Michigan DHS goes soft on child abuse (when it’s in foster care)

THE AGENCY TAKES A KEYSTONE KOPS APPROACH TO POLICING ABUSE IN INSTITUTIONS

One of the more alarming sections of the report by the independent monitor of the Michigan child welfare consent decree is the section on abuse in foster care, especially abuse in the institutions so beloved by Michigan Department of Human Services (DHS) Director Ismael Ahmed and his "leadership" team.

When it comes to how many foster children are being abused in Michigan and who is abusing them, DHS doesn't know, and doesn't seem to care. DHS uses what can best be described as a Keystone Kops approach to policing maltreatment in substitute care.

The consent decree DHS signed includes a series of commitments to change that. The report found that, time and time again, DHS failed to keep those commitments.

According to the monitor's report:

By the end of Period Two, DHS still did not know the extent of abuse or neglect in care in Michigan and had fallen behind in delivering on its commitments in the Agreement to define and address this critical issue.

UNDERCOUNTING ABUSE IN FOSTER CARE

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, the DHS computer system doesn't include some categories of abuse in substitute care – so for years, DHS has been blithely underreporting the real figure. In addition, although DHS can determine that a particular child was abused, apparently the database that tells them that is not linked to the database that tells them which of these children are in substitute care. Brilliant.

The problem is even worse when it comes to investigating abuse in institutions. While child protective services (CPS) investigates abuse in foster homes, when the abuse is in institutions it's investigated by the Bureau of Child and Adult Licensing (BCAL). Leaving aside the question of whether licensing inspectors even know how to investigate child abuse, DHS does not actually allow BCAL inspectors to make a determination. Rather, BCAL is supposed to forward its findings to CPS – which is supposed to make the actual decision (apparently based solely on the paperwork). The trouble is, DHS couldn't prove to the monitor that the information from BCAL even was passed on to CPS.

And it gets worse. According to the monitor's report:

A review of a sample of BCAL special investigation reports raised serious concerns about the treatment of youth in some placements with the responses focused almost exclusively on institutional remedies – examples include: the firing of a staff person, the need for additional training, or flaws in personnel screening practices or staff coverage ratios - with little reference to the needs of the child or children involved. [Emphasis added.]

RESTRAINTS AND SECLUSION

Then there's the vital issue of the misuse and overuse of "restraints" and "seclusion" – nice euphemisms for solitary confinement and God knows what else.

The settlement requires that DHS ensure that the institutions report every use of seclusion and restraint to a "Quality Assurance" unit. But DHS didn't do it, and hasn't even tried to do it. DHS hasn't even started gathering information. According to the monitor's report:

This is particularly concerning because the monitoring team's review of BCAL special investigations identified multiple issues with restraints, many of which identified the need for improved restraint training and adherence to policy.

The consent decree also includes a requirement that DHS consider how often an institution abuses the children confined there when deciding whether to renew the institution's license. Yes, I'm serious. It took a consent decree to force DHS even to consider this.

But DHS broke its word. According to the report:

The monitoring team … read a sample of the available re-licensing reports from Period Two. The monitoring team found no documentation in any of those reports that DHS had, as DHS committed it would in the Agreement, taken into "due consideration" the history (or absence of history) of any substantiations [of maltreatment] or corporal punishment that occurred at any of those facilities or contract agencies. … There appears to be no place on the standard re-licensure reporting form for the necessary and critical consideration of the history of maltreatment and corporal punishment.

DHS also promised to implement a "two-strikes-you're-out" policy against institutions that covered up abuse by failing to report it to DHS. But DHS didn't to that either.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION UNITS

And finally, there is the matter of creating special "Maltreatment in Care Investigation Units," starting in the state's five largest counties. In a press release issued the day before the monitor's report came out, DHS bragged about getting these units off the ground. DHS neglected to mention that they botched the planning and screwed up the implementation of these units. Again, from the report:

When the plan was provided to the monitoring team, it incorporated poor data that severely undercounted allegations of maltreatment in care. In relying on this data, DHS allocated too few staff to these units. The plan lacked information on training; analysis of the challenges inherent in investigations in institutional settings; clarity about reporting lines; and information on tracking, especially with regard to corrective action plans.

(Other than that, however, it was just fine.)

All of this can be found in the monitor's report on pages 61 through 67. Reading through it, it's hard to escape the impression that top management at DHS is more interested in protecting their friends who run private agencies than in protecting children.

Foster care in Michigan: DHS flunks ANOTHER exam

By now, it's well known that the monitor overseeing the consent decree between the Michigan Department of Human Services and the group that so arrogantly calls itself "Children's Rights" issued a report that found huge problems at DHS – including illegal budget cuts, understating abuse in foster care and the mass expulsion of children from the homes of relatives.

But this isn't the only scathing report to surface about DHS.

Every few years, the federal government reviews the performance of every state through what is called a Child and Family Services Review. States tend to do badly. But, as The Detroit News reports today, the latest review for Michigan shows that, even compared to other states, Michigan's performance was dismal. There are seven key categories in the CFSR – and Michigan flunked every single one of them.

How much does this really mean? The CFSR methodology is dreadful, a fact NCCPR has pointed out repeatedly. So, were this the only indication of failure, it really wouldn't tell us much. But because the CFSR tracks so closely with the far more rigorous review by the monitor, it suggests that, in this case, even if only by chance, the CFSR is on the mark.

Think of it this way: The CFSR is like one of those simple, inexpensive screening tests a doctor can perform for some forms of cancer. They don't really tell you if you're sick, but they may tell you that a more rigorous test, like a biopsy, is needed. The monitor's report is the biopsy. Unfortunately, the monitor's report confirms the CFSR "diagnosis": The Michigan child welfare system is gravely ill – and it is having a malignant effect on some of the children it is supposed to help. It needs radical surgery.

TWO REPORTS FIND THE SAME CORE PROBLEM

Both documents highlight the same core problem: The devastating cuts in safe, proven alternatives to tearing apart families. These cuts never had to happen. They were not caused primarily by the recession, but by the way DHS chose to meet the terms of the consent decree itself, and by DHS Director Ismael Ahmed's pandering to the state's powerful private child welfare agencies.

To cure the malignancy, DHS must reverse course. It must not only restore the cuts in prevention and family preservation, it must expand these programs, while doing its cutting in needless foster care and, especially, needless institutionalization of children. (Yes, DHS has begun to cut such placements, and that's commendable, but it's only a down payment on what it owes the children it has wronged.)

The monitor's report details the enormous harm caused by the cuts to prevention and family preservation – and makes clear that the cuts violate the consent decree, making them illegal. Unfortunately, CR, which is as hostile to real family preservation as DHS, isn't doing anything about it.

Similarly, the CFSR declares that

The State's low performance on the outcomes assessed by the CFSR may be attributed in part to State budget cuts that have had a negative impact on the ability of the State to provide services to children and families who come into contact with the child welfare system, particularly in-home service cases. [Emphasis added].

The CFSR singled out for praise the state's outstanding Intensive Family Preservation Services program, Families First, and its Family Reunification services program. But both programs were cut back to fund a foster care caseworker hiring binge and rate increases for residential treatment providers.

The CFSR goes on to conclude that, when it comes to services to families, Michigan actually has deteriorated since the previous federal evaluation in 2002. Among the findings:

●There is a scarcity of key services, such as mental health and substance abuse treatment services, which results in waiting lists for these services.

●Many of these services are not available at all in some parts of the state.

The CFSR also found:

● The State was not consistent in assessing and meeting the needs of children receiving in-home services, foster parents, mothers, and fathers.

● The State did not make concerted efforts to involve children, mothers, and fathers in case planning in both the foster care and in-home services cases, although children in the foster care cases were more likely to be involved than children in the in-home services cases.

This new CFSR notes that when Michigan flunked its previous CFSR, one response was to expand an initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation known as Family to Family.

But as NCCPR noted in our first report on Michigan child welfare last year, in 2008, DHS reduced the level of its participation in that program in Wayne and Macomb Counties.

And there was one more finding, which says a lot about the priorities of DHS. Once a child was in foster care, Michigan generally performed adequately at meeting the child's physical health needs. That was less likely to happen if DHS was helping a family while the child remained in the home. DHS had problems meeting children's mental health needs no matter where they were, but did worse when the children still were in their own homes.

In other words, parents have to lose their children to foster care before DHS will help those children get the health care they need.

When asked about this by The Detroit News, DHS showed that it still excels in two areas: cynicism and deceit. Among the "improvements" cited by DHS: Spending $4 million on prevention programs. What DHS didn't say, but the monitor's report reveals, is that this $4 million is not new money, it's money being shifted by cutting other prevention programs.

CR SHARES RESPONSIBILITY

None of this is solely DHS's fault. CR pushed DHS in this dreadful direction when it negotiated a consent decree that does nothing to demand that DHS do more to keep families together. Instead, it allows DHS to lower caseloads through that foster care worker hiring binge – which it is financing through cuts in prevention and family preservation. The cuts also are going to finance rate increases for residential treatment centers.

So far CR hasn't lifted a finger to stop these cuts. It's been up to the monitor to point out that they violate the consent decree, while CR sits on its hands. At the same time, of course, CR demanded that mass expulsion of children from the homes of relatives in order to satisfy CR's bureaucratic obsession with licensing.

Foster care in Michigan: The DHS horror show

MONITOR'S REPORT MAKES CLEAR CUTS IN PREVENTION AND FAMILY PRESERVATION WERE ILLEGAL – AND DHS MAY HAVE LIED TO THE LEGISLATURE

When the first report of the independent monitor overseeing Michigan's child welfare consent decree was released six months ago, I wrote that "No Hollywood studio is ever going to buy the rights" to such a report.

But if such a studio were to try to make a movie based on the findings of the monitor's second report, released Tuesday, I know the genre in which it would fit: horror film.

The expulsion of hundreds of children from the homes of loving relatives in order to satisfy the licensing obsession of the group that so arrogantly calls itself "Children's Rights," described in previous posts, is only the worst of it. There's much more.

Indeed, the cruelty of what the Michigan Department of Human Services is doing to the state's vulnerable children is matched only by the agency's cynicism in violating the consent decree. This is particularly clear when it comes to the already minimal provisions in the decree involving services to keep families together.

The section of the monitor's report on prevention and family preservation describes a litany of deceit and broken promises.

●The settlement required DHS to conduct a "needs assessment" and then provide $4 million in additional funds for those needs. The promise was broken.

●The settlement required DHS at least to fight for children by seeking the funding it needed from the legislature. But DHS Director Ismael Ahmed and his staff refused even to ask the legislature for the money. The promise was broken.

●The report raises the question of whether DHS lied to the Michigan Legislature. DHS claimed it did not need certain funds to comply with the consent decree, when there was overwhelming evidence that it did.

These were not just promises like the kind one makes in a political campaign. These are legally-binding commitments. The report makes clear that DHS has violated the consent decree. That means DHS has broken the law.

Unfortunately, since these broken promises involve prevention and family preservation, the group that brought the lawsuit, the group that so arrogantly calls itself "Children's Rights," doesn't seem to care. In Connecticut, when a prevention program that includes middle-class families was threatened, CR rushed into court to try to save it – and told us so over and over again in press release after press release. But in Michigan, where the cuts affect only the usual child welfare agency clientele – overwhelmingly poor people - CR has sat on its hands. Now, at last, some lawyers from the group are going to sit down and talk things over with DHS for 30 days.

Big deal.

DETAILS FROM THE MONITOR'S REPORT

Here's how the monitor's report explains what happened. (Wherever a section is in bold, the emphasis has been added by NCCPR.) According to the report:

The Agreement includes a set of necessary commitments to improve the Michigan child welfare system for children and families, many requiring additional investment.

But DHS decided it would rather spend additional funds on hiring more foster care workers and lavishing rate increases on the state's powerful private providers of institutional "care." So, even with children's futures, and possibly their lives, at stake, DHS played cynical shell games with state money.

The monitor's report notes that when the Governor ordered DHS to slash its budget, DHS chose to cut prevention and family preservation. According to the monitor:

Some of these eliminated services are identical to those that both DHS and Michigan State University have identified, as part of needs assessments in the Agreement … as critical – but scarce – for children and families involved with Michigan's child welfare system.

The State Budget Office and DHS did not ask the Legislature for funds to prevent these cuts in services to children and families involved with the child welfare system. These cuts are not consistent with DHS' pledge to build "additional services and placements" in the Agreement…

Moreover, DHS committed in the Agreement that it would, at a minimum, request of the Michigan Legislature "state funds and any federal/special fund authorization sufficient to effect the provisions and outcome measures set forth in this Agreement in connection with any budget, funding, or allocation request to the executive or legislative branches of State government." However, during Period Two, DHS and the State Budget Office did not advance to the Michigan Legislature a request for funds or spending authorization to fully replace the significant cuts in services to children and families that the administration implemented in FY2009 or to fully fund the commitments in the Agreement.

In June 2009, the State Budget Director submitted to the Michigan Legislature a revised FY2010 funding recommendation for DHS that eliminated slightly more than $20 million and 197 child welfare staff positions originally requested to implement the Agreement. DHS indicated these positions were no longer necessary to satisfy its commitments in the Agreement due to reductions in the overall caseload managed by DHS. However … DHS did not meet several of its caseload commitments in Period Two, standards which are only the starting point in a multi-year process of reducing caseloads from excessive to appropriate levels.

As for the "needs assessment," it led the monitor to call for spending $1.5 million more on housing for children aging out of foster care, $1.5 million to support youth "stepping down" from residential care, and $1 million in new family preservation services. And how did DHS "comply" with its legal duty? According to the monitor:

DHS advised the monitoring team that it will divert $4 million in existing family preservation funds, beginning in Period Three, to fund this expansion. Although DHS is not responsible for implementing this expansion of services until Period Three, the monitoring team observes that a diversion of pre-existing resources to fund services is not consistent with the Agreement or the underlying Needs Assessment, and will closely assess funding sources for additional services in future periods.

I'll bet Ahmed and his pals in the private agencies were really proud of that one.

NEXT WEEK: DHS HAS NO IDEA HOW MUCH ABUSE GOES ON AT RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT CENTERS – AND DOESN'T SEEM VERY INTERESTED IN FINDING OUT