Child welfare systems don't work, despite defense

Friday, January 29, 2010

Child welfare systems don't work, despite defense

By Richard Wexler
Posted: 01/29/2010 01:00:00 AM MST


Re: "Allow Colorado's county-based child welfare system to work as designed," Dec. 31 guest commentary.

Ever since the great "state vs. county" debate broke out over Colorado child welfare, I've maintained it's a sideshow wasting everyone's time and effort. Among the nation's best — and worst — systems are some run by states and some run by counties.

But if anything could get me to change my mind, it would be the self-satisfied commentary from Donald Cassata, director of the Adams County Human Services Department.

His claim that the system is "not broken" is at odds with everything we know about foster care in general and the Colorado systems in particular. Consider:

• The evidence keeps mounting about the enormous harm of tearing children from everyone they know and love and throwing them into foster care. A landmark study of 15,000 typical cases — not the horrors that make headlines — found that children left with their own parents fared better even than comparably maltreated children left in foster care.

That's because most parents who lose children to foster care are neither sadists nor brutes. Far more common are cases in which family poverty is confused with "neglect."

But year after year, the county-run systems that Cassata defends tear apart families at a rate double the national average.

• This does nothing to keep children safer. It only overwhelms child welfare systems, leaving workers less time to find children in real danger. Other states know this. Illinois takes children at one-quarter the Colorado rate, but independent court-appointed monitors found that, as foster care plummeted, child safety improved.

• Still another study found abuse in one in three foster homes, a rate consistent with other independent studies, and a much higher rate than reflected in official statistics. It also found that, among foster care alumni, only 20 percent do well as young adults. How can anyone claim a system that churns out walking wounded four times out of five is "not broken"?

Despite Cassata's dismissal of all that pain, I still think the issue of state or county control is irrelevant. But I can think of one Colorado county with a child welfare system that needs new leadership.

Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, www.nccpr.info.


All contents Copyright 2010 The Denver Post or other copyright holders. All rights reserved.

Read more: http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_14289768#ixzz0e0vBGDJP