The head of Washington State’s family police agency explains his agency’s approach to families.

 

Washington State DCYF Secretary Ross Hunter

It boils down to: We don’t do a damn thing to keep families together and you can’t make us!

Here’s the thing about Ross Hunter, secretary of Washington State’s family police agency, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families. He’s not good at sugarcoating the cruelty of some of his actions. 

● Recall how, when the COVID pandemic began he rushed to pander to the state’s worst, most selfish foster parents, at children’s expense. 

● Recall his callous response to KING-TV’s expose of how workers were treating some children in ways international human rights organizations describe as torture. 

● Recall how a majority of his own unionized employees said they want Hunter fired but they fell short of the two-thirds required to initiate a formal no-confidence vote.  (The state advisory board on juvenile justice also wants Hunter fired.) 

And now, in an interview with The Imprint he makes clear that his response to legal requirements to try to keep families together is the equivalent of giving those families the middle finger.  And while he’s at it, he makes a not-so-subtle effort to set one oppressed group against another. 

At issue is how much of an effort his agency should have to make to spare children from the chaos of needless placement in foster care, the high risk of abuse in foster care itself and, of course, the occasional allegation of conduct equivalent to torture.  Hunter’s answer: Almost none. This in a state that tears apart families at a rate 30% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in.

To understand what’s required we need to go back 46 years. 

In 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act.  Among its many excellent provisions is one that requires states to make “active efforts” to keep Native American families together before resorting to foster care.  The term is not defined in the law itself.  There is a definition in federal regulations, but it’s vague, with lots of wiggle room for family police agencies, a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies. 

But the law does NOT say that you only have to make active efforts if you can afford it.  It does NOT say you only have to make active efforts if you already have the services available.  It says make active efforts, period.  If you don’t have the services it’s your job, state and/or local governments, to create them and fund them. 

Two years later, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act.  That law applies to all families, but it doesn’t go as far as ICWA.  It requires only “reasonable efforts” to keep families together.  Once again the term is not defined in law, and this time not in regulation either. 

But the law does NOT say that you only have to make reasonable efforts if you can afford it.  It does NOT say you only have to make reasonable efforts if you already have the services available.  It says make reasonable efforts, period.  If you don’t have the services it’s your job, state and/or local governments, to create them and fund them. 

To some extent the entire debate exists only in the realm of the theoretical – because neither law has ever been seriously, systematically enforced. 

We document the failure to make reasonable efforts extensively in this NCCPR Issue Paper.  But I’ll highlight one example: 

A survey of Michigan judges found that 20 percent of the judges said they always concluded that reasonable efforts had been made – in other words, their child welfare agencies were perfect.  Another 70 percent said they rarely concluded otherwise. 

But even more significant: 40 percent of judges admitted that they lied and said the state child welfare agency made “reasonable efforts” in cases where the judges really didn’t believe it.  In half of those cases, the judges admitted they lied because, if they didn’t, the state would not get federal aid for holding the child in foster care, and their counties would have to pick up the extra costs. 

And if that’s the proportion who will admit it on a survey … 

As for “active efforts,” the failure to follow that provision of ICWA can be seen in the extreme racial disproportionality in American child welfare when it comes to states with significant Native American populations.  

In Minnesota, Native children enter foster care at 14 times their rate in the general population.  In South
Dakota Native Children are 12% of the child population – and 57% of the foster child population.  The appalling treatment of Native children by the state’s family police agency was exposed by NPR in 2010, and again by South Dakota Searchlight and the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader in 2024. 

The extent to which family police agencies have gotten away with ignoring these laws can be seen in the extent to which even proponents of helping families have lowered their standards.  

And that brings us back to Washington State, where, as The Imprint explains,

three years ago, the Washington State Supreme Court Commission on Children in Foster Care recommended draft legislation “to require active efforts for all children” before and after they were removed from home. The commission described active efforts as necessary to ensure social workers take extra steps, and provide services in a “trauma responsive manner.” As an example, they stated that rather than just giving parents a service provider’s phone number, a CPS worker would offer assistance in scheduling appointments necessary to keep the family intact.  

So just to be clear: In Washington State, as far as this Commission is concerned, you can meet the "reasonable efforts" requirement by giving parents a service provider’s phone number!  In other words, you can meet the standard without doing a damn thing for a family. 

Even the Washington State Commission’s definition of "active efforts" is pretty lame.  What if the family doesn’t need an “appointment” for anything? What if they need someone to repair their home so a child isn’t taken because of unsafe housing?  What if they need a voucher to pay for child care so the child isn’t taken due to “lack of supervision”?  And if they really do need an appointment what good is scheduling if they have no car (or don’t have the money to repair their car) and there’s no public transportation? 

"Reasonable efforts," let alone "active efforts" should require the family police to deal with all of this – because that’s what’s most likely to keep children safe and promote their “well-being.” 

But Ross Hunter wants no part of any of it.  His excuse is cost.  He says making "active efforts" on behalf of all children at risk of foster care 

would be very expensive to do, and would require a service array that is much larger than what we have today … [Y]ou have to do it in a way where you’re not requiring something you don’t have the services to provide.” 

No, Ross, you’ve got it backwards. Whether it’s “reasonable efforts” or “active efforts,” these laws require you to do whatever is necessary to create the services and provide them. 

He’s also wrong about the cost.  The great paradox of child welfare is the worse the option the more it costs.  Safe proven alternatives to foster care cost less than foster homes (often, as in the case of rent subsidies and childcare vouchers) a lot less.  The foster homes cost less than group homes which cost less than institutions. 

The reason Washington State hasn’t followed the law requiring "reasonable efforts" or the law requiring "active efforts" is simple.  Contempt for birth families, especially nonwhite birth families, runs so deep in Washington State (and much of the rest of the country) that many people either don’t realize or don’t care that when the family police take a swing at so-called “bad parents” the blow almost always lands on their children. 

But that isn’t even the worst of  Hunter’s behavior on this issue.  There is some nervousness among some – though not all – Native American leaders about what has been called “ICWA for all” legislation.  But it takes a powerful white guy to exploit it. 

Because it sure sounds like Ross Hunter is attempting to play off one oppressed group against another.  As he told The Imprint: 

“Before we will do active efforts for all, I want to make sure that we’re 100% delivering active efforts for the children who have experienced unbelievable historical harm as a result of child welfare practices in the past.” 

That sure sounds like setting the descendants of survivors of genocide against descendants of survivors of slavery – while doing virtually nothing for either. 

And since right now Washington State doesn’t appear to be delivering active efforts for Native families at all – they enter foster care at triple their rate in the state child population -- waiting until they’re  “100% delivering active efforts” for Native families means waiting forever. 

That seems to be just the way Ross Hunter wants it.

Washington State tries the Gitmo approach to child welfare

KING-TV in Seattle recently reported on something one wouldn’t expect even from a child welfare agency.    

Washington State foster children have spent thousands of nights in hotel rooms and offices. (Unfortunately, that’s not the unexpected part.)  But what happens when, often for good reason,  foster children don’t want to go to an office, or to some cruddy group home where the agency wants to force them to spend the night?  See for yourself:

 KING-TV found 

… a years-long pattern of Washington child protection workers dangling basic necessities like a safe, warm place to sleep as a way to get certain “hard to place” foster children to behave or follow orders. … The investigation … uncovered a DCYF culture where “punitive” actions toward some children and teens without placements are not only condoned but encouraged by some department leaders. … 

DCYF managers withheld hotel beds from some foster kids, and they instructed social workers to make the foster youth uncomfortable with inadequate sleeping arrangements, like in cars without blankets and in state offices without beds. This occurred when the kids acted out or refused to go to a placement at a foster home or group home, … 

And here’s where we get to the matter of what might be a reasonable topic for an international human rights inquiry: 

Four people, who claimed they supervised foster kids overnight in cars and offices, said their managers encouraged them to use psychological tactics to make the youth miserable. They say they were told to do things like blast air conditioning or turn off the heat to make the youth intentionally cold. … Three workers said they were instructed not to allow youth to fall asleep throughout the night. [Emphasis added.] 

Though the story doesn’t mention it, sleep deprivation is commonly defined as torture – the CIA used it on prisoners at Guantanamo. 

This still leaves a few questions. 

Why did some of these children resist going where DCYF wanted to put them? From the story:

Taylor Campbell, a 20-year-old woman in Washington state’s extended foster care program, said as a teenager, she turned down many placements where she didn’t feel comfortable — including one home where she said she was inappropriately touched during a prior stay. 

“The state, they take kids from people that do those things. And then to force a child to openly go through a home like that, that was just the turning point for me and I felt I was lost,” said Campbell, who became a ward of the state at age 15. 

She’s not alone in that assessment. 

“Bouncing around from hotel rooms to cars, not having a stable placement — it made these kids’ behaviors worse,” [a caseworker] said. “I feel like the system is hurting these kids more. It’s way worse than some of the scenarios they have come from.” …

 “It pisses me off that a parent can have their kid taken away for the same thing that we are putting them through,” said a current female after-hours social worker based in Kent, who agreed to speak to KING 5 only under the condition of anonymity. “It’s not healthy. It’s not productive. It’s not safe for the employees. It’s not safe for the kids.” 

Why does this constant moving from placement to placement happen? For starters, and this is one place the story was mistaken, it’s not because of a “shortage” of foster parents.  It’s because Washington State routinely tears apart families at a rate above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in. (The lead in to the story, in which all of the children are described has having been "rescued from dangerous or neglectful homes, also is incorrect. More often they were needlessly taken when family poverty was confused with "neglect.")

Why are frontline workers allegedly required by their superiors to do these horrible things to children? That should be a question for DCYF Secretary Ross Hunter.  But perhaps the answer is rooted in the mentality revealed by the way Hunter himself responded to COVID-19  - one of the worst such responses in the nation. That response suggested a contempt for parents.  But the behavior KING-TV has revealed in his agency raises questions about how Hunter really feels about the kids.

Will the racial justice reckoning ever reach child welfare?

#BlackLivesMatter protesters march on New York City family courts, and the
city Saturday, in a demonstration organized by the Parent Legislative Action Network
(Photo by Joyce McMillan)

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REFLECT THE FACT THAT THE HEAD OF THE WASHINGTON STATE CHILD WELFARE AGENCY, WHOSE CALLOUS AND CRUEL STATEMENT IS QUOTED BELOW, HAS NOW SAID SOMETHING EVEN WORSE.


 The link to this story that appeared on the New York Times homepage on June 13 said: “Calls for Racial Justice Touch Seemingly Every Aspect of American Life.” It should have said: Every Aspect But One. 

Not only has the child welfare system, which needlessly separates countless Black families every year, been untouched, it continues to engage in racist behavior and messaging. Sometimes journalists have been its enablers.

So it’s worth remembering again how Robert Latham of the University of Miami School of Law summed it all up: “The child welfare system has nothing to say about anti-Black state violence because the child removal system engages in it daily.”

The most obvious example is one I’ve alluded to before: One agency after another issues dire warnings about what often is called a “pandemic” or “epidemic” of child abuse now supposedly underway because schools are closed and teachers and other “mandated reporters” are not calling in reports to child abuse hotlines.

Of course there is reason for concern that a tiny fraction of parents will respond to the stress of COVID-19 by lashing out. But 97 percent of calls to child abuse hotlines are false reports or cases of “neglect” which often means poverty.  

It should be obvious that it is racist to assume that the moment mostly white, middle class “eyes” are averted form overwhelmingly poor disproportionately nonwhite children their parents will unleash savagery upon them in pandemic proportions.  Endless calls to ratchet up the child welfare surveillance state only drive families away from seeking help and overload child protective services workers, so they have even less time to find children in real danger.

The reduction in surveillance is viewed differently in communities of color. As Kendra Hurley writes in Citylab:

Some parents living in neighborhoods with historically high rates of child welfare investigations say the dramatic dip in maltreatment reports feels more like the pollution lifting — a much-needed respite from the intense and relentless surveillance of low-income moms, and especially those who are black and Latinx.”…

“One parent told [family advocate Joyce McMillan]: “They’re not opening my refrigerator. They’re not opening my dresser drawers. They’re not strip-searching my children and they’re not asking me to take their clothes off for the camera, because that would be child pornography.”

Similarly Eli Hager’s writes in The Marshall Project:

"Poor people are usually constantly inspected by all these agencies,” [one mother] said. “Now there is kind of a peacefulness.”

As Emma Ketteringham of the Bronx Defenders told Hager:

We have a child welfare system that is particularly, extremely sensitive to the media, so we should be very sure of narratives before we put them out there.

Child welfare, and a large chunk of American journalism, would do well to consider the words of David Kelly, special assistant to the Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau in the Department of Health and Human Services:

“If confined to telling binary stories of heroes and villains, an objective view may reverse the roles. Who is the hero, the parent doing the best they can under circumstances more difficult than most of us will ever know or experience, or the folks writing about the likelihood they will fail or actually seek to harm their children?”

But that is only the tip of the iceberg.  Consider the other ways in which child welfare seeks to set itself apart from racial justice:

Defund the child abuse police? Child welfare establshment says: No way!

The Times story notes that

The flood of corporate statements denouncing racism “feels like a series of mea culpas written by the press folks and run by the top black folks” inside each organization, said Dream Hampton, a writer and filmmaker.

It also reprints a tweet from Prof. Crystal Fleming, author of How to be Less Stupid About Race:

Meanwhile, academic institutions be like: "As a university that relies on prison labor, has never had a Black president, hires few Black faculty and has no policies to address systemic racism targeting Black students on campus, we would like to affirm that #BlackLivesMatter..."

— Professor Fleming is on vacation (@alwaystheself) June 7, 2020

In other words, in other fields no one is fooled.  No one should be fooled by the similar statements coming from the child welfare establishment.  Because none of those groups is willing to put real money where its press releases are.

A key component of the racial justice movement is defunding police; that is, transferring large parts of police budgets into better alternatives such as education, housing, and public health. Not only have there been no similar calls from the child welfare establishment, they actually have teamed up with several liberal Democrats in Congress to try to use COVID-19 as an excuse to increase funding for the child abuse police – child protective services investigations -- by up to $500 million.

Just as harmful: They propose funneling the money through the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, an odious law deliberately crafted to avoid issues of race and class in child welfare.  To get their share of this additional $500 million states would have to comply with racist provisions of CAPTA, most notably the so- called “Plan of Safe Care” provisions, which target substance using mothers and drive them away from prenatal care.

Apparently, to the child welfare establishment, forcing more than half of all African-American children to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation – almost always needlessly – just isn’t enough.

In contrast, in the Senate it took two Republicans and two conservative Democrats to propose spending $800 million on what families actually need to prevent what the system calls child abuse: aid for things like housing, transportation and child care.

The proposal to put more federal dollars into child abuse policing is in keeping with a long, ugly  tradition of mainstream child welfare groups opposing real child welfare finance reform.

They successfully blocked a proposal to allow – not require, just allow – states to take the money they now receive through the huge, open-ended foster-care “entitlement” known as Title IV-E as a flexible flat grant that could be used both for foster care and for better alternatives.  Then they tried to block something even more modest: state-by-state waivers. And when they couldn’t block waivers they tried to undermine waivers through regulations.

Radical finance reform

What’s really needed is much more radical finance reform. The federal government should stop paying for foster care, period.  Not only should the open-ended entitlement be converted to a flexible grant, over several years states should be required to transfer the proportion of that grant used for foster care to better alternatives.  No, that doesn’t mean there would be no money for foster care. It just means that the state and local governments that put children in foster care would have to pick up the tab themselves.

Real finance reform also means ending the obscene practice of paying bounties to states for every finalized adoption over a baseline number, a practice that encourages a mad rush to needlessly terminate parental rights, as was well documented more than a decade ago.

The bounties are part of another racist law that needs to be repealed, the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act.  In addition to the bounties, ASFA demands that, with certain exceptions, states presume parents unfit and move to terminate their  children’s right to any relationship with them based solely on how long a child has been in foster care – even if the child never needed to be in foster care at all, and/or is still there because of the agency’s failures. 

Just as harmful is the mentality enshrined by the law: the racist dogwhistling Big Lie of  American child welfare, that child removal equals child safety and that child safety and family preservation are opposites.In fact, family preservation is the safer option for the overwhelming majority of children the overwhelming majority of the time.

It’s no wonder ASFA led to a surge in foster care placements and an increase in the number of children “aging out” of foster care with no real home at all.

ASFA was one of a trilogy of racist bills passed during the mid-1990s.  But while the other two, the crime bill and the so-called welfare “reform” bill, have been called out for their underlying racial and class bias, child welfare has remained willfully blind to the fact that ASFA used the same myths and stereotypes to target the same population: poor women, especially poor women of color.

Jobs not on the line

In a section headed “Jobs on the line,” the Times story discusses the many people forced to resign  because they “made offensive statements.”  But in child welfare, you can make such statements and worse, act in ways that do enormous harm to families of color, and not only will you not have to resign, you might even get promoted.

Consider this offensive statement:

            “There are some things we’re finding with visits on video that are actually more positive than in-person visits.”

            That offensive statement came from Ross Hunter, secretary of the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families.  He was attempting to justify a cruel, blanket ban on in-person visits between foster children and their parents, something that is not necessary to curb the spread of COVID-19.

            But in a state where Black and mixed-race children are in foster care at twice their rate in the general population, and Native American children are in foster care at five times their rate in the general population, Hunter appears to have issued the ban to appease a bunch of appallingly selfish, white foster parents – like those who signed an online petition, which reads in part:

They say what about the bio parents who will miss [their children]? I say to this. [sic] They are the ones who made the choices which in turn lead [sic] to losing their children in the first place. They should not be worried about missing visits at this time.

            I know of  no calls in Washington State for Hunter to resign.    

UPDATE: The statement about visits isn't even the worst thing Hunter's said. He just outdid himself.

One month ago, the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog broke the story of Hunter's agency warehousing children who tested positive for COVID-19 in an office building.  Now that the Seattle Times has finally caught up, we know Hunter's response.

First, here's what some family defenders said:

Tara Urs, special counsel for civil practice and policy for the King County Department of Public Defense ... said its use amounted to “warehousing children in an office building,” sending a message to kids that no home will take them.

Already marginalized, exposed to COVID-19 and put at such a site, “it has to be terrifying for them,” said S. Annie Chung, a lawyer who represents youth separated from their parents.

But Hunter saw it differently: 

“It’s not palatial, but it’s a reasonable alternative for two weeks” — one not unlike the confined spaces millions of people are stuck in, Hunter said. “This is the challenge of the pandemic.”

       Illinois, where Black children are in foster care at triple their rate in the population, has the same blanket visitation ban.  The Shriver Center on Poverty Law has been leading efforts to get it overturned.  On June 12, they tweeted:

For Black lives to matter, Black families must also matter. For close to 3 months, @IllinoisDCFS has kept over 11,000 parents, children, and siblings apart, many of whom are Black. This is unacceptable. #LiftTheBanIL

For Black lives to matter, Black families must also matter. For close to 3 months, @IllinoisDCFS has kept over 11,000 parents, children, and siblings apart, many of whom are Black. This is unacceptable. #LiftTheBanILhttps://t.co/cfOJp0rbUa

— Shriver Center (@shrivercenter) June 12, 2020

That prompted a response from a deputy communications director for Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which concluded:

To claim @IllinoisDCFS does not care about black families is frankly disgusting.

This policy was put in place to prevent the spread of covid. It was upheld by the courts for that reason. @IllinoisDCFS is in the process of updating the policy, as the @shrivercenter  knows. To claim @IllinoisDCFS does not care about black families is frankly disgusting. #twill https://t.co/pfU7xaUXo8

— Jason Rubin (@jasrubin) June 12, 2020

No. What is "frankly disgusting" is when a p.r. person for a white governor lectures a Black-led group fighting for racial justice about what they should say - while distorting what they actually said. 

I know of no calls from Illinois for the p.r. guy to resign.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services now claims it will begin a slow, grudging resumption of in-person visits, starting on June 26. [UPDATE, JUNE 24: But as the Shriver Center explains, it's not nearly enough.]

Nor has anyone I know of demanded the resignation of the California district attorney who declared that “For the most vulnerable people in our community ‘shelter-in-place’ is the same as putting them in a cage with a violent gorilla.”

Failing up

And then there is the case of Cynthia Figueroa, former commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Human Services.  She has repeatedly tweeted support for #BlackLivesMatter, even posting a selfie as she took part in a march.

But during her tenure – and for long before – Philadelphia DHS tore apart familiesat the highest rate among America’s biggest cities, even when rates of child poverty are factored in. , More than 85 percent of those families are nonwhite, When confronted, the agency’s response was misdirection and obfuscation. Only now has DHS finally admitted what it sought to obscure for so long.

But that’s only the beginning. Not only does Philadelphia also ban all in-person visits, Philadelphia DHS falsely blamed federal guidance for the ban. Federal guidance is precisely the opposite.  And now, DHS has published a guide that effectively urges people to turn virtual visits into ways to spy on families.

Yes, I did say Figueroa is a former commissioner. But that’s not because she was forced to resign. On the contrary, she keeps failing up. Mayor Jim Kenney promoted her to a deputy major job. She still oversees DHS.

And then Kenney gave Figueroa new job: Chairing what the Philadelphia Inquirer says will be “a steering committee to help the city move toward reconciliation with residents.”

The reckoning is a long way from reaching child welfare.

Flawed system, flawed journalism: COVID-19 brings both into stark relief

In Washington State, as in many other places, the flaws in the child welfare system are mirrored in the flaws in how child welfare is covered.  But at one online news site there are the first signs of improvement.

Second of two parts. Read part one here.

            The story was a searing expose of ill-treatment visited upon families by a child protective services agency. It told of families repeatedly being harassed, threatened and treated with disrespect. 

            Did I say families? Sorry, I meant mostly white, middle class foster families.  Because for the online news site Investigate West in Washington State, they have been the only families who really counted.

            The story dealt with repeated acts of alleged retaliation by the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families against foster parents who dared to challenge the agency.  But apparently, in the entire 4000-word story, it never occurred to any of those foster parents, nor to the reporter, to pose one simple question:

            The state really needs foster families. If this is how they are treated, how do you think the agency treats birth families?

            For Investigate West, and many other news organizations, the real answer is: Who cares? 

They are more subtle about it, more genteel (and more grammatical) than the  crude, cruel petition posted by a Washington State foster parent demanding a wholesale cutoff of visits between foster children and their parents due to COVID-19 (something discussed in detail in the previous post to this blog). But the message is similar: Birth parents, overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately nonwhite, are essentially so subhuman they’re barely even worth speaking to.  Sure, they may not be evil, but they’re all sick, sick, sick! If they’re ill-treated, they brought it on themselves. 

            Investigate West also presents as fact the claim that there is a shortage of foster parents in Washington State.  But Washington State doesn’t have too few foster parents, it has too many foster children – because it tears apart families at a rate well above the national average when rates of child poverty are factored in.  Investigate West also accepts at face value claims about child welfare and substance use.  Once again, they shouldn’t.  And they’ve bought into the conventional wisdom about the supposed need for more group homes and  residential treatment. Again, a mistake.

         

   The problems with the attitude reflected both in the petition and in much of Investigate West’s reporting are legion, but here’s the most important: Almost always, when you take that kind of swing at parents, the blow lands on their children.

            Most recently, those blows come in the form of states, including Washington, cutting off all in-person visits between foster children and their parents.  Wholesale cutoffs of visits, as opposed to case-by-case decisions, are contrary to federal recommendations, and are not necessary to curb COVID-19.

            In fairness, we know about Washington State’s appalling behavior in large part thanks to a story from Investigate West.  Those failures are discussed in detail in the previous post to this blog. 

This most recent story is a real improvement. This time, two birth parents actually are quoted – and some parents’ attorneys are included.  The federal guidance is noted. The story also exposes DCYF’s false claim that, in banning all in-person visits, the agency is just following orders from Gov. Jay Inslee. And it exposes DCYF’s failure even to provide the necessary technology so all foster children can have video visits with parents too poor to afford it themselves.

It’s also the case that, when it comes to the journalism of child welfare, there is far worse out there.  This most recent story, and the general output of Investigate West, are worth a close look precisely because it is so typical.

Flunking the “balance of harms” test

            As with so much about both child welfare and the journalism of child welfare, the story flunks the “balance of harms” test.

            The story plays up the serious and real risks of coronavirus, without also discussing the enormous risk to children posed by the trauma inflicted when visits are cut off.  In contrast, this story form the Chronicle of Social Change gets it right.  Here’s some of what parents said:

It breaks my heart that I can’t see my child right now.  I can’t hold her. I can’t comfort her when she’s getting frustrated.

She sees me on the screen and then she’s looking around to see if I’ll pop out. She’s reaching out to me, she wants to grab me but she can’t. She tries. It’s a very unbearable thing.

My kids are hurt, they’re crying. They don’t understand. My daughter is thinking we don’t want to see her.

You won’t find that in the Investigate West story.  Instead, the deck is further stacked by suggesting the issue is a matter of public health vs. parents’ rights. Thus we are told that:

The emergency measures are raising the issue of whether Washington officials and judges have the authority to limit the legal right of birth parents to see their children in person … 

But the real issue is whether foster children have the legal right to see their parents in person.

The foster care system itself is described as a place for “young people whose parents have been unable or unwilling to care for them.” In some cases, of course, that’s true.  In other cases it’s for young people whose parents were simply caught being poor or nonwhite or both. 

One of the lawyers Investigate West cites in their story, S. Annie Chung, earlier told Seattle Times columnist Naomi Ishisaka

A vast majority … of the families that are in the dependency system are actually struggling with the effects of poverty and structural racism.  These families are struggling, but they’re not bad parents. They don’t have less love or less of a bond with their children.

If Chung pointed this out to Investigate West, they weren’t interested.

Fortunately, Ishisaka was. She wrote:

Poverty should not be punished with the lasting psychological and emotional damage of family separation. In the meantime, a one-size-fits-all visitation policy will not work.

            In contrast, Investigate West presents the selfishness of foster parents as almost noble:

Foster parents got that public health message and they acted on it.

            Or consider this paragraph, which combines subtle class bias with condescension:

State legal requirements make reuniting foster kids with the birth parents the paramount goal, in line with national recommendations. Yet those birth parents often are struggling with poverty, addiction or other issues that caused the state to remove their children in the first place. Often the hope of recovering their kids is what drives them to do better, child-welfare advocates say.
 

            Strip away the genteel veneer and this is what Investigate West is saying: Not only is it perfectly o.k. to tear apart a family when parents are “struggling with poverty,” the removal is just the kick in the pants those lazy good-for-nothings need to “drive them to do better.”  There is no acknowledgement that some of “them” were doing just fine as parents until child protective services entered their lives.

Investigate West also neglects to mention that the goal of reunification is based on decades of research showing that, in typical cases, children placed in foster care fare worse even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care.

What the headline writer knew

          

             The overall message sent by the story is clear from what one headline writer made of it.  Reporters almost never write the headlines for their stories (something almost every reporter really wants you to know, by the way) but the overall impression a story leaves sometimes can be gleaned from what a headline writer made of it.

            The Investigate West headline was simply: “Birth parents fight to visit kids in foster system during pandemic.”  But at Crosscut, another online news site which reprints Investigate West’s work, someone added a lurid “subhead,” (sometimes called a “deck”). It reads:

Seeing their children in person may put parents, as well as foster families and social workers, at risk, but can the state stop them?

I hope that wasn’t really the message Investigate West was trying to send.  If it wasn’t, then I hope they will go back and try again – and try not to see every child welfare issue almost exclusively through the eyes of white, middle-class foster parents.

In  an outstanding column urging child welfare systems to rise above their fears and their prejudices, Jerry Milner Associate Commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services Children’s Bureau and his Special Assistant, David Kelly, wrote:

There will also be leaders and individuals who will learn from these difficult times and chart a new course, inspired by this stark reminder of our common humanity. For such leaders, this crisis is an opportunity to reorient our system.

Perhaps there also will be journalists inspired to chart a new course and reconsider the assumptions that have guided their coverage.

Foster care in Washington State: Selfish foster parents, and the child welfare agency chief who panders to them

First of two parts. Read part two here.

            Every time I think a child welfare agency can’t sink lower in its response to COVID-19, another agency with the word “children” in its name steps up to take the worst-response-in-America challenge.

            Today's candidate: The Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families.  Thanks to a story from the online news site Investigate West, and an interview DCYF Secretary Ross Hunter did with the Seattle Times, we now know this:

            ● Hunter effectively admits he cut off all in-person visits between foster children and their parents largely to appease foster parents who, though asked to do no more than letter carriers and grocery clerks, are threatening to quit.

            ● Hunter may have felt pressured by a petition posted by an anonymous Washington State foster parent that got nearly 300 signatures. The petition is striking for its cruelty, and well worth reading in full. 

            ● Hey, don’t worry, Hunter says. “There are some things we’re finding with visits on video that are actually more positive than in-person visits.”  Yes, he really said that.  

         

           ● But, Investigate West found, Hunter’s agency isn’t even keeping its promise to provide all impoverished parents with the technology they need for video visits.

            ● And some foster parents have taken cruelty to a new level, refusing even to allow video visits.

            ● Hunter’s agency also claims it’s just following orders – from Gov. Jay Inslee.  But Inslee’s office says his COVID-19 orders still allow in-person visits, on a case-by-case basis.  In fact, says a spokesman, that’s how it should be done.  A reading of the actual order confirms as much.

           ● Hunter gives away his game when he says that, were the pandemic to continue for six months “I would go figure out how to make [in-person visits] practical.”

This reveals, at best, disturbing lack of concern for how children perceive time.  Six months is a lifetime for a newborn, a quarter of a lifetime for a toddler – and, for them, it feels like an eternity.  That’s part of the reason that the younger the child the greater the trauma of separation. And of course, these also are the very children for whom video visits work worst. 

So, if you say you can figure out how to make in-person visits work after waiting six months, Mr. Hunter, you should be able to do it right now.  But apparently pandering to some Washington State foster parents is more important.

            ● The story is a notable improvement for Investigate West, which up to now has served as a de facto public relations factory for the state’s foster parents.  But the story still barely acknowledges the enormous psychic trauma cutting off visits inflicts on children.  And it accepts the view of foster parents that any and all in-person visits are extremely dangerous. 

Visits should be determined case-by-case

            No one is saying all in-person visits should continue. In some circumstances they are unsafe, and in some cases foster parent fears are reasonable.  But there is no need for a wholesale ban on such visits, and indeed, like Gov. Inslee, top federal child welfare officials specifically recommend against such a ban.

Infectious disease experts say that often families still can visit each other.  And many of the assumptions about visits always being unsafe are based on doing them the same old way, supervised in crowded offices. There are other alternatives.  But foster parents aren’t going to extend themselves if they think visits are just a favor for birth parents, and they hate the birth parents, as is apparent in that foster parent petition.

            Investigate West fails to point out that the risks these foster parents are being asked to take are similar to the risks they take if they go to the grocery store or the pharmacy. And they are no greater than the risks taken every day by the pharmacists and grocery store clerks who help shoppers.

           

The “shortage” that isn’t

            Hunter's desperation to appease foster parents is due to a so-called “shortage” of such parents. But, contrary to what DCYF and Investigate West repeatedly claim, Washington State doesn’t have too few foster parents. Washington State has too many foster children. The shortage is artificial, the result of decades of tearing apart families at rates above the national average when rates of child poverty are factored in, and far above the rate in states that are, relatively speaking, models for keeping children safe.

          

  What no one seems to recognize, not the fearful foster parents, not Hunter, and not Investigate West, is who is being hurt most by all of this. The issue is not, as all of these parties suggest, the rights of parents vs. public health.  As the nation’s top child welfare officials have made clear, the issue is not what parents want, it’s what children need. 

            For the child, “It is not merely a matter of longing for contact,” write Jerry Milner, Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau in the Department of Health and Human Services and his Special Assistant, David Kelly. “It is a matter of healthy brain development, maintaining critical bonds, and prevention of trauma that can persist for generations.”

            They continue:

There will be those who use the crisis to serve their own interests or those of their constituencies. There will be those whose implicit or even explicit biases are drawn out into the light. There will be those who choose to weaponize our systemic shortcomings and use them against parents.

            And that brings us to that foster parent petition.  At one point the anonymous author says:

They say what about the bio parents who will miss [their children]? I say to this. [sic] They are the ones who made the choices which in turn lead [sic] to losing their children in the first place. They should not be worried about missing visits at this time.

            Even were that true – and much of the time it is not – the anonymous foster parent apparently thinks that because she or he has such contempt for birth parents (note the patronizing, dehumanizing description of them as “bio parents”) their children do, too.  That’s not how child development works.  If a young child gets the message from a foster parent that their own parents are contemptible human beings – or worse – s/he is likely to think: “They are horrible and they made me, so what does that make me?”  Why is Washington State tolerating foster parents who broadcast such messages?

As Milner and Kelly make clear, almost always, children in foster care desperately need contact – including touches and hugs – from their parents.

            What the anonymous foster parent is saying is almost exactly what the Trump Administration said about the kids they caged at the Mexican border: It’s the parents’ fault, they shouldn’t have crossed the border.

            That’s no reason to keep kids in cages – and alleged failings by the parents are no reason to deprive their children of visits.  Anyone who heard the cries of the children in detention on the border should understand this.  How can anyone be trained and licensed to be a foster parent in Washington State and not know this?  Why tolerate foster parents who are supposed to work with birth parents, but clearly loathe them – and can’t see past that loathing to do what’s best for the children?

            Yet Hunter is doing handstands to keep foster parents like these. He made clear that fear of losing them is at the heart of his reasoning for banning in-person visits.  In fact, were foster parents such as these to quit, the system could only improve. Foster parents whose attitude toward families drips with contempt would be gone. We would be left with the many outstanding foster parents who bring real love and real courage to their work; we would be left with those willing to step up in a crisis instead of stepping away, and take as much risk as a grocery clerk.

Visits are fine – if they’re people like us

            There also is an underlying hypocrisy – and racial and class bias – in some of the foster parent fears.  This can be seen in the rush by some to cut off even video visits.

It can be seen even more clearly at the conclusion of the Investigate West article.  It ends with the story of noble foster parents who are “putting their health on the line” and “risk[ing] coronavirus exposure” to arrange in-person visits for their foster children – two such visits, in fact, each involving at least seven people, adults and children.  The visits even took place in the foster parents’ own home!

            But these were not visits with those at-worst-evil-at-best-sick-always-suspect- overwhelmingly-poor-disproportionately-nonwhite-birth-parents. No, these were visits with fellow white, middle-class foster parents preparing to adopt the children this couple had taken in on a short-term placement. 

            Why are the risks of contracting coronavirus deemed insurmountable for visits with people like them, and worth taking for visits with people like us?

Read part two: Flawed system, flawed journalism