NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending February 6, 2024

● Why do family police agencies so often turn a blind eye to rampant abuse in group homes and institutions.  The head of the family police agency in Rhode Island gave a chilling answer.  I have a column about it in Rhode Island Current 

● In 2022 grandparents of an autistic boy in Kentucky couldn’t control his constant running away.  All the grandparents needed was therapy for the child and help to be sure he was never out of someone’s sight. Had they been rich they easily could have purchased both. But they’re not rich. So they had to turn to the state which offered no alternatives except institutions – and took control of where the boy would live.  He ran away from the institution and drowned. 

In 2024, adoptive parents in Kentucky couldn’t handle the behavior problems of their 15-year-old daughter.  Unable to afford the therapy she needed they turned to the state for help.  They offered no help except to take custody of the child take control of where she would live.  They parked her in foster care while waiting to institutionalize her.  She ran away.  Do I really have to tell you what happened next?  Check out the stories form WDRB-TV in Lexington and WLKY in Louisville. 

And now, more about how The Horror Stories go in All Directions:

 ● Honolulu Civil Beat reports that 

For more than two years, the Department of Human Services has stonewalled in accounting for its actions in the horrific death of Ariel Sellers, the 6-year-old Waimanalo girl whose adoptive parents are accused of murdering her.  This, despite federal law and state regulations that require disclosure of at least minimal information when children die or nearly die as the result of abuse and neglect. 

Now DHS can explain itself to a judge. 

● From The Columbian:A Kelso man formerly employed as a Child Protective Services case worker is facing charges of third-degree child molestation and communication with a minor for immoral purposes after he allegedly sexually abused a child under his care.

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

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

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

Read the full column in Rhode Island Current

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending January 30, 2024

● Twenty years ago, Youth Today revealed the stunning results of a study of Court-Appointed Special Advocates commissioned by the National CASA Association itself.  The study found that the program didn’t work.  The story concluded that National CASA’s desperate efforts to spin the findings “can border on duplicity.” 

Now, The Imprint has surveyed the research on CASA.  It finds no evidence that CASA works – and the most rigorous study finds it actually does harm.  And it does this harm at a cost of $477 million per year, most of it taxpayer funds.  Think of it: $477 million thrown away on a program that fails at best, does harm at worst.  That’s more than double total federal spending on the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. 

As for how CASA and its various chapters spin these findings – well, read the story for yourself. 

And we have more on CASA in our 2021 presentation to the Kempe Center international conference.

● Despite this dismal track record, CASA is explicitly included as an option for "representation" of children in court under the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.  Another egregious practice encouraged by CAPTA is mandatory reporting.  On this 50th Anniversary of the law's enactment, Dr. Mical Raz, author of Abusive Policies: How the American Child Welfare System Lost its Way, explains in Time magazine why that should be repealed.

● In Rhode Island they just said the quiet part out loud.  If you’re still wondering why rampant abuse in residential treatment centers is allowed to continue year after year after year in state after state after state, check out what the Providence Journal reports the head of Rhode Island’s family police agency said when confronted about such abuse at St. Mary’s Home for Children: 

“We can’t lose this [bed] capacity,” she told members of the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday. It’s almost “like a too-big-to-fail situation.” 

The state Child Advocate, who exposed the huge problems, agrees!  

Here’s what’s been happening at the place they are so anxious to save: 

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

 Boston.com has more.  From the start of April through May 8, 2023: 

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

One thing more about Rhode Island:  The reason they have a “bed capacity problem” is that they tear apart families at a rate 80% above the national average. 

● Remember when the county controller in Lehigh County, PA issued a scathing report on the misdiagnosis of child abuse by the local child abuse pediatrician?  Here’s a reminder from The Philadelphia Inquirer: 

Willow Feeney said she and her sister were placed in foster care after her mother was accused of falsifying their medical conditions. She told officials that her family is still traumatized by their experience. 

 “Growing up medically complex is a challenge in itself,” she said. “I was suddenly told that everything I felt wasn’t valid anymore. No matter how much I explained, I was told that I was wrong  and I was brainwashed.”

Now the update: Instead of action, the Morning Call reports, county officials and lawmakers have crawled into a bunker, retaliating against the controller and stalling any action.  I don’t know if she had Ms. Feeney in mind when one county lawmaker complained that “It all became emotional.” 

● In Vital City, Prof. Jane Spinak, author of The End of Family Court, discusses why we need to end family court.  She has a blunt assessment of the arrogance at the heart of the notion that courts should not be real courts, from the original juvenile court in 1899 to the “problem-solving courts” of today: 

As long as family court judges continue to argue that only they can provide justice to families, we will continue to fail children and their families. 

In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories Go in All Directions.  

●KOLD-TV Tucson reports that 

A man was sentenced to more than 200 years in prison for the sexual abuse of a child in his care. That is in addition to a current sentence 53-year-old Francisco Medina is serving from different cases.  Medina is a former foster parent who was convicted of six counts of sexual conduct with a minor under the age of 15, all class two felonies.  He was also convicted of molestation of a child, also a class two felony and a dangerous crime against children.

Backers of a bill that tries to legitimize hidden foster care in Virginia say it creates guardrails. On the contrary; it sends the rights of children and families careening off a cliff.

A judge in neighboring North Carolina says the same approach is unconstitutional, one county alone has paid more than $53 million to settle lawsuits and there even have been criminal charges.

There are two very important things to know about the process by which a child welfare agency removes a child from a parent and places that child with some other kinship caregiver.

1. This process, known as kinship foster care, is usually the least harmful form of foster care.  
2. But it’s still foster care.  Let me repeat that: 

Kinship care is foster care.

Kinship care is foster care.

Kinship care is foster care.

For a child, a journey that begins by being suddenly yanked out of the home, torn from parents and familiar surroundings and carried off, often in the middle of the night is severely traumatic – no matter where that journey ends.  Kinship foster care cushions the blow, but the harm of removal is still present.  

This bears repeating since the child welfare establishment here in Virginia has been doing a great job of hoodwinking lawmakers into thinking kinship foster care isn’t foster care.  They’re rushing to support a bill (HB 27/SB 39) that would, in fact, make things worse for children, parents and kinship caregivers alike.  The bill even has the Orwellian name Kinship as Foster Care Prevention Program. 

Even without the bill, this sleight-of-hand already exists in Virginia.  Virginia, like many states, has a shadow system of hidden foster care. Parents are coerced into “voluntarily” giving up the few due process protections they have and surrendering their children to the hidden foster care system. 

Essentially, these are blackmail placements.  The caseworker says: We want to take away your child.  You could fight us in court, where you’re entitled to free legal counsel if you’re indigent,  where federal law requires us to make reasonable efforts to keep your family together and where an actual judge decides if we can take your children away.  But if you do that and you lose – and you probably will - we’ll throw the kids in with total strangers and maybe split them up while we’re at it.   On the other hand, if you give up all those rights and let us do whatever we damn well please, we promise that we’ll place them with Grandma.   

Nationwide, there may well be as many children in these blackmail placements as there are in official foster care.  In Virginia, the proportion in hidden foster care is probably even higher.  

The Virginia bill changes almost nothing – except to try to give the whole practice a patina of legitimacy.  Proponents say over and over that the law adds “guardrails” to the hidden foster care process.  On the contrary, the law would send the rights of children, families, and kinship foster caregivers careening over a cliff. 

Under the terms of HB 27/SB 39: 

● Child welfare agencies remain free to bypass even the most minimal due process protections.  They don’t have to make “reasonable efforts” – in fact, the bill as written fails to require these agencies to make any effort – to prevent placement or to reunify the family.  No lawyer gets to fight the decision, no judge gets to review it. 

● The bill says families must be notified of their right to consult a lawyer.  But there is no funding to pay for those lawyers if the family is indigent – and they’re almost always indigent.  (Proponents point to a separate bill to provide such counsel – but there’s no guarantee it will pass, it’s not clear when it would take effect if it does pass, or whether there would  be enough funding to cover the entire state.) 

● Proponents say the placements are “voluntary.”  It’s claims like that which explain why I so often
invoke Orwell in these blog posts, though in this case, The Godfather seems more appropriate: It’s the ultimate example of an offer you can’t refuse. 

● Proponents point to time limits: The placements can last 90 days – oh, wait, that’s 90 days and then, if we feel like it, we’ll add another 90 days – “voluntarily,” of course.  But for young children, time passes far more slowly than for adults – six months can be agony.  For a newborn taken at birth – it’s a lifetime. In fact, 180 days actually is longer than 21% of Virginia placements made through the formal court process.   

And that assumes the child will even come home.  After those 180 days, the child welfare agency still can go to court and demand an official placement – they even can point to the fact that the child was out of the home all that time as evidence of supposed “unfitness.” And all of that time, 3-6 months can be tacked on as a fast track to termination of parental rights.  

● Proponents say the bill would make kinship foster care placements easier.  Easier than what?  It’s just as easy to make a kinship foster care placement by going to the judge and saying: “Your honor, we want to place this child with grandma.”  That Virginia may have close to the worst record in America for doing it this way –  at best, only 12% of official foster care placements are with kin -- simply reflects Virginia’s addiction to hidden foster care.  Other states and localities have no problem. 

Nationwide 35% of foster children are placed with relatives – the formal, legal, on-the-books way.  In Montana, it’s 40%.  In Illinois 45%.  In Arizona 53%.  The County-run systems in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh place more than half their foster children with relatives – without sacrificing due process or taking any other shortcuts.  This bill only makes foster care placements easier than not taking children needlessly in the first place; because there is no lawyer fighting for the family and no requirement to make reasonable efforts. 

● The bill confers no benefits on kinship caregivers and it may cost them.  They won’t be paid any additional funds.  But they will be subjected to additional, often onerous surveillance by child protective services agencies.  Depending on the specific case, kinship caregivers may lose out on benefits to which they might be entitled if a placement is court-ordered. 

Oh, and two things more: 

● Hidden foster care is unconstitutional.  A judge ruled it unconstitutional in North Carolina.  One county alone in that state has had to pay $53 million in damages to settle dozens of lawsuits.  There even have been criminal charges.  The Virginia bill won’t fix these issues. You can’t make an unconstitutional practice constitutional by passing a law. 

So why push for a law that doesn’t benefit children, doesn’t benefit families, and doesn’t benefit kinship care providers?  Because of the one group it does benefit: The Virginia Department of Social Services and county child welfare agencies.  With hidden foster care, they don’t have to deal with all that pesky due process, and they can mislead the public about the true extent to which they take away children.

Indeed, Virginia’s Commissioner of Social Services, Danny Avula, seemed to brag about doing just that. According to Virginia Public Media: 

Avula noted Virginia’s rate of placement with relatives is less than half of the national average — a statistic he said is skewed by the fact that local social services departments in the state prioritize informal placements with relatives before sending a child into the foster care system. 

“The upside of that is that it keeps our overall numbers of kids in formal foster care low,” Avula said. [Emphasis added.] 

And finally, one last point: 

Foster care is traumatic.  Kinship care is foster care.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending January 23, 2024

Before the news, check out this big event on January 31.  There's an in-person and a virtual option for the Congressional Briefing and you can register here: bit.ly/50YearsRepealCapta 

And now the news:

● The Imprint has a story that covers both the good California Supreme Court decision I wrote about for WitnessLA and a terrible bill proposed in Washington State that is essentially a throwback to the “crack baby” hysteria of the 1980s. The good news: Until recently, such a bill would have sailed through almost any state legislature in America nearly unanimously.  But people are learning, and this time, there’s some real opposition. 

● Westword examines Colorado’s task force studying mandatory child abuse reporting laws – including NCCPR’s perspective, that while the Task Force has done far better than any other or it’s kind, that’s a low bar.  I have more about that here.  The story confirms that the Task Force is not even considering the one recommendation that would make a huge difference: abolishing mandatory reporting entirely.

● WitnessLA perfectly sums up the harm of mandatory reporting laws in a story that begins this way: 

Mandated reporting laws have led to a flood of calls to report suspected child abuse and neglect, burying calls about kids who are in critical danger, while subjecting many more families whose children are safe to unnecessary surveillance and separation. 

● Gothamist has real news about what should be called fake Miranda rights – the notices that New York City’s family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, will give parents when ACS caseworkers pound on their doors. Among other problems, unlike proposed state legislation, ACS’s misleading notices will tell families some of their rights – but not all of them.  

But my favorite part of the story is where ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser objects to a provision in the state bill which would require his caseworkers to inform families, Miranda-style that “anything can be used against you in a court of law” because that “might increase fear.” 

Right. Because there’s nothing to fear from a government agency that can march into your home, stripsearch your kids and take them away from you on-the-spot!

NCCPR in the Arizona Mirror: No, sex-trafficking satanists have not infested DCS. The real problems are way worse.

Here’s the good news: Contrary to what one state legislator seems to believe, the Arizona Department of Child Safety is not in the grip of a global satanic sex trafficking cabal. Here’s the bad news: The real problems at DCS are way worse. 

If it were just a few satanists in high places, all we’d have to do is weed them out.  But the real problems at DCS are rooted in a culture that has plagued the mostly well-meaning people working in Arizona child welfare for decades: the false assumption that child removal equals child safety.  The result is a system that makes all Arizona children less safe. … 

Read the full column in the Arizona Mirror

NCCPR news and commentary roundup week ending January 18, 2024

● You hear it from family police agencies all the time: We never take children because of poverty alone.  This investigative report from WABE Public Radio in Atlanta and ProPublica could have been called: Like hell they don’t!  It documents hundreds of cases in which Georgia family police tore apart families for lack of housing – and nothing else.  Read it and watch how, paragraph after paragraph, the madness of the system unfolds. 

There’s the caseworker who probably didn’t even know she was admitting her agency routinely violates federal law requiring “reasonable efforts” to keep families together, when she seemed to be telling the mother at the center of the story that the agency isn’t obligated to do a damn thing. 

Or the judge who wouldn’t return the children because “these children have lived in unstable living arrangements long enough” – dooming the children to be split from each other into separate foster homes, moved from placement to placement to the point that two of them had to spend a night in a family police agency office. 

Or if the harm to children isn’t enough, there’s the fact that taxpayers are spending vastly more on foster care than it would cost to just provide the housing.  And not just Georgia taxpayers.  If the case is eligible for federal aid, and it probably is, we all paid to wreak havoc on this family. 

● Hope this isn’t a spoiler, but the best part of a Texas Monthly story about that long-running McLawsuit against the state’s horrific foster care system comes at the end.  The plaintiffs want to put the Texas system into receivership.  That almost never happens, so the Texas Monthly reporter thought it would be a good idea to check with a family law expert who’s actually seen one.  From the story: 

Matthew Fraidin, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia, watched receivership play out in the Washington, D.C., foster care system, following a lawsuit similar to the one in Texas. Six years of federal oversight there produced scandal and mixed results. Many argued that the foster care system was in no better shape after the federal takeover. The case ended in 2021, after more than thirty years. The only real change came, Fraidin argues, once the district focused on removing fewer children from their homes to limit the size of the foster care system. About a decade ago, his law students represented parents whose children were removed to foster care, he says, “and in sixty percent of the cases they were returned home without ever being found abused or neglected.” 

In Texas, that hasn’t been part of the reforms Jack has ordered, but Fraidin says it may be the only way out of the quagmire. Lawsuits like the one before Jack “are doomed to leave agencies as bureaucracies that are focused on the wrong thing.” 

● In Arizona, NCCPR explains in the AZ Mirror, it’s a good news, bad news story: 

Here’s the good news: Contrary to what one state legislator seems to believe, the Arizona Department of Child Safety is not in the grip of a global satanic sex trafficking cabal. Here’s the bad news: The real problems at DCS are way worse. 

● NCCPR has released a new Issue Paper.  It’s all about the enormous harm of mandatory child abuse reporting laws. 

● Last week’s round-up included a news story about a surprising report from a commission studying those laws.  I have a blog post about it. 

● And private foster care agencies in New York are trying to sucker the State Legislature into giving them a $200 million bailout.  No clickbait here; you absolutely will believe why they say they need it.  It’s in this blog post. 

In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

The Sacramento Bee has an update on the tragic death of a child in an Arizona group home. 

And WJAR-TV in Providence has an update on that scathing report on conditions at a residential treatment center in Rhode Island.