Dakota for a summit meeting with Native American tribal leaders and state officials in an attempt to resolve the issues.

            The South Dakota officials never showed up.

Foster care in South Dakota: Federal lawyers may help SD tribes enforce ICWA

Nearly half a century after Robert F. Kennedy sent federal marshals to enforce civil rights in Mississippi, the federal government is considering taking a similar step to enforce the rights of Native American children in South Dakota to remain safely in their own homes, free from needless foster care.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is considering sending federal lawyers to South Dakota to help tribes enforce the rights of their children under the Indian Child Welfare Act.  The routine violation of those rights was exposed in a three-part NPR series in October.

BIA is considering this major enforcement action in response to a suggestion by U.S. Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA).  Moran wrote to BIA after hearing the NPR stories.   This link goes to the BIA’s full response to Moran.

BIA also plans to convene a summit early in 2012 in South Dakota bringing together all “stakeholders” including the tribes, the South Dakota Department of Social Services, the South Dakota Office of Tribal Relations and others.

It speaks volumes about the extent to which South Dakota is harming Native American children, and violating federal law, that BIA is considering such a forceful response to NPR’s excellent reporting.  And it’s good news not only for Native American children but for all South Dakota children.

As I’ve noted in a previous post to this Blog, when it comes to child welfare, South Dakota is among the worst by almost any measure.  It takes away children at one of the highest rates in the nation, it places children in the worst form of “care” – group homes and institutions – at one of the highest rates in the nation, and it tears apart Native American families at one of the highest rates in the nation.  In short, South Dakota hit the trifecta of child welfare failure.

South Dakota tears apart families at the third highest rate in the country, even when rates of child poverty are factored in.  This obscene rate of removal does nothing to keep children safe.  On the contrary, states that take away proportionately far fewer children are nationally- recognized as leaders in keeping children safe. 

Of course anything that curbs the blatant bias and the take-the-child-and-run mentality that dominate South Dakota child welfare helps Native American children avoid the enormous trauma of needless foster care.  But curbing needless removal of children also gives workers more time to find children in real danger – and that makes all South Dakota children safer.

NCCPR commends BIA for considering this bold move.  We hope they follow through.

Foster care in South Dakota: When all else fails, try xenophobia

Apparently those NPR stories about the damage done to Native American families by child protective services in South Dakota have made that state’s governor, Dennis Daugaard, very nervous.

He refused to actually be interviewed by reporter Laura Sullivan and producer Amy Walters.  Instead, he issued a five-page rebuttal to the series – before it ever aired.

What is so fascinating about the rebuttal is that it leaves all of the most important points in the series unrebutted.  There is no response to the fact that South Dakota tears apart families at a rate vastly above the national average.  There is no response to the fact that Native American children are trapped in South Dakota foster care at a rate nearly four times their rate in the general population.  In fact there is no response to anything in the NPR stories about the actual harm done to Native American children.

Instead the governor obsesses over part two of the series which was all about – the governor.  That was the part which discussed how, back when he held the part-time job of lieutenant governor, his full-time job was running the Children’s Home Society of South Dakota – and how, during this time, CHS did remarkably well when it came to obtaining state contracts.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, told NPR that it’s “a massive conflict-of-interest.”  The governor’s defense is that everybody in South Dakota knew all about it – it’s a small state – and anyway, he was only doing it for the kids. 

It’s certainly true that Daugaard made no secret of his connection to CHS – as NPR reported, he bragged about it in his campaign for governor. He may well have believed, sincerely, that what CHS was doing was best for the children. (NPR never suggests otherwise.)   Most people who run great big child welfare agencies that hold kids in foster care believe that – and only rarely does the mass of objective evidence to the contrary change their minds.

Whether CHS got the contract to warehouse kids or someone else did doesn’t make a lot of difference to me.  The issue is that South Dakota not only tears apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation, it also dumps the kids into the worst form of “care” – group homes and institutions – at one of the highest rates in the nation. But the governor’s past employment raises another concern: Anyone that emotionally invested in warehousing children is going to find it hard to face up to the reality of how much it harms children.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CONFLICT

The role of CHS raises questions about a different kind of potential conflict of interest – the kind that comes with what is known in the corporate world as “vertical integration.”  During Daugaard’s time as Lieutenant Governor, CHS grew so huge that a good case can be made that, as a practical matter, CHS runs child welfare in South Dakota.

● CHS does the examinations of children to determine if they were abused or neglected.

● CHS trains the state caseworkers who decide whether to remove a child from the home.

● CHS screens the potential foster parents, both strangers and relatives, who might take in those children.

● CHS trains the foster parents.

● CHS runs lots of group homes and institutions.

So if CHS decides a child is abused, it increases the number of potential candidates for CHS group homes and institutions.  If CHS trains the caseworkers, will those caseworkers be trained in a way that makes them more likely to take away the child – and send that child to a CHS institution?  If CHS screens family foster homes that are, in effect, “competitors” to CHS group homes and institutions, will they set standards many of those family foster homes can’t meet?

I’m not suggesting that any of this would be some kind of conscious conspiracy.  But rationalization is powerful.  Any organization whose livelihood is dependent on substitute care is going to persuade itself that lots and lots of children need substitute care.

It’s no different from doctors who are more likely to perform unnecessary surgery when paid on a fee-for-service basis or hospitals which extend patient stays when they are paid by the day.  In both cases, the medical personnel almost certainly have persuaded themselves that the patients are really, really sick.

The governor’s “prebuttal” as it was aptly described by one reporter, addresses none of this.  And, as I noted at the outset, it says nothing about the entire issue of the destruction of Native American families.

“SHOW THEM THE WALL”

The only support the Governor can come up with for the claim of bias is a statement from his own press secretary, Joe Kafka (I’m not making that name up) and an e-mail from reporter Sullivan requesting an interview. 

In fact, rather than showing bias, the e-mail is an example of exactly what good, careful reporters are supposed to do.

When I was a reporter in the late 1980s, the newspaper where I worked brought in a superb investigative reporter as a guest speaker.  In discussing the need for fairness in investigative reporting, this reporter urged us, as we reached the conclusion of any project, to go to anyone who may not come out looking good and “show them the wall.”  By that he meant, lay out every specific point that raises questions about the subject and give that subject a full opportunity to respond.

That is exactly what Sullivan does in her e-mail.  She spells out exactly what she and producer Walters have found so far and asks the Governor to please tell his side of the story.  This is precisely the opposite of the kind of “ambush interview” we’ve all seen on some television newsmagazine programs, the kind that gives investigative reporting a bad name.

Governor Daugaard should have welcomed the e-mail and told his side of the story. Unless of course, he had no real answer.

Apparently he doesn’t.  Because the governor’s other tactic was to change the subject.

THE PENULTIMATE REFUGE OF A SCOUNDREL?

If, as Samuel Johnson said, false patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrel, the next-to-last is xenophobia.

And so, in the very first paragraph of his prebuttal, the governor notes that Sullivan “a native of San Francisco, works for Washington DC-based NPR.”

Horrors!  Washington and San Francisco!  Obviously, anyone with a background like that simply has it in for South Dakota.  (I imagine the only thing worse would be to work in the Washington area and be from New York City – like me.)

Similarly, after two Members of Congress said they were launching an investigation, an aide to the governor complained that they are from “other states” and didn’t speak to the South Dakota Department of Social Services first.  The real question is why the South Dakota Congressional delegation so far has refused to speak up for their Native American constituents – and all the children harmed by the rampant misuse and overuse of foster care in the state.

But it seems the governor underestimated his constituents, or at least the state’s journalists – because they don’t seem to be buying it.

See, in particular the work of Denise Ross, a reporter for the Daily Republic in Mitchell, S.D.  (She’s the one who came up with “prebuttal.”)  In a post on the newspaper’s Blog she speaks highly of the governor, and expresses her conviction that he really does care about the kids.  But she also writes:

The much bigger, longer-standing issue is whether South Dakota complies with the federal Indian Child Welfare Act and other laws, for example when social workers enter Indian reservations with which the state has no agreement and remove tribal children from their homes. The Crow Creek tribe threatened to prosecute for kidnapping in one case, NPR reported, and the children were promptly returned to their relatives. …

Here’s my hope, especially given my enduring belief in Daugaard’s character. I hope that he acknowledges that the state contracts for CHS look bad, but I hope he then vows as governor to look into South Dakota’s foster care system, our compliance with ICWA and our rate of taking children from their home – about 3 times that of other states.  I hope he works as hard at that as he worked as a young lawmaker to bring some reform to juvenile corrections. This time, he has a lot more power to affect change.

I don’t know where Ms. Ross was born and raised.  But right now, Gov. Daugaard, she’s sending you a message straight from Mitchell, South Dakota.


CORRECTION: This post has been corrected to fix an error in the name of the newspaper in Mitchell, S.D.  I can only imagine what Joe Kafka will make of that.

Foster care in South Dakota: At last, “these people” are heard on NPR

NOW I remember why I used to be proud to work at a public radio station.


To hear the excellent NPR stories discussed in this post, follow this link

One of the earliest posts on this Blog concerned a dreadful story aired on what was then known as National Public Radio concerning the death of Nixzmary Brown in New York City in January, 2006.

The story gave a full airing to those who said the case “raised questions” about whether the city had been doing too much to keep families together  - with no response from families who had lost children to foster care.

When we complained to NPR’s ombudsman at the time, he contacted an editor who worked on the story, Andrea DeLeon.  She said of parents:

I don't believe these people are key stakeholders in a story about whether the system is functioning well today. [Emphasis added].

That contempt permeated NPR coverage of child welfare for several years thereafter

That could be seen clearly when four separate NPR programs covered a report about trans-racial adoption – and talked only to white people.

It could be seen in the story in which reporter Michelle Trudeau’s very first sentence was an outright lie:

A child is placed in foster care only as a last resort, when parental maltreatment or neglect is extreme and unremitting.

At the time I wrote that “The only reason I can't call that a baldfaced lie is that I don't think she would make this false allegation on purpose.”  But that was three years ago.  An honest error that remains uncorrected no longer is honest.

Things did start to get better more recently.  Tell Me More did an excellent report on racial bias in child welfare and, of course, recently NPR’s flagship news programs,  All Things Considered and Morning Edition, aired an excellent series on parents falsely accused of killing their children.

But Tell Me More is a program aimed at minorities.  And the fatality stories dealt with a very small subsection of the problem, and one of the few where the issue reaches into the middle class.

The heart of the problem – poverty and racism - never made it to the heart of the NPR schedule – until now.

Now Michelle Trudeau’s error of commission, Andrea DeLeon’s error of omission, and all the errors in between, all the mistakes that led me to conclude that NPR stood for “No Parent Response” are being corrected – the record is being set straight and then some.

The corrective comes in the form of a superb three-part series now airing on the network.  Part one aired on All Things Considered yesterday.  Part two is scheduled to air on that program today and part three airs on Morning Edition tomorrow [Oct. 27.]

The stories are the result of a year-long investigation by reporter Laura Sullivan and Producer Amy Walters into the child welfare system in South Dakota – and in particular the widespread needless destruction of Native American families in that state. 

South Dakota is among the worst by almost any measure.  It takes away children at one of the highest rates in the nation, it places children in the worst form of “care” – group homes and institutions – at one of the highest rates in the nation, and it tears apart Native American families at one of the highest rates in the nation.  In short, South Dakota hit the trifecta of child welfare failure.

NPR’s searing stories are revealing it all for the first time.

But South Dakota is not an isolated example.  Plenty of states are as bad, some are worse.  And almost every state has similar problems, the only difference is one of degree.

This is the NPR that made me so proud to be working for a public radio station fresh out of journalism school decades ago. This is the NPR I remember from before it became gentrified and too-precious-by-half.  This is the NPR that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.  I hope it stays around for while.