UPDATED: New York’s structure for screening child abuse reports guarantees one thing: mutually-assured buck-passing. The Legislature should change that.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2018

The State Assembly holds a hearing Oct. 9 that could be a first step in the right direction

Last March, the New York City Family Policy Project, an essential resource, and not just for New Yorkers, published a comprehensive report on the harm done by the state’s child abuse hotline, which is run by the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS).  The report found that New York screens out false reports at a far lower rate than most states. That causes havoc for families wrongly investigated, and deluges workers with so many false reports they have less time to find the few children in real danger. 

Responding to the Family Policy Project report, the State Assembly Committee on Children and Families announced it will hold a hearing on the issue on Oct. 9.  

I hope they will zero-in on one nearly unique element in the New York system that makes it particularly destructive: a built-in incentive for what should be called mutually-assured buck-passing. Only one other state has the structural problem New York has built into its process.  I also hope the legislature will take a look at some relevant history, both recent and ancient. 

The structural problem 

In most states, the family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency) is a state agency.  That state agency runs the hotline and that state agency does the investigations and takes away the children.  In 10 states,* the investigating and family-separating is a local government function.  But in five of those states, including California and Minnesota, the localities typically run the hotline as well, while in three more, localities can screen most or all reports sent from the state hotline. 

Only one other state, North Dakota, does it in the awful way New York does it: 

In New York, all calls alleging child abuse and neglect go to the statewide hotline run by OCFS.  They then send the reports they screen-in to localities to investigate.  The localities have no choice – if the state hotline sends it, the locality must investigate it. 

And it sure seems like, at least in New York City, they want to keep it that way.  The reason for that has to do with safety – no, no, not safety for the children, safety for the city family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). 

Over and over again, when ACS needlessly investigates and traumatizes an innocent family, the
agency’s commissioner, Jess Dannhauser, says something like: We didn’t want to wreak havoc on this family; the state made us do it!  

The state, for its part, has an incentive to send huge numbers of reports to the localities.  After all, if the hotline wrongly screens out a report and later there’s a tragedy, the state agency gets the blame.  This may well be a key reason the New York hotline wrongly screens in so many cases. 

Meanwhile, ACS speaks often of the need for better training so mandatory reporters don’t phone in false reports, (but since they’re mandatory reporters, they still may be afraid not to report) and ACS is piloting some supports in schools to encourage those reporters to seek alternatives to calling the hotline.  But Commissioner Dannhauser has never publicly called for the Legislature to simply give ACS the power to screen out false reports sent to his agency by the OCFS hotline. 

And no wonder: If ACS were to get that power, screen out a report, and then there’s a tragedy  – well, you know. 

Hence, mutually-assured buck-passing. 

I figure Dannhouser is likely to testify at the Oct. 9 hearing.  I hope one of the lawmakers asks him this question: You keep blaming the state hotline for forcing you to investigate reports you know are b.s.  Why have you never asked us for a law allowing you to screen out those reports yourself?  (And if the legislators don’t, I hope a reporter covering the hearing will.) 

UPDATE, OCT 10. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE HEARING:

On the one hand, for the first time I know of, Dannhauser made some noises about wanting some power to screen calls after they are received from the hotline. 

 However, Dannhauser is a master of calculated ambiguity.

 All he really said in his prepared testimony is that the state should consider creating a system in which localities would submit a plan that OCFS would then have to approve which would allow ACS to "conduct an expedited and less intrusive review of the allegations." He seemed to go a little further in answer to questions – or did he?  But this is certain: At no time did he call for simply giving his own agency the power to screen out reports it deems to be false.  It doesn’t sound like he wants to give up the power ACS truly covets: the power to pass the buck.

As I said, only North Dakota does it the way New York does it.  There also are two hybrid states.  In Colorado, there’s a state hotline and local hotlines.  Most calls go directly to the local hotlines which, of course, can screen reports. Pennsylvania has a state hotline that passes on calls to local family police agencies.  But, unlike New York, those local agencies have discretion to screen out almost all reports alleging “neglect” – which are, of course, the overwhelming majority of reports. Pennsylvania localities are not allowed to screen out reports alleging abuse or “severe neglect” – but this still is an improvement over New York’s approach. 

Pennsylvania also teaches something else: Giving localities the authority to screen won’t work miracles. Both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh take away proportionately far more children than New York City – and Pittsburgh decided to screen in the worst possible way – using “predictive analytics.” 

So why make the change? For starters, just taking away ACS’ excuse and making localities accountable for launching needless, harrowing investigations of families would be worth it. 

But also: right now, New York localities have to investigate 100% of the reports sent to them by the hotline.  If they get the authority to screen and wind up investigating 90% of the reports instead of 100% that’s still an improvement. And there’s nothing to stop OCFS from using predictive analytics at the state level should it so choose. 

Even without a law, it is possible to change regulations to allow for a kind of “circuit breaker” in which localities would have the authority to stop an investigation at a very early stage if the report never should have been sent to them in the first place. 

Also, there’s a more encouraging lesson from a county in Upstate New York. 

The relatively recent history 

At one time, two Upstate counties, Monroe (metropolitan Rochester) and Onondaga (metropolitan Syracuse) ran their own hotlines.  In Monroe County that was true until 2015 when, in the wake of a child abuse death, the state took that authority away.  Showing notably more courage than their New York City counterparts, Monroe County officials actually asked for that authority back. But, in a remarkably nasty response, the state OFCS said no – because, they said, when Monroe had its own hotline they screened out too many calls.  

Well, OCFS sure “fixed” that problem! Once the state took over, the number of screened-in calls skyrocketed. 

The ancient history 

All the way back in 1987, the (long-since defunct) New York State Legislative Commission on Expenditure Review gave hypotheticals to 23 hotline operators, 12 at the state hotline in Albany, eight in Onondaga County and three in Monroe County.  In each case, they asked: Screen-in or screen-out?  

The results: Big differences between Monroe County, Onondaga County and state hotline screeners (at that time the Monroe County operators were far more likely to screen-in reports) and no consistency among the state hotline operators. 

In one case, for example, all the Monroe County operators said screen it in, almost all the Onondaga County operators said screen it out, and the 12 operators at the state hotline split: 8 yes, 4 no. 

There is no reason to think the hotline is any less arbitrary, less capricious or less cruel today. 

Improving that will require a better screening tool and yes, operators will have to be trained in how to use it, and others will have to be trained to be sure they are using it correctly.  But beware of the use of “training” as a copout. Because in addition to being invoked when it’s needed, it’s also invoked – endlessly – as a way to avoid real change.  Training is no substitute for due process. 

So if you’re in Albany on Oct. 9, please be extra careful on the roads.  Because if anyone suggests a drinking game based on how often some family police official at the hearing uses the word “training,” you can expect a lot of drunk driving. 

*-Nine states are fully local. I also count Wisconsin, since the state runs child welfare in only one county, albeit the largest, Milwaukee.  I do not count Nevada, where the state runs the system everywhere except the largest county Clark County (metropolitan Las Vegas)

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending Sept. 24, 2024

● Often children are taken when their poverty is confused with neglect only to face actual abuse in foster care.  But rarely children really do face horrific abuse in their own homes.  This story from The Press-Enterprise in Riverside describes a case in California in which that happened – and then the children faced horrific abuse in a foster home overseen by a private agency. 

● I mention the item above because right now, California’s private foster care agencies are rushing to make sure it never happens again – no, no, not the abuse, the lawsuits.  They’re pushing for legislation that would make them almost immune from such suits. You can read about it in this NCCPR column for WitnessLA.  The column asks if would make more sense to stop pouring billions of dollars into a system – foster care – that is so unsafe it is becoming uninsurable. 

● The research arm of the Maine Legislature produced a series of reports on recent child abuse deaths.  The reports were careful, nuanced assessments – far better than what’s spewed forth from certain politicians, and the state’s child welfare “ombudsman.”  In addition to summarizing the reports, this story from the Maine Monitor points out what isn’t covered – making the last 11 paragraphs particularly valuable. 

● Those last 11 paragraphs are an indirect reminder of how, in less than 25 years, Maine child welfare went from national scandal to national model to national disgrace.  In the Maine Morning Star I have a more direct reminder – and what can be done about it. 

● The New York Daily News reports on an initiative by the city’s family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, to bring resources into schools that, in theory, may help the process of what Joyce McMillan calls turning mandated reporters into mandated supporters. (McMillan’s vision for this is, of course, considerably more comprehensive.)  But the story also cites this caution: 

“ACS has a reputation as being the agency that can take your kids away from you,” said Nora McCarthy, director of New York City Family Policy Project. “It’s the right idea to expand support options for families, but having a feared agency being the one contracting and providing that support may be a problem. It might deter families from accessing the services.”

● There are plenty of mandated reporters who want to be mandated supporters and chafe at what the family policing system forces them to do.  In the authoritative British medical journal The Lancet, two US pediatricians write:

[W]e have often felt complicit witnessing our physician and other health-care colleagues dismiss an abuse diagnosis easily within middle-class white families while over-evaluating and subsequently reporting Black and Brown children for, say, accidental falls from bed. If the mandate of paediatrics in general, and child abuse paediatricians in particular, is protecting the young, it has become clear to both of us that the current system is not working as it should. 

● Stateline reports on something some in the medical profession are doing about it: 

Some states and hospital systems have updated their policies on drug testing for pregnant women and newborns, aiming to better support patients’ treatment and recovery from substance use disorder and combat racial disparities in testing and reporting. 

● For some more comprehensive ideas, check out this webinar from Pale Blue:

● Responding to a New York Times column by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy about the enormous stress faced by parents, Kathryn Icenhower C.E.O. of SHIELDS for Families, writes a letter to the editor (the second one down when you click on this link) about a major stress Murthy left out: 

Most families experience economic anxiety at some point. For many, it’s passing. But for Black families, economic anxiety is compounded by the justified fear that they are at a higher risk for having their children taken away. That stress can never fully go away. 

● In his Substack column, Play Makes Us Human, Peter Gray discusses what it is that often takes away the human right to play.  It’s what you think. 

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

● Another state is playing a sick game of whack-a-mole with children’s lives.  Responding to horrific abuse in a Rhode Island residential treatment center, did the Rhode Island family police agency finally stop tearing apart families at one of the highest rates in America?  Of course not!  Instead, the Boston Globe reports, they did exactly what we’ve come to expect from family police agencies.  As the Globe explains: 

Dozens of youths and young adults in the state child welfare system are being sent to residential treatment facilities outside of Rhode Island — including some places accused of abuse, neglect, and dysfunction. 

These were the same types of problems that led the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families to stop sending youths to St. Mary’s Home for Children in North Providence last fall — and then remove them entirely in June. 

● In Nevada, the Nevada Independent reports: 

A January legislative audit identified seven care facilities for children that failed to adequately protect those in their care, with complaints ranging from children self-administering medication to substance abuse issues. 

● And KWGS public radio in Tulsa reports that 

A state committee has granted law enforcement leeway to investigate the Department of Human Services after a parent accused the agency of negligence in handling his son’s abuse report. 

Stillwater parent Darrel Dougherty testified before the Oklahoma Legislature’s House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee on Monday that DHS investigators covered up his son’s abuse while his son was in state custody. DHS staff said Dougherty complained too much and refused to investigate allegations. 

And finally … 

● The University of Pennsylvania has, at long last, disciplined self-proclaimed “race realist” law professor Amy Wax.  What does that have to do with “child welfare”?  Check out this NCCPR Blog post from last year about Wax and some of those in a group allied with her.

NCCPR in the Maine Morning Star: Maine child welfare can become a national model again – if we learn from Logan Marr

Child welfare systems fail all over the country. But what is happening in Maine may be the saddest story of all. 

Over less than a quarter century Maine child welfare went from national scandal to national model to national disgrace. For a few years, Maine was one of the very few places getting child welfare right. But then, thanks to a few demagogic politicians and a case of collective amnesia, Maine threw it all away. ...

Read the full column in the Maine Morning Star

NCCPR in WitnessLA: Don’t shield private foster care agencies from accountability for abuse; the “crisis” facing Foster Family Agencies is an opportunity for real reform

Recent developments in California and New York make it clear: Foster care is now known to be so harmful to children—and there is so much abuse in foster care—that agencies providing it are becoming uninsurable. 

Private foster care agencies are, of course, portraying this matter as a crisis. As a result, they’re seeking various forms of immunity from liability for the horrible things done to some children on their watch. This should not be seen as a crisis that demands the kind of remedies that could eliminate the last vestiges of accountability and deny children justice. Instead, these developments should be seen as an opportunity—a chance to finally make meaningful change in a system that so often destroys children in order to save them ...

Read the full column in WitnessLA

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending September 17, 2024

● If you think Darth Vader was bad, wait ‘till you see how the family police operated a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.  For The Imprint, Prof. Josh Gupta-Kagan writes about it, and what we can learn from it in our galaxy right now. 

● Prof. Gupta Kagan, a lawyer, joins with a social worker, Andrea Asnes, and a doctor who authored the definitive history of the modern child welfare surveillance state, Dr. Mical Raz, to offer guidelines for clinicians to answer this question “Should I Call Child Protection.” The brief guide, in JAMA Pediatrics includes “Five Things Every Clinician Should Know About CPS and Equity Before Making a Report”

● In Minnesota, which takes away all children at a rate far above the national average and has, by far, the worst record of racial disparity when it comes to tearing apart Native American families, children of color don’t just lose family and friends.  As The Imprint reports: 

Data compiled by the state’s Department of Human Services for this outlet show that in 2022, more than 40% of the 4,051 Minnesota foster children placed with strangers were Native American, African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander or Latino. Of the licensed, non-relative foster parents who received them, twice that percentage were white. In some counties where foster youth are mostly children of color, 100% of foster parents are white, state statistics show. 

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

From VT Digger: 

A former state Department for Children and Families employee has been charged with sexually assaulting a youth she was working with when she was employed by the department several years ago.

 From the Tampa Free Press           

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office has arrested a youth counselor at A Kid's Place of Tampa Bay for allegedly engaging in sexual acts with a minor resident.

NCCPR News and commentary round-up, week ending September 10, 2024

● WABE Public Radio in Atlanta has published and broadcast a stunning story.  It starts with one of the worst practices of family policing – and then documents one failure after another after another.  That’s why this post to the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog is called All the failures of family policing in a single case - and it's not an unusual case. 

● It’s bad enough that hospitals routinely test pregnant women for drugs without their consent, and then routinely report a positive result to the family police. The Marshall Project and Reveal report on the common practice of doing it based on tests that are wrong up to 50% of the time. 

● From the Dallas Morning News: A story about the new laws curbing the power of the family police – but instead of the usual fearmongering, this story profiles a family that might well have benefitted had the laws been in effect sooner. 

● Many newspapers have an unfortunate - I would say arrogant --  policy of refusing to even consider op-eds that dissent from their editorials. They will accept only much shorter letters to the editor.  In other words: everyone is fair game - except us!  Fortunately, the Albuquerque Journal is not one of those newspapers.  Thank you for publishing this dissent from NCCPR. 

● Record numbers of children are trapped in foster care in Maine. I have a blog post on how a state that once was a potential national model became a national disgrace.  

And if you’re wondering what happens when a state tears apart a record number of families:

● The Associated Press reports: 

Maine unnecessarily segregates children with behavioral health disabilities in hospitals, residential facilities and a state-run juvenile detention facility, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday in a lawsuit seeking to force the state to make changes. 

●And the Bangor Daily News reports that: 

In the months following a scathing federal investigation that detailed maltreatment at out-of-state programs where Maine youth are receiving mental health treatment, state health officials have yet to conduct in-person inspections of those programs, a spokeswoman said.

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

John Hill of Honolulu Civil Beat writes about multiple settlements the state has reached over abuse in foster care: 

If the Legislature can’t be persuaded to demand accountability from the child welfare bureaucracy for the sake of — you know — the welfare of children, maybe they could do it on behalf of taxpayers. 

Because the lawsuits, settlements and verdicts against the Department of Human Services for botching their life-and-death job just keep piling up. 

The latest: $600,000 to the plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging the state negligently placed a teenage girl in a Kailua-Kona home where she was sexually assaulted. 

Negligent, in the sense that a state social worker placed the girl in that foster home even after the girl’s older sister allegedly warned that she had been sexually assaulted and harassed by a man living there.

All the failures of family policing in a single case - and it's not an unusual case

 

An extraordinary story by Stephannie Stokes of WABE, the public radio station in Atlanta, is built around one of the most cruel, most odious practices of family policing systems: making parents pay ransom to get their children back. (No, of course they don’t call it that, but when you take someone’s children and make them pay money to get the children back, euphemisms like “child support” only obscure what’s really happening.)  

But read the story and you’ll see the story is about so much more – in fact, it’s almost every family police failing in a single case. 

Consider: 

● The mother, Annalinda Martinez, had grown up in foster care herself. 

● There really was child abuse – but not by Ms. Martinez.  As the story explains: 

She discovered her ex-boyfriend was abusing her daughter. He was arrested and she testified to put him in prison. 

On the contrary, when she discovered her ex-boyfriend was abusing her daughter, she did the right thing and turned him in. He was arrested and imprisoned. 

● But then: 

without his income, she couldn’t afford their rent. Soon, her family was evicted. All seven of them spent a night in their van.  

● She had no friends or family to call on (remember where she grew up) all she could think to do was call the agency that provided the family with foodstamps, in the hope it also would help with housing.  

● But that agency was the Georgie Department of Family and Children’s Services – the family police.  “That very same day,” Martinez told WABE, “my six kids got taken away.” 

As the story explained:

 The court documents for Martinez’ case say that her family was “found” living in a van. DFCS and a judge argued it was unsafe for her kids to be homeless. But instead of connecting her family to housing, the state put her kids in foster care.

● With DFCS holding the children and demanding ransom, Martinez saw no way out. So …

After about a year and a half, Martinez said the court pressured her to surrender her rights as a parent. She agreed. She believed it would allow her kids to be adopted together into the same home... 

● But the “forever family” wasn’t.  The adoption fell apart, the children were thrown back into foster care, and Martinez has no idea where they are now, and whether they are OK.

Now, at this point let's pause to consider another bit of cruelty spewed by those most fanatical about tearing apart families like this: Talk about poverty and they’ll immediately say: “Well they wouldn’t be poor if they didn’t choose to do drugs!” 

In fact, contrary to the nonstop fearmongering from the take-the-child-and-run crowd a large majority of foster care cases don’t involve even an accusation of drug abuse. 

But also, often where there is drug abuse, the fearmongers get cause and effect backwards.  This case is one of them. Drugs are in the picture in this case. That’s because after her children were torn from her, after they were taken forever, after her life was torn apart by poverty and by the family police then: 

She was desperate for something that would make her forget that she had permanently lost her kids. She tried marijuana to numb her feelings. Then, she used cocaine. The problem was she was pregnant. So when she gave birth to her youngest daughter a couple of months later, DFCS took her too.  

At that point, Martinez realized that only compliance would get this child back – so when DFCS said jump, she said how high.  Years later she has a stable household; she’s rebuilt her life – almost. 

Because the family police still want their ransom.  And they’re threatening her with jail if they don’t get it. 

Georgia usually doesn’t do this to families in cases that arise today.  It’s one of several states and localities that stopped making parents pay ransom after the practice was exposed by NPR.  But somehow, the desire of the family police and their allies to twist the knife every chance they get never seems to end.

Read -- and hear - the full story from WABE