Colorado task force’s solution to stop children from running from residential treatment: Fence ‘em in & lock ‘em up!

 

When NCCPR released a comprehensive report on Colorado “child welfare” in September 2023, we included a section called “Tapeworm in the System.”  It’s about Colorado’s love affair with the worst form of “care” for children – group homes and institutions.  At the time, we noted that, as of 2021, Colorado was using them at a rate 33% above the national average.  By 2022, use of group homes had fallen, but Colorado was using the worst of the worst, institutions at a rate 40% above the national average.

We wrote this about a “task force” the legislature created, overseen by the state's child welfare "ombudsman," to spend two years

determining “the root causes of why children run away from out-of-home placements” and figure out how to stop them from running.

Allow us to save the state a little money and a lot of time: Children run away from out-of-home placements because they are in out-of-home placements. You stop children from running away from awful places by not putting them in awful places.

Alas, the “task force” did not take us up on this offer.

Ignoring lived experience

They did, however, meet with adults who, as children, had run away from placements.  According to the task force report:

All the panelists … recalled their desire to return to their home of origin and/or parents, regardless of circumstances

They also commissioned a study which found that

Youth stated that they feel disconnected from family, friends and experiences while they are in residential care. They stated a strong desire to remain connected to family and friends and to remain connected to familiar environments or places. This desire to feel connected is often a reason for running away from care.

But these young people were ignored. The task force report says nothing – nothing – about reducing the “need” for residential treatment, shortening time in care or even increasing “connectedness” for the inmates residents.

Instead, recommendations include this:

[M]embers agreed that residential facilities should not resemble jails or prisons and should remain inviting for children or youth. … However, the task force also noted that perimeter security is essential for keeping dangers out. There was unanimous agreement that fencing could be an effective method for preventing children and youth from running away from care.

Presumably, they mean inviting fences – painted in pretty colors perhaps?

If you’re wondering why fencing also might be “needed” to “keep dangers out” – it illustrates another reason why residential treatment is so harmful.  When you bring a lot of troubled, vulnerable children into one institution it becomes a magnet for predators – because predators go where the prey is.

The task force also called for a study of

the use of delayed locks, fencing and alarms. Funding should also be provided for the implementation of these mechanisms, if the study finds their use to be appropriate.

The alarms they have in mind include “motion sensing alarms” for when children leave their rooms at night.  According to the report: “This was also presented as a way to support facilities working with minimal staff.”

The report notes that these recommendations are not meant to apply to family foster homes – not because the idea of fencing a foster home necessarily appalled them, but because of

the diverse needs of children and youth in foster home placements and the large volume of foster homes located throughout the state.

The false premise at the heart of it all

Part of the problem is that the task force started with a fundamentally false premise. The report claims that

Colorado’s state-licensed residential treatment facilities provide critically important services to some of the state’s most high needs children and youth, including those with severe behavioral health needs.

That is not true. 

On the contrary, as a U.S. Senate Committee report points out:

[Residential treatment facilities] are costly, not as effective as community-based behavioral health treatment options, and often harmful to youth in their care.

The report added:

The risk of harm to children in RTFs is endemic to the operating model.

There is much more documentation concerning why residential treatment is worthless, how there are alternatives that are far better and far less costly, and why the usual excuses for using group homes and institutions don’t hold up to scrutiny in the Colorado report excerpt below.

Stacking the deck from the start

The reason the task force ignored all this evidence – and the young people whose time they wasted – is clear when you look at the makeup of the task force; who was on it, and who wasn’t. That, too, is discussed below. Suffice it to say that Colorado’s residential treatment task force was like a task force to study climate change that included no environmentalists but lots of representatives of the fossil fuel industry.

Worst of all, the task force exploited two of the members, parents of two children who died after
running away from such places. Of course, a parent whose child ran from an institution and died would want a fence. But surely even more they would want the kind of help that would have made it unnecessary for their children ever to be institutionalized in the first place.*

And on that score, if anything, NCCPR’s 2023 prediction about the task force was too optimistic. We wrote:

The residential treatment industry will make sure that when the task force issues its report it will include claims that the industry is all for Wraparound and they love foster families and they really, truly want to keep children in their own homes “whenever possible.” They’ll say they just want a “full continuum of care.”

But what stands in the way of a full continuum of care is – the residential treatment industry. 

We were wrong. Apparently, the residential treatment industry is so confident that Colorado lawmakers and media will buy anything they sell that they don’t even have to pretend to support alternatives. The word “wraparound” does not appear in the task force report even once.

Two bills

So far, the Colorado Legislature has not gone as far as the Task Force. But there is a bill “sailing through the legislature” to build a fence around a new residential treatment facility scheduled to open in Denver next year. In other words, a plan to make a facility the state doesn’t need in the first place even worse. It requires legislation because under current law you can’t force youth to be institutionalized behind a fence if they haven’t committed a crime.

Another bill, (also "sailing through the legislature) based on another task force recommendation, calls for creation of a standard pre-admission “risk assessment tool” to predict how likely it is that a given child will run. 

And then what?  The task force says a consultant should draw up the tool and determine “how the information obtained from the tools may be used to adjust a treatment plan for the child or youth while they are in out-of-home care.” 

And what, exactly, does that mean? Even more restrictions, more onerous “treatment” for any child the assessment tool thinks might run away?

The report makes no mention of the fact that, in other child welfare contexts, such tools have an ugly history of bias.  According to the report “several members cautioned” that objective criteria are necessary and that the assessment of risk can vary “depending on the professional performing the assessment” but there was no mention here of racial bias – something that might have come up had the task force itself been a bit more diverse.

And, what happens if, despite the assessment tool, and the alarms, and the fencing, children still run away? The task force has an answer: Create a whole new type of institution just for them! Or at least a whole new name: “Short-term stabilization units.”

In short, the Task Force did exactly what we thought it would do: pander to the residential treatment industry at the expense of the children. They’re feeding the tapeworm in the system  Because, remember …

 *-The institutions serve two populations, foster children taken from their own parents by force of law, and children placed voluntarily by desperate parents unable to cope, and who have no other option. 

NCCPR in the Albany Times Union: Commentary: Foster care agencies should not get a taxpayer bailout

New York must not absolve these institutions of responsibility for actions alleged in Child Victims Act lawsuits.

To hear the private agencies that institutionalize foster children in New York tell it, the rampant abuses that went on in their facilities, abuses that have led to more than 800 lawsuits under the Child Victims Act, are “sins of the past,” so they shouldn’t have to pay for them.  Instead, they argue, taxpayers should pay, in the form of a bailout of up to $200 million.

If they don’t, the institutions warn they may go broke and shut down — or at least take away children’s birthday parties. 

None of it holds up to scrutiny. 

Sins of the past?  Everyone from foster youth to a committee of the U.S. Senate begs to differ. …

Read the full column in the Albany Times Union

NCCPR in the Missouri Independent: What Missouri’s vulnerable children need — and what they don’t

Two recent news stories aptly illustrate what Missouri children “at risk” of maltreatment need — and what they don’t. 

What they need is concrete help for their families, so their family poverty is not confused with “neglect” and they are not torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster care. 

To his great credit, Missouri Republican U.S. Rep. Jason Smith has partnered with Wisconsin Democratic U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore to introduce legislation to clarify that a small source of federal aid can be used to provide this kind of help. 

And to his great credit, in supporting the bill, Children’s Division Director Darrell Missey said: …

Read the full commentary in the Missouri Independent

Who’s afraid of Paris Hilton?

 

It turns out, Paris Hilton knows more about "residential
treatment facilities" than at least one self-proclaimed
"child welfare scholar." (Photto by Peter Schäfermeier,
via Wikimedia Commons)

In a previous post, I noted the increasing desperation of Richard Barth.  The former Dean of the University of Maryland School of Social Work and self-proclaimed “child welfare scholar” seeks to run from the fact that the system he’s done so much to build and maintain – the family policing system – has failed. 

Among other things, I discussed in that post how he couldn’t cope with the rigorous scholarship of Prof. Kelley Fong, author of the landmark study Investigating Families. 

But now it turns out, Barth also can’t cope with Paris Hilton. 

Late last month, Hilton testified at a Congressional hearing. The topics included the horrors inflicted on thousands of young people, herself included, by “residential treatment facilities” (RTFs).  The hearing followed the release of a scathing report from a United States Senate committee on those horrors and the entire residential treatment industry.  

So how did Barth respond?  By pretending that this industry has nothing to do with his sacred, beloved “child welfare” system.  It’s not a matter of ill-motivation. Barth has always genuinely wanted to help vulnerable children.  This issue is his failure to face the reality that his approach has backfired. 

So in a post on his increasingly shrill feed on the site formerly known as Twitter, he tells us that Hilton: 

has very reasonable grievances but, just to be clear, she was not in the "child welfare system".  Her treatment was privately arranged by her family.  

In another tweet, he tells us: 

“@ParisHilton story is about private residential treatment--another, distinct, service ‘system.’" 

And then he throws in a story about saintly foster parents in order to distract us from what the system – and it is one system – is really like. 

So, time for a fact check. 

For starters, to characterize what Hilton and so many others have been forced to endure in these hellholes as merely “very reasonable grievances” is a disturbing understatement.  

But more to the point: Residential treatment facilities collect their victims from two sources.  Yes, sometimes desperate parents are fooled into sending their children there voluntarily.  But a large source of victims – and revenue – for these places is foster children. They’re dumped into institutions by family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies) when they run out of foster homes because they take so many children needlessly. 

Professor Barth may not understand this.  But Paris Hilton does.  As she testified: 

“For children who do end up in foster care, we cannot allow them to grow up in cold facilities that act like kid prisons.” 

Another speaker at the same hearing, not a celebrity but a former foster youth, Tori Hope Petersen, made the same point. 

But if that’s not enough for Barth, the Senate committee report itself singled out the warehousing of foster youth in such places as a particular problem.  According to the report: 

[A] significant portion of foster children placed at RTFs have no demonstrated behavioral health needs, so family court judges should be dissuaded from placing children in RTFs … 

The report goes on to note that at least two states are violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, in one case by placing disabled foster children in substandard facilities, in the other by dumping them in RTFs when they didn’t need to be placed in such places at all. 

Citing an excellent report from the group Think of Us, the Senate report notes that “a child described being mocked by a staff member who said, “[t]hat’s why your mom didn’t want to keep you. That’s why you’re in foster care.” 

And it’s those family police agencies, so beloved by Barth, who are responsible for investigating abuses in these horrible institutions – and repeatedly turning a blind eye. 

Pretty much everyone knows it's all part of one “child welfare” system – except apparently Richard Barth, who’s made this same claim before.  As we noted in that previous post:

For some reason, the federal database known as the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System has a whole category for “institutions” Similarly, this excellent database from ChildTrends includes “Group Home or Institution” under “Placement settings and stability for children in foster care.” [Emphasis added.]  

And apparently [if Barth is right] the entire federal government got its regulations wrong, too.  Because federal regulations define foster care as 

“24-hour substitute care for all children placed away from their parents or guardians and for whom the State agency has placement and care responsibility.”  

Barth also seems to think it’s significant that RTFs are mostly privately run; as if this somehow makes them separate from his precious foster care system.  But most group home and institutional care has always been privately run – with all of us taxpayers providing most of the money.  In many states family foster care also is overseen by private agencies. 

And no, it doesn’t matter that a lot of the RTFs are run by for-profit corporations – nonprofits also have a hideous track record. 

So no, Prof. Barth.  Residential treatment is not some separate system that appeared out of nowhere and has nothing to do with foster care.  It’s an integral part of the “child welfare” system you helped to build and you continue to defend.

NCCPR in The Imprint: Don’t Forget: Nonprofit Residential Treatment Also Stinks

Long ago, in the early years of my career as a reporter, I worked in the original nonprofit sector of journalism — public broadcasting. Public television stations are known for their incessant pledge breaks begging for money — after all, they’re nonprofits, dedicated solely to the public good, right? How else are they going to stay on the air? 

That explains what happened, at least twice, at a station where I had worked, during pledge breaks in the middle of “Sesame Street.” The person doing the pitching said words to the effect of: “And now, boys and girls, we need you to bring your moms and dads to the television because we have a very important message for them: If we don’t get enough money we might have to take away Sesame Street.” 

It was a reminder that no halos come with nonprofit status. Desperation to survive can induce behavior in nonprofits that is as corrosive of common decency as the worst corporate greed. ...

Read the full column in The Imprint

Victims of abuse in foster care shouldn´t have to choose between compensation and justice

Private foster care agencies in New York tell victims of abuse on their watch: If we don´t get a taxpayer bailout, you might not get compensation for what was done to you.  A lawyer for survivors apparently agrees.

 Last month, I wrote a column for the New York Daily News about the attempt by New Yorks´s private foster care, group home and residential treatment agencies to get a taxpayer bailout of up to $200 million.  Why do they say they need it?  To pay settlements in some of the hundreds of lawsuits filed by survivors of abuse in their foster homes, group homes and institutions, going back decades. Otherwise, the agencies say, the could go out of business.

 They say the going-out-of-business part as if it´s a bad thing.  On the contrary. The group homes and institutions are harmful even when they´re not rife with physical and sexual abuse.  The whole model is a proven failure and there are far better alternatives.  But these giant, greedy, well-connected agencies are scarfing up all the money for such alternatives. (And when I say greedy: Have you seen Ron Richter´s salary for running one of them?)

Losing a few of these places would be a net plus, something I discuss in detail (along with Richter´s salary) in the Daily News column.

Fortunately, New York State lawmakers rejected the bailout. They didn´t buy the agencies’ b.s. – though, unfortunately, some media that should know better did.

And, it seems, the agencies have at least one lawyer for the survivors on their side.  According to the child welfare trade journal, The Imprint:

“These victims’ lives have been ruined forever. They deserve justice,” Helene Weiss, a lawyer whose firm is representing dozens of survivors suing under the Child Victims Act, said in an email. “It is incredibly disappointing that New York State decided not to prioritize the needs of survivors of sexual abuse — survivors who were harmed under the State’s watch.”

No, Ms. Weiss.  The state decided not to prioritize the very agencies on whose watch these survivors were abused. It would be perfectly reasonable to create a bailout fund that would apply to survivors of a given agency only after that agency had gone out of business – but not one to keep the agencies alive.

The story also claims that “All sides of the lawsuit [sic] had urged passage” of the bailout.  It´s not clear if this means all survivors bringing all the lawsuits, those represented by Ms. Weiss or something else.

No survivor is quoted. But certainly for those who haved endured the unendurable, if presented by their lawyers with a claim amounting to something like: “look, if the agencies´ claims about going broke are true, this may well be the only way you´ll see any compensation for what was done to you” no one could begrudge them supporting it.

But what if it were presented a different way?  What if it were presented like this:

If the agencies´claims about bankruptcy are true and if bailout fails, your payment will be delayed: it´s possible you´ll never see a dime.  But if the bailout passes, the message to the agencies will be: You can let this keep happening to children on your watch over and over and over, for decade after decade after decade.  The agencies will get the message that they´re too big to fail and they can get away with anything.” 

In that scenario, the survivors get payment – but would they view that as justice?

I hope no survivor ever has to make such a choice.  But if it came to that, I would begrudge no survivor any answer they chose to that question.  I just hope someone asks.

NCCPR in The Imprint: Rhode Island Public Officials’ Solutions to Abuse in Residential Treatment Centers: Dumb and Dumber

 Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There’s a scandal involving horrific abuse at a residential treatment center.

No, not the one in Arizona, or the one in Kentucky, or the one in Tennessee, or Indiana, or Utah, or Oklahoma, or Washington state or Arkansas, or Connecticut or — well, you get the idea.

This time it’s Rhode Island. But don’t worry. Some Rhode Island lawmakers have come up with the perfect solution: Put locked suggestion boxes in all the group homes and institutions! And that was only the second worst idea to come from legislators or state officials. …

Read the full column in The Imprint

NCCPR in West Virginia Watch: West Virginia: Child removal capital of America

I have followed the harm done to children by America’s child welfare systems for nearly half a century, first as a journalist, now as an advocate. In all that time I have never encountered a state so mind-bogglingly fanatical about tearing apart families that even foster care agencies think it’s too much – until now.

Yes, even agencies typically paid for each day they hold a child in care say West Virginia is taking away too many children. They’re right. Year after year, West Virginia is the child removal capital of America. ...

Read the full column in West Virginia Watch

Residential treatment: Can the scent of Pine Sol cover up the stench of abuse?

Rhode Island State Rep. Patricia Serpa says she can tell things are soooo much better
at a residential treatment center because "I could smell the Pine-Sol"

Ever wonder why “residential treatment centers” almost always look so good?  It’s amazing how much these places, which always claim to need even more money, lavish on making sure the grounds are gorgeous the “cottages” are nicely painted and the lawns are mowed.  Then they invite public officials on a carefully guided tour.  

The amazing thing isn’t that these places keep pulling this stunt, the amazing thing is that it works! 

The latest to be snookered is Rhode Island State Rep. Patricia Serpa, who chairs that state’s House of Representatives Oversight Committee.  She and other officials got the full guided tour of St. Mary’s Home for Children in North Providence. 

Here’s what’s been happening at the place they are so anxious to save, according to news accounts summarizing a 119-page report from the state’s child advocate. 

“Staff-on-child physical assault, youth stealing the program van, overdoses, a high number of AWOLs, neglect and an overwhelming number of responses by the North Providence Police Department.” 

From just the beginning of April through May 8, 2023: 

There were more than 20 calls to the CPS hotline, they found, including allegations of drug overdoses, sexual contact among the children, staff assaulting children, runaway children, and an overwhelming amount of police responses, the [Office of Child Advocate] said. 

That’s just the start.  The Boston Globe did its own investigation and found that, at an institution with only 39 beds: 

The North Providence police were called to St. Mary's more than 300 times in the past two years, mainly for children as young as 8 running away, according to 317 pages of police call logs obtained by the Globe through a public records request. … 

North Providence Police Chief Alfredo Ruggiero Jr. told the Globe things are so bad that when runaways are found by police “there’s a part of us that our hearts are breaking” as they bring them back.

Neighbors such as Andrew Marsalli and his partner Ken Richey said they would often hear children screaming.  Marsalli recalled 

the boy with cuts and bruises who showed up at his door asking for help. 

"The boy would say, 'Please don't let me go with them. Don't let them find me,' " Marsalli said. "He would just come knock on my door to talk. But . . . they would know where to find him." … One time, Marsalli and Richey said, they watched in horror when two staff members tackled the boy in their yard and hauled him away. They said an ambulance was called because the boy's arm had been yanked back. 

Then there was the girl placed at St. Mary’s by Rhode Island’s family police agency, the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), because she’d been sexually assaulted and was at high risk of being sexually exploited.  She ran away several times.  Twice she was raped.  When her mother sued, St. Mary’s said the child “had assumed the risk of injury.” (The suit was settled.)  St. Mary’s is not the only residential treatment center to make that horrifying claim. 

And then there was the whole matter of the institution bringing in a bunch of bikers to help patrol the place. 

The head of DCYF, Ashley Deckert, admitted St. Mary’s was awful, but in a comment stunning for both its callousness and its candor, she said that because Rhode Island doesn’t have enough places to put kids, St. Mary’s is a “too big to fail situation.” 

As I pointed out when I wrote about St. Mary’s for Rhode Island Current, what she did not say is that the lack of places to put kids is because Rhode Island tears apart so many families needlessly – at a rate 80% above the national average. 

Pine-Sol to the rescue! 

But great news everyone!  After her definitely-not-a-surprise inspection, Rep. Serpa says things are soooooo much better now!  How does she know?  She told WPRI-TV: 

“What I saw today was encouraging.  The facility is clean. I could smell the Pine-Sol, I could smell the fresh paint. The kids’ rooms were kids’ rooms — they were messy, but an organized messy.” 

Of course!  Everyone knows children are never abused in rooms that smell of Pine-Sol!  And who would ever want to run from a room that was freshly painted?   (Where was Serpa expecting to see kids stay – in dungeons?)  

Deckert took the tour too.  Deckert, more than any other individual, has a vested interest in downplaying any problems at the places where her agency institutionalizes children.  And sure enough, she called the progress “tremendous.” She, too, made a point of saying the place “smells nice.”

 No wonder DCYF is moving full speed ahead on a plan to spend $11 million in taxpayer funds to expand St. Mary’s.

Fool me once … 

This isn’t even the first group of Rhode Island officials to buy into this routine.  As we discussed in our 2010 report on Rhode Island child welfare, the chief family court judge for many years, Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, fell in love with an institution in Pennsylvania; the Glen Mills School.  As we explained in our report: 

[I]n late January of this year, Jeremiah suggested that Andrew J. Johnson, a lawyer and director of the Rhode Island Court Appointed Special Advocate’s office, visit Glen Mills to see what their program has to offer. Johnson flew to Philadelphia, at the school’s expense, where a school van drove him the 22 miles to the school in Concordville, Pa. He met with admissions officials, toured the campus and talked to students.  “It’s a remarkable place,” Johnson said after he returned. “Step on the campus and it’s like a prep school or a university ... .” 

Again, that was 2010. 

It will probably not surprise readers who have gotten this far to know that the Glen Mills School was closed.  After the Philadelphia Inquirer exposed rampant, horrific abuse, the state of Pennsylvania shut the place down.  Unfortunately, they’ve now allowed the place to reopen on a (for now) much smaller scale.  The place has a brand new name.  It’s run by a new corporation headed by a former Glen Mills executive.  

And presumably, it has a good supply of Pine-Sol.

NCCPR in Rhode Island Current: Why DCYF tolerates abusive institutions: Ashley Deckert says the quiet part out loud

It happens all over the country. A watchdog agency or a news organization exposes rampant abuse of children confined to group homes and institutions. Just in the past year, horrors have been exposed in Arizona, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Utah, Oklahoma, Washington State, Arkansas, Connecticut and New York, to name a few. 

Whenever all that abuse is exposed, people wonder how it could have been missed by the state’s child protective services agency, the agency mandated to keep children safe and, often, the very agency that put the children there in the first place. Thanks to Ashley Deckert, director of the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF), we know the real answer. Speaking at a legislative hearing concerning appalling abuse at St. Mary’s Home for Children, she said ...

Read the full column in Rhode Island Current

NCCPR in the Kentucky Lantern: The only way to end abuse in children’s institutions is to end the institutions

Recent news stories illustrate both the terrible harm Kentucky’s “child welfare” system inflicts upon its most vulnerable children and the root cause. Until the findings in these stories are examined together the harm will never stop. 

The ultimate harm can be seen in the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting’s expose of how the state systematically ignores abuse of children institutionalized in “residential treatment.”  Over and over children’s stories of vicious abuse were not believed. In more than half the “unsubstantiated” cases the children were not even interviewed before the cases were closed and their claims dismissed. The story also revealed that, remarkably often, the places where young people alleged abuse occurred were places where video cameras were not present or mysteriously didn’t work. 

The reason for this is no mystery. … 

Read the full column in the Kentucky Lantern

Attn: New Hampshire “Child Advocate” – there are horrendous institutions in your state, too

You shouldn’t be getting “a good night’s sleep” while kids are institutionalized anywhere.  

If your state didn’t tear apart families at a rate nearly double the national average, you wouldn't be institutionalizing children at triple the national average.  In fact, none would “need” to be institutionalized. 

The Bledsoe Youth Academy in Tennessee sure sounds like a hellhole.  That’s what New Hampshire’s “Child Advocate,” Cassandra Sanchez, found when she toured the place. 

As the news site In-Depth New Hampshire reports: 

Sanchez and Assistant Child Advocate Jennifer Jones toured Bledsoe, finding it was run by staff through fear and humiliation … 

At Bledsoe, kids are offered incentives by staff to assault other “problematic” kids, the report said. 

“…if a kid is giving staff a difficult time, another kid might be asked by staff to go after him physically and would be rewarded by staff with a snack or some other incentive, and the aggressor would not be written up for the behavior. …” 

So Sanchez was understandably proud of herself for getting two New Hampshire foster youth out of the place.  But Sanchez takes that way too far when, as the story puts it, 

Finally, she and her staffers can breathe and get a good night’s sleep knowing they are no longer at Bledsoe, she said. 

The management of WMUR-TV apparently feels similarly reassured. 

But no one should be getting a good night’s sleep as long as foster children are institutionalized – in Tennessee, New Hampshire, or anywhere else.  In fact, that goes triple for New Hampshire, where, as of 2021, 27% of foster children were institutionalized - a rate triple the national average.

And Sanchez, of all people, should know it. Because just last year her predecessor issued a report exposing widespread abuse at a home-grown institution. In fact, the Child Advocate’s office received a “cascade of complaints” about the place.  And yet, for some reason, that institution got kid glove treatment, not only from the state but in the remarkably tepid recommendations from the Child Advocate’s office itself.  You can read all about that institution, and the state’s lousy response here.

As we pointed out in that post, institutionalization is inherently so traumatic as to be an act of abuse in itself.  It is also unnecessary.  The evidence is overwhelming that there is nothing an institution can do that can’t be done better, and at far less cost, with Wraparound programs.  Watch Wraparound pioneer Karl Dennis explain how it’s done.

 

And that makes Sanchez’s own response even more disheartening.  Again, from the story: 

Two Executive Councilors and a handful of lawmakers have reached out to Sanchez’ office since the report became public to see what can be done to avoid a similar situation in the future. … 

One idea Sanchez mentioned was to form a commission to study the residential treatment placement of children in and out of state and find out what’s working well. 

Just a commission?  You sure you don’t want a blue-ribbon commission?  Or maybe a “task force”? 

That’s what they’ve got in Colorado, a state that also institutionalizes children at a rate above the national average, but actually looks good compared to New Hampshire – and they’ve stacked it with people who run residential treatment centers.  You can guess how that’s going to go. 

So let me make New Hampshire the same offer I made Colorado: I can save the state a little money and a whole lot of time. 

Here’s a list of everything that’s “working well” in residential treatment: 

 

When it comes to institutionalizing children the only thing that works well is not institutionalizing children. It appears the new director of New Hampshire's family police agency knows this.  He says a top priority will be reducing institutionalization.

And yes, New Hampshire could do that.  The so-called “shortage” of foster homes in New Hampshire is artificial.  It comes from the fact that New Hampshire tears children from their families at the ninth highest rate in America – a rate nearly double the national average – even when child poverty is factored in. 

Get the children who don’t need to be in foster homes back into their own homes and there will be plenty of room in foster homes for the relatively few children who need to be taken away. 

But Sanchez undermines any effort to even consider that option when she refers to having concerns that institutionalization is “further traumatizing the kids.”  That reinforces the false impression that every child removed from her or his home had been traumatized there.  In fact, many children are not traumatized until they are taken away.

Sanchez’s false framing makes it that much less likely that the one option that “works well” will be considered by lawmakers. 

All of this means that, at best, those New Hampshire children rescued from the hellhole in Tennessee are out of the fire and into the frying pan. 

That should be keeping Sanchez and her staff awake at night.

Congratulations, Cuyahoga County DCFS! You win the award for Family Policing Euphemism of the Year!

If only you were half as creative about actually helping families

The public and private “child welfare” agencies that institutionalize children never want to actually say they’re institutionalizing children.  So they’ve come up with a variety of euphemisms.  The institutions are “residential treatment centers” or “shelters.” They have “cottages” so they’re “home-like.”  (“Child welfare” itself is a euphemism for what should be called family policing.) 

But by now people have caught on to how awful such places are.  So there’s an urgent need for a new euphemism.  And one family policing agency has come up with one destined to be a classic. 

And so, we are pleased to announce that NCCPR’s first Family Policing Euphemism of the Year award goes to the Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services for calling the new parking place shelter it plans to build to stash kids – are you ready? A “child wellness campus”! 

Is that brilliant or what?! It conjures up images of children frolicking on bucolic grounds as their every need is attended to.  

But it’s just another shelter – and shelters are among the very worst placements for children.  Even when they don’t turn into hellholes, as they so often do, like any institutional placement, they inflict inherent emotional harm on children – even when the stay in these places is relatively short.  Just check out the research.  Then ask the young people forced to endure them.  And shelters inflict their own kind of harm. 

The excuse for building this institution, which would be the second of its kind to open in Cuyahoga County just since March, is the one you’ve been reading all over the country: Children are forced to sleep in hotels, emergency rooms, detention centers, or in the case of Cuyahoga County, the main agency office, where the youth assault each other and staff and traffic other vulnerable young people.  The excuses for this in Cleveland are also the ones you’ve heard all over the country: Desperate shortage of foster homes, no place for the most difficult kids, blah, blah, blah. 

Unfortunately, most news organizations accept this b.s. without questioning it.  In fact, the only exception I’m aware of is The Philadelphia Inquirer – which zeroed in on the real problem: taking away too many children needlessly in the first place, often when family poverty is confused with neglect. 

Philadelphia tears apart families at one of the highest rates among America’s big cities.  But you know which city is even worse?  Cleveland.  Compare entries into foster care to impoverished child population data from the Census Bureau and Cuyahoga County tears apart families at a rate 15% higher than Philadelphia, double the rate of New York City and triple the rate of metropolitan Chicago.  

Stop taking all those children needlessly and there will be plenty of room in good, safe foster homes for the children who really need them – and no need to warehouse any child in an institution – oh, sorry, “child wellness campus.”  The “but the kids are too difficult for families” argument also is b.s. Because it’s only true if you don’t give the families any help. There’s nothing an institution can do that can’t be done far more humanely and at far less cost with Wraparound programs that bring anything a family or foster family needs right into the home.  They’ve done it for young people as challenging as any DCFS is parking in its office. 

There’s plenty of money available for alternatives, and there would be even if they didn’t cost less.  The county simply prefers to throw the money away on institutionalizing children.  The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that the shelter that opened in March cost $11 million, and estimates of renovation costs alone for the new one ranged from $500,000 to $8 million.  

Promises, promises 

Along with the false claims about necessity the plans for the “child wellness campus” come with all the usual treacly promises. So County Executive Chris Ronayne declares in a press release this institution -- oops, there I go again -- “child wellness campus,” will be “focusing not just on a child’s survival but on their well-being, too.”  He envisions “safe, supported residential placement 24/7 365 days a year until less restrictive placements become available.  

And in the same release, DCFS Director Jacqueline Fletcher says the new institution will promote "transformative care to ensure the safety and well-being of our children." 

Yeah. That’s what they all say. 

Too bad it doesn’t work out that way.  Case in point, New York City which, when it was taking far more children also opened a place like this amid grand hopes and promises.  Guess how it turned out.  Or guess how it turned out at a whole slew of shelters in California. 

As we wrote at the time: 

Here’s the first rule about parking place shelters. 

If you build it they will come.  If you keep it open they will stay.  If it stays open long enough it will become a hellhole. 

Second rule: It doesn’t matter how pretty the place is.  It still will become a hellhole. 

The Plain Dealer story notes that none of the material about the planned facility “explains how this new facility would improve conditions…”  But that’s not quite fair.  At least now, if the young people continue to endure abuse and sex trafficking it will happen at a place with a lovely name. 

If only the Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services were as good at actually helping children and families as they are at coming up with euphemisms.

The group home industry excuse machine leaps into action after still another tragedy

Two girls ran from a group home in Arizona.
Their bodies were found here.

On Jan. 7, two girls, one age 17, the other 15, ran away from a group home in Mesa Arizona. Two weeks later their bodies were found in a nearby pond. 

The only solution the operator of the group home can offer is to imply that such places should be able to be more like jails.  The lawyer for the group home said there was nothing they could do because they’re not allowed to lock young people in, but as soon as they left they called Arizona’s family police agency, the Department of Child Safety, to report them missing.  We don’t know what, if anything, DCS did. 

If that sounds familiar, it may be because it’s the same answer offered by the residential treatment industry and their media and government allies in Colorado, after similar tragedies there.  There also have been similar tragedies in Kentucky. 

It never seems to occur to the industry that if children keep running to the point where the only way to keep them in your institution is to lock them in, maybe the problem isn’t with the children but with the fact that you are institutionalizing them.  Or maybe it does occur to residential treatment “providers,” but to mention it would encourage people to draw the logical conclusion: that such places should be shut down. 

There are no allegations of abuse at the group home in Arizona, which opened about three months ago.  But the problem with institutionalizing children is that it is inherently abusive, inherently dehumanizing.  And an overwhelming body of research shows such places are not necessary.  Of course children want to run. 

And of course you’ll hear the usual excuses: There supposedly aren’t enough foster homes, or, to use the industry’s own offensive phrase, these children “blow out” of foster homes.  That’s just industry b.s. 

Arizona, Colorado, and Kentucky all tear apart children at rates well above the national average.  Stop doing that and there will be plenty of room in good, safe foster homes for the few children who really do need to be taken from their parents.  Then provide wraparound services, in which birth families or foster families get all the help they need to care for children with behavioral problems.  There is nothing residential treatment can do that can’t be done better with wraparound programs. 

That’s what the residential treatment industry doesn’t want you to know. 

An “advocate for foster families” is no better 

Perhaps even more offensive are the comments from someone described as an advocate for foster families.  (I’ve yet to see a story that quotes an advocate for birth families.) 

The only solution she can come up with is, well, it’s not clear exactly what it is, but it seems to involve telling authorities that, after children run away, they have to start looking for them sooner.  She told Phoenix television station KNXV: 

“I do feel like there needs to be legislative changes, with some teeth behind it, some deliverables behind it, to ensure that for each and every child that goes missing that there are procedures that are being followed and adhered to. … This is the perfect opportunity to show that these girls did not die in vain. 

But if all the state of Arizona can come up with is some cruddy little piece of feel-good legislation (even if it does have “deliverables behind it”) it won’t just mean these girls died in vain.  It will be like spitting on their graves.

NCCPR in Youth Today: You don’t need a task force to tell you why institutionalized children run

Most of the time when industries want more money from government, they cite their success. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to make the case for more taxpayer money based on your own failure.

Yet that’s what the “residential treatment” industry has been doing in Colorado.  News accounts have documented a litany of failure, from abuse of institutionalized children to runaways dying.  Yet we are told the solution is to pump even more money into these places because they can’t scrape by on a mere $250 to $600 per-day per-child.  The industry says we also should make residential treatment more like jail, allowing locked doors and physical force against youth.  They’re also whining about the minimal standards institutions must meet under the federal Family First Act so states can get federal aid for stashing kids in such places. 

Similar themes have been sounded across the country, as news accounts bemoan children forced into makeshift placements – while almost never asking if all those children should have been taken away, or whether there are better options than institutions. (The answers are no and yes, respectively.)  But nowhere is the residential treatment industry as brazen as Colorado. ... 

Read the full column in Youth Today