"Child welfare" in Missouri has a dubious distinction

In Missouri, everyone caught up in the child welfare system gets to be harassed by two agencies.  Here’s how that helped tear apart a Black family.

Missouri child welfare perfectly illustrates what goes wrong
when a fifth wheel is allowed to drive the entire vehicle

Samantha Mungai, an immigrant from Kenya – a dreamer, brought here as a child herself - was terrified of losing her job and winding up homeless.  So one night, while she worked, she left her four-year-old home alone in her Kansas City, Missouri apartment.  As a result, the child has lost the right ever to see her mother again during her childhood.  Her rights to her mother were terminated – a more accurate term than termination of parental rights. 

The state child welfare agency, known as the Children’s Division, and the courts not only took the child needlessly and then refused to give her back, they refused even to allow extended family to adopt the child.  Now the child lives with the white foster parents who adopted her.  All of which prompted first Kansas City Star Editorial Writer Toriano Porter and then Laura Ziegler of KCUR public radio to take an in-depth look at, as KCUR’s headline puts it, “What The Adoption of One Kansas City Mother’s Child Says About Race in the Child Welfare System.” 

It says exactly what you think it says.  

Confusing poverty with neglect 

Were Ms. Mungai white and middle class, the issue wouldn’t have arisen.  She wouldn’t have had to work at night as a dancer (and you can bet that the job, in itself, counted against her).  Whenever and wherever she worked, were she middle class, she could have afforded childcare.  And if you have any doubt about how much more leeway middle-class white families get in situations like this, check out this outstanding 2003 New York Times story that examined exactly that. 

This is a classic example of confusing poverty with neglect.  The problem that started all this could have been solved with basic concrete help.  Indeed, in the same city a police officer, A.J. Henry showed exactly that kind of common decency in what is, in some ways, a strikingly similar case.  

Instead, the Missouri Children’s Division took the child and ran – something they do at a rate 50% above the national average.  Then they poked through Ms. Mungai’s life looking for issues they could raise to hang onto the child and make her jump through ever more hopes.  At one point, a traffic violation was held against her.  At another point, the Star reports, she even was dinged for not being able to pay the cost of the hoops through which she was required to jump.  Even her first caseworker is, as the KCUR story puts it … 

…still haunted by the many obstacles she feels made it almost impossible for Mungai to be reunited with her daughter. 

"She jumped through so many hoops," the caseworker said. "She had a red flag because she was Black, she was lower income, an immigrant, and a stripper, a line of work people judge. We failed her, the system failed her." 

Worse, they failed her child, who, both stories indicate, has suffered emotionally from her removal from her mother and placement with white strangers.  Even before adopting the child, the foster parents cut her off from visits with extended family after the Star published its story. 

Harming children of battered mothers 

One of the issues the Children’s Division found illustrates another common nationwide problem: Needlessly taking children from victims of domestic violence, the same issue exposed so well last year by USA Today Network reporters in Florida.  As this Blog has noted often, taking children from domestic violence victims does the children so much harm that in one state, New York, it’s actually illegal.  

Missouri’s fifth wheel 

But there also was a third factor in this case that is unique to Missouri.  As the public radio story explains: 

Documents obtained by KCUR indicate that Mungai was making progress toward meeting the requirements to achieve the goal all had agreed on: reunification. A handwritten case report dated July 11, 2018 — a year after the child was removed from the home — noted, “(Mom) moved into apartment… (is) adjusting well…(she is) working…visits (with her daughter) goes well….approved for Food Stamps.” 

Four months later, Mungai called in from work for her regular team meeting and was shocked to hear Juvenile Officer Heather Kindle announce she was changing the goal from reunification to TPR — Termination of Parental Rights. 

That might reasonably prompt people in 49 states to ask: What in the world is a “juvenile officer” and why does she have so much power? 

The Juvenile Office is a bizarre “fifth wheel” in the Missouri child welfare system.  It is, in effect, a second, parallel child protective services agency run directly by the courts, that is even more powerful than the one run by the executive branch.  I’ll describe how it works in detail below, but first, consider the arrogance – and possible disregard for law – displayed by the office not only in this case but in others, as seen in these comments to KCUR from Clay County supervising juvenile officer Janet Rogers: 

“The law, as far as juvenile cases, is not clear cut.  They’re not like criminal cases where you can say, 'Well, you’ve proved it, here’s the sentence, off to the department of corrections.' (These cases ) are very subjective, we put recommendations in front of the judge, sometimes she takes them, sometimes she doesn’t." 

Behold!  An officer of the law almost literally saying the system is lawless.  In fact, the
system is supposed to be like the criminal system, particularly when it comes to permanently severing a child’s right to her or his parents.  You are supposed to prove a parent is unfit before even reaching the issue of “best interests.”  And you’re supposed to do it with clear and convincing evidence.  Says who?  Says the United States Supreme Court. 

So what are they doing at the Juvenile Office?  Do they just make it up as they go along? Do they recommend destroying a family forever whenever they feel like it for whatever “very subjective” reason suits them?  Surely by now we’ve figured out that subjectivity is just another word for bias.  

As for Rogers’ statement that “we put recommendations in front of the judge, sometimes she takes them, sometimes she doesn’t" I hope someone checks to see how often she “does” and how often she “doesn’t.” 

For more on how this bizarre fifth wheel drives the entire vehicle of child welfare in Missouri, and why that’s so harmful for children, here’s an excerpt from NCCPR’s 2003 report on Missouri child welfare.  Some of what you’ll read presaged what happened in this case:            

Missouri may be the only child protection system in America with two front doors. 

            As in all states, citizens are encouraged to call the child welfare agency if they have “reasonable cause to suspect” maltreatment, and some professionals are required to report.

            But in Missouri, citizens can simply call their county juvenile office instead – or as well.  (Mandated reporters must call DFS [The Department of Family Services; this report predates creation of the Children’s Division], but they also can call the juvenile office). 

            Thus, while it is not clear how often it happens, it is possible for DFS and the juvenile office to wind up doing duplicate investigations of the same case.  And even if the DFS worker does not think the child needs to be removed, if the juvenile officer disagrees, the juvenile officer can take the child on the spot. 

            Even when both organizations agree on removal, parents may wind up whipsawed between conflicting requirements.  They may do everything DFS asks, only to go to court and find that the juvenile office isn’t satisfied – or vice versa. 

            And the fact that two entities that apparently don’t always get along must sign off on plans developed through Team Decisionmaking before they can take effect, is likely to further impede the Team Decisionmaking process. 

            And it is the juvenile office, not DFS, that actually performs the role equivalent to a prosecutor in a criminal trial.  Thus, if DFS thinks a child should return home and the juvenile office doesn’t, (or vice versa) DFS sometimes may finally have something in common with the parents: The agency may not be adequately represented in court.  DFS does have its own lawyers and they do appear in some, but reportedly not all, cases. 

            In addition … the juvenile office is a part of the court system, which means that in any conflict between the juvenile office and an agency of another branch of government, the judge might be tempted to favor the “home team.”… 

            The fact that no other state has a “Juvenile Office” does not, in itself, make Missouri wrong.  If Missouri had the best child welfare system in America, then there might be reason for other states to follow its lead.  But, of course, it doesn’t.  Missouri has a typically wretched “child welfare” system that, as noted above, tears apart families at a rate 50% above the national average.  Clearly the juvenile office isn’t the only reason for this – other states are even worse – but it sure isn’t helping. 

            Missouri could help children in impoverished families by abolishing the juvenile office – and plowing the savings into things like, say, childcare for those families. 

            And the next time a neighbor in Kansas City feels they must call someone because a young child is home alone, I hope they’ll try calling Sgt. Henry first.          

NCCPR in Youth Today: ASFA’s timelines are horrible for children but another part of the law is even worse

America’s most recent attempt to reckon with racism, a reckoning that began with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 and shifted into high gear with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, has forced the nation to come to grips with two of the three major racist laws passed by Congress in the 1990s. 

Ugly, racist stereotypes about Black youth would lead to passage of draconian anti-crime legislation in 1994. The First Step Act took a first step back from that approach. 

Ugly racist stereotypes about “welfare queens” would lead to draconian cuts in welfare benefits in 1996. The expanded child tax credits in the COVID relief bill represent a welcome change in course. 

But when it comes to fighting racism, child welfare always lags behind. After all, what other field has an entire “caucus of denial” running around claiming that it is immune from the racism that infects every other aspect of American life? 

Read the full column in Youth Today

If it’s April Fools, it must be Child Abuse Hype and Hysteria Month

 I've reprinted this post almost every year since 2010.  But for the past two years it's been especially relevant. You can be sure that this year, like last year, the Astroturf fill-in-the-blanks op-eds that various advocacy groups send to their local chapters will be filled with references to an "epidemic" or a "pandemic" of child abuse - as though the moment white middle-class professionals can't have their "eyes" on poor children of color, their parents will rush to torture them.  This myth persists even though several national news organizations have challenged it.  NCCPR has details here.

I hope that before pushing the send button on these generic submissions, people will at least have the decency to pause and think long and hard about just how racist that framing is. Precedent suggests, however, that they won’t.

In fact, given that the child welfare establishment has no shame, expect the usual op-eds to have token boilerplate statements about racial justice – even as they propose making a profoundly racist family policing system even bigger and more powerful.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED APRIL 1, 2010 , UPDATED APRIL 1, 2018, MARCH 31, 2020, AND MARCH 31, 2021.

Back in 2003, one of the groups most responsible for fomenting hype and hysteria about child abuse came remarkably close to admitting that they did just that – and that it had backfired. 

Rather like Dr. Frankenstein admitting he’d created a monster, in a 2003 Request for Proposals concerning how to improve their messaging, Prevent Child Abuse America wrote: 

While the establishment of a certain degree of public horror relative to the issue of child abuse and neglect was probably necessary in the early years to create public awareness of the issue, the resulting conceptual model adopted by the public has almost certainly become one of the largest barriers to advancing the issue further in terms of individual behavior change, societal solutions and policy priorities. 

In 2020, PCAA went further. They actually branded what they had done “health terrorism” – but refused to apologize for it. 

This is especially worth remembering as we begin “Child Abuse Awareness Month” – a month, which, appropriately starts on April Fools Day. 

So I’ve reprinted below our 2010 blog post on the topic – with some updates and links to newer data – since, unfortunately, aside from those data, nothing has changed. Because it's a lot easier to create a monster than to bring it under control.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED APRIL 1, 2010:

Get ready for a seemingly endless stream of cookie-cutter news stories and Astroturf op ed columns (the kind written by national groups with blanks to fill in to make them sound home-grown) touting "Child Abuse Awareness Month" – based on the bizarre premise that the American people are blissfully unaware of child abuse. 

There is something appropriate about the fact that "Child Abuse Awareness Month" starts on April Fool’s Day, since it involves fooling the public in order to push an agenda of hype and hysteria that obscures the real scope of the problem, and real solutions, in favor of approaches that only make a serious and real problem worse. Your typical Child Abuse Awareness month news story or op ed column follows a standard formula: 

1.  1. Take the most horrifying case to occur in your community over the past year, the more lurid the better.

2.   2. Jump immediately from that story to a gigantic number which actually is only the number of "reports" alleging any form of child maltreatment. Ignore the fact that the vast majority of those reports are false and most of the rest are nothing like the horror story. Rather, they often involve the confusion of poverty with neglect. Or…

3.   3.  Use only the total number of cases that caseworkers guess might be true, but call them "confirmed" giving the guesses, which are simply the opinion of a worker checking a box on a form, far more credibility than they deserve. A major federal study found that workers are two- to six-times more likely to wrongly label an innocent family guilty than to wrongly label real child abusers innocent.

4.   4. Pile hype onto hype by reasserting the racist, discredited COVID-19 “pandemic of child abuse” myth.

5.    5. Throw in huge lists of "symptoms" or "warning signs" that "might" be "signs" of child abuse – and might as easily be signs of any number of other things.

6.     6. Instruct us all that it is our duty to phone the local child abuse hotline with any suspicion of anything no matter how vague and how dubious – instead of advising us to report when we have "reasonable cause to suspect" maltreatment, the same standard often used in law to guide "mandated reporters."  

      7. Remind us that we are welcome to call the hotline anonymously – thereby encouraging those who want to harass an ex-spouse, a neighbor or anyone else against whom they may have a grudge to go right ahead, secure in the knowledge that they'll never get caught because they can conceal their identity. 

It all comes from the same ends-justify-the-means mentality behind, for example an egregiously-misleading report published by the group that calls itself Every Child Matters – the mentality that says: What's a little distortion and exaggeration in the name of a good cause? 

In fact, such distortion and exaggeration can do enormous harm to children.  

Hotlines wind up with more false reports and trivial cases; children are harassed and traumatized by needless child abuse investigations – often including stripsearches as caseworkers look for bruises - and some of those children are forced needlessly into foster care. The caseworkers wind up even more overloaded by these false allegations, so they have even less time to find children in real danger.  And at this moment this year, it still. risks spreading a deadly virus. 

Reality check 

NCCPR has some resources on our website for any journalists and others interested in putting all this into context, countering the hype and hysteria and pressing for real solutions: 

·        -- Issue papers on Understanding Child Abuse Numbers and False Allegations: What the Data Really Show

·        -- Our Solutions pages, Doing Child Welfare Right and our Due Process Agenda.

·        -- Our presentation on how to really prevent child abuse: take a social justice approach instead of a public health approach.

If the people behind "Child Abuse Awareness Month"  (also known as "Child Abuse Prevention Month") really want to prevent "child abuse" then how about campaigning to ameliorate the worst effects of poverty.  

Poverty increases the stress that can lead to actual abuse and, as noted above, poverty itself often is confused with "neglect."  This can be seen by the fact that study after study shows even small increases in income significantly reduce what child welfare systems call "neglect."

The problem of child abuse is serious and real, but the solutions have been phony. The distortion and exaggeration that typify child abuse "awareness" campaigns only promote phony solutions and make those serious, real problems even worse.

If only there were a Statistics Abuse Prevention Month.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending March 30, 2021

● We begin with some very good reporting about some very bad ideas.  In Massachusetts, a state that already takes away children at a rate more than 60% above the national average, and despite the mass of evidence that mandatory reporting is a failure, a special commission is proposing to double down on that failure. 

Not only do they want to vastly expand who is a mandated reporter they want to make it easier to confuse poverty with neglect.  But CommonWealth Magazine didn’t do the usual story – find the worst “unreported” horror story and use it to cheer on the changes.  Instead, this story from reporter Shira Schoenberg looks at all sides – including all the reasons the plan could backfire. 

● Speaking of laws that backfire, America’s racial justice reckoning has led to calls to repeal the federal government’s worst child welfare law, the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act.  Those calls have focused largely on one abominable feature of the law – timelines.  But in this column for Youth Today I discuss another part of the law that’s even worse. 

● ASFA and mandatory reporting both illustrate that in child welfare nothing succeeds like failure.  I have a column in the Allentown, Pa., Morning Call about the pernicious practice of predictive analytics spreading to another Pennsylvania county. 

● At last! Voices that have been effectively silenced by most Washington State media for decades are heard in this excellent story by Nina Shapiro of the Seattle Times. The story focuses on the confusion of poverty with neglect, and several initiatives aimed at curbing needless removal. 

One notable statistic from the story: 

“Poverty is the greatest predictor of whether you’re going to have a dependency case,” said Tara Urs, special counsel for civil police and practice at the King County Department of Public Defense. Of 962 cases filed in the county during 2019 and 2020 seeking to make a child a dependent of the state and possibly a placement in foster care, just five families were not entitled to a public defender because of indigency, according to her department’s records.

● In Reason, Lenore Skenazy wrote about a family turned-in to child protective services because a parent was seven minutes late picking up her son.  Her work led me to revisit a similar situation in Washington, D.C., where it is standard operating procedure to report some parents if they’re late picking up kids from afterschool programs. 

● In a system permeated with racial bias, what about the means used to decide what is, and isn’t, “evidence-based”? In The Imprint, three child welfare consultants write that the clearinghouse that has to give its seal of approval before a program can be funded under the Family First Act  

…does not apply or require a racial equity lens for approval. As a result, they are too often implemented through white normative standards, and rarely evaluated for efficacy in non-white populations. 

● And in Washington State, KING-TV and NBC News report that some prosecutors are having second thoughts about the “expert” they used in some child abuse cases, From the story: 

This winter, [Dr. Elizabeth] Woods left her position as the director of the child abuse intervention program at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma, and last month she was removed from the small roster of doctors who provide expert medical reports to the state’s child welfare agency, hospital and state officials confirmed. Some area prosecutors have also been sending letters to defense lawyers disclosing that Woods’ credibility as an expert witness has been called into question. 

These changes follow a KING 5 and NBC News investigation from one year ago that revealed that Woods, 39, provided false information while testifying under oath about why she never received key training to become certified as a child abuse medical expert. The investigation also examined four cases in which child welfare workers took children from parents based on Woods’ reports — including some in which Woods misstated key facts, according to a review of records — despite contradictory opinions from other medical experts who said they saw no evidence of abuse.

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.