Foster Care vs. Family Preservation: The Track Record on Safety and Well-being

Foster Care vs. Family Preservation: The Track Record on Safety and Well-being

National Coalition for Child Protection Reform Issue Paper 1

Foster Care vs. Family Preservation:
The Track Record on Safety and Well-being
At the heart of the criticism of family
preservation is one overriding assumption: If
you remove a child from the home, the child will
be safe. If you leave a child at home the child is
at risk. In fact, there is risk in either direction, but
real family preservation programs have a
better record for safety than foster care.
And even when families don’t get
special help, two huge studies have found
that children left in their own homes typically
do better than comparably-maltreated
children placed in foster care.
To understand why, one must first
understand one fundamental fact about foster
care: It's not safe. Here's how we know:
A study of reported abuse in Baltimore,
found the rate of "substantiated" cases of sexual
abuse in foster care more than four times higher
than the rate in the general population.1
Using the same methodology, an
Indiana study found three times more physical
abuse and twice the rate of sexual abuse in
foster homes than in the general population. In
group homes there was more than ten times
the rate of physical abuse and more than 28
times the rate of sexual abuse as in the
general population, in part because so many
children in the homes abused each other.2
Those studies deal only with reported
maltreatment. The actual amount of abuse in
foster care is likely to be far higher, since
agencies have a special incentive not to
investigate such reports, since they are, in effect,
investigating themselves.
A study of foster children in Oregon
and Washington State found that nearly one
third reported being abused by a foster parent or
another adult in a foster home.3
In a study of investigations of alleged
abuse in New Jersey foster homes, the
researchers found a lack of “anything
approaching reasonable professional judgment”
and concluded that “no assurances can be
given” that any New Jersey foster child is safe.4
A lawyer who represents children in
Broward County, Florida, says in a sworn
affidavit that over a period of just 18 months he
was made personally aware of 50 instances of
child-on-child sexual abuse involving more than
100 Broward County foster children.5
Another Baltimore study, this one
examining case records, found abuse in 28
percent of the foster homes studied - more than
one in four.6
A study of cases in Fulton and DeKalb
Counties in Georgia found that among children
whose case goal was adoption, 34 percent had
experienced abuse, neglect, or other harmful
conditions. For those children who had recently
entered the system, 15 percent had experienced
abuse, neglect or other harmful conditions in just
one year.7
Even what is said to be a model foster
care program, where caseloads are kept low and
workers and foster parents get special training,
is not immune. When alumni of the Casey
Family Program were interviewed, 24 percent
of the girls said they were victims of actual
or attempted sexual abuse in foster care. This
study asked only about abuse in the one foster
home the children had been in the longest, so
some would not even be counted.8 Officials at
the program say they have since lowered the
rate of all forms of abuse to “only” 12 percent,
but this is based on an in-house survey of the
program’s own caseworkers, not outside
interviews with the children themselves.9
So is it any wonder that even Marcia
Lowry, executive director of the group that calls
itself “Children’s Rights” – and no friend of family
preservation says:
"I've been doing this work for a long
time and represented thousands and
thousands of foster children, both in classaction lawsuits and individually, and I have
almost never seen a child, boy or girl, who
has been in foster care for any length of time
who has not been sexually abused in some
way, whether it is child-on-child or not."10
This does not mean that all, or even
many, foster parents are abusive. The
overwhelming majority do the best they can for
the children in their care -- like the overwhelming
majority of parents, period. But the abusive
minority is large enough to cause serious
concern. And abuse in foster care does not
always mean abuse by foster parents. As
happened so often during the Illinois Foster Care
Panic for example (see Issue Paper 2), and as
the Indiana study and the Broward County data
indicate, it can be caused by foster children
abusing each other.
Compare the record of foster care to
the record of family preservation. The original
Homebuilders program (see Issue Paper 10) has
served more than 12,000 families since 1982.
No child has ever died during a Homebuilders
intervention and only one child has ever died
afterwards, more than two decades ago.11
Michigan has the nation's largest family
preservation program. The program rigorously
follows the Homebuilders model. Since 1988, the
Michigan family preservation program has
served 100,000 children. During the first two The Track Record on Safety (continued)
years, two children died during the intervention.
In two decades since, there has not been a
single fatality.12 In contrast, when Illinois
effectively abandoned family preservation,
there were five child abuse deaths in foster
care in just one year. That’s one reason the
state subsequently reversed course.
Several states and localities that have
bucked the national trend and embraced safe,
proven programs to keep families together, also
have improved child safety.
One state that is leading the nation in
reforming child welfare is the last state many
people might expect: Alabama. But Alabama
implemented a consent decree (R.C. v.
Hornsby) resulting from a federal lawsuit
requiring it to reframe its whole approach to child
welfare by following family preservation
principles. Alabama still removes children at one
of the lowest rates in the nation.13 Re-abuse of
children left in their own homes has been cut by
60 percent – to less than half the national
average.
14
An independent, court-appointed
monitor concluded that children in Alabama
are safer now than before the system
switched to a family preservation model. The
monitor wrote that "the data strongly support
the conclusion that children and families are
safer in counties that have implemented the
R.C. reforms."15
Illinois also has improved child safety,
even as it has dramatically reduced its foster
care population (See Issue Paper 2).
Well-being
Confronted with the fact that, for most
children, family preservation is, in fact, the safer
option, child savers sometimes seek to change
the subject to children’s overall well-being.
Maybe children are safe, but they couldn’t really
be doing better in life when left with birth parents,
could they? They could, and they do.
The largest studies ever to try to
measure well-being compared outcomes for
more than 15,000 children who came to the
attention of child protective services from 1990
through mid-2003. The studies looked at teen
pregnancy, juvenile arrests, young adult crime
and youth unemployment.
On every measure, children left with
their own homes did better than comparablymaltreated children placed in foster care.
And that was true even though birth families
generally got only the conventional “help” offered
by child welfare agencies, not the exemplary
interventions supported by NCCPR.16
When University of Minnesota researchers
compared children left in their own homes with
comparably-maltreated children placed in foster
care, they too found that the children left in their
own homes did better, even when the birth families
got little or no help at all.17
Why it works:
There are three primary reasons for the
better safety record of communities that
embrace safe, proven programs to keep families
together.
Most of the parents caught in the net of
child protective services are not who most
people think they are (see Issue Paper 5).
When child welfare systems take
family preservation seriously, foster care
populations stabilize or decline. Workers have
more time to find the children who really do need
to be placed in foster care. (See Issue Paper 8).
Family preservation workers see
families in many different settings for many
hours at a time. Because of that, and because
they are usually better trained than child
protective workers, they are far more likely than
conventional child protective workers to know
when a family can't be preserved -- and contrary
to stereotype, they do place child safety first.
(See Issue Paper 8).
As for the better well-being for children
left in their own homes, that is no testament to
typical services for families. Rather it is
evidence of just how toxic an intervention it really
is to tear a child from everyone she or he knows
and loves. Anything that toxic should be used
sparingly and in very small doses.
Updated January 3, 2011
1. Mary I. Benedict and Susan Zuravin, Factors Associated With Child Maltreatment by Family Foster Care Providers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
School of Hygiene and Public Health, June 30, 1992) charts, pp.28,30. //2. J William Spencer and Dean D. Kundsen, “Out of Home Maltreatment: An
Analysis of Risk in Various Settings for Children,” Children And Youth Services Review Vol. 14, pp. 485-492, 1992. //3. Peter Pecora, et. al., Improving
Family Foster Care: Findings from the Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study (Seattle: Casey Family Programs, 2005). //4. Leslie Kaufman and Richard Lezin
Jones, “Report finds flaws in inquiries on foster abuse in New Jersey.” The New York Times, May 23, 2003. //5. Affidavit of David S. Bazerman, Esq,
Ward v. Feaver, Case# 98-7137, United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, Fort Lauderdale Division, Dec. 16, 1998, p.4, //6. Children’s Rights,
Inc., “Expert research report finds children still unsafe in Fulton and Dekalb foster care,” Press release, Nov. 5, 2004. //7. Memorandum and Order of
Judge Joseph G. Howard, L.J. v. Massinga,, United States District Court for the District of Maryland, July 27, 1987. //8. David Fanshel, et. al., Foster Children
in a Life Course Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p.90. //9.How Are The Children Doing? Assessing Youth Outcomes in Family
Foster Care. (Seattle: Casey Family Program, 1998). //10. Dana DiFilipoo “Avalanche of Anguish” Philadelphia Daily News, Jan. 21, 2010. //11. Personal
communication from Charlotte Booth, Executive Director, Homebuilders. Even in the one case in which a child died after the intervention, in 1987,
Homebuilders had warned that the child was in danger and been ignored. //12. Personal Communication, Susan Kelly, former director of family
preservation services, Michigan Family Independence Agency. //13. In 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, Alabama removed 12.9
children for every thousand impoverished children. The national average was 18.3. //14. Erik Eckholm , “Once Woeful, Alabama Is Model in Child Welfare,”
The New York Times, August 20, 2005. //15 Ivor D. Groves, System of Care Implementation: Performance, Outcomes, and Compliance, March, 1996, Exec.
Summary, p.3. //16. Joseph J. Doyle, Jr. , “Child Protection and Child Outcomes: Measuring the Effect of Foster Care” American Economic Review:
December, 2007 and Joseph J. Doyle, “Child Protection and Adult Crime: Using Investigator Assignment to Estimate Causal Effects of Foster Care,”
Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 116, No. 4, 2008. //17. Byron Egeland, et. al., “The impact of foster care on development” Development and
Psychopathology, (Vol. 18, 2006, pp. 57–76).