Their anguish over the death of another child “known to the system” is genuine. I think they’ll also be open to some new ideas.
A little over a week
ago, two columnists for the Tampa Bay Times, Sue Carlton and John Romano, wrote
about still another death of a child “known to the system” in Florida. Often, when that happens, I reach out to the
journalists in a letter. This time, I’m
sharing that letter with everyone.
Dear Ms. Carlton and Mr. Romano:
I am
writing to you because you’ve both written
columns
about the tragic death of Jordan Belliveau, another child “known to the system”
in Florida – apparently on the same day.
More particularly, I am writing because your columns were not the usual
quick-and-dirty “Boy do I hate child abuse!” rants – the kind of column that is
filled with scapegoating; the kind that’s really just a cheap and easy way to
meet a deadline. On the contrary, the
anguish in your columns is real and you both seem seriously interested in
answers.
Indeed, I first
got in touch with you, Ms. Carlton, after you wrote a brave, counterintuitive
column on some of these very issues. That was in 2010, a time when Florida
child welfare finally was starting to improve.
As you may recall, when I wrote to you then, I predicted a backlash against
reform. Sadly, that’s exactly what
happened. I did not predict that it
would be led by the Miami Herald –
and the editorial board at the Tampa Bay
Times. But that’s also exactly what
happened. So the need for bold,
counterintuitive thinking is even greater now.
I am using
the open letter approach because you’re certainly not alone in agonizing over
how to fix child welfare in Florida. And
I am hoping that your interest in answers includes a willingness to look past
the usual failed solutions – just as you did, Ms. Carlton, in 2010. Because
those “solutions,” and the false premises that underlie them, are a large part
of what has gotten Florida, and much of the country, into this mess in the
first place.
Among those
false premises is one that both of you mention in your columns. That’s understandable, since it is probably
the most common misconception in all of child welfare: The idea that family
preservation and child safety are inherently at odds – competing interests that
somehow have to be “balanced.” The implication, of course, is that if you leave
a child in or return a child to a home where abuse or neglect has been alleged,
that’s inherently risky. Keep the child in foster care and it may ruin his
psyche, but at least he’s physically safe.
That is not
true.
What I will argue in this long
letter is that in the overwhelming majority of cases family preservation isn’t
just more humane than foster care, it’s safer
than foster care. And the real reason
for horrors such as the death of Jordan Belliveau has nothing to do with any
supposed “policy of reunifying families at all costs” at Gay Courter, a
volunteer “guardian ad litem (what most states call a Court-Appointed Special
Advocate (CASA)) claims in a Times
op-ed column.
On the contrary, it’s almost always
because of caseworkers so horribly overloaded with cases of children who don’t
need to be in the system that they lack the time to properly investigate any
case. As a result, they make terrible
mistakes in all directions. Even as they
take many children needlessly they leave others in, or return them to, dangerous
homes.
Those false
premises are laid out most clearly in Ms. Courter’s op-ed. Since I’ve followed Florida child welfare for
about 30 years now, and NCCPR has issued reports on child welfare dating back to 2000, I am
familiar with Ms. Courter’s work. I know that, like most people in child
welfare, she has only the best of intentions. I also know that at least one of
you has written admiringly about her in the past. I, on the other hand, am that guy who keeps
saying those terrible things about the whole approach to child welfare taken by
the Times and the Miami Herald. I make no apology for
that. When children’s lives are at stake - literally – good intentions aren’t
enough.
The Times and the Herald
didn’t make a good child welfare system bad. But they helped make a bad child
welfare system worse – and they helped to halt and reverse what had been the
first real improvement in that system in decades. You are in a position to do better. And if you are willing to reconsider old
assumptions then you can help break the cycle of tragedy-investigate-repeat
that Ms. Carlton aptly described in her column.
