The hostility extends to extended families

Sacramento CPS: The hostility extends to extended families
by Richard Wexler, published on June 21, 2010 at 6:15AM
Storyline: Child Welfare
Community Tags: california child abuse child welfare family preservation foster care kinship care sacramento county
In response to my column last week, about how Sacramento County is the child removal capital of California, an aunt who is providing foster care for a nephew raised several objections. Among other things, she argued that it was unfair of me to lump in relatives providing foster care, known as “kinship care,” with strangers in calculating Sacramento’s rate of removal.
In one sense she is right; it’s unfair - unfair to other counties, because it makes Sacramento look too good. When you look only at the proportion of children placed with total strangers, Sacramento actually fares even worse.
My previous column documented the extensive research on the inherent trauma of foster care - trauma that occurs even when the foster home is a good one, as the majority are. That trauma can be reduced, but not eliminated, if the child is placed with a relative instead of a stranger.
Study after study has shown the enormous benefits of kinship care.
Kinship care is still foster care, and even grandma is no substitute for leaving children in their own homes. But when that really isn’t safe, at least if a child is placed with a relative, or with an aunt, it’s likely to cushion the blow. The child is with someone he knows and loves. And odds are the placement is in his own neighborhood, so he doesn’t have to change schools and lose all his friends.
Kinship care also lessens one of the most damaging problems of foster care, moving children from foster home to foster home. People who love you are far less likely to give up on you than total strangers. So grandparents and other relatives are more likely to put up with behavior that might prompt strangers to either reach for the psychiatric medication or throw the child out.
Indeed that helps explain why in Florida, for example, where the child welfare agency is trying to crack down on the misuse and overuse of sometimes dangerous psychiatric medication on foster children, while 26 percent of institutionalized foster children and 21 percent of foster children placed with strangers are on such medication, only four percent of foster children are medicated when they are placed with relatives.
And there are more benefits to kinship care. A study by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia found that children placed in foster care with relatives had fewer behavior problems than children placed in stranger care.
Another study found that children in kinship care did far better than children in stranger care on multiple measures of safety, permanence and well being.
This is one of several studies showing the most important result of all: Kinship care is safer than stranger care.
But apparently the word hasn’t reached Sacramento County.
HOW COUNTIES USE KINSHIP CARE
San Francisco also has a dismal record for taking away children from their families – a record almost as bad as Sacramento. But at least San Francisco manages to place nearly one-third of those children immediately with a relative. Orange County does almost as well. Contra Costa and Alameda Counties place about one-quarter of children immediately with relatives. The statewide average is 17.4 percent.
In Sacramento the figure is only 9.3 percent – only seven of the counties ranked in the NCCPR California Rate-of-Removal Index do worse.
There is a similar discrepancy when one looks at the percentage of all foster children placed with relatives on any given day – not just those placed with relatives immediately.
San Francisco places half of such children with relatives, Orange County and Santa Clara County place more than 42 percent of foster children with relatives; Los Angeles, Alameda and Contra Costa counties all are over one-third – which is the statewide average.
In Sacramento County it’s 29.1 percent. Only eight of the ranked counties do worse.
I’ve updated the full NCCPR California Rate of Removal Index to include kinship care data for all the ranked counties. It’s available on our website here: http://www.nccpr.org/reports/2009californiaror.pdf
“A TREE HAS MORE THAN ONE BRANCH”
Because grandparents bring an extra ingredient to the mix – love – it should surprise no one that kinship care generally is safer than stranger care. So why is Sacramento County so reluctant to use it?
Sadly, it’s not unusual for child welfare systems that are deeply hostile to birth parents to extend the hostility to extended families. It’s all summed up in one pernicious little smear: “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” If mom is abusive, it is claimed, it must be because grandma has failed in some way.
For starters, this assumes that if mom is doing a poor job raising the children it has to be grandma’s fault. In fact, there are any number of times when a grandparent may raise four children under circumstances of poverty and need that many of us can’t possibly imagine, and have three of them become happy, healthy productive adults. The fourth is lost to the lure of the streets. When that grandmother then comes forward, at a time when finally she should be able to rest, and offers to take care of that child’s children, she should be treated as a hero, not a suspect.
And, as one of the nation’s leading experts on kinship care has said: “a tree has more than one branch.”
Unfortunately, some child welfare systems have sought to take advantage of the benefits of kinship care and pretend that it is not foster care at all. But make no mistake: When it is done because a child welfare agency demands it or a court orders it, kinship care is still foster care.
Indeed, the federal government counts such placements as foster care placements. Kinship care is still a blow to the child, and it is no substitute for safe, proven alternatives to keeping children in their own homes. That’s why, when calculating rates of removal, I will continue to “lump in” kinship care placements and stranger care placements.
Even if that makes Sacramento County look better than it deserves.
Former journalist Richard Wexler is Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, based in Alexandria Va. The full NCCPR California Rate of Removal Index and comprehensive recommendations for reforming child welfare in California and nationwide are available at www.nccpr.org Citations for the studies cited in this article are available on request.

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