Two stories about “shortages” in Massachusetts “child welfare.” One got it right.

Last month, the Boston Globe published one of those stories popping up all over the country about a so-called “shortage” of placements for foster children, leading to some having to sleep in offices.   Also last month NPR interviewed Julie Lurie of Mother Jones about her story concerning prolonged delays in initial hearings for families after the state family police agency – entirely on its own authority – rushes in and takes away the children. 

Now, try to imagine what would happen in either case if Massachusetts didn’t take away children at a rate more than 60% above the national average. 

Julia Lurie did. She told NPR: 

So you have a number of problems. One is the high rate of CPS involvement, again, particularly in the homes of Black or brown families. … 

And, concerning solutions: 

So child welfare experts that I've spoken to have pointed to a few changes. One is being much more judicious about removals to begin with and only removing kids from families that absolutely need to be removed. … 

In contrast, the Globe story tells us the problem is too few foster parents. No alternative explanation is offered for reader consideration. In fact, the problem is not too few foster parents.  The problem is too many children needlessly torn from everyone they know and love. (Compare how the Globe got it wrong to how the Philadelphia Inquirer handled the same story.) 

Worse, the Globe story suggests it is a bad thing that group homes are taking fewer children and, in some cases, closing. But in a system that wasn’t one of the worst in the nation for tearing apart families, that would be something to celebrate – because institutionalization is the worst form of placement for children.  Again, closing institutions is even more urgent in Massachusetts, which, not only tears apart families at a rate more than 60% above the national average but also institutionalizes the children it takes at a rate 60% above the national average. 

How did Massachusetts get into this mess?  It goes back more than a century.  Other states are as bad or worse, but, as it happens, the history of “child welfare” failure in Massachusetts is particularly well-documented. 

Last month I gave a presentation examining some of that history.  Excerpts are on this Blog here.

Foster care as a shakedown scheme

The notices from family policing agencies demanding that parents help pay
the costs of foster care in order to get their children back don't really look like this
(which comes courtesy of ransomizer.com) but when you tear a child from
a parent's arms and demand money from that parent to get the child back,
 the only proper term for the payment is "ransom."

Even if you don’t think the family policing system was designed as a way to squeeze every last dollar out of poor families and perpetuate their poverty, these three stories show that’s how it works.

 The biggest problem with the so-called “child welfare” system is that it has nothing to do with the welfare of children.  The biggest problem with what should properly be called the family policing system is it does enormous harm to children by tearing them needlessly from everyone they know and love and/or putting their families under an onerous regime of surveillance.

But while they’re at it, Congress, state legislatures and family policing agencies have found a breathtaking array of ways to pour salt into the wounds they open.  Three examples of excellent investigative reporting, published in 202,1 serve as a guided tour of some of these dark alleys of family policing, from the start of a case until after it’s over.

 Each individually paints a deeply disturbing picture.  Taken together, they reveal a hellscape which, even if it is not designed to squeeze every last dollar out of poor families, perpetuate their poverty and prolong the trauma of foster care nevertheless does exactly that.

1.  At the start of a case: Take poor people’s money to investigate poor people.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) replaced welfare as we knew it.  By ruthlessly cutting people from welfare roles, states built up surpluses that are supposed to be used to help those same impoverished families become self-sufficient.  Instead, in a process that is legal, but morally is theft, a process we first flagged more than a decade ago, many states take the money and use it as a child welfare slush fund, to fund family police investigations and foster care.  

So, for example, because she couldn’t get TANF funds, a mother in Arizona had to work from sunrise until 10 p.m.  So she wasn’t home when a babysitter allegedly sexually abused her child.  That led to the child being thrown into foster care.  

But let Eli Hager explain, in his story for ProPublica: 

Arizona spends only 13% of its welfare funding on welfare itself, and none on child care or pre-K. Meanwhile, it diverts 61% of the dollars to the state’s child protective services system, which amounts to more than $150 million repurposed in this way every year, a ProPublica review of budget documents shows. 

In other words, welfare in Arizona largely goes not to helping poor parents financially but rather to the state’s Department of Child Safety — an agency that investigates many of these same parents, and that sometimes takes their kids away for reasons arising from the poverty that they were seeking help with in the first place. … 

“It all connects,” [the mother] said. “If I’d gotten just a little bit more help, I wouldn’t have had to work until 10 p.m. every night, and I could have been with my child, and this never would have happened.” 

It doesn’t end there.  Arizona and other states also take this money that’s supposed to help impoverished parents raise their own children and hands it to middle-class foster parents to do it instead.  And, by the way, Arizona lavishes money on foster parents at one of the highest rates in the country. As of 2015, the state paid anywhere from $670 to $1,392 per month per child – tax-free -- plus health insurance for the foster children. 

By the way, in at least one state, Georgia, TANF funds were diverted to the family policing system in order to fund a settlement of one of those class-action McLawsuits brought by the group that calls itself "Children's Rights."  CR is making a lot of noise suggesting that they're changed - but so far, they have not reopened any of their odious consent decrees - something to keep in mind before accepting at face value their endless fundraising pitches.

2. While we’re at it, let’s steal the kids’ money, too! 

Now, suppose that an impoverished family was getting by in part on a Social Security program that helps pay expenses for some disabled children, such as keeping a roof over everyone’s heads.  When the children are taken, the family police often rush to take away that money too. (Benefits paid under another Social Security program, survivors’ benefits, also are vulnerable.)  So now, that income is gone and the family is more likely to lose their home – which, of course, prolongs foster care for the child. 

Even if you think: “Well, we can’t trust those parents with the money, (after all, we all know what they are like, right?) it has to be held for the children!” that’s not what happens.  With rare exceptions, family policing agencies aren’t holding it for the children. They’re keeping it for themselves to run their bureaucracies, as Hager, then at The Marshall Project, and Joe Shapiro of NPR explain in these stories.  And to see how it all plays out in one city, check out Steve Volk’s story in the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

Once again, technically it’s legal, morally it’s theft. 

3. The coup de grace: Make parents pay ransom.  

Well, no, of course the family police don’t call it ransom.  But, again as we’ve been pointing out for some time, if you tear a child away from a parent and make the parent pay money to get the child back, clearly, the proper term for that payment is ransom. 

And that’s exactly what happens.  Having had the children taken, often because of their poverty, parents often are billed for part of the cost of the care.  In some cases, they can’t get their child back until the ransom is paid.  So the foster care is prolonged. 

As NPR’s Shapiro and Teresa Wiltz, now at Politico, report, this policy is as stupid as it is cruel.  Not only does it extend the time that children are kept away from their families, it actually increases the cost to states, since no parent can pay the full amount.  Between that and the amount spent on enforcement, the whole deal costs states money.  

But that doesn’t stop states from trying. Collections went up in 2020 – because it was easy for states to grab COVID relief checks and use them to fund foster care, instead of letting families use the money in their time of greatest need.  As NPR explains: 

Billing parents for foster care undercuts the efforts of child welfare agencies to help parents and children reunite, according to the limited research on the subject. The added debt extends the time children spend in foster care and then keeps families in the impoverished conditions that put children at risk for going into foster care in the first place. 

Charlie Borrell, a county commissioner in rural Minnesota who describes himself as being “as conservative as they come” told NPR that forcing parents to pay ransom (again, our term, not his): 

"sets them up for failure"… He's seen mothers, often single mothers, work overtime or take on a second job to pay off the debt – "and then the kids are left alone and unattended and do not get the parental guidance that they need." 

And, of course we know what else can happen when the kids are left alone unattended.  

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.

Child welfare and race: The award for tone deafness goes to NPR’s Fresh Air

The acclaimed public radio program chose this moment – this moment – to showcase a white mom's narrative about the joys of transracial adoption.

             About a year ago, Late Night with Seth Myers produced a parody called White Savior: The Movie Trailer.  I’ve cued the video to the part that the producers of public radio’s Fresh Air need to see most (though there might be an ad first):

            They need to see that because, in what has to win some kind of award for tone deafness, Terry Gross and her producers at WHYY Public Radio, where Fresh Air is produced for NPR, chose this moment – this moment - to showcase a real-life white mother's narrative about the joys of transracial adoption.

            Here’s the description of the June 18 program on the NPR website:

“Blogger [name omitted]  talks about how raising two white biological daughters and two black adopted sons helped her understand white privilege.”

(I am not linking to it or naming the blogger because she’s plugging a book about her life raising these children, and I’d rather not help promote it. The transcript is easy to find online.)

            One of the Black children was adopted, as a baby, from foster care.

I guess there’s nothing like exercising white privilege to help you learn about it.  And who knew that the job of Black children was to teach their white adoptive parents?

            What follows is 37 minutes of humblebragging from this white adoptive parent about things like how her children absolutely do not have to be grateful to her, she hates savior narratives and she learned how much easier it is for a white person to buy shampoo. 

            I’m not going to go into detail because the issue here is not transracial adoption.*  Nor do I want to suggest that the blogger is not a fine parent who cares about racial justice. The problem isn’t the blogger. The problem is Fresh Air and the tone-deafness of its producers. 

           

As far as I can tell, in its decades on the air, Fresh Air has never taken a serious look at the harm the foster care system does to children of color – or any children for that matter.  In this moment when we may finally be coming to grips with racism in all walks of life, here are some of the things Fresh Air could have done – but didn’t:

            ● They could have interviewed Prof. Dorothy Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and author of Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, about the havoc child protective services – the child abuse police -- wreak not only in Black families but entire Black communities. (Prof. Roberts is a member of NCCPR’s volunteer Board of Directors.)

            ● They could have interviewed leaders of the Movement for Family Power about their calls to expand the narrative about defunding and abolition from police to include the child welfare system.

            ● They could have talked to people in communities of color across the country whose view of child protective services is vastly different from the narrative among the white professional elite – the way Kendra Hurley did for Citylab and Eli Hager did for The Marshall Project.

            ● They could have talked to Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg of The New York Times about their landmark 2017 story: “Foster Care as Punishment: The New Reality of ‘Jane Crow’”

            Fresh Air did none of these things.

It is one more example of the extent to which the racial justice reckoning has yet to reach child welfare – or the journalism of child welfare.

            *- For the record, I am not opposed to adoption. I am not opposed to all adoption of Black children by white families – though some in the family preservation movement are.  But it is important to understand that almost no one would even consider transracial adoption necessary if:

            ● We stopped taking so many Black children needlessly in the first place.

            ● We fully embraced kinship guardianship, often a preferred approach to permanence for Black families.

            ● Agencies got serious about finding adoptive parents in Black communities.    

           Needless to say, none of that was discussed on Fresh Air. 

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.

Honoring outstanding journalism about child welfare

            The Journalism Center for Children and Families each year gives awards to what judges chosen by the center consider the best journalism about children’s issues.  This year, the center honored three outstanding examples of broadcast journalism.

            For starters, in the audio category, the center honored NPR’s superb series about what the South Dakota child welfare system is doing to Native American families in that state.  This series already had received one of the most prestigious honors in broadcast journalism, a George Foster Peabody award.

            One of two runners-up in the same category was another NPR series, in co-operation with the PBS series Frontline and the non-profit journalism website ProPublica, about innocent people wrongly convicted of killing their children – and the guilty-until-proven innocent mentality that often was behind the prosecutions.

            And in the long form video category, honorable mention went to a segment of the PBS series Need to Know about the misuse and overuse of psychiatric medication on foster children.

            The full press release from the Center is available here. Below are excerpts from the press about these three winners and links to the stories:

AUDIO:

WINNER: "Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families," NPR, Laura Sullivan, Amy Walters, Barbara Van Woerkom, Alicia Cypress, Alyson Hurt, Nate Rott, Quinn Ford, John Poole, Susanne Reber (ed.), Steve Drummond (ed.), Keith Jenks (ed.) and Jonathan Kern (ed.)

This outstanding investigation reveals the troubling financial incentive that’s fueling the placement of hundreds of Native American children in foster care. The practice is a disturbing echo of the past, when the U.S. government routinely pulled Native youth from their families and forced them to attend boarding schools. The stories of adults who return home after being sent away to foster care illuminate the human toll on Indian tribes whose very survival depends on children knowing their relatives and learning their culture. The judges said, “This series epitomizes what radio does best: Get into your head, into your heart, under your skin in a way that other media just can't.” In response to the series, U.S. lawmakers demanded action from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other federal agencies.

RUNNER-UP (tie): “Post Mortem: The Child Cases,” NPR, PBS Frontline and ProPublica, NPR personnel: Joseph Shapiro, Sandra Bartlett, Coburn Dukehart, John Poole, Susanne Reber, Keith Jenkins, Barbara Van Woerkom, Nelson Hsu, Aly Hurt, Stephanie D'Otreppe, Alicia Cypress, Anne Hawke, and Katrine Elk; ProPublica personnel: A.C. Thompson, Chisun Lee, Marshall Allen, Aarti Shahani, Mosi Secret, Krista Kjellman Schmidt, Al Shaw,  Jennifer LaFleur and Robin Fields; Frontline personnel: Lowell Bergman, Carl Byker, Andres Cediel, Arun Rath,  Raney Aronson-Rath, David Fanning and Catherine Upin; California Watch Personnel: Ryan Gabrielson

“Child Death Cases Repeatedly Mishandled”
“The Child Cases: Guilty Until Proved Innocent”
“Rethinking Shaken Baby Syndrome”
“The Child Cases: Lessons from Canada”

This series uncovers how a justice system that relies on tainted medical evidence and flawed conclusions from the coroner can condemn innocent people in prison for the worst of all possible crimes: the murder of a child. A grim topic explored in depth and without sensationalism, the series found that almost always, accused parents and caregivers are poor people of color, whose families are irreparably destroyed by heinous allegations and wrongful convictions. In addition, NPR found the physician who coined the term “Shaken Baby Syndrome,” who at age 95 admitted he was troubled to see his diagnosis used in murder cases.

VIDEO, LONG FORM:

HONORABLE MENTION: “Drugs in the System,” PBS Need to Know and The Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, Sarah Fitzpatrick and Mar Cabra
An eight-month investigation revealed that children, especially those in foster care, were being prescribed powerful medications in combinations that left them lethargic and morose. Foster kids in U.S. were receiving antipsychotic drugs at nine times the rate of other children in the Medicaid system. Adoptive and foster parents detailed the monumental challenges they faced weaning their children off of meds in order to get to know the real child and enable them to develop a healthy attachment. This story made a sizable splash, leading to a Government Accountability Office report and hearings on Capitol Hill. Judges praised the reporting for being “voice for the voiceless.”

Foster care in South Dakota: The state goes after another child welfare whistleblower

            It’s hard to say in which state it is most dangerous to take on child protective services – but a good case can be made for South Dakota.

            For the second time in less than a year, South Dakota authorities allegedly retaliated against a whistleblower who sought to change the state’s horrific child welfare system, a system whose failings were exposed in a Peabody award-winning series by NPR last fall.

            The first instance concerns Robert Doody, executive director of the South Dakota branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.  Shortly after he announced that the South Dakota ACLU was looking into the NPR stories and gathering cases for a possible class-action lawsuit, his own child was taken from him.  As of May 1, that child still was in foster care.

            But now, it turns out, even a prosecutor may not be immune from the long, vengeful arm of South Dakota authorities.

            Brandon Taliaferro used to be in charge of prosecuting real child abuse in Brown County, which includes the City of Aberdeen.  But according to a report from the Lakota People’s Law Project (LPLP), that didn’t blind Taliaferro to the abuses of the South Dakota Department of Social Services.

           On his own, Taliaferro had drawn the same conclusions as NPR: South Dakota DSS repeatedly tore apart Native American families needlessly, and South Dakota repeatedly violated a federal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). For that he lost his job.  According to the LPLP report: 

Mr. Taliaferro was fired after a face-to-face meeting with D.S.S. official Virginia Weisler and D.S.S. Chief Counsel Daniel Todd. In that meeting D.S.S. Officer Weisler and D.S.S. Chief Counsel Todd accused Mr. Taliaferro of “not being a team player” and of “being disloyal to the D.S.S.”

            Taliaferro was fired by Brown County state attorney Kim Dorsett.  No one would accuse her of being disloyal to DSS – particularly since Dorsett had a $75,000 contract to represent DSS – a lot more than she was being paid to be Brown County state attorney at the same time.

            According to the LPLP report:

On December 19, 2011, The Aberdeen News reported that Mr. Taliaferro “said that it is financially beneficial for the department to remove American Indian children from their homes and place them in [white] foster homes.” Mr. Taliaferro said that, over the years in which he served as the Assistant State Attorney in Brown County in charge of prosecuting abuse & neglect cases, he and the D.S.S. were “often at odds.”

In official papers filed with the State Department of Labor in his appeal of his firing, Mr. Taliaferro charged that “following the orders of State Attorney Dorsett would have required [me] to violate the law, and ethical rules that govern attorney conduct.” Referring to the unlawful South Dakota state policy of systematically violating the Indian Child Welfare Act, Mr. Taliaferro asserted that he refused to participate in “a cover-up of misconduct” by the D.S.S.

COVERING UP ABUSE IN FOSTER CARE?

            But state officials weren’t through with Taliaferro. 

This part of the story begins with the placement of four Native American girls, ages 7,9,14 and 16, in a white foster home in Brown County.  They were placed over the objections of the children’s adult sister, who offered to take the girls in.  Federal law encourages states to give preference to relatives whenever a child must be placed in foster care, and the Indian Child Welfare Act requires it when the children are Native American.  The whole thrust of the NPR stories, of course, was South Dakota’s contempt for ICWA and its horrendous treatment of Native American children.

            The older girls complained that they were being sexually abused by the foster father, and the foster mother threatened to punish them if they told authorities.  Taliaferro investigated and concluded that the allegations were true.  He charged the foster father with 23 felony counts of aggravated rape of a child and aggravated incest.  The foster mother was charged with 11 felony counts of aiding and abetting the foster father’s crimes.

            Taliaferro was supported by Shirley Schwab, the director of the Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program in the county.  That, in itself, is extraordinary, given that CASA usually shows a profound bias in favor of foster parents and against birth parents.

            According to LPLP, these charges came after repeated reports were made to the South Dakota Department of Social Services alleging abuse by the foster parents.  DSS refused to investigate.

            But DSS and the state attorney general were a lot more aggressive about going after Taliaferro and Schwab. 

            The attorney general and the state Department of Criminal Investigation have charged Taliaferro and Schwab with “unauthorized disclosure of child abuse information” and “witness tampering” According to the LPLP report, Taliaferro and Schwab say these agencies are “actively coordinating with DSS officials” to use these “fabricated allegations” to discredit the evidence against the foster parents.  LPLP notes that the charges were brought  “immediately after the embarrassing [NPR] expose” of South Dakota DSS.

           The foster father ultimately pled guilty to one count of rape of a child under ten years old.  He will be sentenced to 15 years in prison, with parole possible after five.  According to LPLP, prosecutors originally planned to dismiss all of the charges against the foster father, except for one misdemeanor charge of spanking one child.  Only after the birth family expressed its outrage at the secret deal were the charges upgraded.

            LPLP reports that its investigation

revealed a common pattern: South Dakota state prosecutions tend to dramatically downplay criminal abuse cases brought against white foster care parents when Lakota Indian children are the victims. On the other hand, our investigation shows that Lakota parents are systematically treated more severely by D.S.S. than are white parents for virtually identical conduct. Indeed, over the last ten years, Lakota children in South Dakota have been systematically removed from their Lakota parents under factual circumstances under which white children would never have been taken away from their white parents. This is exactly the conduct of which former Assistant State Attorney Taliaferro accused D.S.S. officials,

           

            A hearing on the charges against Taliaferro and Schwab is scheduled for Wednesday.

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.