Child welfare in Michigan: Why let a few hundred “missing” foster children spoil the party?

            It was another love fest at federal court in Detroit last week, during a hearing on the dreadful consent decree between the Michigan Department of Human Services and the group that so arrogantly calls itself Children’s Rights (CR).

            According to one news account, the judge overseeing the decree praised “a different day, a different mindset, and a different atmosphere” in court compared to when the original settlement was reached in October, 2008.  According to another, a CR lawyer praised DHS for "some really important strides."

            No kidding.  The current director of Michigan DHS, Maura Corrigan, and the director of CR, Marcia Lowry, have identical outlooks: Both have contempt for birth families (Corrigan literally walked out on them during their one and only chance to tell their stories to one of those Obligatory Blue Ribbon Commissions that states and localities love to name to avoid actually changing their systems) both view permanence for children only in terms of adoption and neither cares about the slash- and-burn budget cuts in support for impoverished families used to finance their so-called reforms.  (For full details see our reports on Michigan child welfare.)

            Corrigan also is the one who wrote an op-ed column for the Detroit Free Press under the headline “Removing children from families always follows legal procedures” at the very time probation officers were illegally rubber-stamping the names of judges on orders removing children from their homes.

            So of course they get along famously.  The so-called progress largely involves hiring hundreds of new caseworkers to tear apart more families (financed in part by cutting family preservation and public assistance programs) and extending foster care until age 21.

            Amid all the celebration there is not one word about the hundreds, perhaps thousands of foster children who have gone “missing” thanks to the consent decree.

            They’re not literally missing, of course.  Someone knows where each child is individually – the foster parents and caseworkers, mostly.  But when it comes to their collective fate, they are entirely off the radar.  Corrigan and Lowry appear content to keep it that way.  They've adopted their own "don't ask, don't tell" policy.  In public, at least, Lowry's group doesn't ask and Corrigan's agency doesn't tell. 

            The children in question are those who were kicked out of the homes of grandparents or other relatives when those relatives couldn’t or wouldn’t comply with the ten pages of hypertechnical requirements to become formally licensed as a foster parent.  The consent decree requires that loving grandparents and other relatives, who often are poor, comply with exactly the same requirements as the middle-class strangers for whom those requirements originally were designed, unless they can obtain a waiver.  The consent decree deliberately makes those waivers very hard to obtain.

            Of course, all foster homes should be required to meet minimal health and safety standards – and all child welfare agencies should be required to provide the help needed to bring the homes up to those standards. But the Michigan foster care licensing requirements go way beyond that.  As I’ve noted before, the apartment where President Obama was raised by his grandmother would not have qualified under these regulations.  Some relatives simply may be too poor to provide all the required middle-class creature comforts.

            But Lowry, the ultimate bureaucrat, has shown that she doesn’t give a damn.  Licensing brings in federal money so the children be damned.  (Licensing also makes the relatives eligible for higher payments – no one is saying they shouldn’t be allowed to be licensed if they want it.)

            But damned to where?  Lowry doesn’t know, and DHS isn’t telling.

            The only clues to what is going on are in the periodic reports issued by the monitor for the decree.  The figures provided in those reports are confusing – and the most recent such report mentions only the number of unlicensed homes closed without any mention of the number of children affected.  But it appears that more than 2,000 children have been kicked out of homes with relatives since the decree went into effect.

            Where did they go?

            ● In some cases, they may have gone back to their own homes, almost always a positive outcome.

            ● In other cases, though children were forced to move, the home really might have been substandard and closing the home may have been valid.

            ● And in other cases (now that the monitor is reporting only on homes, not children) the home actually might not have had any children in it.

            But that probably still leaves hundreds of children needlessly kicked out of the homes of loving relatives and forced to live with strangers.  They may be bouncing from foster home to foster home and /or facing abuse in foster care, all to satisfy Marcia Lowry’s licensing fetish and the hostility to families she shares with Maura Corrigan. 

            The hostility runs so deep that I can find no public statement from either Lowry or Corrigan expressing the slightest concern about these children or the slightest interest in finding out what happened to them.

            The monitor, Kevin Ryan, says he’s trying to find out what happened to the children, but only those who were expelled from relative homes after July, 2011.  Why that date?  Because that’s when a new consent decree superseded the original consent decree, so he has no authority before that date.   

            So when it comes to all the children expelled from the homes of relatives between October, 2008 when the first decree was signed and July, 2011, when the second decree was signed, absolutely no one is inquiring into their status.

            After all, if they did, it might spoil the party.

Foster care in Michigan: Did the state’s child welfare chief mislead the public on purpose ...

…or was she just appallingly ignorant herself?

That’s the question raised by the latest outstanding investigative report from WXYZ-TV in Detroit.  In a series of reports dating back to last August, the station exposed the fact that probation officers were – literally – rubber stamping court orders to tear children from their families; orders that are supposed to be approved only by a real live judge.  The issue first came to light as a result of Maryanne Godboldo’s fight to rescue her daughter from needless institutionalization by the Michigan Department of Human Services.

Not surprisingly, that happens to be illegal.  But the practice was stopped only after WXYZ exposed it.

But the Wayne County Juvenile Court refuses to release any information about how many children were removed illegally or what has happened to them.  Neither will the Michigan Department of Human Services – unless the television station pays more than $32,000.  In effect, DHS is holding what should be public information for ransom.

If anyone should be scrupulous about adhering to the law it is the Director of Michigan DHS, Maura Corrigan.  After all, she is a former justice of the Michigan Supreme Court.

But, as WXYZ reported:

Following one of our first stories a year ago about child removals, DHS Director Maura Corrigan refused to speak to us on camera.  The day after our investigation aired, Corrigan wrote an opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press.  The headline: “Removing children from families always follows legal procedures.”

Now that that’s been proven to be false – we asked a DHS spokesman if they have been trying to determine how many children may have been wrongly taken from homes with invalid court orders. [Emphasis added.]

This raises an obvious question: Did Corrigan know full well that the process of removing children from their homes in Detroit was rife with illegality when she claimed otherwise – or was she appallingly ignorant herself?

If it’s the latter, it appears Corrigan has been doing nothing to educate herself.  Because in answer to WXYZ’s question, the agency said it is not lifting a finger to find out how many other children were affected by illegal rubber-stamp removals.

And if you’re wondering what the group that so arrogantly calls itself “Children’s Rights” – the group that has a consent decree with Michigan DHS – is doing about all this, the answer is: absolutely nothing.  More than nine months after the illegal rubber-stamp removals were revaled, CR hasn’t said a word about them.

But at least one member of Congress isn’t settling for silence and stonewalling.  In a follow up story, WXYZ reports that Representative Hansen Clarke (D – Detroit) is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Corrigan’s agency.

UPDATE: Foster care in Michigan: Wayne County bars rubber-stamp removals

This post was updated at 7:20pm to reflect additional information about the new policy.


The Michigan Department of Human Services no longer will be allowed to simply get a clerk of probation officer to rubber-stamp orders to tear children from their families. WXYZ-TV in Detroit has a story about the decision.

After the practice was exposed by attorneys for Maryanne Godboldo and some excellent reporting by WXYZ, Wayne County officials issued an unsigned memo changing the policy.

Effective immediately, orders must be signed, personally, by either a judge or a “referee,” a lawyer appointed by a judge to hear cases and make recommendations.  At least that appears to be the minimum required according to the somewhat-unclear written policy.  Though it's not in the written memo WXYZ reports that the policy requires that even when a referee "reviews" the order, a judge personally will have to sign it.

The change in policy is an important first step.  It sends a vital message to DHS that tearing a child from everyone she or he knows and loves is not a trivial act to be rubber-stamped.  And it means that, at a minimum, a real live human being with actual training in the law has to review the allegations before allowing such drastic action.

There still is a long way to go.

● First, it would be useful to have a clear, written statement that a judge and only a judge can sign these orders.  Though that's what the policy reportedly means, it can be read as allowing a referee to sign the orders.


A referee is not a judge.  Responsibility for inflicting the trauma of removal on a child should be taken, personally, by a judge.  Indeed, DHS director (and former Michigan Supreme Court Justice) Maura Corrigan herself has claimed that, by law, "only judges" can do this.   She made that claim even when probation officers were, in fact, rubber-stamping the orders in Wayne County.  Presumably, she didn't know.  But even after the rubber-stamping was revealed, Corrigan never spoke out against it.  Nor did she instruct her caseworkers to refuse to accept an order that was rubber-stamped.

● Second, while it is not entirely clear, the new policy still may allow verbal orders over the phone after hours.  In an age of e-mail there is no reason to tolerate a verbal order.  Orders to tear apart a family can and should be in writing at any hour.  There needs to be a complete written record of what was alleged.  The Godboldo case illustrates why - it is the errors throughout the written order and the failure to cite any valid reason to tear apart the family on the spot that document the slovenly nature of DHS practice in that case.  And having the order in writing helped Judge Ronald Giles reach his wise decision to throw out the criminal case against Godboldo.

● More generally, while this should mean the end of the use of a literal rubber-stamp, judges and referees all over the country are far too willing to do whatever child welfare agencies  want them to do.  As is discussed in the previous post to this Blog, juvenile court judges need to bring to bear the same wisdom and same respect for the Constitution shown by Judge Giles, who presides in Wayne County District Court.

● And  Michigan law itself makes it too easy to take away children without a full-scale court hearing first, or even going to a judge or referee at all – the standard is significantly lower than in other states.  That law needs to be changed.

But this change is still an important start. 

Maryanne Godboldo never chose this fight – and her daughter never chose it either.  But having been forced into it, they now have won an important victory for all of the vulnerable children of metropolitan Detroit. 

Foster care in Michigan: DHS and Maryanne Godboldo: The more we learn, the worse it gets

            Two trials now are underway in the case of Maryanne Godboldo, the Detroit mother whose child was taken away after she exercised her right to take her off a potentially dangerous psychiatric medication. The trials have revealed new details about the behavior of the Michigan Department of Human Services.  They reveal DHS to be a lawless agency that refuses to abide by even the bare minimum due process protections to which families are entitled.

            First a little background:

When Godboldo refused to let the police in to execute what now appears to have been an illegal order to remove the child, it set off a chain of events including, allegedly, Godboldo firing a shot and police responding with a SWAT team, a helicopter and tanks.  (There’s an overview of the case in NCCPR’s monthly Blog for the trade journal Youth Today).

            After seizing the child and institutionalizing her, authorities decided she didn’t need the medication after all – but they continued to institutionalize her for seven weeks before releasing her to an aunt.  If not for the alleged shot, and the response, this case would be exactly like thousands of others in Michigan.  No mainstream media would have paid the slightest attention, and Godboldo’s daughter probably still would be institutionalized.

            In the course of investigating the case, WXYZ-TV learned that in the Godboldo case and many others, orders to remove children are, literally, rubber-stamped. But it wasn’t clear who does the rubber-stamping. 

            Now, we’re learning more about the process. A regular reader of NCCPR’s Facebook page, James Rinkevich, pointed me to this story on the Voice of Detroit website. VOD reports that the Interim Supervisor of Juvenile Intake for Wayne County, Vikki Kapanowski, testified at Godboldo’s juvenile court trial that the orders actually are approved by a probation officer with no law license, who then stamps the judge’s name on the order.  The judge never even sees the order.

MAURA CORRIGAN’S ELOQUENT SILENCE

            So the most charitable explanation for DHS Director (and former Michigan Supreme Court Justice) Maura Corrigan’s claim that “Only judges can issue orders removing children from their homes; such orders are issued only in the most extreme circumstances” is that she was totally unaware of what’s been going on in Detroit.  But what is the explanation for her silence about this practice now that it’s been revealed?

            One possibility: Corrigan may claim that the probation officer was acting as a “referee.”  The judge in Godboldo’s juvenile court case bought this argument.  But, Voice of Detroit points out, there are a few problems with it:

            ●Referees hear testimony in some juvenile court cases and make recommendations to judges.  But they are not authorized to issue orders to remove children.

            ● Referees have to be formally sworn in.  The probation officers wielding rubber-stamps in Detroit have not been sworn – and are not authorized to perform any of the functions of referees.

            ● A referee has to have a law license.  The probation officers rubber-stamping orders to remove Detroit children don’t have law licenses.

ILLEGAL ORDER ILLEGALLY SERVED

            Voice of Detroit and the Detroit News also reported on testimony in Godboldo’s criminal trial revealing that the whole process of serving the illegal order was, in itself, illegal.

            From the Detroit News story:

Although the juvenile order allowed 30 days for compliance, [DHS caseworker Mia] Wenk said she went straight to the Godboldo home with two other CPS workers. Wenk also said some of what she did in the hours after getting the order didn't follow normal procedure. Civil orders are normally enforced by county deputies and court process servers.

Wenk and the other CPS workers stopped a block short of serving the order themselves. Wenk instead dialed 911 on her cellphone to tell Detroit Police she needed help with a "warrant" to remove a child. Godboldo's lawyers claim Wenk elevated the tension by implying a criminal warrant was involved, not a less urgent civil order with a monthlong compliance window. …

Detroit Police Officer Kevin Simpson testified today that his department's official policy is to let other agencies enforce civil orders such as the one issued to seize Godboldo's child. But, he had been dispatched to help Wenk execute a "warrant," which Detroit police routinely enforce.

[Godboldo’s lawyer Byron] Pitts asked, "So it's not the responsibility or an official duty of the Detroit Police Department?"

"Correct," Simpson answered.

"The order was not directed to the Detroit Police Department?"

"No," Simpson said.

Noting there is no enforcement agency named on the document, Pitts asked, "In fact, it's not directed to anyone, is it?"

"No," Simpson answered.

Simpson said his supervisor decided to forcibly enter the house after Godboldo said she was calling her lawyer and shut the front door in his face.

Pitts asked, "Nobody said, 'Hey, there's no rush. Let's come back another day and talk to this woman?'"

"No," Simpson said.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO “REASONABLE EFFORTS”?

The caseworker was asked how all this could possibly comply with the requirement in federal law to make “reasonable efforts” to keep families together before resorting to taking away the child.  Her answer: She invited Goldboldo to a meeting to discuss the case.  Period.  End of efforts.  She admitted she did not tell Godboldo that if she didn’t attend, cops and caseworkers would descend on her home to remove her child by force.

And families have reason to be suspicious about such meetings.  A study of Michigan child welfare revealed that in at least one case, such a meeting was a subterfuge, used in an attempt to lure a parent and child to a DHS office to the child could be taken on the spot.

Voice of Detroit has some additional details about DHS caseworker Mia Wenk’s testimony:

“I told ‘911’ I needed assistance to execute a warrant,” Wenk said. “I told them when they get the child out they will need to transport her in their back seat since they have a cage in the car. I never met [the child]. I didn’t even know what she looked like. I asked them to bring her leg, and told them she has ‘psychosis NOS’ [not otherwise specified].”

Many in the courtroom, which was packed with Godboldo’s supporters, gasped at the reference to caging a Black child, and the derogatory terminology used to describe her disability. The child has been disabled since infancy, but according to family and church members has led a normal life including dancing, swimming and horseback riding lessons, using a prosthetic leg.

Thirty-Sixth District Court Judge Ronald Giles told audience members to leave if they could not restrain themselves, upon which Godboldo herself left the courtroom, returning shortly after she was able to compose herself.

If you’re wondering what the other Detroit daily, the Free Press had on all this, the answer is – absolutely nothing.  As usual, since this case began, reporter Gina Damron’s coverage was minimal, and focused largely on helping the prosecution and/or DHS make its case.

It is a remarkable contrast with how the Free Press covered two cases of wrongful removal involving affluent white families.  In the “Mike’s Hard Lemonade” case, in which the parents are white professors at the University of Michigan, the Free Press ran a front page column excoriating DHS.  And just two months ago, the Free Press published an excellent six-part series about another white, suburban family’s bizarre false-allegation nightmare – a case that ended three years ago, and which was covered thoroughly at the time.

Damron’s one-sided coverage is even more surprising considering the connection between that case involving the white suburban family and the Godboldo case.  That story in a future post, probably Wednesday.


UPDATE, 2:05PM: Voice of Detroit has another excellent story about the Godboldo juvenile court trial today.

Foster care in Michigan: DHS needs a “platitude” adjustment

            In every field of law, certain decisions become touchstones.  These decisions state fundamental principles that form the foundation for interpreting the law in their field.  Sometimes they are cited by both sides.  That’s because, typically, the sides don’t dispute the principles themselves, only how they apply to a particular case.

            So, for example, in Troxel v. Granville, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote:

“[S]o long as a parent adequately cares for his or her children (i.e. is fit), there will normally be no reason for the State to inject itself into the private realm of the family to further question the ability of that parent to make the best decisions concerning the rearing of that parent’s children.”

            In Parham v. J.R., the Supreme Court said:

 “[T]he statist notion that governmental power should supersede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to American tradition.”

            The decisions are two of several quoted in a brief submitted to the Michigan Supreme Court on behalf of a father challenging the termination of his parental rights.

            But, apparently, the Michigan Department of Human Services and its new director, Maura Corrigan, disagree with these bedrock principles. Because in a stunning and scary statement in their reply brief, DHS and the Michigan Attorney General dismiss these principles as “platitudes.”

            The notion that there should be some reasonable limits on government intrusion into the family is, according to DHS, a platitude.  So is the idea that there should be a presumption that, when it comes to making decisions for children, a fit parent knows best.

            This also is one more indication of how child welfare crosses ideological lines in unusual ways.  Corrigan, the DHS Director (and former State Supreme Court Justice) who now apparently is ready to embrace the above “statist notion” is a conservative Republican.  But perhaps that’s no surprise, since Corrigan also has remained silent about recent revelations that orders to take away children, orders that are supposed to be signed by real, live judges, are merely rubber-stamped, allegedly by DHS workers.

            The dismissal of fundamental principles as “platitudes” is even more frightening since DHS is defending a law that any child welfare agency that really cared about the welfare of children would be fighting to strike down.  It is a law, possibly unique to Michigan, which says that if one parent “admits” to maltreating a child, the other parent loses all right to contest those same allegations.

            Of course, it is reasonable that, if one parent really is abusing a child, that should be enough for the state to intervene to protect the children.  That’s not the issue here.  The Michigan law goes far beyond that.  In Michigan a non-custodial parent could “admit” to “maltreating” a child and the custodial parent would be stripped of all rights to contest any allegations. (There is a detailed discussion in our first report on Michigan child welfare, on page 52.)

            In the case at issue, the mother did have custody and she “admitted” neglecting her children.  But the father was entirely innocent.  He wasn’t even living in the home.  He had never been accused of maltreating anyone and had no other problems that would make him unfit.  In short, he would be an excellent placement for the children.  Yet he was required to jump through a whole series of hoops without a shred of evidence that he needed the “counseling” “parenting classes” etc.  He had no chance to challenge these conditions.  And when he didn’t manage to jump through every one of the hoops exactly the way DHS wanted, the trial court itself ordered DHS to seek termination of parental rights. 

            At first, even DHS didn’t agree – telling the trial court the move to termination, after the children had been in foster care for seven months – was premature.  But DHS followed orders and now is fighting to uphold the termination, and the horrendous law on which it’s based – in part with that claim about “platitudes.”

            It’s one more reason to worry about the fate of Michigan’s vulnerable children with DHS being run by Corrigan.  Other reasons range from her lame attempt to defend DHS’ actions in cases like the seizure of Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter and the “Mike’s Hard Lemonade” case (if you really want to see platitudes, check out her op ed in the Detroit Free Press) to her turning the Michigan Supreme Court website into a propaganda vehicle for adoption, with all other options for giving children permanence ignored, to her walking out on parents when they had their one opportunity to address one of those obligatory blue-ribbon commissions states name to study child welfare. (Details are in our first report on Michigan child welfare, starting on page 54.)

            Obviously, Corrigan didn’t write the brief.  There are plenty of lawyers in the Attorney General’s office and at DHS for that.  We don’t know if Corrigan saw it before it was filed – though it would be disturbing if she allowed it to be filed without seeing it first.  Either way, as DHS director, she’s responsible for it until and unless she repudiates it.

Foster care in Michigan: Another reason for the love fest in federal court

For an overview of our perspective on Michigan child welfare, listen to this segment of  The Craig Fahle Show on WDET public radio.

The Detroit News had a story yesterday which further explains why a lawyer for the group that so arrogantly calls itself Children’s Rights was cracking jokes with Maura Corrigan in federal court yesterday even as children continue to suffer.

Corrigan turns out to be a big backer of still another of CR founder Marcia Lowry’s bureaucratic obsessions: separating the state child welfare agency from the larger human services agency.

There is not a shred of evidence that this kind of change makes a child welfare system any better – and a pattern is beginning to emerge suggesting it may be easier to create an improved system without such a change.

When you look at the few child welfare systems that are, relatively speaking, national models – with strong, independent evidence that child safety has improved, they all have one thing in common: They focused on reducing the number of children torn from their families.  But many have something else in common as well: They are not stand-alone agencies.  Rather they are part of larger human services agencies.

●A class action lawsuit brought by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law transformed the child welfare system in Alabama into, relatively-speaking, a national model.  (Co-counsel for plaintiffs is a member of NCCPR’s volunteer Board of Directors.) The New York Times wrote about it here. In Alabama, the child welfare system is part of the larger human services agency.

●A former Michigan DHS official who got fed up with having all his reform ideas stymied in Michigan, Jim Beougher, went to Maine and led a transformation of child welfare so remarkable that, in 2009, it was a finalist in Harvard’s Innovations in American Government awards.  I’d be glad to send stories about Maine to anyone interested.  Beougher runs the child welfare division within a larger human services agency.

● Still another fed up Michigander / Michiganian (I’m neutral on that one), David Berns, led a similar transformation of child welfare in the county-run system in El Paso County Colorado.  Key to making the transformation work was the fact that child welfare and other human services were in the same agency, according to an evaluation by the Center for Law and Social Policy.

● Similarly, Marc Cherna, who was hired to run the child welfare division of the Allegheny Department of Human Services and now runs the entire agency thinks having everything in one agency was crucial to his success.

● And in Florida, although it sounds like the Department of Children and Families deals with nothing else, Florida DCF actually has pretty much the same functions as Michigan DHS.  Florida’s dramatic improvements were the result of bold new leadership and a waiver from federal funding restrictions (the same waiver Michigan got, but then turned down at the last minute.) The Florida reforms also caught the attention of The New York Times.

● In Illinois, which was transformed thanks largely to a number of class-action lawsuits and a relatively brief outbreak of good leadership, the child welfare agency is a stand-alone agency.

● In New Jersey, making the child welfare agency a separate agency was a way to get CR off everybody’s back.  The separate agency per se changed nothing.  What made the difference was an unusually good settlement, largely because CR was guided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (a former funder of NCCPR), and, especially, strong leadership from the first commissioner of that new agency, Kevin Ryan.  Ryan now is the monitor for the Michigan decree.

INDIANA: A MODEL OF FAILURE

The most ludicrous claim is the one from Corrigan that Indiana is doing well by creating a separate child welfare agency.  I am aware of no one anywhere in the country who cites the Indiana system as it exists today as a model of anything good.

On the contrary, Indiana takes away children at a rate more than 60 percent above the national average and nearly triple the rate of Illinois.  In 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, even as most states were able to reduce entries into care, Indiana saw an increase.  Perhaps that’s exactly what Corrigan likes about Indiana, which certainly wouldn’t bode well for Michigan.  Or perhaps Corrigan simply assumes the child welfare agency in Indiana must have improved because a conservative governor named a grandstanding judge to run it.

So why does CR keep pushing for a change for which there is no evidence of benefit?  Probably two reasons.  First, anything that separates children from their families, whether individually or in bulk, seems to appeal to Maura Corrigan and to Marcia Lowry.  And CR loves anything that involves more bureaucracy.  Add another form to fill out, move around the boxes on a table of organization, and somehow CR thinks something has been accomplished.  As I’ve said before, the people at CR are like the clerk you least want to see when you finally make it to the front of the line at the DMV.

Foster care in Michigan: Here comes the new settlement, just like the old settlement

UPDATE, JULY 19: I discussed the failings of the new consent decree on The Craig Fahle Show on WDET public radio.  You can hear it here.


            The previous post to this blog predicted a disgusting spectacle in a federal court in Michigan today – and that’s just what it was.

            Sure enough, according to one news account, there was DHS Director Maura Corrigan “cracking jokes” with one of the lawyers suing DHS on behalf of the group that so arrogantly calls itself “Children’s Rights” (CR) as they agreed to a new settlement which is every bit as bad as the old settlement.

For the vulnerable children of Michigan, there is nothing to laugh about.  They gain absolutely nothing.  And all the harmful provisions of the old decree remain in effect.  That guarantees that many more children in Michigan will be shedding a lot more tears, while Corrigan and her new pals at CR pat each other on the back.

THE WAR AGAINST GRANDPARENTS CONTINUES

            The worst provision of the old settlement required grandparents and other relatives taking in their own family to comply with all of the hypertechnical licensing requirements imposed on strangers. 

            Of course, certain minimal health and safety standards are essential.  But the Michigan regulations, all ten single-spaced pages of them, go far beyond that; often revolving around middle-class creature comforts.  As I’ve noted often before, the apartment in Hawaii where President Obama was raised by his grandmother could not have passed inspection under the Michigan standards.

            The old settlement included cumbersome bureaucratic procedures to allow for the occasional exemption from some of these requirements or for waivers from licensing.  But the overall message was clear: The safer easier path, not for the families, but for DHS workers, was to say: No license, no child.

            That’s exactly what DHS has done.  As a result, by March, 2010, anywhere from 1,500 to 2,400 children had been expelled from the homes of their own grandparents and other relatives.  By September 30 of that year, the figure probably was at least 1,300 higher.   No one is keeping track of what happens to them.  Neither DHS nor CR seems to care.

            The new settlement changes none of this.  It has the same cumbersome procedures, and that sends the same dreadful message to the frontlines.  This puts at risk every grandchild now in the loving home of a grandmother or grandfather who is not licensed in accord with the bureaucratic mentality of DHS and CR. 

            Another onerous provision from the original settlement appears to give a preference to adoption of a child by total strangers over guardianship by a relative.  That, too, remains in the new agreement.

THERE IS NO “MAINTENANCE OF EFFORT” REQUIREMENT FOR FAMILY SERVICES

            The old settlement required DHS to conduct a “needs assessment” and then, based on that assessment, spend a small amount of money on services to help families.  By implication this was supposed to be additional money.  But DHS played a shell game.  DHS simply cut existing services to help families to fund the ones called for in the needs assessment.  DHS also has cut other prevention and family preservation services to fund other parts of the settlement, like the child abuse investigator / foster care worker hiring binge.

            Having seen how disingenuous DHS was about the first settlement, one would think that the new settlement would include a specific requirement that new funding for prevention and family preservation be additional funds, not just money moved from one pot to another.

            There is no such provision in the new settlement.

            That’s not surprising.  Since the settlement is with a group, CR, that doesn’t give a damn about keeping children safely in their own homes, obviously CR isn’t going to fight to avoid cuts to those programs.

STILL TRYING TO REPEAL THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE

The original settlement contained an attempt to repeal the laws of human nature known as “concurrent planning.”  Under concurrent planning, people who desperately want to adopt a child – and the child welfare agencies that desperately want those people to adopt -- are told, in effect: “Now remember, your first goal is to work with the birth parents and do everything you can to help them get the child back – but if, by some chance, you fail at this then you get what you really want – someone else’s child for your very own.”

One parent in New Jersey was honest enough to tell The New York Times what she called “the mantra” of parents in this kind of program, which is: “I’m on the next plane to South America if they think they’re getting this baby back.”

Meanwhile, the caseworkers are supposed to work equally hard to get the child adopted by people they like and can identify with – typically middle-class foster parents - as they do to try to reunite the child with people they often can’t stand, overwhelmingly poor disproportionately minority birth parents.

The new settlement continues “concurrent planning.”  Anything else would have been a shock, given that it’s hard to know who is more fanatical about adoption-at-all-costs, the director of CR, Marcia Lowry, or the Director of DHS, Maura Corrigan. 

BARELY A WORD ABOUT KEEPING CHILDREN OUT OF FOSTER CARE IN THE FIRST PLACE

            The original settlement was nearly silent on efforts to keep children in their own homes.  So is the new settlement.  Once again no surprise.  Keeping families together is the best option for the overwhelming majority of children the overwhelming majority of the time, it is of almost no interest to either Corrigan or Lowry.

            So children at risk of foster care in Michigan, overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately minority, remain at the mercy of CR and DHS, both of which appear to far prefer seeing them in the  middle-class suburban homes of strangers than in the poor, urban but loving homes that most of them came from.

            Only one question remains.  When Corrigan signed the new document, did she do it herself with a pen, or did she do it the Michigan way and just have some clerk  rubber-stamp it?

See the previous post to this Blog for a review of the record of DHS – and Maura Corrigan.

Foster care in Michigan: Corrigan sends the b.s. meter off the scale

Looks like Detroit television station WXYZ’s expose of the way child welfare really works in Michigan, and/or yesterday’s post to this Blog really rattled Michigan Department of Human Services Director Maura Corrigan.  Because she’s got an op ed column in the Free Press today that sends the b.s. meter off the scale.    

But the column does illustrate how Corrigan, a former state supreme court justice, rose so far in the legal profession.  What becomes immediately clear if you read the piece closely is the weasel-wording.

Corrigan says DHS workers can’t take children on their own authority.  But look closely.  Then she says law enforcement can take children on their own authority – but they only do it in “emergencies.” So what Corrigan really is saying is: DHS workers can't remove children on their own.  But they can call the police and have the police do it for them. 

Then, Corrigan says, child protective services "still must obtain a court order before accepting the child from law enforcement..."  And where is the child during this process?  Already in foster care, of course.  You can bet it makes very little difference to the child that the person keeping him away from everyone he knows and loves is a cop, rather than a social worker.

So Corrigan's legal hair-splitting notwithstanding, DHS workers can and do remove children on their own authority,.

And if children are removed this way only in emergencies, please explain, ex-justice Corrigan: How did Leo Ratte, the boy in the Mike's Hard Lemonade case ever wind up in foster care?  (If anyone isn’t familiar with that case, it’s discussed in detail in the Channel 7 story.)

Corrigan then claims that “both the parents and the child are represented by an attorney before the judge when the case is being weighed.”

Leaving aside the wretched quality of much of what passes for defense counsel for parents in Michigan, something documented in detail in the first of our reports on Michigan child welfare, even at face value this is grossly misleading.  This time the weasel words are “when the case is being weighed” – because often that’s after the child already has been removed.

For example: what lawyer represented Maryanne Godboldo, or her daughter, before DHS came to take the child away?  The answer, of course, is no lawyer.  DHS went to court by itself (the legal term is ex parte) and got the court order without Godboldo ever having a chance to tell her side of the story.

Corrigan even tried to hide behind vulnerable children to defend her agency’s routine stonewalling when journalists try to hold DHS accountable.  Oh, we’d really, truly like to tell our side of the story, she suggests - and we’re always right - but we just can’t because it would invade the privacy of those poor children.

But several states have laws allowing their child welfare agencies to tell their side of the story when cases already have become public.  I'm sure the Michigan Legislature would consider passing similar legislation if Corrigan asked for it.  But she almost certainly won't.  Child welfare agencies love these laws since they allow them to cover up their mistakes.

Still, at least this sets me straight on one point concerning Corrigan: I thought she was a law-and-order conservative.  But over and over in her op ed column, when it comes to her own agency’s blunders, she tries to get the agency off on a technicality.

Foster care in Michigan: Maura Corrigan flunks her first big test ...

...and WXYZ-TV in Detroit documents how the system really works.


There was one person who could have put an immediate stop to the suffering endured by Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter, the 13-year-old needlessly torn from everyone she knew and loved and institutionalized for seven weeks, after her mother took her off psychiatric medications that were making the child’s mental health problems worse.  One person could have ended the suffering with little more than a wave of the hand.  One person could have said: We were wrong; this child has suffered enough, send her home.

That one person is the new director of the Michigan Department of Human Services, Maura Corrigan.

Corrigan had been a justice of the Michigan Supreme Court when Gov. Rick Snyder named her to the job in January (reportedly after she actively sought it).  As usual, the issue isn't motivation.  Corrigan always has had the best interests of children at heart - as she saw those interests.  But she saw them much as a 19th Century "child saver" would.


Corrigan had long been one of the more regressive forces in Michigan child welfare.  But there was hope she was beginning to change.  Her decisions certainly had gotten better in recent years, so there was hope that that a “new, improved” Corrigan was emerging.

But Corrigan’s behavior in the Godboldo case suggests we’re back to Corrigan version 1.0.  Corrigan allowed Godboldo’s daughter to suffer for those seven weeks.  For most of that time she was silent about it (and, as far as I know, reporters never asked her about the case).   When she did speak, according to MLive Detroit, she sought to justify that suffering.  The website reports that Corrigan told a local radio station:

"You could say that there is an abstract debate about holistic medicine versus what a traditional doctor would say, but that is going to be a very considered decision by a judge about whether there is evidence." … While she declined to discuss specifics of the case, Corrigan said CPS did not unilaterally decide to remove the girl from Godboldo's custody.

"Before you would do something so serious, as to take a child away from its parents, you need a judge -- a neutral and detached judge -- to decide whether you've got enough evidence to do that."

GETTING PAST THE DISNEY VERSION

Corrigan has to know this is nonsense.

For starters, the case is not about holistic vs. traditional medicine.  Godboldo had agreed to try a powerful psychiatric medication, Risperdal, on her daughter.  But the agreement she signed authorizing the treatment also said Godboldo was free to stop that treatment – which she did when it made her daughter’s symptoms worse.

Corrigan also knows her comments about the court process amount to the Disney version. Here’s how it really works:

In every state, caseworkers have the power to remove children entirely on their own authority.  If they decide to go to court first, they rush in on their own, claim it’s an emergency, and claim there’s no time for the judge to hold a hearing where the family can be heard.  Having heard only one side of the story, and fearful of what will happen to his career if he says no and something goes wrong, the judge rubber-stamps the child welfare agency request.

And, of course, there is no possible excuse for Corrigan allowing her agency to try to snatch Godboldo’s child back two hours after she was freed.


Just last night, WXYZ-TV in Detroit documented how Corrigan's Disney version compares with reality in Michigan.

But there is a special irony in Corrigan talking about neutral judges.  I know of no prominent figure in the American judiciary who has done more to undermine judicial neutrality in child welfare than Maura Corrigan.  In fact, while on the bench, she undermined two noble principles at once: judicial neutrality and permanence for children.

She did that by turning the court into a propaganda arm for promoting adoption at the expense of any other outcome for children.

Adoption is a vitally-important option for some children.  But it is not the only way to achieve permanence. Indeed, all else being equal, on the hierarchy of best outcomes, adoption by strangers  generally ranks fifth, behind not taking away the child in the first place, reunifying the child with her or his own parents, adoption by a relative and guardianship by a relative.

ADOPTION AT ALL COSTS

But not to Maura Corrigan. At least not if her actions, public statements and what she did to the Michigan Supreme Court website are indications.

Among her first acts upon becoming the court’s Chief Justice was to create a task force on adoption – not a task force on permanence, a task force only on adoption.  And one would think the court was an adoption agency, given how Corrigan slathered its web site with promotional material about adoption and “adoption day” events.

I’ve noted before that these annual Adoption Days really should be called National Child Welfare Hypocrisy Day, since they show how a system that claims its first priority when a child is taken is reunification celebrates only the supposed lower priority, adoption.

We noted the first time we raised the issue on this Blog, no place is this hypocrisy more apparent than in Michigan, where Corrigan takes pride in having orchestrated more such celebrations than any other state.  She has not lifted a finger to promote celebrations of family reunification.

As for judicial neutrality in the first of our 2009 reports on Michigan child welfare we noted that, thanks largely to Corrigan

In theory it is possible for one or more justices of this court to give a speech touting adoption in the morning, preside at an adoption luncheon at noon – and hear an appeal of a termination of parental rights that afternoon. If the reality of justice depends at least in part on the perception, it is fair to ask if the actions of Justice Corrigan and her colleagues risk compromising that reality.

WALKING OUT ON BIRTH PARENTS

Corrigan’s priorities also were on display during a meeting of an ineffectual Obligatory Blue Ribbon Commission created by Corrigan’s predecessor, Ismael Ahmed.  The incredibly-unwieldy “task force” had more than 80 members – including Corrigan - but, of course, not one birth parent who’d lost a child to the system.  The parents got one chance to give one presentation to the task force – but not to Corrigan, who had better things to do than listen.

As we noted in our first Michigan report:

Corrigan, who had been present at the meeting earlier and would return later, was absent during the birth parents’ presentation. Her spokeswoman said she had to return to her office to deal with "pressing court business" - preparing for the Supreme Court's weekly conference at which cases are discussed and decided. 

But Corrigan was back at the Task Force that afternoon, in time to chastise a task force committee, harshly and at length, for putting forward a recommendation that would require a little more work from the courts in support of family reunification at a time when their budget is being cut.  The task force promptly backed down.

Just last month, four months into her tenure running DHS, (and with Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter already institutionalized) Corrigan gave a speech outlining her priorities.  According to The Detroit News:

The department, along with other state agencies, recently submitted to Snyder lists of areas where it plans to show measurable results. Among them, Corrigan said today, were driving down the number of children maltreated in foster care; reducing the number of foster children who await adoption or guardianship longer than 24 months; and quicken the response time of investigations into child abuse or neglect.

What gets measured gets gone.  And there’s nothing on Corrigan’s list of measurable outcomes about keeping children out of the system in the first place, or reunifying families.

A CONTRAST IN CONNECTICUT

Corrigan’s failure is even more striking when her priorities are compared to those of the other state supreme court justice to step off the bench to run a state child welfare agency this year: Joette Katz in Connecticut.

Here’s what she told Hartford Magazine:

There has to be a lot more family engagement. There have to be differential responses. Obviously, you have cases where there is high risk and you’ve got to get in there and treat it a little more aggressively. But if it’s a case where there is what we would call minimal risk, there are ways of approaching that family.

Instead of a forensic investigation, it can be much more friendly: “What do you need? What can we bring to you? How can we make your situation better? How can we help you with this child?” It has to be a kinder, gentler approach to a lot of our families ­– an almost voluntary engagement.

Some children are so afraid of being separated from their family that they won’t tell on their abusive parents. That just shows you the [family] bond. It used to be that everything was all about safety, and some children obviously have to be removed. But it is [also] about well-being. We used to think, “Do no harm.” What we understand now is that even when we have to remove a child, we are doing harm. That’s why we need to understand there is that connection, and do what can we to facilitate that child’s re-entry into that family.

And while Michigan’s consent decree with the group that so arrogantly calls itself “Children’s Rights” puts obstacles in the way of placing children with relatives instead of strangers, Katz is trying to clear away those obstacles in Connecticut – even though that state also is saddled with a settlement with CR.

So there was plenty of reason to be disappointed but no reason to be surprised at Maura Corrigan’s response to the Godboldo case.

But, believe it or not, things could be worse.  When it comes to leadership at the Michigan Department of Human Services, the bar for improvement is extremely low.  Corrigan replaced Ahmed and a “leadership team” (I use that term loosely), so awful that the independent monitor overseeing the state’s child welfare consent decree urged the new governor to replace it.  So, if nothing else, it will be difficult to Maura Corrigan to actually make Michigan child welfare worse.