NCCPR in the Washington State Standard: How curbing foster care has saved children’s lives

How many times have you heard it? A child “known to the system” dies, and someone says: “See? Because you’re not taking away as many children, and throwing them into foster care, it’s causing children to die!” 

We’ve known all along it’s not true. And now, thanks to new research from Washington State, we know something else: Washington State’s limited efforts to stop tearing apart so many families have saved children’s lives – anywhere from six to 22 per year. At the same time, by increasing the proportion of foster children placed with relatives instead of strangers, the state has saved another 10 to 30 children’s lives per year. ... 

Read the full column – with a link to the research – in the Washington State Standard 

That Washington State law on clergy as mandatory reporters is not anti-Catholic – it’s anti-CHILD

● The Trump Administration launches a ludicrous "investigation" of a bad law.

● The real harm of this law: Impoverished parents in Washington State now have one less place to turn without risking being turned in to the family police because their poverty was confused with  “neglect.” 

Laws requiring clergy to report the slightest suspicion of child abuse or neglect are common – unfortunately. Laws requiring priests to report the slightest suspicion of abuse or neglect even when they hear about it in confession are less common but at least seven states have had them for some time – unfortunately. 

But two things have made the latest such law, in Washington State, the subject of national attention: 1. Local media hype, led by a local reporter who’s been, pardon the expression, crusading for it for years, writing stories that shut out any meaningful dissent. (Now he has something he can put on the “What did the stories accomplish?” line on awards entries forms.) And 2. the Trump Administration, which, presumably, saw the publicity and a chance to pander to its conservative base.  

So the Trump Justice Department is launching an “investigation,” calling the new law “anti-Catholic.” That’s likely to come as news to groups such as the Catholic Accountability Project and Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests which, mistakenly in my view, but sincerely, supported the new law. In case you didn’t know this Trump Justice Department: Chances are, most of the members of these groups are Catholics. 

No, the new law isn’t anti-Catholic. But it sure is anti-child. It’s one more example of a feel-good press-release-worthy law that ignores a huge pile of research and is almost certain to backfire. 

For starters, any law that expands mandatory reporting in any way is anti-child, because mandatory reporting backfires. It drives families away from seeking help, and overloads the system with false reports, making it harder to find the relatively few children in real danger.  That’s why so many one-time proponents of mandatory reporting have had second thoughts. 

But instead of heeding the research and replacing mandatory reporting with permissive reporting, in which professionals are free to exercise their professional judgment, Washington State lawmakers opted to careen full-speed backwards. 

The reason expanding mandatory reporting to clergy has support in some quarters is obvious: What comes to mind when you hear the words clergy and child abuse?  Priests raping altar boys – and bishops covering up the crimes. When Gov. Mike Ferguson (who, by the way is a Catholic) responded to the investigation he said “We look forward to protecting Washington kids from sexual abuse in the face of this 'investigation' from the Trump Administration." 

But the new law expanding mandatory reporting will do nothing to protect kids from sexual abuse. Pedophile priests either will stop confessing or go to a church where their voices won’t be recognized. 

It also can harm survivors, who sometimes first disclose their abuse in confession. Consider what a survivor group said in Australia, where pedophilia scandals have led to similar campaigns to end the exemption for the confessional: 

“The Seal offers victims a safe, secure and watertight place where they can be listened to without cost, where they can remain anonymous, and can decide what they’re ready, and not ready, to share – and all of this in complete confidence,” spokesman James Parker said. 

“The Confessional Seal as it presently stands literally saves lives and offers every abuse victim the chance to begin to heal.” 

But that’s only the beginning of the harm. Neither Ferguson nor anyone else supporting this law seems to have given a moment’s thought to the fact that in Washington State 93% of cases in which a child is placed in foster care don’t involve even an allegation of sexual abuse. In nearly nine times more cases the allegation is “neglect” which often means poverty – and clergy now have to report those, too. 

Now consider some hypotheticals about who is far more likely to be reported than a pedophile priest: 

● A mother is terrified.  She’s being beaten by her husband.  But when she threatened to go to the police he said: “Go ahead, call the cops! They’ll just call child protective services and they’ll take away the kids.”  She turns to her priest/minister/rabbi/imam and says: “Please help me to escape.  Where can I turn to protect myself and my children?” 

The clergyman replies: “I’m so sorry.  I’m now a mandated reporter and you may have allowed your child to “witness domestic violence” if he saw or heard you being beaten. So I have to call child protective services. 

● A single mother enters the confessional:  “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned,” she says. She says she’s guilt-ridden for having left her child home alone when she went to work and her regular childcare arrangement fell through.  She didn’t know what else to do. Her boss said he’d fire her if she didn’t show up; then she wouldn’t be able to afford the rent and the family would be evicted.  

After the priest prescribes the appropriate acts of contrition, the mother asks a question:  Might the priest know someone in the congregation who could volunteer to provide childcare if this ever happened again?  “As a matter of fact, I do,” the priest replies.  “But it’s too late to do only that.  You see, I am now a mandated reporter of child abuse.  What you did can be considered ‘lack of supervision.’  So I have to report you to child protective services” 

As it stands now, clergy are among the only helpers to whom impoverished families can turn with less fear that they will be turned in to a family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency).  Once the word gets around that even the confessional isn’t safe, you can bet that parents like those in these hypotheticals won’t come forward and ask for help.  Children at risk from pedophile clergy won’t get any safer – and children whose families' “crime” is poverty will be cut off from a potential source of support. 

Of course, it’s not a crime for lawmakers to rush into enacting bad policy that doesn’t have a prayer of stopping child abuse. But it sure seems like a sin.

When the journalism of child welfare fails, part four: A Washington State news site discovers the trauma and tragedy of false allegations of child abuse – well, sort of.

Wow. Things sure got tough for Silvia Zarate after she was falsely accused of child abuse.  She had to fight her way through a long, cumbersome appeals process before she could get overturned a determination by a caseworker for the Washington State family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency) that the allegation against her was “founded.” 

But, as the online news site Investigate West explains: 

Zarate’s ordeal is far from finished, as she continues to struggle with her employment because the abuse charge still comes up on background checks. She said she has wiped out her retirement, gone into debt and has racked up more than $180,000 in attorney fees fighting the abuse allegation. 

She’s struggling with employment because she was fired from her job.  She also was criminally charged – charges ultimately dismissed.  As she explained to Investigate West: 

“Just because I won doesn’t mean I recovered anything. I still have to go through all this turmoil.” 

Investigate West goes on to tell us: 

To Zarate, it felt vindictive. She felt she was presumed guilty and needed to prove her innocence rather than the opposite. 

“They rushed to judgment,” she said. “They didn’t really investigate it well.” 

At last!  A big mainstream news organization in Washington State understands the enormous harm of false allegations, rushing to judgment, sloppy investigations and no meaningful redress!  

Well – not quite.  And if you don’t know what’s coming next, you don’t know either this Blog or Investigate West.  But here’s a hint: When it comes to covering “child welfare,” Investigate West isn’t really a news organization at all – it’s the de-facto p.r. arm of the Foster Parents Association of Washington State.  You can read about some of their long, ugly track record here. 

So you’ve probably guessed: The only reason this falsely accused parent got such sympathetic treatment – in fact, the only reason Investigate West talked to her at all – is because she was a foster parent, and the accuser was one of her foster children.  

I don’t think this is primarily the reporter’s fault.  She’s relatively new to Investigate West and this seems to be her first story about foster care.  The fault lies mostly with her editors who, at every turn, lionize foster parents and demonize birth parents.

As for Zarate, there’s something else worth noting: The job from which she was fired was caseworker for the state family police agency. 

So when the story ends with Zarate saying: “They have all the resources and us little people, foster parents, we don’t have those kinds of resources,” she doesn’t just forget who has even fewer resources – impoverished birth parents – she also seems to forget that, until her ordeal began, she was an integral part of “they.” 

What Zarate endured is, indeed, horrible.  I hope she wins the $9 million she is seeking from a state fund as compensation for her ordeal.  

But it is only a fraction of the trauma endured by poor families who don’t know the system from the inside, and don’t have $180,000 for legal fees.  But as we’ve seen over the years, Investigate West views birth parents as, at worst, evil, at best sick! sick! sick! – and certainly not worth talking to, much less doing an entire story about how they are guilty until proven innocent. 

And while the story mentions only the suffering Zarate endured, when this happens to birth families those who suffer most are the children – often traumatized by needless investigations and stripsearches at best, consignment to the chaos of foster care at worst. 

Nor does this story include the usual “Big Lie” of American child welfare that always turns up when
birth parents challenge the system.  No state legislator or leader of a mainstream “child advocacy” group coming out of the woodwork to say what they always say when the system traumatizes birth families: Yes, what happened is unfortunate, but we have to balance “parents rights” against child safety.  

On the contrary: The whole thrust of the Investigate West story is that this horrible treatment of foster parents is going to drive them away, and then boy will we be sorry!  So there! 

With no sense of irony, the co-president of the Foster Parents Association of Washington State complains that 

Once you get crosswise with the department, it’s really, really, really difficult to get back to where you want to be. 

Getting the priorities right 

Investigate West even finds a way to effectively blame the problems of foster parents on – birth parents! The story quotes a family police agency supervisor who 

said he’s heard foster parents increasingly express feeling underappreciated in their role in recent years, perhaps partially as an unintended consequence of Washington policy shifting to prefer kinship placements and increase family reunifications. 

“If kids can be with family, relatives, neighbors or friends, that’s going to do a better job in a lot of cases of being less disruptive to that child’s life,” [the supervisor] said. But, “I think the context of this is that foster parents kind of feel forgotten about and pushed to the bottom of the pile, by not just the agency, but the whole state. When the reality is, we absolutely need them.” 

So, in other words, the real purpose of the foster system is to pander to the egos and rescue fantasies of stranger foster parents. 

If, on the other hand, you believe the purpose of the foster system is to help children, then the priorities that supervisor describes are exactly right: Keeping children in their own families is almost always better for children’s wellbeing – and safer – than placement with stranger foster parents.  When that truly isn’t possible, kinship foster care has been shown to be far better than placement with strangers.  So yes, stranger foster care parents should be a lower priority – in fact the only worse option is group homes and institutions. 

Good foster parents, the ones who really care about the kids, get that. 

Are foster parents persecuted? 

As for foster parents being persecuted, the evidence suggests otherwise.  As of 2019, the most recent year for which I could find data, Washington State claimed to find abuse in only 0.06% of foster homes.  If that figure is correct, it means if you put 1,666 former Washington State foster children in a room and asked: “How many of you were abused during your last year in foster care?” only one would raise her or his hand.  

In contrast, independent studies, including one specific to Washington State and Oregon, consistently find abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes (and the rate in group homes and institutions is even worse.)  That’s a rate at least 400 times higher than what Washington State’s family police agency claims to find.  (In fairness, the studies generally cover the entire time a child is in foster care, and, on average, children are trapped in foster care for a little under two years.  On the other hand, the study methodology often excludes some kinds of abuse. But, just to give Washington State the benefit of the doubt, let’s not just double but triple their official single-year estimate.  Then the independent studies find only 133 times more abuse in foster care.) 

PERCENT OF CHILDREN ABUSED IN FOSTER CARE

So if there is a systematic campaign by the Washington State family police agency to persecute foster parents with false allegations of child abuse – they’re not very good at it.  

The vast undercount of abuse in foster care is precisely because when they investigate abuse in foster care family police agencies are, in effect, investigating themselves.  After all, they put the child in the home where she or he was abused.  It’s also because they don’t want to lose foster homes, and go through all the work of finding new placements for foster children.  So when it comes to abuse in foster care, there is an enormous incentive for caseworkers to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil and write no evil in the case file. 

And remember: Washington State is where a stranger foster mother and foster grandmother could allegedly kidnap the foster child in their care and flee all the way to Vietnam, and it was days before the family police agency even noticed.  I probably do need to remind you, since Investigate West never bothered to cover that story.  Neither did the Seattle Times.  You can be sure had birth parents kidnapped their child from a foster home, both news organizations would be all over the story – and Investigate West would do a huge feature about foster parents “living in fear.” 

The story about Zarate isn’t even the first pity-the-poor-falsely-accused-foster-parents story Investigate West has done. They did essentially the same story in 2020 (and I wrote pretty much the same blog post in response).  

No one should have to endure what Silvia Zarate endured.  But it would have been easier to sympathize if at some point she’d said something like this: “I wonder sometimes, did I do this to any families on my caseload? Did I get it wrong, substantiate an allegation when I shouldn’t have, and put some other family through this?  Did I inadvertently traumatize their children? And if this is how horrible it is for me, what is it like for birth parents who can’t fight back?” 

And if there really is a systematic campaign to persecute foster parents it would have been nice if someone at Investigate West had thought to say: “They really need foster parents – if this is how foster parents are treated, how are they treating birth parents – and what is that doing to their children?  Maybe we should do a story about that.” 

But there is nothing like that in the story from either Zarate nor the head of the foster parents association.  Either they didn’t say it, or they did but it never got into the story. 

There is only a hint that some of this may have occurred to Zarate.  She’s not actually quoted, but the reporter does say: 

Zarate said she hopes the department takes impacts such as she’s endured more seriously when approaching investigations of foster parents as well as biological parents. 

The words “biological parents” (and biological is pejorative, by the way) are words # 1,730 and 1,731 in a 1,761-word story.

“Child welfare” in Washington State: No AMBER Alert, no release of alleged kidnapper’s photo for days after a foster mother allegedly kidnaps a child in her care. And almost no media coverage, either.

UPDATE, DECEMBER 16: The child was found safe - in Vietnam - and has been returned to his real mother. We know this thanks to another story form KING5. Through the entire ordeal, the Seattle Times reported not a single word.  Fortunately,  Mother Jones did.

It was more than a week before anyone realized the foster child on the left was missing.
It took even longer for police to release the photo on the right - a photo of
Amanda Dinges, the foster mother who allegedly kidnapped the child.

UPDATE: An arrest warrant now has been issued for Amanda Dinges' mother as well. 

Thanks to KING-TV Seattle – and no other Washington State media – here’s what we know about a case in which a foster mother allegedly kidnapped a five-year-old foster child in her care: 

● In July, the lawyer for the birth mother raised concerns about the placement because, KING reports, “[the foster family] made some comments insinuating that the child was already a member of their family and that seeing his mother was too inconvenient and a nuisance to them." 

● On Nov. 15, the foster mother, Amanda Dinges, was told that the birth mother would start getting overnight visits with her son, a key step toward reunification. 

● The next day, Dinges notified child protective services that they needed to take back an older foster child in her care because, Dinges said, she was about the move across the state to take a new job. She claimed the younger child already had been returned. That was a lie.  For some reason, child protective services apparently did not know that was a lie. 

● On Nov. 18, apparently still under the impression that the five-year-old had been returned, CPS
removed the older child. 

● Sometime between then and Nov. 21, Dinges – and the five-year-old child – disappeared. 

● Nobody noticed until Nov. 25, when the child didn’t show up for a scheduled visit. The birth mother notified CPS, which didn’t get the message until Nov. 28, due to the holiday weekend. 

● On Nov. 29, local police issued a warrant for Dinges’ arrest on charges of Second Degree Kidnapping. They put out a press release, but not an AMBER Alert.  Why not?  Because, according to the release: 

    --“The date of the abduction was unknown…” (yeah, I don’t know why that’s relevant either).

    --“The child was placed in the care of the suspect and there had been no previous issues.” (You mean until the alleged kidnapping, right?)

    --"There were no indications that the abducted child was believed to be in danger of imminent death or serious bodily injury.” (Aside from being an “abducted child.”) 

Not only was there no AMBER Alert, there was no picture of Amanda Dinges. The picture of Dinges at the top of this post came only days later.  (And by the way, now that the pictures are out we know that Dinges is white and the child she allegedly kidnapped is not.) 

All of this is from KING-TV.  There’ve been a couple of tiny stories on other broadcast sites.  And here’s what the Seattle Times has published so far:

So ask yourself two questions: Suppose a birth mother was accused of kidnapping her child from a foster home.  Would it have taken a week before anyone noticed?  Would there be no AMBER Alert?  And would the mighty Seattle Times have roused itself to write anything about it?  Would it, in fact, have dominated news coverage across Seattle media, and possibly beyond?

 Of course, that might change.  If the child is found safe and the foster mother is arrested, and if she then tries to smear the birth mother and play the “bonding card” I’ll bet the Seattle Times will be all over it.  And Investigate West, whose stories about foster care often sound like they were written by the state foster parent association, might even weigh in – with a sympathetic profile of the alleged kidnapper.

Meanwhile, I'll do what the Seattle Times hasn't bothered to do: If you've seen the foster child and/or Amanda Dinges and/or Dinges' mother, please call the Mount Vernon, Washington State, Police at (360) 428-3211

Washington State warehousing COVID-19 positive foster youth in makeshift institution

This office building is being used by the Washington State
Department of Children, Youth and Families to warehouse
four foster youth who have tested positive for COVID-19.
(Photo: Google Street View)

UPDATE, MAY 23: The Chronicle of Social Change has grim new details: Family defender S. Annie Chung told the Chronicle that the office building "has no laundry facilities, no full kitchen, no full bathrooms." The youth are sleeping on cots and sleeping bags in the building basement, which had been used for supervised vists.

   Four Washington State foster youth who tested positive for COVID-19 were yanked out of their placements and institutionalized in a makeshift shelter, apparently in a child welfare agency office building, the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog has learned.  Like all Washington State foster children, they are not allowed in-person visits with their families.

            It happened just days after the Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families said such facilities were merely being contemplated.

            Word of the plans leaked out, via a job posting on May 8. Three days later, DCYF issued a “clarification”, declaring that the sites mentioned in the job posting were merely “potential locations in the community where we could house children in our legal care and authority who’ve tested positive for COVID-19 in the event a placement home was not available.”  

But things moved quickly from consideration to reality.  In response to emailed questions, DCYF Communications Director Debra Johnson confirmed to NCCPR that, as of May 21, four young people were institutionalized in such a facility.  UPDATE: But, as of that date, we could find nothing on the DCYF website updating the earlier "clarification." 

            The job posting listed three possible sites for institutionalizing COVID-19 positive foster youth: a summer camp, a church and one of DCYF’s own office buildings in Seattle. Johnson did not say which facility is being used, but the summer camp said it has no intention of being used for that purpose. The church says it is willing, but no such placements have been made yet. So that leaves the office building. UPDATE: The Chronicle of Social Change story confirms it's the office building.

It never had to happen

            The move is still another example of the cruelty of Washington State DCYF.  In a previous post we discussed how DCYF cut off all in-person visits between foster children and their parents in order to pander to some of the state’s worst foster parents.

            Now, consider what DCYF has done to these four children and may do to many more:

First, the children are torn from their birth families. Then all in-person visits are cut off. Then they come down with a terrifying disease. And now DCYF transfers them – and eventually, perhaps many more - into what amounts to a holding pen, where they are cared for by rotating shift staff. 

            And it’s not even a licensed holding pen.  In the email, Johnson said that “children are temporarily being supervised by agency staff and therefore the facility does not require licensure.”

Unable or unwilling?

            The children were institutionalized because, Johnson says:

In all cases, DCYF follows recommendations about sheltering in place procedures for children who are COVID-19 positive. If children can be sheltered in place in their current out-of-home placement, we do so at the direction of health care authorities.  In some circumstances, caregivers may be unable to continue to care for children placed with them. This is the reason the four COVID-19 positive children are currently receiving care at the identified site.  [Emphasis added]

             
            Perhaps for now the operative word is “unable.” But what about when foster parents are simply unwilling? Given the cruelty of some Washington State foster parents, and DCYF’s willingness to do handstands to pander to them, will these makeshift institutions become dumping grounds for foster parents who decide to get rid of their foster children because the children have COVID-19?

            And why is the only option for these children a holding pen?  Oh, wait, I know: because of the “shortage” of foster parents.  But Washington State doesn’t have too few foster parents. Washington State has too many foster children.  Year after year it takes away children at a rate well above the national average when rates of child poverty are factored in.

            Ideally, of course, DCYF would have determined that these four COVID-19 positive children could simply go home. But let’s give DCYF the benefit of the doubt and assume that, in these particular cases, that really would be unsafe.  That still doesn’t mean a holding pen was necessary.

Somewhere in Washington State, you may be sure, there are four foster children who can go home. In fact, there are many, many more than that.  And you may be sure that once all those children went home, at least some of those foster parents would be loving and caring enough to take in those four youth with COVID-19.

            But Washington State child welfare doesn’t work that way. They don’t even think that way.

A note about terminology

            You may be sure that DCYF will be oh, so upset about terms such as “holding pen” and and “warehousing.”  But when you temporarily confine children in an office building from which they cannot leave for weeks because they have an illness, and leave them to be cared for by shift staff instead of a family, that is warehousing. And while the place where they are kept may turn out to be a very pretty holding pen, it’s still a holding pen.

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

A judge’s dissent exposes the contradiction at the heart of CASA

Were CASA’s slogan honest it would be: “The voice of white privilege in Court”

A publication on the website of the National Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) Association says that the group was created to be the “child’s voice in court.”

Some local CASA chapters use “a child’s voice in court” as their slogan.

Others opt for “Lift up a child’s voice.”

But a scathing dissent by a state supreme court justice makes clear that, in many cases, that claim simply is not true.

The dissent itself did not criticize CASA, but in the course of describing what a CASA does, and does not do, it exposes a misrepresentation at the heart of the program.

CASAs are overwhelmingly white overwhelmingly middle-class amateurs sent into the homes of people who are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately of color.  The amateurs then tell judges what decisions to make and, to a frightening degree, the judges rubber-stamp the recommendations.  Yet, though CASAs almost always mean well, their only real “qualification” typically is their white, middle-class status.  So it’s no wonder a law review article aptly argued that CASAs  “give voice to white supremacy.”

The problems with this should be obvious – and I don’t just mean assorted scandals and other issues involving CASA chapters, which I’ve recapped here and at the end of this post.  

The largest, most comprehensive study of CASA ever done, a study commissioned by the National CASA Association itself, found that the group’s only accomplishments are to prolong foster care and reduce the chances that children will be placed with relatives instead of strangers – while doing nothing to improve child safety.  The trade journal Youth Today concluded that CASA’s efforts to spin the study findings “can border on duplicity.”

But all the while, CASA has been passing itself off as speaking for the child. Much of the time, it does no such thing. And that’s where the judge’s dissent comes in.

A case from Washington State

The case comes from Washington State and it involves the issue of when children should have a real voice in court – that is, a lawyer who will fight for whatever the child wants.  In Washington State appointment of such lawyers is discretionary.  In a recent decision the State Supreme Court upheld this arrangement.  But in a dissent, Justice Mary Yu argued that the state constitution requires that lawyers be appointed for all children in child welfare cases.

In the course of making her argument, she exposed a misrepresentation at the heart of CASA.

The mandate of a CASA is to advocate for whatever the CASA thinks is in the child’s best interests.  So if a child wants to go home and the CASA thinks it’s best for the child to remain in foster care (or vice versa) then the CASA actually would be violating Washington State law if she were “the child’s voice in court.”

The CASA is required to advocate for what she thinks is best even when that means effectively silencing the child.  And, it appears, that’s often what happens.

Justice Yu made that clear in discussing one of the cases on which the court ruled.  The child, known as E.H., is now about ten years old, more than old enough to make his preferences clear. His mother is in jail, but will be released next year. Justice Yu writes:

E.H.'s position was (and remains) directly at odds with the position of his CASA and the State: E.H. wants to reunite with his mother, while the CASA and the State argue that termination of parental rights is in his best interests. When the court denied appointed counsel … E.H. was erroneously deprived of his right to be heard.

Although E.H. cannot reunite with his mother right now, she is scheduled to be released in July 2019, when E.H. will still have almost half of his childhood ahead of him. In the meantime, he is in a stable placement with foster parents who are willing to serve as long-term guardians for him. He has maintained a close relationship with his mother, and she has made every possible effort to remain an important part of his life. …

E.H. thus has a clearly stated position favoring reunification, and there is no apparent reason why that outcome is not a reasonable possibility in accordance with the law of this state.

The trial court noted that the CASA, though "somewhat leery," reported E.H.'s stated position to the court in accordance with her statutory duty. … However, the position of the State and the CASA, that termination is in E.H.'s best interests, directly conflicts with E.H.'s stated desire to reunite with his family.

The CASA is required to represent and advocate for termination in order to comply with her statutory duties, but termination and reunification are mutually exclusive outcomes. … No one could possibly advocate for both at the same time. The CASA's assessment of E.H.'s best interests therefore make it impossible for her to represent his position.

It gets weirder.  Justice Yu points out that the CASA actually had a lawyer to argue for the CASA’s position – that E.H’s rights to his own mother should be terminated -- yet E.H. had no lawyer to argue for what he actually wants - reunification.

The usual defense

The standard answer from CASA apologists is that the CASA also is supposed to tell the court what the child wants – even when she advocates for the opposite.  And in this case the CASA did just that.

But I wonder how many people suggesting that is enough for children would say it was enough if they were on trial. 

Suppose you were accused of murder.  Your lawyer says to the judge: “Your honor, my client wants you to know he says he’s innocent – but I think he’s guilty as sin, and I’m going to devote all my energy in this trial to persuading you to throw the book at him!”

Anyone who considered that an adequate defense really would be not guilty – by reason of insanity.

Or, as Justice Yu put it: “reporting a child's position while strongly advocating against it does nothing to protect a child's right to be heard.”

She cites alarming data suggesting that’s what happens most of the time.  According to one study CASAs in Washington State presented actual arguments in support of the children’s position only 30 percent of the time.

And, Justice Yu noted, when a child has no one vigorously advocating for what she or he wants, it undermines the pursuit of that child’s “best interests.” In a reminder that should be heeded by judges across the country, she writes:

Trial courts cannot ascertain what is in the child's best interests by simply deferring to a CASA's … position. Courts must instead consider the positions of all the parties and reach their own conclusions.

So in addition to all the other failings of CASA, add the fact that National CASA and its chapters don’t dare even be fully honest about what they do.  A CASA is not a child’s voice in court.  A CASA is a CASA’s voice in court.  And that means, most of the time, a CASA is the voice of white privilege in court.

The trouble with CASA: A brief recap

There have been so many problems and, sometimes, scandals.  Here’s a list:

● There’s the study, commissioned by National CASA itself, that found the program prolongs foster care and reduces the likelihood that children will be placed with strangers instead of relatives – with no evidence that it improves child safety.

● There’s the conclusion from the trade journal Youth Today, that CASAs efforts to spin the study findings “can border on duplicity.”

● There’s the second study, done by a CASA, that also found CASA didn’t work.

● There’s the scandal surrounding the CASA program in Snohomish County, Washington, where a judge found “pervasive and egregious misconduct.”

● There’s the matter of the former CASA for that same program whose diatribe about the overwhelmingly poor disproportionately nonwhite parents the program sees would make Donald Trump blush.

● There’s the CASA program in Kansas that held a fundraiser that featured a blackface act.

● There’s the CASA program in California that fell apart over a simple request that volunteers be more diverse.

So it’s no wonder a law review article argues that CASA is “exercise of white supremacy.”

And see also our overview: The Case Against CASA.