Coming Monday: What the LA Times won’t report about the county’s child welfare waiver

            In his efforts to scapegoat a waiver from federal funding restrictions for problems in the Los Angeles County child welfare system, L.A. Times reporter Garrett Therolf has been highly selective in quoting from an evaluation of that waiver.

            On Monday, I’ll tell you what Garrett keeps leaving out, and I’ll post a link to the full evaluation so you can judge for yourself.

Foster care in Los Angeles: That’s why it’s called a PANIC

            Garrett (What suit should I wear to the Pulitzer ceremony?) Therolf has a story in the Los Angeles Times today about a report from the office of the county’s Chief Executive concerning the problems at the county Department of Children and Family Services.

            The story serves one useful purpose: It contradicts Therolf’s own earlier stories that attempt to blame all department failings on efforts to keep families together.  On the contrary, this report makes clear that the problems are rooted in the foster-care panic set off by Therolf’s own misreporting of child welfare.

            The report paints a picture of an agency plunged into chaos by a top management so hell-bent on knee-jerk responses to whatever is in the newspaper that it should change its name from DCFS to DCYA.

            Frontline workers are drowning not just in cases, but in policies – so many cascading down on them that workers can’t possibly keep track of them, much less follow them all.  In the story, a spokeswoman for the caseworkers’ union aptly calls it an “out-of-control policy machine.”  The problem is compounded by so many automated e-mail “reminders” involving so many deadlines that the reminders lose their impact – except, in all likelihood, to add an extra element of stress to an already extremely difficult job.  (One can only imagine what it’s like if these constant reminders are accompanied by some kind of special beep on the caseworker’s computer when they arrive).

            The new policies almost always involve more work per case, without any discretion concerning which cases need whatever is called for by the new policies and which do not.  So everyone falls behind and, you may be sure, there is informal corner-cutting going on that no one’s going to know about until it leads to the next tragedy.

            It is to the workers’ great credit that in spite of all this the report found that there has been a “significant reduction” in a backlog of cases open longer than 60 days.  That deserved to be mentioned farther up than the end of the ninth paragraph of the story; but, of course, one wouldn’t expect that kind of basic fairness from Therolf.

            There also is another classic Therolf touch:  

            The only individual case Therolf cites involves DCFS failing to act concerning children living in what is allegedly a squalid home.  But common sense suggests that any agency operating in this kind of chaos is going to make mistakes in all directions at once.  Yes, they will leave more children in danger – they also will take more children needlessly from homes that are safe or could be made safe with the right kinds of help.  This is one reason why, all over the country,  foster-care panics have been followed by increases in deaths of children “known to the system.”

            Indeed, in the story itself, the union spokeswoman notes that different DCFS offices apply the new standards and policies in different ways (the report itself notes that training hasn’t kept up with all the new policies, so regional administrators have to figure them out for themselves).  In other words, a child who might be removed from the home by a caseworker from office A will be left in the home by a caseworker from office B – again, setting the stage for errors in all directions.

           The report itself also suffers from one crucial flaw: The only people to whom the authors spoke are people who work for DCFS.  Imagine what they might find out if they actually spoke to some of the families whose children were needlessly taken by the agency. 

          But then, Garrett Therolf can’t be bothered doing that, either.

In Youth Today: Ending the TANF child welfare slush fund

            This week, Youth Today published the first of NCCPR’s monthly blogs for their website.  It’s about how states take funds intended to help poor families become self-sufficient and divert the money into child abuse investigations and foster care.  You can read it here.

Getting Beyond “Gestapolemics:” What REALLY motivates some child protective services workers

            There is a stereotype about frontline caseworkers for child protective services agencies that is as pernicious as the stereotypes some such workers hold about families.  It’s the one in which caseworkers are portrayed as jack-booted thugs who relish tearing apart families.

            At its worst, this stereotype descends into what Chris Doyle of Ponder, Texas, calls “Gestapolemics” – calling your opponents Nazis.* That’s something I’ve written about before on this Blog.

            This week, there was published something that gives an outstanding insight into how many of those on the frontlines, the people whose 19^th Century counterparts proudly called themselves “child savers” really think.  And it’s much worse.

            The insight comes courtesy of someone calling herself “Concerned Social Worker,” (I’ll just call her CSW) in the form of a letter to Annie’s Mailbox, an advice column written by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar, two former editors for Ann Landers.  And this takes a little setting up.

            First came a letter from Shirley, writing about her friend “Helen” and Helen’s five-month-old infant, “Petey.”  Shirley wrote that

Petey seems to be rather small (about 12 pounds) for a 5-month-old. He seldom lifts his arms or legs or does any of the things my children did at that age. Helen has used a swaddling blanket on Petey since he was born. She makes him take a lot of extended naps, plus at least eight hours of sleep at night. I fear she may have done some harm with this tight bondage, maybe cutting off circulation to his limbs. … Also, Petey has not been checked by a doctor for nearly two months. Is this OK?

            The columnists offered some excellent advice, including this:

The pediatrician should see Petey roughly every two months to check his development. Between 4 months and 7 months, babies should be rolling over, reaching out for things and able to stay in a sitting position and hold up their heads and chests when lying on their stomachs. It’s time to call the doctor if these milestones are not reached by 7 months, or if the child doesn’t use an arm, a leg or one side of the body.

Petey may be just fine, but if you think otherwise, bring this column to Helen and use it to start a neutral discussion.

            But that wasn’t enough for “Concerned Social Worker,” who, in the second letter in this column, said the advice was off the mark.  She wrote:

Having worked as a child abuse/neglect investigator, I can tell you that if Shirley had contacted Child Protective Services, we would have opened an investigation based on Petey's size alone. Keeping the baby wrapped tightly and napping most of the time also sets off alarm bells. If Petey is not given enough attention and stimulation, not to mention food, he could suffer lasting developmental delays or even starve to death.

Petey is likely the victim of physical neglect. Shirley should immediately report Petey's situation to her local Child Protective Services office. Whether or not the child is being neglected, CPS will likely offer Petey's mother some assistance and monitor the family until the situation improves.

            Before I respond, here’s what Mitchell and Sugar said:

Dear Social Worker: Depending on the child's birth weight, 12 pounds is not unreasonably low at five months. And Shirley is only guessing the actual weight. Petey sees the pediatrician regularly, and if he were failing to thrive, it would be noticed. We do agree, however, that the situation bears watching.

            So what we have in CSW is someone who means well, but doesn’t know the basics about baby weight, jumps to conclusions (“A lot of extended naps” turns into “napping most of the time”) and is conjuring up horror scenarios about a baby starving to death even though the baby regularly is seen by a pediatrician and his weight may well be normal.

            Although CSW says “we would have opened an investigation” based on no more than Petey’s quite-possibly-normal weight, CSW has, in fact, already drawn her conclusion: “Petey is likely the victim of physical neglect.”  And even if he isn’t, CSW says CPS would keep the family under surveillance anyway!

AN OFFER YOU CAN’T REFUSE

           Worst of all, of course, CSW’s approach flunks the balance of harms test.  There is no recognition of the enormous stress a child abuse investigation puts on a family – and the consequences that stress may produce for a five-month-old.  And though CSW paints a benign picture in which CPS would merely “offer Petey's mother some assistance” it would probably be the classic “offer you can’t refuse” involving pointless “counseling” and “parent education.”  The problems increase exponentially, of course, if CSW decides to throw the child into foster care.

          Whether that would happen would depend on things like whether the Petey’s mother is poor, singe and/or a minority, which caseworker shows up at the door, and whether the local newspaper has been whipping up hysteria over child abuse deaths.

           To get a sense of just how harmful that would be for Petey, consider a University of Florida Medical Center study of infants for whom one would think there is much more reason to resort to foster care: those born with cocaine in their systems.  The study compared such infants placed in foster care with those left with mothers able to care for them.  At six months the infants were tested using the same developmental milestones Mitchell and Sugar mention in their column: sitting up, reaching out, rolling over.  Consistently, the children left in their own homes did better – for the foster children the separation from the mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.  (That doesn’t mean children should be left with addicts, but it does mean drug treatment for the mother is a better first choice than foster care for the child.  And, of course, there is nothing like this kind of problem in Petey’s case.)

          CSW’s response also casts doubt on the all-purpose answer to every CPS problem proposed by the National Association of Social Workers: require every caseworker to have a social work degree.

THE COST OF GOOD INTENTIONS

            At least if caseworkers really were jack-booted thugs one could appeal to their consciences.  CSW’s combination of ignorance and self-righteousness is a lot harder to deal with, and it helps explain why child welfare systems are so hard to change.

            Of course not every CPS worker is like CSW.  Some are like the caseworker profiled some years ago by the San Antonio Express News who said

…she worries when she sees new caseworkers, recent college graduates, charged up by the prospect of saving children, snapping photos of unkempt kitchens. "I don't believe in
removing (children) on (the basis of) dirty houses. I just don't," [she] said, joking that her
own home is "practically a referral."

"I always think: 'Where will (the children) go for Christmas?'"

           Two years later, another reporter for the same newspaper wrote about a supervisor who sometimes

has to reassure his childless employees that some parental behavior is normal. He recalls a caseworker appalled by a child's hamburgers-and-chips meals.
"Junk food's not a crime," [the supervisor] said.  Another couldn't believe parents let
their kids eat off the floor. That happens with kids, [the supervisor] said. It's OK.

           I’d use these fine workers’ names, but I’m afraid CSW might be out there, ready to turn them in for child abuse.

*-Sure he coined the word for The Style Invitational, a weekly humor contest in The Washington Post, but I say, if the word fits – use it.

Foster care coverage at the Los Angeles Times: Are even Garrett Therolf’s editors getting tired of the hype and distortion?

            I didn’t notice it until it was pointed out by the LA Weekly’s Informer Blog, but there are some interesting differences between two versions of Garrett (anything for that Pulitzer) Therolf’s Los Angeles Times story hyping child abuse death numbers in Los Angeles County.

           

As LA Weekly reports:

The total deaths of children who had some kind of Department of Children and Family Services care or supervision actually went down, according to the DCFS' own numbers, from 169 in 2008 to 163 in 2009.

The Times appears to have thrown in gang-related homicides and other deaths unrelated to county care in its Oct. 18 online report, even though it admitted that some of the pre-2008 numbers used for comparison were flawed. The Times then appeared to take out those numbers and remixed a headline in its Oct. 19 print version of that story -- without explanation.

The paper, however, stuck with its assertion that abuse-or-neglect deaths of DCFS-supervised children rose  from 18 in 2008 to 26 in 2009.

            Of course, what Therolf still refuses to report is that, if there has been such an increase, the most likely cause, aside from random chance, is the foster-care panic he did so much to start.  Indeed, the link between such panics and increases in child abuse deaths is so strong that we predicted both during a news conference in Los Angeles more than 14 months ago.

            One can only hope that even Therolf’s editors are growing wary and/or weary of his hype, distortion and out-of-context reporting – reporting which increases the danger to the county’s vulnerable children.

            I wonder which version of the October 18 story Garrett will submit to the Pulitzer judges?

Foster care in California: A bigger Band-Aid for the wrong wound

            Few things say more about the real priorities of America’s child welfare establishment than the most recent big law about foster care to pass Congress.

            There actually is some good stuff in the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act.  The law provides federal reimbursement for subsidized guardianship – and that was enough, finally, to get New York to join other states in offering this smart, sensible option for children who really can’t return to their own homes. (The law passed over the strong objections of New York City Administration for Children’s Services Commissioner John Mattingly.) 

            Even a provision allowing young people to stay in foster care to age 21 (again if states opt in) falls into the category of lesser evil.  If the only options are being bounced from foster home to foster home and being kicked out at 18 or being bounced from foster home to foster home and being kicked out at 21, the latter usually isn’t as bad.

            In fact, there’s only one really bad provision in the whole law -  a “delinking” of federal reimbursement for adoption subsidies from previous limits.  It’s a first step toward trying to do the same for foster care payments.  Unless such “delinking” is part of a much bigger, more comprehensive reform, it will do enormous harm to children.  (For details see our paper on child welfare finance.)

            But by and large, the problem with the Fostering Connections act is what’s not there. Consider the categories on a website devoted to the law:

● Adoption

● Education

●Health

●Kinship/guardianship

●Older youth

●Tribal

●Training

            Notice anything missing?

            Even though groups like the Child Welfare League of America, the Children’s Defense Fund, the Center for Law and Social Policy and the rest of the child welfare establishment prattle on incessantly about how the first priority should be keeping children safely in their own homes, somehow the Fostering Connections Act has not one word – and not one penny to advance this supposed top priority.  There’s plenty about what is said to be the second priority – adoption – it’s even in the name of the law. 

            And, of course, the foster care providers among CWLA’s member agencies win big with that three more years of foster care.

           How odd.  Unless, of course, all that stuff about really, truly wanting to avoid foster care is just a lot of empty rhetoric to hide the child welfare establishment’s real priorities.

           All of which leads me to the obscene spectacle that played out in California last month when governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB 12, the bill implementing the Fostering Connections act in California: An orgy of self-indulgent self-congratulation by that state’s child welfare establishment, which did not lift a finger to add anything to the bill to keep children out of the system in the first place. 

           As I discuss in this op ed column in the San Jose Mercury News all they did is put a bigger Band-Aid on the wrong wound.

Foster care lawsuit in Nevada: How the National Center for Youth Law planted the seeds of its own defeat

            I’ve written often here about the failure of my fellow liberals on child welfare issues.  But if you want to see a good old fashioned failure of right-wing extremism, just check out the decision by Federal District Judge Robert C. Jones throwing out a lawsuit against the child welfare system in Clark County (metropolitan Las Vegas) Nevada.  (Check it out when the decision in Henry A. v. Willden becomes generally available online, that is; right now I’ve only been able to find it through a federal courts database that requires registration; but this story in the Las Vegas Review Journal sums it up well.)

            In the course of throwing out a lawsuit brought by the National Center for Youth Law (which should not be confused with the more progressive Youth Law Center), Judge Jones essentially ruled that, under the U.S. Constitution, the rights of children thrown into foster care are perhaps one step above the rights of prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.  NCYL plans to appeal, and we’d better hope that appeal is successful.

            It’s not that this was a very good lawsuit to begin with.  As I’ve discussed previously on this blog, NCYL has the same approach to litigation as the group that so arrogantly calls itself Children’s Rights: Whatever you do, don’t raise the issue of children not needing to be taken away in the first place.  So NCYL’s suits tend to produce the same mediocre results as CR’s, which is why I’ve taken to referring to the California-based NCYL as “CR West.”

            For example, NCYL is waging the same war against grandparents as CR.  Indeed, the one good thing about Judge Jones’ decision is that it threw out NCYL’s bizarre claim that foster children have a constitutional right not to be placed with their grandparents or other relatives if those relatives can’t comply with every hypertechnical licensing requirement.

This, of course, illustrates the problem with claiming to “represent” children through adult “next friends” who may barely know them or who, in this case, may simply be current or former foster parents who may put a shared ideology ahead of what the children really want. It’s hard to imagine that thousands of children really are begging their caseworkers by saying something like “Please, please don’t place me with grandma unless her house has precisely the square footage required in section 4 subsection A(2) of regulation 456!”

            But the rest of the lawsuit might have made things a little better. And by setting such an appallingly low standard concerning what foster children are entitled to, the decision, if upheld on appeal, could make things much worse.

            The great irony in this – and the biggest lesson for NCYL, CR and all the others who willfully ignore the problem of wrongful removal of children is that ignoring that problem helped plant the seeds of NCYL’s defeat.

            That is evident from this section of the decision, on page 12:

Plaintiffs have failed to allege that Defendants “did anything more than place foster children into an already broken system.” … Moreover, the Complaint does not state that Defendants created or increased the danger to children. Based on these pleading failures, this claim for relief is dismissed.

In addition, Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity on this claim. In this regard, Plaintiffs have not provided any factual assertions that the Defendants increased the danger to Plaintiffs. [Emphasis added.]

In contrast,

           ● Had NCYL taken note of Nevada’s extremely high rate of child removal – more than 50 percent above the national average.

           ● Had NCYL pointed out that many of those removals are unnecessary (something well documented in a casereading by Prof. Leroy Pelton of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas School of Social Work)

          ● And had NCYL included cases of wrongful removal among their “named plaintiffs”

then they could, indeed, have made the claim that Clark County and the State of Nevada had actually made things worse for the children, and the judge would have had a lot more difficulty dismissing the case on that ground.

           Of course, given the judge’s clear hostility to the whole lawsuit, even had NCYL acknowledged the existence of the elephant in the room, judge Jones might well have ruled against them anyway.  But there’s still a lesson for those times when cases are brought before more reasonable judges: NCYL’s embrace of a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare got in the way of making the strongest possible case for the children it sued to protect.