UPDATED: New York’s structure for screening child abuse reports guarantees one thing: mutually-assured buck-passing. The Legislature should change that.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2018

The State Assembly holds a hearing Oct. 9 that could be a first step in the right direction

Last March, the New York City Family Policy Project, an essential resource, and not just for New Yorkers, published a comprehensive report on the harm done by the state’s child abuse hotline, which is run by the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS).  The report found that New York screens out false reports at a far lower rate than most states. That causes havoc for families wrongly investigated, and deluges workers with so many false reports they have less time to find the few children in real danger. 

Responding to the Family Policy Project report, the State Assembly Committee on Children and Families announced it will hold a hearing on the issue on Oct. 9.  

I hope they will zero-in on one nearly unique element in the New York system that makes it particularly destructive: a built-in incentive for what should be called mutually-assured buck-passing. Only one other state has the structural problem New York has built into its process.  I also hope the legislature will take a look at some relevant history, both recent and ancient. 

The structural problem 

In most states, the family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency) is a state agency.  That state agency runs the hotline and that state agency does the investigations and takes away the children.  In 10 states,* the investigating and family-separating is a local government function.  But in five of those states, including California and Minnesota, the localities typically run the hotline as well, while in three more, localities can screen most or all reports sent from the state hotline. 

Only one other state, North Dakota, does it in the awful way New York does it: 

In New York, all calls alleging child abuse and neglect go to the statewide hotline run by OCFS.  They then send the reports they screen-in to localities to investigate.  The localities have no choice – if the state hotline sends it, the locality must investigate it. 

And it sure seems like, at least in New York City, they want to keep it that way.  The reason for that has to do with safety – no, no, not safety for the children, safety for the city family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). 

Over and over again, when ACS needlessly investigates and traumatizes an innocent family, the
agency’s commissioner, Jess Dannhauser, says something like: We didn’t want to wreak havoc on this family; the state made us do it!  

The state, for its part, has an incentive to send huge numbers of reports to the localities.  After all, if the hotline wrongly screens out a report and later there’s a tragedy, the state agency gets the blame.  This may well be a key reason the New York hotline wrongly screens in so many cases. 

Meanwhile, ACS speaks often of the need for better training so mandatory reporters don’t phone in false reports, (but since they’re mandatory reporters, they still may be afraid not to report) and ACS is piloting some supports in schools to encourage those reporters to seek alternatives to calling the hotline.  But Commissioner Dannhauser has never publicly called for the Legislature to simply give ACS the power to screen out false reports sent to his agency by the OCFS hotline. 

And no wonder: If ACS were to get that power, screen out a report, and then there’s a tragedy  – well, you know. 

Hence, mutually-assured buck-passing. 

I figure Dannhouser is likely to testify at the Oct. 9 hearing.  I hope one of the lawmakers asks him this question: You keep blaming the state hotline for forcing you to investigate reports you know are b.s.  Why have you never asked us for a law allowing you to screen out those reports yourself?  (And if the legislators don’t, I hope a reporter covering the hearing will.) 

UPDATE, OCT 10. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE HEARING:

On the one hand, for the first time I know of, Dannhauser made some noises about wanting some power to screen calls after they are received from the hotline. 

 However, Dannhauser is a master of calculated ambiguity.

 All he really said in his prepared testimony is that the state should consider creating a system in which localities would submit a plan that OCFS would then have to approve which would allow ACS to "conduct an expedited and less intrusive review of the allegations." He seemed to go a little further in answer to questions – or did he?  But this is certain: At no time did he call for simply giving his own agency the power to screen out reports it deems to be false.  It doesn’t sound like he wants to give up the power ACS truly covets: the power to pass the buck.

As I said, only North Dakota does it the way New York does it.  There also are two hybrid states.  In Colorado, there’s a state hotline and local hotlines.  Most calls go directly to the local hotlines which, of course, can screen reports. Pennsylvania has a state hotline that passes on calls to local family police agencies.  But, unlike New York, those local agencies have discretion to screen out almost all reports alleging “neglect” – which are, of course, the overwhelming majority of reports. Pennsylvania localities are not allowed to screen out reports alleging abuse or “severe neglect” – but this still is an improvement over New York’s approach. 

Pennsylvania also teaches something else: Giving localities the authority to screen won’t work miracles. Both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh take away proportionately far more children than New York City – and Pittsburgh decided to screen in the worst possible way – using “predictive analytics.” 

So why make the change? For starters, just taking away ACS’ excuse and making localities accountable for launching needless, harrowing investigations of families would be worth it. 

But also: right now, New York localities have to investigate 100% of the reports sent to them by the hotline.  If they get the authority to screen and wind up investigating 90% of the reports instead of 100% that’s still an improvement. And there’s nothing to stop OCFS from using predictive analytics at the state level should it so choose. 

Even without a law, it is possible to change regulations to allow for a kind of “circuit breaker” in which localities would have the authority to stop an investigation at a very early stage if the report never should have been sent to them in the first place. 

Also, there’s a more encouraging lesson from a county in Upstate New York. 

The relatively recent history 

At one time, two Upstate counties, Monroe (metropolitan Rochester) and Onondaga (metropolitan Syracuse) ran their own hotlines.  In Monroe County that was true until 2015 when, in the wake of a child abuse death, the state took that authority away.  Showing notably more courage than their New York City counterparts, Monroe County officials actually asked for that authority back. But, in a remarkably nasty response, the state OFCS said no – because, they said, when Monroe had its own hotline they screened out too many calls.  

Well, OCFS sure “fixed” that problem! Once the state took over, the number of screened-in calls skyrocketed. 

The ancient history 

All the way back in 1987, the (long-since defunct) New York State Legislative Commission on Expenditure Review gave hypotheticals to 23 hotline operators, 12 at the state hotline in Albany, eight in Onondaga County and three in Monroe County.  In each case, they asked: Screen-in or screen-out?  

The results: Big differences between Monroe County, Onondaga County and state hotline screeners (at that time the Monroe County operators were far more likely to screen-in reports) and no consistency among the state hotline operators. 

In one case, for example, all the Monroe County operators said screen it in, almost all the Onondaga County operators said screen it out, and the 12 operators at the state hotline split: 8 yes, 4 no. 

There is no reason to think the hotline is any less arbitrary, less capricious or less cruel today. 

Improving that will require a better screening tool and yes, operators will have to be trained in how to use it, and others will have to be trained to be sure they are using it correctly.  But beware of the use of “training” as a copout. Because in addition to being invoked when it’s needed, it’s also invoked – endlessly – as a way to avoid real change.  Training is no substitute for due process. 

So if you’re in Albany on Oct. 9, please be extra careful on the roads.  Because if anyone suggests a drinking game based on how often some family police official at the hearing uses the word “training,” you can expect a lot of drunk driving. 

*-Nine states are fully local. I also count Wisconsin, since the state runs child welfare in only one county, albeit the largest, Milwaukee.  I do not count Nevada, where the state runs the system everywhere except the largest county Clark County (metropolitan Las Vegas)

No, the sky ISN’T falling because child abuse hotlines are getting fewer calls

In fact, it might clear some of the “pollution” of false reports from the system and make children safer – especially if we take this opportunity to rethink an approach that’s failed for more than half a century.

KEY POINTS

● Out of every 100 calls to child abuse “hotlines” 97 are screened out, false reports, or neglect reports – which often means poverty. So no, reducing the number of calls will not necessarily increase actual child abuse.

● In fact, fewer calls may wind up decreasing abuse. That’s because with far fewer false reports to deal with, workers may have more time to find children in real danger.

● In contrast, fear-mongering that encourages even more people to call in their slightest suspicions increases the risk of traumatizing children with needless investigations – and as workers poke and pry through home after home it increases the risk of families – and workers – contracting COVID-19.

● Even if one believes there might be some increase in actual child abuse, the notion that, as some have claimed, as soon as all those (mostly) white, middle-class professional “eyes” are averted from (mostly) poor children of color it could unleash “a child abuse pandemic!” -- is racist. It suggests that the only thing stopping those uncivilized poor folk from torturing their kids is white paternalism and omnipresent surveillance.

● Some child abuse has indeed been unleashed – by the response of the child welfare system itself.  It is child abuse to prolong needless foster care.  It is child abuse to deny a young child a visit with her or his mother.  Such wholesale policies are not necessary to curb the spread of the virus.

● Yes the increased stress we’re all under right now may cause some parents to lash out. It is even more likely to prompt the strangers taking care of foster children to lash out.  The threat of being reported to child protective services only decreases the likelihood of people reaching out for help.  And it’s hard to imagine much that would add more stress to a family than a needless child abuse investigation.

            Almost every news story about COVID-19 and its impact on child welfare focuses primarily, often exclusively, on one theme. Like the frantic robot on the original Lost in Space shouting “Danger, Will Robinson!” the stories cry out: Oh my God!  Calls to the child abuse hotlines are declining because schools are closed!  How will we find the child abuser under every bed?  Two stories have even included quotes warning of, as one official’s tweet put it “a child abuse pandemic!” [Exclamation point in original.]

            Two major exceptions I’ve seen so far: Impressive stories from Eli Hager in The Marshall Project and Roxanna Asgarian in Vox. [UPDATE: Here's another, from Rachel Blustain in City Limits and another from Abigail Kramer at the Center for New York City Affairs, and, one of the best: Kendra Hurley in Bloomberg CityLab. Even that bastion of the child welfare establishment, Chapin Hall, has debunked this myth.

 

            The assumption is that vast numbers of brutes and sadists have been lurking in the home all along, and the only thing stopping them from jumping out and torturing children is school personnel ever-vigilant to call child protective hotlines.  And, of course, the increased stress of coping with the pandemic will make things even worse as parents lash out at their children.

           

In fact, the reduction in calls might improve child safety, by giving workers more time to find children in real danger.  In contrast, encouraging everyone to call in their slightest suspicion, in addition to all the other ways it harms children, now increases the risk that families – and caseworkers – will contract the virus as the workers go through homes opening refrigerators and pantries and asking intimate questions of everyone in the house.

Meanwhile, this outpouring of mostly white middle-class angst ignores the real child abuse that has been unleashed by the pandemic – abuse that targets children who are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately nonwhite, abuse inflicted by the child welfare system’s own response to the pandemic.

            It’s not just the usual mainstream media suspects.  Mother Jones is a publication that prides itself in championing the poor, the working class and people of color. But they jumped on the same bandwagon.

            The profusion of these stories is a testament to two things: The first is the extent to which the unconscious biases about race and class that afflict child welfare itself also afflict newsrooms.  

            But also it’s a tribute to the success of America’s latter-day “child savers” in their decades-long effort to foment hysteria about child abuse by making selective use of horror stories and selective use of statistics. Indeed, at least one of the groups responsible for doing this decades ago has effectively admitted it – and even suggested it may have been a mistake.

The child abuse many stories ignore

 It is child abuse to prolong the anguish of a child’s time in foster care because court hearings are only for taking away children, not for sending them home.  (That also increases the risk the children will catch the virus in a crowded foster home or group home.)  It is child abuse to let white, middle-class foster parents veto a child of color’s chance to visit her or his mother and bond with her because the foster parent doesn’t want to “risk” it – even though there often are ways to do in-person visits safely.  And yes, that is happening in some states. In other states the visit cutoff is absolute.

These practices are so abusive toward children that one of the federal government’s top child welfare officials has sent out a letter strongly urging an end to these sorts of blanket restrictions.

  All of this is discussed in detail in NCCPR’s column last week in Youth Today.

This kind of abuse is inflicted almost exclusively on children who are poor and disproportionately on children of color. 

As the Movement for Family Power put it:

Every day our family courts are reminding us that Black and Brown families are not "essential," that keeping our families together is not a "priority," that our prolonged separations are not "emergencies"

Similarly, at its core the notion that taking (mostly) white middle-class “eyes” off families that are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately nonwhite could unleash a “child abuse pandemic!” is racist. It suggests that the only thing stopping those uncivilized poor folk from torturing their kids is white paternalism and omnipresent surveillance.

Most journalists like to think of themselves as open-minded, and certainly not biased based on race or class -- and all of their stories about child abuse reporting were written with the best of intentions.  But what else can explain the near universal refusal to report on this kind of pandemic-related child abuse – even by news organizations such as Mother Jones?

Foster parents lose their temper, too

As for all the talk about added stress on families, of course that is true.  But foster parents lose their temper, too.  And you’re not going to ease a family’s stress by sending in an investigator to ask traumatic questions of children, possibly stripsearch them and maybe walk out with them (and in the process put everyone at greater risk of COVID-19).  Instead, you traumatize the children if you tear them from everyone they know and love.  And now the damage is compounded: Their risk of contracting COVID-19 increases further as they go from home to car to office to shelter to car to foster home. 

After all that, they wind up in a foster home where the foster parents are just as likely to be stressed.

Even in the best of times multiple studies have found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes – and the record of group homes and institutions is even worse.

Now, with all this additional stress foster parents are, if anything, even more likely to lash out at the newcomer in their home because these strangers don’t have the secret ingredient that increases patience in the most stressful of times: Love. Parents and extended family have that secret ingredient. That’s probably why, for example, kinship foster parents, such as grandparents are far less likely to demand that children be doped up on potent, sometimes dangerous psychiatric drugs.

Why the sky isn’t falling

            To understand why very few actual cases of serious abuse are being missed – and more such cases may now be found – we first need to look at all those reports to child abuse hotlines.

            In 2018, calls were made concerning 7.8 million children.  But many of them were to obviously false, or so clearly not maltreatment that they were screened out and never sent on for investigation.  Cases involving 4.3 million children were investigated.  But 83 percent of those cases involved false reports – usually well intentioned, but sometimes including CYA reports by “mandated reporters” such as teachers terrified not to report their slightest suspicion.

            So now, let’s look at the “substantiated” cases. The first thing to understand about them is “substantiated” doesn’t mean what many people think. It doesn’t mean a court convicted the accused, or even that the accused had a chance to present a defense to anyone. It means only that a caseworker checked a box on a form – it could be no more than a guess.

And in most states, the worker need merely guess that it is slightly more likely than not that abuse or neglect occurred; in some states the standard is even lower.  So consider again: Even with that incredibly low standard of proof and no chance for families to defend themselves, 83 percent of the time, the report was not substantiated. Oh, and one more thing: The only study I know of to second-guess those caseworker guesses found that workers are far more likely to wrongly substantiate an allegation than wrongly say one is unfounded.[1]   

            Of the cases that were substantiated by far the largest category is “neglect.” Yes, sometimes neglect can be extremely serious.  A parent locking a child in a closet and starving him to death is neglect.  But so is running out of SNAP aid at the end of the month. Guess which happens more often.  Two-thirds of all “substantiated” cases involve allegations of neglect – and nothing else. 

            So out of every 100 children who are subjects of calls to child abuse hotlines, 45 are screened out, 46 are false reports and six are neglect.  Sexual abuse and all forms of physical abuse, from the most minor to the most horrible involve three of those 100 children.

           

 When less is more

            One could argue that if even one case is missed then the sky really is falling.  And indeed, the only acceptable goal for child abuse is zero.  But fewer reports might well be the best way to bring us closer to that goal.

.

            As the pie chart makes clear, during normal times investigators for CPS agencies spend an astounding amount of their time – at least 83 percent of their time – spinning their wheels. They go to a home, often traumatize the children through the investigation itself – and find nothing.

The pandemic adds a whole new danger: An investigation means not just walking into a home, but walking all over the home, opening cupboards and refrigerators, looking into every bedroom. It also means questioning every member of the household.  The caseworker does this again and again going from home to home.  This, of course, greatly increases the risk of spreading the virus both to families and to caseworkers.  But more than four times out of five, it’s all for nothing. We should think long and hard before doing anything that’s likely to increase false reports.

            All this is a result of a jury-rigged system created more than half a century ago – put in place and expanded over and over with no evidence that it would work.  So huge numbers of people – most notably, at the moment, teachers – are mandated reporters. They can wrongly report as often as they like and there’s no penalty – but they could lose their jobs, or worse, for failing to report.  Now that research finally is being done, it turns out this system is backfiring – increasing the danger to children.

            That’s because all those false allegations, trivial cases, and poverty-confused-with-neglect cases overwhelm workers. Because of those huge caseloads, it’s often impossible to investigate any case thoroughly – so some children are needlessly torn from everyone loving and familiar while other cases involving children in real danger are missed.

            If hotline calls continue to decrease, that has the potential to significantly cut worker caseloads.  That means they’ll have time to make the extra phone call, question more witnesses, and even call a teacher at home to see if s/he had any concerns back when the child still was in class.  And it may reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus to families and to caseworkers.  Yes, the reduction in hotline calls might lead to some cases of children in real danger being overlooked – but it may well lead to more children in real danger being found, and rescued.

            At least that might happen if the fearmongering doesn’t ratchet up hysteria by telling us all, over and over, to report our slightest suspicion, now that teachers aren’t on-hand to do it.  If that happens, workers will remain overwhelmed and the percentage of false reports is likely to increase – as people are encouraged to report even the most trivial concern based on little or no evidence.

A chance to start over?

            But now we have a chance to do better.

An irony of the pandemic is that it led to far less pollution in China when all the factories were closed and traffic stopped.  

It’s possible that with schools and other places children congregate closed, the child welfare system may be less “polluted” by false reports and poverty cases – and workers may be able to more clearly see, and save, more children in real danger.

For example, in Vox, Will Francis, Texas chapter director of the National Association of Social Workers offers this lament:

“Normally, if a kid wasn’t getting fed at home or was having a bad day, it was a teacher that saw them. You’re losing a huge number of eyeballs on kids.”

           

But “a kid [not] getting fed at home” is not a reason to call child protective services – it’s a reason to call a foodbank!

None of this means we should keep the schools closed forever – just as we shouldn’t close factories and ban traffic forever. But perhaps from all of this we will learn lessons about better ways to reduce child abuse.  We now have a chance to rethink the entire report-anything-and-everything model that has failed for decades. We can start over and build a network of support for families instead of a network of omnipresent surveillance. 

In the process we’ll save more children, and do far less collateral damage.

[1] - Study Findings: Study of National Incidence and Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect: 1988 (Washington: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1988), Chapter 6, Page 5.

News and commentary round-up, week ending June 18, 2019

● There’s nothing unusual about a child protective hotline being used as a weapon of family destruction by those making malicious false reports and by “mandated reporters” making CYA calls.  It is unusual when the child protective services agency admits this is a problem – even when they won’t actually do anything about it.  That’s what’s happing in New Mexico, as revealed in an excellent story from Searchlight New Mexico.  And I have a blog post about what could be done about the problem if agencies ever mustered up the courage to do it.

● Still another abuse of families is state central registers of alleged child abusers. They’re really easy to get on and really hard to get off.  WNYC Public Radio has a story about how that hurts children and families.

● Did racial bias prompt Texas child welfare authorities to needlessly tear a black child from his parents? Yes. Who says so? The caseworker assigned to the case.  The Houston Chronicle has the story; a story that also illustrates why the longtime flack for the state child welfare agency needs to see an otolaryngologist.  All that time defending the indefensible has compromised his sense of smell.

● A Forbes commentator writes about a new study in JAMA Network Open, part of the Journal of the American Medical Association network of medical journals. The study found that child neglect decreased in states that chose to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The story includes a link to the study.  In an invited commentary in JAMA Network Open the author says the findings may indicate “an unexpected benefit” of Medicaid expansion.  But by now we should realize that nothing is more predictable.

● Prof. Martin Guggenheim, co-director of the New York University School of Law Family Defense Clinic (and President of NCCPR) and Susan Jacobs, founding executive director of the Center for Family Representation discuss the implications of that landmark study demonstrating the success of high-quality family defense in safely reducing foster care.

● And I have a postscript to the brilliant Netflix series When They See Us. It’s about how the mother of one of the Exonerated Five, Sharonne Salaam, went on to help reform child welfare in New York City.

NCCPR in Youth Today: After anonymous child abuse reporting Is “weaponized” to attack family of #BlackLivesMatter activist, congressional candidate asks “What’s going on?” Here’s the answer.

When she first learned that journalist and Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King and his family were being harassed by a troll who had called in a false report of child abuse, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was outraged. She is the activist and champion of the poor and working class who was catapulted to national prominence when she won an upset victory in a Democratic congressional primary in New York City.

But even with all her experience as a progressive organizer and activist, she was shocked by how child protective services agencies work.

“This is wrong,” she tweeted. “Shaun is an activist that has been targeted in the past. Anonymous claims should be thoroughly vetted before exposing his children + family to a potentially damaging experience.”

And then she added a question: “What’s going on here?”

What’s going on here? Business as usual, that’s what’s going on here. The only part that’s unusual is that this is one of those rare occasions when child protective services targeted a family with the resources to fight back (not to mention more than one million followers on Twitter).

Read our full column in Youth Today about what's going on here - and what can be done about it.