Media shocked – shocked! – when Oregon foster care chief states the obvious

A headline on the website of the Portland Oregonian today says: 

Foster care scandal: Are kids safe? 'I can't answer that question yes' 

The headline refers to a dialogue at a legislative hearing yesterday.  According to the Oregonian it went this way: 

Clyde Saiki, the department [of Human Services] interim director, was asked at a hearing Thursday whether he could say all children in state care "are safe today." He gave a blunt response: "No." 

"The way you've asked that question," Saiki told [State Sen. Sara] Gelser, "I can't answer that question yes. That's something that bothers me. That's something that keeps me up at night." 

Judging by the stories written about this, it seems reporters were shocked – shocked! – that the head of the child welfare agency can’t guarantee that every foster child is safe.

But it was a loaded question – one to which the only possible honest answer is “no” and always will be “no.”  Not just in Oregon, but in every child welfare system in America, including the few that are relatively good.

Clyde Saiki

Abuse in foster care is a major national problem.  Study after study has found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes – and the record of group homes and institutions is even worse. 

Oregon may well be no worse than many other states, particularly those other states which, like Oregon take away far too many children.  Oregon may just be getting more attention at the moment.

But Sen. Gelser trivializes this serious issue by setting an impossible standard.  Indeed, the phrasing of the question makes me wonder if she wanted a serious answer, or just a chance to look good on television.  Earlier I gave her credit for sincerity, now I’m starting to wonder.

The reason for that boils down to the word that made the question so loaded: All.

Are all children in foster care in Oregon safe? No.

Are all children in foster care anywhere safe? No.

Are all children agencies decided to leave in their own homes safe? No.

Are all children at college safe? No.

Are all children in high school safe? No.

Are all children currently in cars on America’s highways safe? No.

Are all children currently walking down the street safe? No.

Are all politicians more interested in grandstanding than genuinely improving child welfare? No.

Or, to put it another way: Would anyone seriously call a police chief on the carpet by demanding to know if all citizens in his or her community are guaranteed not to be victims of crime?

The question should be: What can be done to make children as safe as possible – and bring abuse in foster care as close as possible to zero?  But that’s not nearly as likely to get you headlines – especially since the honest answer is: Start by taking away fewer children.

A threat from foster care agencies

This was illustrated, albeit unintentionally, in the Oregonian story.  Gelser has introduced legislation that supposedly would crack down on abuse in foster care.  But look what the head of a trade association for foster care agencies said: 

Janet Arenz, the director of the Oregon Alliance of Children's Programs, a group that lobbies for foster care providers, supported Gelser's goals 

Let me just stop here: Her goals involve making sure foster children aren’t abused.  Who wouldn’t support them?  Now, get ready for the but … 

but raised concerns about the cost some providers might face under stricter rules. She said agencies had been ending their foster care contracts even before the prospect of reforms. State officials have repeatedly lamented, in hearings but also in … emails … Oregon's lack of safe and appropriate placements for foster children. The foster system is in charge of 8,000 kids on any given night. 

"They're not sustainable," Arenz said. "They're losing too much money. There's tremendous risk in managing the kids and making sure they're complying with rules and regulations." 

In other words: Better watch out Oregon, if you make us meet even minimal standards we’ll close our doors and then what are you going to do? 

That threat only works when the state is taking away too many children in the first place.  Stop the wrongful removal and foster care no longer is a sellers’ market. The state can call the agencies’ bluff and get rid of the bad actors.

Flaws in proposed legislation

Unfortunately, Gelser’s “all or nothing” approach also is reflected in a bill she’s introduced to force Oregon DHS to crack down on abusive foster care providers.  Again from the story: 

Officials would also be forced to revoke a license if a child dies because of abuse, regulators learn a provider didn't immediately report a sex crime, or the provider fails to cooperate in an investigation. 

Now, consider a hypothetical:

Agency X has been doing an exemplary job for 40 years.  It holds foster parents and group home staff to the highest standards and it genuinely works with families to get children returned home as soon as possible.  It has an unblemished record.

Until one day, one staff member, perhaps beset by personal problems of his own that no one knew about, explodes.  He hits a child hard, the child hits his head on the floor and dies.

Or, let’s say one staffer gets scared and covers up an instance of child-on-child sexual abuse.

If the Oregonian description of Gelser’s bill is correct, the license for this entire agency is pulled immediately.

What happens to the children?

Actually, Linus was on to something
Flickr Photo by Lehigh Valley, Pa.

They may well have to be uprooted and moved to another foster home – even though one of the major reasons foster care does so much harm to children is because it forces them to move from placement to placement.

Gelser’s jury-rigged solutions remind me of an old Peanuts cartoon in which everyone is trying to figure out how to keep Snoopy warm when he sleeps atop his doghouse on cold winter nights.

All sorts of bizarre ideas are brought up until, finally, Linus says: "Why doesn't he just sleep inside the doghouse?"  The others just look at him and roll their eyes at the absurdity of such a suggestion.

Similarly, Gelser and Oregon media, insist on ignoring the fact that the only way to fix foster care is to have less of it.

By the way, if you click on the Oregonian story be sure to scroll down to the comment from WeCanDoBetterOregon. It is one of the best analyses of political – and media – response to this kind of crisis I’ve ever read.

What the Miami Herald did to children: Group home abuse illustrates price of foster-care panic

Judge calls latest horror “a cockfight … between foster kids”

A story in the Miami Herald  this week begins this way:

A Miami group home for foster children is under fire after a video circulated on social media showing two 11-year-old boys in a violent brawl — egged on by the facility’s adult supervisor as other kids cheered.

“I saw a cockfight … between foster kids,” Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman said in court last week, describing the video as showing the employee “provoking and encouraging violence” while “these two boys battled it out and beat each other up."

A wrecking crew does to the former headquarters of the Miami  Herald
 what the Herald did to journalistic standards in its child welfare
coverage.  Photo by Phillip Pessar http://bit.ly/1J0P3bl 

 I'll come back to this story below.  But first some context - in particular concerning the role of the Miami Herald itself in creating conditions that make such abuses more likely.

From time to time on this blog I have highlighted the failings of news organizations whose work has falsely scapegoated family preservation for child deaths.  That has led to foster-care panics, sharp sudden spikes in the number of children removed from their homes. 

That does terrible harm to the children needlessly taken, of course, but it also overloads the child welfare system.  That means caseworkers have less time to investigate any case properly.  As a result, even as more children are forced to endure needless foster care other children, in real danger, are overlooked.  That’s why foster-care panics make all children less safe.

There have been many such journalistic failures over the years.  But one is in a class by itself – at least so far in this century.  Yes, it's the Miami Herald.

The Herald has been crusading against efforts to keep families together for at least five years.  The apotheosis of the campaign was a series published in March 2014 called Innocents Lost.  The stories blamed family preservation for child deaths.  The Herald’s journalistic failures have been so egregious that NCCPR created an entire website to respond, including a comprehensive rebuttal to Innocents Lost. 

The results were great for the Herald – it won a bunch of awards, and spawned at least one imitator in another state.  The newspaper got to claim credit for the usual changes in law to “crack down on child abuse” that follow this kind of reporting.

Now, nearly two years after Innocents Lost was published, the results are in for the children.  Those results are not so great,  

Florida has a long tumultuous history in child welfare – just as one would expect from Florida.  But for several years before the Herald started on its crusade, the state actually was making impressive progress.  The number of children taken from their parents was reduced and a series of independent evaluations found that child safety improved.

The Herald destroyed all that. 

• Thousands of children who otherwise would have remained in their homes have been consigned to foster care.
• This was supposed to reduce child deaths.  In fact, such deaths, including deaths of children “known to the system” have increased.

Innocents Lost did about as much good for the children  of
Florida as the war in Iraq did for the Iraqis.  That's why
 every time the series won an award, I thought of  this image.

In short, as we noted on our Florida blog, Innocents Lost did about as much good for the children of Florida as the war in Iraq did for the Iraqis.  That's why every time the series won an award, I thought of George W. Bush in front of his “Mission Accomplished” banner.

And then, this week, we got that example of the human toll behind the figures:

  

One of the things that happens when you have a foster-care panic is that the agency taking the children runs out of places to put them.

The “shortage” of placements forces the state to rely more on the worst form of “care” group homes and institutions, and to turn a blind eye when those institutions become abusive. 

With that in mind, let's look again at what the Herald reported this week:

A Miami group home for foster children is under fire after a video circulated on social media showing two 11-year-old boys in a violent brawl — egged on by the facility’s adult supervisor as other kids cheered.

“I saw a cockfight … between foster kids,” Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman said in court last week, describing the video as showing the employee “provoking and encouraging violence” while “these two boys battled it out and beat each other up. …

“She encouraged the kids to fight. She said, go ahead and fight, just don’t use weapons. Let’s have a fight. She circled everybody around. Got the kids all riled up.”

The home was one of many run by the Children’s Home Society of Florida, (CHS) a venerable, and powerful player in the Florida system.  Children’s Home was contracted to run the group home by Our Kids, the private “lead agency” responsible for foster care in Miami.

According to the Herald story (written by David Ovalle, not Carol Marbin Miller, the lead writer for Innocents Lost) the fight wasn’t the end of the trauma for one of the children, identified in court records as J.W. 

After the staffer [who organized the fight] summoned police, officers committed J.W. against his will to a hospital for days for psychiatric evaluation under the state’s Baker Act. Hanzman said the staffer clearly “lied to” officers about what happened.

“This kid is going to be labeled as having a mental illness his whole life. Probably won’t be able to get a job,” he said. “All because you have a stupid, inept case worker at your facility that encourages 11-year-olds to engage in brutal violence and stands around watching and cheering.”

But others told the court the problem goes well beyond one staffer.  Again from the story:

There is reason “to believe that the incident in the case is not isolated, and that all of the children in the care of CHS are potentially in danger of similar abuse,” Eugene Zenobi, head of the publicly funded Regional Counsel office, wrote in a motion filed to the court Friday.

Group homes and institutions are particularly damaging for younger children. In fact, the federal government rates state child welfare systems in part on their ability to reduce the number of children under age 12 in institutions.  Which raises the question: What were those 11-year-olds doing in a group home in the first place? 

One likely answer: With so many more children entering care and trapped in care for a longer time because of the foster-care panic caused by the Herald, the state Department of Children and Families and the “lead agencies” are begging for beds.  Beggars can’t be choosers.

Our Kids has a disturbing record when it comes to institutionalizing children. The proportion of children under Our Kids jurisdiction in group homes and institutions is 35 percent above the state average, and it’s increased by nearly 30 percent since April of 2010. 

Another part of the problem is that so many in Florida, including the judge in this case, have bought into the false narrative created by the Herald in Innocents Lost.  So the judge declares:

“What is really sad is these kids are abused, abandoned and neglected. And then they get taken from their parents. They come in expecting refuge,” the judge said. “And what they are subjected to is more abuse and neglect at the hands of ineptitude, and agencies who throw them in these group homes with incompetent people who stand around watching them have cockfights.”

He got the second part right.  But while some of the children taken from their parents are “abused abandoned and neglected,” others are not.  And the proportion who are not is likely to rise during a foster-care panic, when caseworkers rush to take away more children to avoid being on the front page, or the home page, of the Herald.

By now some readers, especially in Florida, may be wondering: Are you really going to blame every new horror in Florida foster care on the Herald?

Actually, yes – in part.

Since at least March 2014, when Innocents Lost was published, the Herald has, in effect, dictated child welfare policy in Florida.  That’s partly the fault of the Florida Legislature, the governor and DCF, which have allowed the Herald to tell them how to run child welfare.  It’s also true that there were horrors before Innocents Lost, even during the years when Florida was reducing foster care and, those independent evaluations found, improving safety overall.  And there are horrors in every child welfare system in America.

But the take-the-child-and-run approach advocated by the Herald has made everything worse. So the Herald shares responsibility for the results.  

Remembering Judith Kaye, the New York judge who put the “family” in Family Court

Judge Judith Kaye

Judith Kaye, the first woman named to New York State’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, and the first to serve as its Chief Judge, died today at age 77.

Though The New York Times notes many of her accomplishments, the paper neglects some of the most important.  They concerned the state’s Family Courts.  Here are some of them:

Protecting domestic violence victims, and their children

It had been common practice in New York – and remains common practice elsewhere – for child protective services agencies to take away children from battered mothers, just because the mothers “allowed” the child to “witness domestic violence.”

A federal class-action lawsuit brought an end to the practice in New York. (NCCPR’s Vice President, Carolyn Kubitschek, was co-counsel for the plaintiffs.)  During the course of that suit expert after expert testified that while witnessing domestic violence sometimes can, indeed, be emotionally harmful to a child, taking that child from the victim of the violence is much, much worse.  One expert said that, for the child, it is “tantamount to pouring salt into an open wound.”

The section of U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein’s decision summarizing this testimony remains one of the most popular pages on NCCPR’s website.

After Weinstein ruled, the City appealed.  At one point the federal appellate court sought clarification of New York law from the state Court of Appeals.  That led to a sweeping, unanimous decision, written by Judge Kaye, making clear that New York State law does not allow this barbaric practice.  In effect, that extended the impact of the lawsuit statewide (though, as always, it’s not clear if child protective services agencies actually are following the law).

Giving children real lawyers

Although juvenile court hearings are supposed to be all about the children, often the children are effectively silenced.  That’s because instead of a lawyer tasked with advocating for what the child wants, children often get “law guardians” who are free to substitute their own judgment for that of the child.   And that’s often the easiest course of action, particularly when it simply involves rubber-stamping the recommendation of a child protective services agency.   So if a child desperately wants to return to her or his parents from foster care, but the law guardian disagrees, the child is effectively silenced.  (While less common, a child who desperately wants to remain in foster care also may be silenced, and that is equally wrong.)

Of course, the fact that a child wants a particular outcome doesn’t mean he or she should get it. And some children are too young to express a rational preference, or any preference at all. But deciding what’s best is what judges are for.  And they can’t truly do justice unless everyone has an advocate making the best possible case for his or her side.

The New York State Bar Association promulgated guidelines calling for children’s lawyers to follow the direction of their clients – the children - except where the child was too young.    But the guidelines were not binding.  Judge Kaye made them binding.

Opening family courts to press and public

One of the reasons juvenile courts can get away with trampling on the rights of families, and attorneys can provide representation that’s inadequate – or worse – is that, in much of the country, the hearings are secret.  Slowly that’s been changing, and today, nearly half of America’s foster children live in states where these hearings are open to the public and/or the press. 

In New York, that was done by order of Judge Kaye.  I believe the news stories exposing what went on those courts after the hearings first were opened are part of the reason New York City became a national leader in providing high quality defense counsel for families caught up in the child welfare system through organizations like The Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Family Defense Practice and the Center for Family Representation.

And no one ever boiled down the rationale for opening these courts better.  Said Judge Kaye: “Sunshine is good for children.”

Her own family has many reasons to be proud of the legacy of Judge Judith Kaye.  And a lot of children and parents who may never have heard of her have reason to be grateful.

Child welfare in Oregon: A columnist's self-indulgent rage isn't helping

I’ve previously noted that one of the easiest ways for a newspaper columnist to fill space is to write the "boy-if-there's-one-thing-in-the-world-that-I-really-really-hate-more-than-anything-it's-child abuse-and-all-the-people-who-let-this-child-die-must-be-lazy-or-idiots” column. 

Former home of The Oregonian

No actual reporting is required. If anyone disagrees with anything in the column then at best they just don’t care; at worst they’re in favor of child abuse.  Aside from filling space, these columns accomplish nothing except to encourage a rush to take away more children.  That’s dangerous in any state, but especially in one like Oregon, which takes away children at a rate well above the national average.

I’ve noted before that a master of this genre is Steve Duin at the Oregonian in Portland – which is too bad, since he’s also capable of much better work.

Duin was at it again on December 22.  This time he seemed intent less on calling attention to child abuse than on distracting readers from where a lot of that abuse has been turning up lately in Oregon – foster care.

He begins this way: 

Oleander Labier weighed 28 pounds when, at the age of 5, her torture finally ended. And while Oleander doesn't rank high in terms of blood money, those millions the state of Oregon has paid out in settlements in cases involving the Department of Human Services, hers is the story of neglect and suffering that still speaks to me. 

It should speak to anyone.  But so should the case that actually prompted the huge payout Duin is talking about.  Here’s what that case involved, according to the Salem Statesman-Journal: 

James Earl Mooney, a former Salem resident, pleaded guilty in 2012 to five counts of first-degree sodomy of medically fragile children, ages 48 hours to 3 years, who had disabilities or other special needs. Mooney was sentenced to 50 years in the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution for crimes that included sodomizing an 18-month-old foster baby in her car seat while his wife attended a doctor's appointment with another foster child. 

Doesn’t that at least whisper to you, Mr. Duin?

Similarly, the scandal involving the foster-care agency Give Us This Day gets barely a mention and no graphic details. (At least Duin gives credit where it’s due - to Willamette Week reporter Nigel Jaquiss - for breaking the story.)

UPDATE, JAN 4, 2016: And just last week, two Oregon newspapers reported on two more examples of foster care failure, this time in "residential treatment."

On one level, the minimal attention to abuse in foster care is understandable.  Talking a lot about it would make the segue to the Only Public Official Who Really Cares part of the column a bit awkward – I’ll get to that in a moment.  But first, there’s the Ritual Condemnation Of The Rest of Us: 

… [R]efusal to take ownership of a tragedy sums up this state's attitude toward the abuse and death of children under our care. Our attitude. Yours and mine. 

I think he really just means yours, Oregon.  He proves how much he cares by writing columns scolding everyone else: 

In not giving a damn, the governor, the Legislature, the attorney general and the Department of Human Services simply follow our lead. 

As I said, Oregon, I think he means your lead.  As for not giving a damn, I’ve previously noted Duin’s belief in his own extraordinary power to read minds.  Once again, he can detect that almost everyone who works for the state human services agency, the Attorney General and every state legislator (except one – we’ll get back to that) doesn’t care.

By the time he says, much farther down that he knows there are  “people who bring extraordinary commitment to their jobs in child welfare …” he sounds like Donald Trump saying that some of the Mexicans crossing the border actually “I assume, are good people.” 

Oregon State Sen. Sara Gelser

But there is one hero in this story (besides the columnist himself).  He writes: 

In recent months, a legislative committee chaired by Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, has called the state's foster care agency on the Capitol carpet. … Gelser has a sustained interest in child-welfare issues. Her family has frequently asked her to give it a rest over Sunday dinner. … "I have not seen engagement on this issue in a meaningful way from our prior two governors," Gelser notes. Until Gov. Kate Brown deeded control of the agency to Clyde Saiki last month, nor has [sic]  Gelser seen anyone at the controls of Human Services prioritize child safety. 

I don’t doubt Sen. Gelser’s commitment or her dedication.  But her agenda suggests she has made the common mistake of confusing child removal with child safety.  Again from the column: 

At the very least, Gelser argues, the agency needs a far better screening process for the initial complaints of child abuse and neglect. "We close far more reports at screening – 60 percent – than any state in the country," Gelser says. "There's no investigation. You call the child-welfare line, and nothing happens. And the majority of calls about foster care are closed." 

That’s probably not exactly what Gelser said.  She said Oregon screened out calls at among the highest rates in the country.  (I know this because when I emailed her, at about 2:15pm her time on the day before Christmas, she immediately responded, personally, with the source for her information and what she had tweeted at the time.  As I said, I don’t doubt the part about dedication.)

But looking only at the rate at which calls to a state’s child protection hotline are screened in or screened out can be misleading.

Oregon does screen out calls at a rate well above the national average – though it’s 56.6 percent, not 60 percent.  But Oregonians also are far more likely to call the hotline in the first place (which is pretty remarkable for a state which, according to Duin, is filled with people who don’t give a damn).  Nationwide hotlines get about 47 calls for every thousand children.  In Oregon it’s more than 76.  

It’s possible this is because Oregon is a cesspool of depravity with vastly more child abuse than the nation as a whole.  More likely, however, people in Oregon just happen to be more prone to heed the constant messages to “report” anything and everything, no matter how absurd the suspicion may be.  With that many more people, proportionately, calling in, it makes perfect sense that a larger proportion of cases won’t meet even the minimal standards needed to be accepted for investigation.

In addition, Oregon “substantiates” cases at a rate 35 percent above the national average.  But that’s still only 23 percent of the cases – which means workers are wasting more than three-quarters of their time spinning their wheels – because the screening isn’t strict enough.

So, to review:

● Oregonians phone in reports of child abuse at a rate above the national average.

● Calls are accepted for investigation at a rate below the national average.

● Investigations are substantiated at a rate above the national average.

● Children are removed from their homes at a rate above the national average.

But Sen. Gelser expresses concern only about the figure for screening.

In fairness, Gelser also notes with concern that a majority of reports alleging abuse in foster care are closed at screening.  In fact, that also makes sense. Though multiple studies, including at least one specific to Oregon, have found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes, that’s still not a majority.

What does not make sense, however, is the fact that allegations of abuse in foster care are screened out at a significantly higher rate  - more than 66 percent – than allegations of abuse in general.  This is still another indication of where the real bias lies in Oregon.

Duin pays more attention to another of Gelser’s concerns: 

Gelser also notes that the majority of reports from the children's Court Appointed Special Advocates – are also dismissed at screening: "That makes no sense to me." 

Actually, it makes perfect sense.  CASA volunteers mean well, but the evidence is overwhelming that the racial and class bias that permeates child welfare is virtually built in to the CASA model.  That may well prompt CASAs to report cases where no maltreatment has taken place.

None of this means the Oregon hotline is working well.  Odds are, like every other part of almost every other child welfare system, it is arbitrary, capricious and cruel, with some cases wrongly screened out — and others wrongly screened in.  In at least three other states, when hotline operators were given identical hypothetical cases, there was no consistency in whether the cases were screened in or out.  So a truly objective investigation would be worthwhile.

But the whole screening debate needs to be seen in the context of that other disturbing statistic:

Oregon tears children from their families at anywhere from 15 to 34 percent above the national average – and it’s been doing that for decades.  Surely, if take-the-child-and-run were the answer, Oregon would have much safer children by now.

Instead, of course, all that needless removal overloads the system, creating an artificial “shortage” of placements.  So the state looks the other way at abuse in foster care.  And now, it seems, Steve Duin wants us to look away from that part of the picture, too.

An algorithm for the holidays

For more about predictive analytics in child welfare, see our report Big Data Is Watching You

Child welfare in Arkansas: The Legislature is not helping

Last of three parts

If little John or Jane from Little Rock isn't in class today,
a child abuse investigator may be at the door tomorrow.

The previous two posts about Arkansas child welfare deal with the failures of Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the State Division of Children and Family Services.  But while the governor has been leading the state backwards, the legislature has been no help.

Consider the issue of “educational neglect.”  This is how we began a blog post on thisissue in 2010:

Late [in 2009] the highly-regarded Vera Institute of Justice, based in New York, issued a report  on one of the seedier back alleys of child welfare: "Educational Neglect." The majority of states, wisely, don't even include such cases in the mandate of their child welfare agencies. Unfortunately, New York, is not one of them. There, educational neglect reports serve one primary function: They're a lever schools can use to force parents to do what they want – like, for instance, not demand too much in the way of special education for their kids, or not complain about school safety.
 

Here are some highlights from the Vera Institute study, which focused on New York State but applies to any state that still lets CPS investigate "educational neglect":

● Overwhelmingly, these are low-risk cases, and it's idiotic to waste the time of child protective services dealing with them. (While that may be obvious, they've got an actual case reading, from Orange County, to prove it.) In addition to wasting the time of CPS workers, sending a CPS worker to the door only makes the family defensive and makes it harder to solve whatever problem may be causing absenteeism.

● The notion that educational neglect is the "tip of the iceberg," a sign of some other, deeper problem, (the primary excuse for CPS investigating such cases), is nonsense. Generally, "educational neglect" is the tip of nothing except some kind of school problem, often one that is not the parent's fault.

So guess what the Arkansas Legislature did this year: It passed a law expanding the jurisdiction of the state Division of Children and Family Services to include educational neglect.  The rationale: Exactly the “tip of the iceberg” assumptions that the Vera Institute study found were wrong.

This is a bad idea in any state.  It’s even dumber in Arkansas, where one of the key problems identified in a report from child welfare expert Paul Vincent (a report commissioned by the state itself) is impossibly high caseloads.

The other issue concerns cases where DCFS does not remove the child, but demands that the family meet certain conditions to keep the child in the home.  In most states, these “safety plans” are used in low-risk cases, and are agreed to by the agency and the family.

The Arkansas Legislature has decided, however, that in Arkansas, every single one of these plans is going to have to be accompanied by a formal charge of abuse or neglect and approved by the court.

According to Vincent’s report:

Regardless of the merits of the Act, it will undoubtedly increase the DCFS workload, including administrative tasks and time in court. It is also likely to increase the number of children placed in foster care.

But there’s more – and it says a lot about the mindset both of DCFS and some in the court system, Vincent writes: 

It is likely that this bill was introduced because of doubts on the part of some stakeholders that DCFS could assure child safety without court oversight. Some legal stakeholders criticized a DCFS practice which they called coercive placements, meaning that DCFS would threaten removal unless the caregiver placed the child with another family member, for example, … 

OK, let me interrupt here.  When I first read this, I thought: Good.  The courts have discovered that DCFS is unfairly strong-arming parents into placing the child into what is foster care in all but name.  This also raises questions about how many times DCFS does this but doesn’t officially report the placement as an entry into foster care, something discussed on this blog here.  So it’s possible the real rate of removal in Arkansas is much higher than the official figures reported to the federal government.

But now, let me allow Vincent to finish his thought (I've put the portion I left out above in bold): 

Some legal stakeholders criticized a DCFS practice which they called coercive placements, meaning that DCFS would threaten removal unless the caregiver placed the child with another family member, for example, without properly reviewing the alternative caregiver’s suitability or petitioning the court.

In other words, these “legal stakeholders” were just fine with DCFS strong-arming the parents – but, in keeping with the profound bias against kinship care that permeates the state, they just didn’t like where the child went after the parents were strong-armed.

Donald Trump and the child savers: It's not a band, but they sing the same song

Photo by Gage Skidmore

This post originally appeared at the Chronicle of Social Change

Last month, author and political commentator Jeff Greenfield wrote an essay for Politico on the politics of fear – and how Donald Trump exploits it.  He wrote:

History teaches us lessons of what can happen when genuine public fears are co-opted by the demagogues, fear-mongers and over-reactors. There was a reason to fear crime in the 1960s and 1970s, because violent crime in America was increasing by leaps and bounds, but that didn’t mean the only response [had to be] four decades of over-incarceration, driven by politicians’ fears of looking soft on crime. There was a reason to fear a Soviet espionage network looking for military secrets during a Cold War waged in the shadow of countless nuclear weapons, but that didn’t require McCarthyism as a response.There was a reason to fear where Al Qaeda might strike next after 19 men with box cutters killed 3,000 people in the heart of two great cities, but that didn’t mean we had to invade Iraq.

Let me add one to Greenfield’s list: There is a reason to fear that a small number of parents are brutally abusive and will do terrible things to innocent children if they are not stopped.  But that doesn’t mean we needed to create a system that puts millions of children through frightening investigations every year, and casts thousands of them into a chaotic system of foster care, traumatizing some of them for life. 

Yet that’s what we’ve done. Some of the same people who probably are horrified by Donald Trump seem to have no problem using his tactics in the fight against child abuse.

Case in point: Suppose someone tried to set up a role-playing exercise concerning international relations. But every Muslim character was a terrorist and they all said things like “death to America” and “kill the infidels.”  The furor at this blatant bigotry would be enormous.

Yet a column in the Chronicle of Social Change recently sang the praises of a role-playing exercise about foster care in an article that begins with the script for those taking the role of birth parent:

The birth parent leans in and whispers horrific things to her child.“I don’t want you.”“I can’t protect you.”“Don’t tell anyone our family secret.”

Everyone playing a birth parent is instructed to “choose an addiction” – since, of course, every parent who loses a child to foster care must be an addict. 

In fact, the problem of drug abuse, like the problem of child abuse, is serious and real. But both also have been subjected to enormous hype, and inflated figures.

Where in this role-playing exercise are the birth parents who lost their children because their poverty was confused with neglect? Where are the mothers who were beaten by their husbands and then had their children taken away because they “allowed” the children to “witness domestic violence”?   And where are the ones who lost their children because of a false positive drug test, or whose “drug problem” consists of smoking marijuana?

This same role-playing exercise features only “enlightened foster parents.”  There are many of these.  But since multiple studies have found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes, they can’t all be enlightened.

And where are the caseworkers who immediately jump to conclusions about families because they are poor, and especially if they are poor and African-American?  has shown that to be a common problem.

Yet this exercise in stigma and stereotyping not only isn’t condemned, it is honored. The guy who came up with it, David White, won and “Angels in Adoption” award.

Donald Trump would be proud.

Or suppose Donald Trump were asked which states were doing the best job at solving a social problem. Suppose he replied that it’s complicated, “but I will tell you the states that do the best overall are the ones that have smaller, whiter populations” [emphasis added].

Even Trump never actually said that - but Michael Petit did, when asked which states are best at preventing child abuse. He’s the founder of the group that calls itself Every Child Matters, and he said it at a Congressional hearing. 

And then there is this, from a former social worker for the Washington, D.C. child welfare agency. She laments the fact that a judge would not let foster parents adopt a child, and instead awarded custody to

The 19-year-old father, jobless and a high school dropout. … He had not abused or neglected Davon. Nevertheless, it was clear that Davon would do better with his foster parents. 

In other words, why do we need actual maltreatment to take away a child forever? And why help a birth father with employment and child-rearing?  Let’s have a society in which mostly white, middle-class caseworkers descend upon impoverished communities and take black children from parents because they would be “better off” elsewhere! 

Perhaps she should send the idea to the Trump campaign. I’m sure they’d love it.

None of this is new. In the 19th Century, Protestant Minister Charles Loring Brace snatched away the children of poor Catholic immigrants whose parents he deemed genetically inferior and threw them onto “orphan trains” even though many were not orphans.  Brace knew how to whip up a crowd with scare stories. 

Other child savers, as they proudly called themselves, hid their agenda of fear and loathing of the immigrant poor – and their efforts to confiscate their children -- behind horror stories of brutally beaten children, complete with “before” and “after” pictures for the media.

They, and their latter-day counterparts, could be Donald Trump’s role models.

If there is a difference between Donald Trump and today’s child savers it is this: The child savers mean well.  They want to help children and they really believe their “solutions” will work. 

But Greenfield wrote something else in his Politico column on the politics of fear:

The dilemma, of course, is that in every one of these examples, the lunge toward useless, or foolish, or dangerous, or deplorable responses seems almost built into the political system.

In child welfare, we have a system that subjects millions to needless investigations, traumatizes thousands with needless foster care – and still overlooks children in real danger.

Useless, foolish, dangerous and deplorable seems like a pretty good description of that system. If we’re ever going to change that, America’s latter-day child savers need to stop playing the Trump card.

More about the impact of Trump-style paranoia, and the implications for child welfare, in this post.