Child welfare in Washington, D.C.: An “offer” families can’t refuse

Remember when the D.C. family police denied they take children if their parents are late to pick them up after school?  A policy manual from the D.C. schools reveals that it’s more complicated.

If you’re a parent living in poverty, you may need a lot of help.  But no matter where you turn for help you risk being turned in to the family police (a more accurate term than child protective services).  In Washington, D.C. that even applies if you’re late picking up your child from an afterschool program.  Turns out, it’s right in the D.C. Public Schools’ handbook for such programs.   

But that’s not the way the D.C. family police agency has been spinning the story.  

Back in late August 2019, a Washington, D.C. television station revealed that a local public elementary school was threatening to call the family police, known in D.C. as the Child and Family Services Agency, if parents were late picking up their kids from school. CFSA then would take the children to their central office.  

About eight months later, the head of the agency flatly denied this in a way that made it easy for listeners to infer the story was wrong. 

But the story was right. Only after the policy was exposed was it changed.  

And it gets worse.  No one at CFSA bothered to mention that handbook, the one that includes  a very similar policy – citywide – for some of the children in afterschool programs.

This is the story of what CFSA said, what CFSA did, and what CFSA still does. 

August, 2019: WUSA-TV breaks the story 

To understand the context, we need to go back to August 2019, when WUSA-TV, Channel 9 broke the story.  They reported on a memo sent to parents at one school at the start of the school year – and lest there be any doubt – displayed the memo, which said: 

If you choose not to have your child remain in the Afterschool Program, then he/she MUST be picked up promptly at 3:15 p.m. For those students that are not picked up on time (3:15pm) the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) will be contacted, and parents will be required to pick their child up from their office." [Emphasis most definitely in the original] 

Here’s the full story:

Channel 9 got comment from a CFSA deputy director, Robert Matthews, and D.C. Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee. At no point did either of them deny that the memo was real. At no point did they say the school was wrong to have issued it. At no point does Matthews say CFSA would not cooperate with demands to come and get children under these circumstances.  That’s worth keeping in mind in light of how the agency is spinning the whole thing now. 

I discussed the harm of this policy in a follow-up story on Channel 9.  At that time CFSA still did not make the claims it would make now, a year-and-a-half-later, as we’ll see below.

 

May, 2020: The CFSA Director on the radio 

Fast forward to May 2020. By then we were well into the pandemic.  CFSA Director Brenda Donald appeared on a prestigious local radio program, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, on public radio station WAMU. She touted the false master narrative that, in the absence of “mandated reporters” constantly keeping their eyes on children, they were at grave risk of child abuse.  Donald even urged the very people to whom families were most likely to turn to for help to become spies – though, of course, she didn’t use that word. Here’s what she said: 

So our big concern now is really not so much our children, who are in foster care because they are well cared for. They're in foster homes. … But it's the children we don't see who may be suffering that we are concerned about. … 

But now what we've asked our community partners to do who are out about in the community. They're providing meals to families. They're connecting with families in other ways to really step up and be more vigilant. If they see that, you know, perhaps they haven't seen a child when they've delivered meals to the family or they may observe some other signs where they note that something is not quite right. 

So now every D.C. parent with a hungry child has to worry about whether to accept a meal just when they may need it most.  

I called in to the program to raise that concern.  To which Donald replied: 

We’re not as – certainly when someone calls our hotline we have experts, who are trained to ask certain questions to really understand if someone is making a report that really doesn’t go to true abuse or neglect. We’re not going to respond to a frivolous call. 

Since Donald said they don’t respond to frivolous calls, that seemed like a good time to bring up the WUSA-TV story. This exchange followed: 

RICHARD: Last year Channel 9 reported that if you're simply a few minutes late to pick up your child from a D.C. public school those school teachers who are ever on the alert will call CFSA. CFSA caseworkers would be there and haul them off to Brenda Donald's office, a terribly traumatic experience for a child. 

NNAMDI: Brenda Donald. 

DONALD: Clearly bad information that was false that was corrected. Someone -- we don't know where that came from, but that absolutely does not happen and is not encouraged. 

 

Where things stand now 

All of which brings us to last week, when a similar situation arose in Chicago.  Lenore Skenazy wrote about that case for Reason.  And she discovered that the D.C. approach went way beyond one school.  She links to an old edition of something called the “District of Columbia Public Schools Afterschool Program Parent/Guardian Handbook.”  That prompted me to look further.  I found the handbook for the 2019-2020 school year – the school year in progress at the same time Brenda Donald was on The Kojo Nnamdi Show.  

Of course, the original WUSA9 story dealt with what a school did with children who were not in an afterschool program.  The passages below deal with what happens to students who are somehow involved with such a program – and sure enough, as you’ll see below, CFSA ultimately would split this very hair.  But either way, it doesn’t exactly sound like this “absolutely does not happen…”  Let’s take a look at Page 7: 

1. If a student is not picked up by the end of the program day (6:00 p.m.), afterschool staff will call the phone numbers listed in the child(ren)’s enrollment application to locate an adult who can pick up the student. 

2. If, after multiple attempts, the student(s)’ parent, guardian, or emergency contact(s) cannot be reached, the school will call the DC Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) at 202-671-7233. [Emphasis added.] 

3. If the parent, guardian, or another approved adult arrives prior to the CFSA representative, CFSA receives another call and a reported update. 

4. The student may not return to the afterschool program until the AA/full-time coordinator and/or the principal has spoken with the parent, guardian, or caseworker and has agreed to a plan by which the student will be picked up on time. [Emphasis added]. 

Now let’s turn to page 8, regarding students who are kicked out of an after-school program: 

DCPS implements the following steps in the event that the student (who has been previously removed from the afterschool program) is left after school dismissal: 

--The student will be held in the main office once school is dismissed (beginning at 3:15 p.m.). 

-- School staff will call the parent/guardian after dismissal to request immediate pick-up from school (at 3:30 p.m.). 

-- If the parent/guardian does not pick up the student within 30 minutes, a second call will be made to the parent/guardian and emergency contacts on the student’s afterschool enrollment form (at 4:00 p.m.). 

-- If the parent/guardian does not pick up a student within an hour of the first call, CFSA will be contacted and asked to take custody of the student (at 4:30 p.m.). [Emphasis added]. 

Yes, there is a slight difference between this district-wide policy involving certain students involved with afterschool programs and what happened at that one school that was the subject of the Channel 9 story:  The district-wide policy sometimes allows an hour’s grace period before turning over the situation to the family police.

 

What CFSA says

On Friday I reached out to CFSA Communications Director Kera Tyler for the agency’s response.  I asked her why Donald referred to what WUSA9 reported as “Clearly bad information that was false that was corrected. Someone -- we don't know where that came from, but that absolutely does not happen and is not encouraged.”  In an email, Tyler acknowledged the memo from the school was real but claimed the school was the one that got it wrong. Says Tyler: 

In addition to responding to your hyperbolic language re: caseworkers hauling children to her office, Director Donald was referring to the misinformation in the principal’s communication to parents. Teachers are not directed to contact the DC Child and Family Services Agency when families are “simply a few minutes” late picking up their children by the 3:15 p.m. elementary school dismissal. Shortly after this news story ran, Principal Thomas and DC Public Schools (DCPS) corrected the misinformation, children who are not picked up on time at the end of the regular school day are enveloped into available afterschool programming while staff members work to contact family members and emergency contacts. The DCPS Parent Handbook you’ve linked and referenced is regarding afterschool programming. 

So WUSA9 got it right – that was the school’s policy and only after Channel 9 broke the story, were things “corrected.” 

But notice that the response says nothing about why a very similar policy exists, districtwide, for afterschool programming.  (I’ll get to how CFSA spins that, below.) 

Tyler went on to deny that Donald was misleading listeners on the radio program.  There just wasn’t time to go into detail about it, Tyler said, because “The purpose of her appearance on The Kojo Nnamdi Show last spring was to address concerns regarding child welfare during the public health emergency.”  Translation: Donald was too busy scaring people into rushing to report any vague suspicion of child abuse and urging them to usie meal drop-offs for spying. 

But even if we accept this at face value, it doesn’t explain why CFSA didn’t say anything like this when the agency’s deputy director commented in the original WUSA9 story.  (Neither did the D.C. Schools Chancellor.) 

As for the policy that CFSA at no point denies, the one about afterschool cases, Tyler explains that’s just CFSA being kindly, benevolent helpers!  Writes Tyler: 

During emergency incidents where families and emergency contacts can’t be reached, CFSA offers schools and families respite. 

Let’s stop right there.  “Offer” implies the families can say no. But this is an “offer” they can’t refuse. 

Tyler continues: 

By and large, these incidents are not abuse or neglect, and a child requiring temporary safe supervision until their family can be reached is not a removal. 

But does it feel like it’s not removal to the child?  

Tyler continues: 

CFSA social workers are trained professionals who team with educators to support families during these incidents by helping to identify additional familial contacts and providing that safe supervision if necessary. 

But recall that the actual policy manual puts it differently: 

If the parent/guardian does not pick up a student within an hour of the first call, CFSA will be contacted and asked to take custody of the student (at 4:30 p.m.). 

In 2019, CFSA told Channel 9 they didn’t track how often this happens.  They still don’t. But Tyler says there have been only a handful of cases in the past two years during which CFSA had to take custody – oh, sorry, I mean provide safe supervision -- under these circumstances. 

Tyler did offer schools help with p.r. -- declaring that “we’re happy to work with them to help soften the tone of any language that comes across punitively.” 

Because how could children possibly feel punished by having strangers come to the school and, yes, haul them off to the downtown office of the family police?

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending March 23, 2021

● The real story of COVID-19 and child welfare is not the false, racist master narrative about a supposed pandemic of child abuse.  The real story is how it has increased the harm done to families by needless foster care and an ongoing mad rush to terminate parental rights.  Mother Jones tells that story. 

● A start toward curbing this harm would be the repeal of the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act.  The Imprint reports on a new campaign to #repealASFA.  You can support the campaign and find out more by following the campaign on Twitter and Instagram at @RepealASFA and on Facebook at http://bit.ly/ASFA-fb.  

● Repealing ASFA is an example of “non-reformist reform” – reforms that are interim steps that move toward more radical change rather than shoring up the existing system. Prof. Dorothy Roberts of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (and a member of the NCCPR Board of Directors) discusses the concept and much more on The Imprint’s weekly podcast. 

The podcast is a good preview of the Columbia Journal of Race and Law Symposium Strengthened Bonds: Abolishing the Child Welfare System and Re-Envisioning Child Well-Being, commemorating the 20^th Anniversary of the publication of Prof. Roberts’ book, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare. [UPDATE: In solidarity with striking Columbia University graduate students, the symposium has been postponed.]

● A Chicago Public School teacher was late to pick up her own child from school due to a mix-up. The school reported the family to the Illinois family policing agency, the Department of Children and Family Services.  Now, WGN-TV reports, the teacher 

…worries for her child, who she says after DCFS questioned him, remains scared that he will be taken away from his mother. 

“He just ran and gave me a hug and was like ‘I’m so dumb,’ I said, ‘baby, why are you dumb?’ He said, ‘I shouldn’t have told her when she said where I live. I should have said nope, that’s not it because she can just come to our home now and come get me.'” 

By the way, Chicago is not alone. The same thing happened in Washington, D.C. 

● And I have a blog post about the lessons Florida politicians and journalists should, but probably won’t learn from the outstanding USA Today Network story about how the state ignores abuse in foster care.

USA TODAY Network reporters document how DCF ignores abuse in Florida foster care

 Once again, it’s the price of foster-care panic 

For decades, NCCPR has pointed out the huge disconnect between officially-reported rates of abuse in foster homes, group homes and institutions and the findings from independent studies which consistently find vastly more such abuse. 

Now USA TODAY Network Florida reporters have obtained copies of thousands of reports alleging abuse in foster care that the state, in effect, covered up, by deciding they were not serious enough even to investigate as child abuse reports.   

As the story explains: 

The nearly 5,000 records detail calls to the Florida Department of Children and Families abuse hotline from teachers, health care professionals, day care workers, neighbors and others about the treatment of kids in state care. 

None of these cases would have been counted in what Florida publicly reports each year about the number of serious abuse, neglect and abandonment allegations in its foster care system. 

DCF says the accusations do not meet its definition of serious harm. Instead, they are classified as foster care "referrals," potential license violations that may prompt an administrative review and that Florida officials have fought to keep secret for years. 

As the story notes, NCCPR reviewed a sample of these reports and, using very conservative criteria, found that a great many absolutely would have been considered abuse had the accused been birth parents.  

Florida experts agreed. Here’s what they told the USA TODAY Network reporters: 

“This is stuff kids tell you about when foster homes are really bad,” said Robert Latham, a child advocate and clinical instructor at the University of Miami’s law school. … The system has an incentive not to believe children because it’s afraid to lose foster parents. Even calling in abuse reports is frustrating because you’re almost sure nothing is going to happen.” … 

In at least four counties, the same case manager assigned to complete regular visits to the foster home where the abuse reportedly occurred is often dispatched to investigate the allegation, former DCF attorney Lisa Dawson-Andrzejczyk said. 

"The vast majority of case managers are good and dedicated and appreciate the seriousness of their job, but you're going to have some who didn't do the home visits, or they visited the child at school and called it a home visit," Dawson-Andrzejczyk said. "They have every reason to not want to acknowledge that there's something they might have missed." … 

A system desperate for foster parents will let a lot of things slide, said Neil Skene, who served as DCF’s special counsel from 2008 to 2010 and chief of staff at the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services from 2015 to 2017. … 

But don’t take our word for it – or theirs. The reporters published summaries of scores of allegations. Read them yourself and ask yourself one question: What would the Florida Department of Children and Families have done had the accused been birth parents? 

It isn’t just Florida, of course. The same incentives apply everywhere, especially in places where child welfare agencies are experiencing foster-care panics - sharply increasing the number of families torn apart needlessly in response to politicians or journalists falsely scapegoating family preservation after high-profile child abuse deaths. 

That is exactly what happened in Florida.  So nothing will come of this excellent journalism from the USA TODAY network if lawmakers and others are allowed to ignore the reason DCF is desperate for foster care beds – the foster-care panic triggered by the Miami Herald’s series falsely scapegoating family preservation for child abuse deaths, and the complicity of the Tampa Bay Times in encouraging the panic.  That panic led to the needless removal of thousands of children.  All were likely traumatized by that needless removal from loving homes. Some almost certainly wound up in abusive foster homes, group homes and institutions. 

You can’t fix this with another tired foster parent recruitment campaign. And you sure as hell can’t fix it with more group homes and institutions – where the rate of abuse is even worse. You can only fix it by reducing the number of children taken needlessly from their homes.

As they read the USA TODAY Network story in the Herald and Times newsrooms – and they will – reporters and editors should think long and hard about how they contributed to what better journalists have now exposed. 

But they probably won’t.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending March 18, 2021

● For decades, NCCPR has pointed out the huge disconnect between officially-reported rates of abuse in foster homes, group homes and institutions and the findings from independent studies which consistently find vastly more such abuse.

 Now USA TODAY Network Florida reporters have obtained copies of thousands of reports alleging abuse in foster care that the state, in effect, covered up, by deciding they were not serious enough even to investigate as child abuse reports.  As the story notes, NCCPR reviewed a sample of these reports and, using very conservative criteria, found that a great many absolutely would have been considered abuse had the accused been birth parents.  Florida experts agreed.

 I’ll have more about this on the blog tomorrow.  Meanwhile, you can read the full story here.

● The Nation has a great overview of child welfare’s failed response to COVID-19: 

When Covid-19 shuttered schools and grounded kids and parents at home, many child welfare authorities feared surging rates of abuse and neglect. … Advocates for parents in marginalized communities, however, say the alarms raised about hidden abuse reflect ingrained biases in child protective services, too eager to remove kids from their homes and drag parents to court in the name of saving children. 

● It’s just the latest in a long line of failed responses, as Chris Gottlieb, co-director of the New York University School of Law Family Defense Clinic explains in an op-ed for Time magazine: 

Today, more than 200,000 children of color are in government custody in our foster system, and the current protesters are largely low-income Black and brown parents who explain that fearmongering about child abuse has empowered child protective authorities to unfairly target their communities and invade their homes with virtual impunity. A shocking 53% of Black children’s homes are investigated by child welfare officials. That knock at the door is not benign social work. Caseworkers routinely demand entry into homes in the middle of the night without warrants. The interrogations are frightening; the strip searches degrading. Far too often, they end with the trauma of children pulled from their parents’ arms. 

● Something unusual happened during a webinar on child welfare in New York City. The head of the child welfare agency tried to fudge the figures – and a journalist called him out.  I have a blog post about it, including video of the full webinar. 

● Several organizations in Connecticut have released a report on the harm that the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act does to the children of incarcerated parents. 

● And have you heard the one about the parents who let their eight and ten-year-old children play at the end of their dead-end street – by themselves????  Yep, this is going where you think it’s going.  Here’s the story, from Lenore Skenazy in Reason.

Child welfare in New York: Why you should ALWAYS fact check the commissioner of New York City’s family policing agency

This graphic from a report by the Movement for Family Power tells the real story of the rise in surveillance of
impoverished families by the New  York City Administration for Children’s Services. 
When ACS Commissioner David Hansell tried to fudge the figures,
Abigail Kramer of the Center for New York City Affairs called him out.

Over the past four years, I’ve had many opportunities to observe the m.o. of David Hansell, commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services.  What we have seen far less often – o.k., up to now, never – is a reporter call him out in real-time when he fudges the figures.

 And that’s one of the things that sets apart a child welfare webinar organized this week by the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. 

The main highlight for me was the comments of Halimah Washington, Community Coordinator for Rise, the magazine written by parents caught in the net of ACS and other family policing agencies. She speaks not only of what ACS did to her but about how it fails so many other families and why so-called “preventive services” can be just another form of surveillance and harassment when they are run by or overseen by an agency that can take away your children. 

So you may want to stop right here and just listen to Ms. Washington:

Another highlight came when Jess Dannhauser, now director of a private foster care agency but formerly an official of ACS, apologized for a policy he pushed when he was at the agency, a policy that expanded the harassment of families due to “educational neglect” reports.  That is a problem that probably has worsened due to COVID-19.

But one more high point for me was watching a journalist call out Hansell when he tried to make selective use of statistics.

 First, some context: 

There are three key elements to any David Hansell public appearance. 

1.         1. Everything good that has ever happened in New York City child welfare is thanks to David Hansell!  Thus, he manages to take credit for a decline in the city’s foster care population that dates back to the 1990s.

2.         2. Everything bad that still happens is someone else’s fault.  It’s because of another city agency or a state agency or the state legislature. You can watch him do lots of this during the webinar.

3.         3. Data are taken out of context to cast ACS in an undeservedly favorable light.  (I went into detail on that one in this column for the online news site City Limits.) 

If anyone hoped things would change after the debacle of his agency getting caught trying to get one of its biggest critics fired, such hopes were dashed during the webinar. 

Hansell started bragging about the decrease in the number of children in foster care on any given day – again, the decrease that began all the way back in the 1990s.  (The record on entries into foster care is more mixed.  It got worse at the start of his tenure, now it’s improving, but until COVID it remained worse than before Hansell became commissioner.) 

But as the Movement for Family Power pointed out in a comprehensive report released last June, even as the number of children in foster care on any given day has declined, there has been a vast increase – almost child-for-child -- in the number of children whose families are forced to undergo onerous, court-ordered supervision and surveillance.  Here’s that graphic from their report again:

 

No that’s not as bad as losing a child to foster care, but it can still undermine a family (If you listened to Ms. Washington you already know that. Here’s another case in point). It’s a level of needless intrusion that white, middle class families would never tolerate. 

 And that brings me to this exchange between Hansell and the moderator Abigail Kramer, senior editor at the Center for New York City Affairs.  It starts at 1:08:07. 

KRAMER: It’s also clear that under your administration, both the number and percentage of families who have cases filed against them in family court has increased significantly as has the number of families who end up with court-ordered supervision. … [They have to] accept continued investigation and monitoring … often for very long periods of time, and typically long before there’s a fact-finding or the equivalent of a hearing where the judge actually decides on the facts of the case. So under the umbrella of this conversation about support vs. surveillance, I’m wondering if you can speak to the increase in that? 

HANSELL: Actually, I don’t want to get into a data discussion here, but actually I think those numbers are wrong, Abigail. I think there were fewer requests for supervision last year than the year before, fewer families under supervision and I think the same was true 2018 to 2019, so I actually think that number has been decreasing …

But Hansell picked the wrong reporter from whom to omit crucial context.  Kramer probably has tracked New York City child welfare data more closely than any other reporter.  She also knows that Hansell became ACS commissioner in February, 2017. So, after a prolonged digression by Hansell, Kramer returned to the data at 1:12:55: 

KRAMER: According to my analysis of ACS numbers, the number and percentage of families brought into court who end up under court supervision has indeed gone down from the high that it hit in FY 2018 but still remains significantly higher than in the years prior to your administration. … [Emphasis added.] 

The irony is, Hansell could have finessed this and come out looking good. When the numbers first were pointed out to him he could have said: “Yes, court supervision cases went way up at first. There had been a high-profile death of a child known-to-the-system and we overreacted. But we were wrong to do that, and we’re beginning to correct it.” 

But that would have required Hansell actually to acknowledge having been wrong.  

Given how averse he seems to be to doing that, we need many more journalists willing to check, double-check and triple-check anything that comes from the New York City Administration for Children’s Services. 

And if you’re not reading this in New York City, you should do even more checking when your own family policing agency puts out a statement.  Because New York City really is one of the least bad child welfare systems in the country (mostly not thanks to David Hansell). Wherever you are, it’s probably worse.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending March 9, 2021

● “One call to the child welfare agency and my whole life could have gone another way.”  Instead, this son of a single mother had a network of friends and extended family to support him.  So Jerry Milner grew up to spend four years running the Children’s Bureau in the Department of Health and Human Services.  He discusses the work he did there, and his work on the landmark reforms that changed child welfare in his home state of Alabama on the Parental Rights Foundation podcast. 

●Milner also has a column on the Rethinking Foster Care blog, in which he writes: 

To my horror, I still read articles suggesting that we should be taking more, not fewer, children into foster care.  That black children are more likely to be abused and neglected, rather than the reality that black children and families are more likely to suffer the ravages of over-surveillance and poverty, which we continue to confuse with neglect.  That we need more and more and more foster homes. 

● The Imprint has a story about a new report from Children’s Rights on the need to drastically curb the use of group homes and institutions.  Lots of groups put out reports like that. But what sets this one apart is their list of alternatives.  Instead of the usual nonsense about recruiting more foster homes, giving foster parents a big pay raise, blah, blah blah, this report focuses on keeping children out of the system in the first place and, when removal from the home really is necessary, bolstering kinship foster care. 

Also in The Imprint: 

● Jessica Pryce, director of the Florida Institute for Child Welfare and Amelia Franck Meyer, founder and CEO of Alia Innovations, write about the need to face up to racism in child welfare with  truth, reconciliation – and reparation.  They write: 

We often teach our children that an apology should be followed by a change in behavior. In child welfare, although we are working on transforming how we do our work, we have skipped an essential step. We have not made efforts to admit our shortcomings and make our intentions of changing child welfare’s future clear to the very people to whom it matters most — families. 

But that won’t be easy when so many in the field are still claiming that child welfare is magically immune from racism. 

● And in Minnesota, a forum rallied support for the Minnesota African American Family Preservation Act. From the story: 

The effects the child welfare system has on the disintegration of the Black family is haunting and the entryway must be closed, advocates said at the meeting. 

“The front door of child protection is too wide,” said Kelis Houston of Village Arms. Houston, who helped conceive of the bill along with legislators in both chambers, pointed out the lack of cultural competence, and the continued racial bias from mandated reporters that often mistake poverty for neglect, which leads to maltreatment allegations.

NCCPR in Youth Today: When the product is poor people’s kids, it’s always a bull market

            A new study from the Children’s Bureau in the federal Department of Health and Human Services reveals some shocking findings.  It turns out we now know exactly how to target intervention to rescue children from those awful parents.  Science now tells us that the worst parents, by far, are the parents of infants.  The most salvageable are the parents of 14-year-olds.  Given the nobility of child welfare practitioners, any other explanation is unthinkable. 

            Here’s how we know ...

Read the full column in Youth Today