A Critical Look at the Child Welfare System
Reunification Plans
REUNIFICATION PLANS: RECIPES FOR FAILURE
Kevin Norell is one of the newer foster care caseworkers in the Utah Division of Child and Family Services, hired to satisfy child-welfare reform laws and the terms of a recent lawsuit settlement in Utah.
According to Norell, the state asks a lot of parents who want their children returned home. They have to find a job, find housing, all of which can be "tough to do for anyone in Salt Lake County." Parents are ordered into therapy, parenting classes, perhaps drug rehabilitation, and they have to find time to visit with their children.
"Even an organized parent might have trouble with all that. And many of these parents are anything but organized," says Morell.[1]
The intent behind court ordered reunification plans may be admirable, but the reality appears to be that many plans are designed for failure, according to the 1991-1992 San Diego Grand Jury:
Testimony was received regarding the hours of time which must be spent in order to comply with these plans. Defense attorneys have testified that they have told clients that it is impossible for them to work and comply with reunification. Judges and referees were observed, seemingly without thought, ordering parents into programs which require more than 40 hours per week. Frequently, these parents have only public transportation. Obviously, there is no time to earn a living or otherwise live a life. A parent often becomes a slave to the reunification plan.[2]
On April 20, 1993, a Florida father entered into such a "performance agreement" with the Florida Department of Health and Human Resources. The performance agreement, which is now referred to as a "case plan" pursuant to revisions in the Florida statutes, required the father to perform nine tasks to be reunified with his child:
(1) completion of an abuse counseling program and its recommendations;
(2) completion of a psychological evaluation and its recommendations;
(3) completion of a parenting program and demonstration of proficiency in parenting skills;
(4) evaluation for anger management and follow recommendations;
(5) evaluation for individual counseling and follow recommendations;
(6) monthly contact with HRS;
(7) follow reasonable requests and recommendations of the supervising counselor;
(8) provide HRS a list of relatives, their addresses, and phone numbers; and
(9) maintain adequate housing and demonstrate financial ability to provide for the child.
The father, through sheer determination, managed to comply with the provisions of the performance agreement. But was HRS satisfied with the result?
On November 22, 1994, HRS filed a motion for change of goal, requesting that the father's rights regarding the child be terminated because he had 'failed to benefit from services in a reasonable length of time.'
The lower court, on this basis, terminated the father's parental rights. The determined father appealed to the District Court of Appeal. On March 22, 1996, the Court of Appeal reversed the decision of the lower court, holding that HRS had not met its burden of proof. The case was remanded for further proceedings. By this time, the child had been in foster care for three years.[3]
In another recent case, HRS filed a petition to declare a child dependent, and to terminate the parental rights of the mother. The lower court dismissed the petition, as it failed to allege any abuse or neglect.
The Court of Appeal ruled that abuse or neglect need not be alleged, and that the lower Court was in error holding that it could not terminate parental rights on the ground that HRS had alleged only that the mother failed to comply substantially with her performance agreements:
Florida Rule of Juvenile Procedure 8.500(b) provides that the only substantive allegation required in a termination petition, aside from the parents' and child's identities, etc., is that 'the parents were offered a performance agreement or permanent placement plan and did not substantially comply with it,' when required by law. The petitions conformed with this requirement.[4]
In most states, allegations of abuse or neglect are not necessary to remove a child, or to permanently sever parental rights. In virtually every state, the laws have been constructed in such a way as to allow the removal of children on the basis that they may be abused or neglected at some point in the future.
In the State of Montana, for example, temporary removal orders require the department only "to submit to the court facts establishing a probable cause that a youth is abused or neglected or is in danger of being abused or neglected."
According to a recent judicial assessment of the Montana juvenile justice system, such treatment plans are often implemented early during the proceedings, even though a child may not have been adjudicated "a youth in need of care."
"Adjudication provides the basis for state intervention in a family," reviewers note. "Therefore, enforcement of treatment which is not required for the immediate protection of the child... is an inappropriate exercise of the state's power."
Citing state law, assessment reviewers explain the dire consequences of failure to complete the "treatment plan" constructed by the department of social services:
the failure of a parent or guardian to participate in, comply with, in whole or in part, or to meet the goals of the treatment plan is prima facie evidence that return of the child to the parent or guardian would be detrimental.[5]
Incredibly, rulings like this can be found throughout the states.
In California, an often-applied ruling used to terminate the parental rights of parents who simply refuse to comply with social worker demands that they attend "treatment" or "therapy" reads:
the failure of the parent or guardian to participate in any court-ordered treatment programs shall constitute prima facie evidence that return [of the child] would be detrimental.[6]
Hence, the refusal to participate in these programs will result in the permanent separation of a child from his parents--whether or not any maltreatment had actually occurred.
In examining studies conducted by the American Humane Association during the mid-1980s, Dana Mack of the Institute for American Values found that half of the families that child welfare agencies compelled to undergo therapeutic services for child maltreatment never mistreated their children at all, and that many removals of children are capricious actions of "preventive intervention," based on a caseworker's presumption that although abuse may not have occurred, it may at some time in the future.[7]
Even for those parents who comply with the reunification terms, the state has another way of using these plans to terminate parental rights.
The laws throughout the states are written in such a way that "failure to substantially comply with the terms of the performance agreement," or "failure to derive benefit from the services provided by the Department" are reason enough to have children permanently separated from their parents, once they have become dependents of the court.
In a recent Minnesota case, for example, the "disposition plan" for reunification included the following elements:
(1) that appellants work with a housekeeper provided by the county to maintain the housekeeping standard from week to week;
(2) that appellants cooperate with an assessment and goals as determined by an in-home skills counselor, to provide a safe, clean, and organized living environment for the family;
(3) that prior to reunification, the home environment will have an adequate level of housekeeping, as determined by the social worker and public health nurse;
(4) that appellants keep all scheduled appointments with service providers or cancel and reschedule appointments in a timely manner;
(5) that appellants complete individual psychological and psychiatric evaluations and follow all recommendations;
(6) that appellants attend individual therapy to determine and address issues of depression, grief, and loss, and other issues as may be recommended by the treating therapist;
(7) that appellants cooperate and work with the assigned financial worker from the county and comply with the budget or recommendations of the financial worker;
(8) that appellants follow all recommendations of [the child's] treating physicians and keep all appointments with the home health aide for the purpose of childcare, nutrition, and bathing; and
(9) that appellants maintain a working telephone in the residence at all times.[8]
The sad reality is that abuse or neglect need not be demonstrated. Simple failure to maintain a purely subjective housekeeping standard, the missing of an appointment, failure to "adequately assimilate" budgeting skills, or the disconnection of a telephone can result in the permanent separation of a child from his or her parents.
In most states, social workers have been granted the authority to construct these reunification plans at their sole discretion. And, there is precious little oversight from the courts in the construction of these plans.
Montana reviewers found that most judges rarely issue orders or make recommendations addressing reunification or treatment plans, finding also that: "Some judges assert that it is appropriate for the courts to defer to the department's expertise in these matters because of the social workers' experience and education."
One judge reported that while he often orders parents to take parenting classes, he does not actually know what those classes entail!
Hence, the construction of these plans is left to social workers who typically have precious little training, oversight or experience.
Worse, over half of counsel representing parents said that they seldom receive information from service providers or the department regarding the availability of services. Reviewers determined that: "Parents' counsel are, therefore, unable to to effectively challenge the appropriateness of a treatment plan."[9]
Personal bias or prejudice often play a role in how these plans are constructed.
Veteran Juvenile Court Judge Judy Sheindlin recounts the story of one young couple named Robin and Tim. Robin had two children before she met Tim. She also had a drug problem. City caseworkers stepped in and removed her three children when the third was born with cocaine in her system.
Tim, who was separated from Robin, lived at home with his parents and his brother, all of whom were employed. Judge Sheindlin describes the obstacles Tim had to face when he sought custody of his child:
First, he had to establish paternity, proving that he was the biological father of his child. Tim did this. Next, the caseworkers told him that before he could even be considered for custody, he had to take parenting classes. He had to provide the name of the person who would be caring for his child while he worked during the day. He had to establish a permanent, independent residence. There was not a scintilla of evidence that he was an unfit parent, but these were the rules that Tim had to follow. He met all of the conditions.
Meanwhile, Robin the drug addict had it easy. All she had to do was enroll herself in a drug treatment program and get on welfare. That, my friends, was it.
When Judge Sheindlin asked the caseworker about this obvious gender disparity, her answer was simply: "Well, she's the mother."[10]
The San Diego Grand Jury confirmed that these plans are sometimes intentionally made impossible to prevent reunification:
Failure to comply with any element of a reunification plan is sufficient for termination of parental rights. We have taken testimony from attorneys, court appointed therapists, and social workers, that some of these plans are intentionally made impossible, particularly when infants or toddlers are involved.
Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey conducted an independent investigation of the San Diego Department of Social Services. His report confirmed the San Diego Grand Jury findings, following on the heels of another stinging critique of the system by the county's Juvenile Justice Commission.
The system is too demanding of the parents, distracting them from more important issues, he wrote. "Too many tasks or unproductive requirements overwhelm parents and reduce the potential for priority behavioral change."
His report also indicated that foster parents may try to thwart reunification efforts. "A desire to take care of the child on a permanent basis must not be permitted to work against the parent's goal" of reunification.[11]
The Juvenile Justice Commission examined several troubling cases in which social workers sought to prevent reunification of children with their parents. They found such cases in their representative sampling to be "numerous and diverse."
In one such case, a social worker threatened that a child would be removed from the mother's home if she allowed the child to attend a scheduled birthday party with her father in a public place. She further advised the mother to move to another part of the County, and keep her whereabouts unknown to the father.
In another case, a social worker sought to prevent the development of ties between a child and her maternal aunt, even though the aunt was known to the worker as a licensed foster mother. The worker sought instead to maintain the child in a foster home in which the foster parents had expressed a desire to adopt the child.
"The unwillingness of the Children's Services Bureau staff, from line to administrative, to listen to opposing views to the point of being hostile and threatening has resulted in a backlash from the community, as well as tragic consequences for families," the Commission found.
"Court time and real time are world's apart, so that while a case drags on from week to week and month to month, the agony of separation continues," the Commission concluded. "While Court cases often require lengthy investigation and preparation to ensure due process of law to all involved, it must never be forgotten that these cases are ultimately about living, breathing human beings."[12]
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/reunification.htm
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Sunday, February 21, 2010
DEFENSIVE SOCIAL WORK
DEFENSIVE SOCIAL WORK
From Lifting the Veil
"I would like the caseworkers to err on the side of protecting the children," said Nicholas Scoppetta, the former prosecutor named by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to revamp the troubled New York City agency after the tragic and avoidable death of Elisa Izquierdo.
Shortly after her death made headlines, defensive social work took hold in New York City, and removals of children from their homes skyrocketed.
What is defensive social work?
A Brooklyn judge, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained to a New York Times reporter:
It's classic cover-your-rear-end behavior by people who are either genuinely frightened or cynical. I don't know if they are servicing people better, but all of a sudden, I have tons of cases, cases that they would not have normally filed.
Said Jane Spinak, head of the Legal Aid Society's Juvenile Rights Project: "They are bringing many, many more cases into court. The question is whether they are cleaning up their act or whether, to protect themselves, they are shifting the burden of responsibility to the judges."
According to Faye Moore, a senior official with the Social Services Employees Union Local 371: "People are working not to make mistakes, and that may not necessarily be in the best interests of the children. How so? Unnecessary removals."[1]
But needless and traumatic removals would appear to have long been the rule, rather than the exception in New York City.
According to one former child protective worker, the "classic cover-your-rear-end behavior" spoken of by the Brooklyn juvenile court judge was specifically taught at the New York City Training Academy.
Former New York City child protective caseworker Lisa Clampitt explained: "They would literally say it all through training: You have to cover your ass. Everyone's going to try and dump work on you and get you in trouble."[2]
Says former New York City caseworker Marc Parent: "Our thing was go out, see if the kid's safe. If the kid's safe, leave him. If the kid's not safe, take him. If you're not sure, take him."[3]
If you're not sure, take him?
BEST DEFENSE--A REAL OFFENSE
Douglas Besharov refers to needless removals of children as "defensive social work." It would appear that the unconscionable practice of removing a child to protect a career, or to prevent liability is quite common. Besharov explains:
The dynamic is simple enough to understand: negative media publicity and a lawsuit are always possible if the child is subsequently killed or injured; but there will be no critical publicity if it turns out that intervention was unneeded, and much less chance of a lawsuit. Joanne Selinske, formerly director of the American Public Welfare Association's child abuse project, characterized this approach as the "'better safe than sorry' attitude that permeates the child protection system."[4]
The former NCCAN director adds that while no one knows exactly how much defensive social work goes on, there is no denying "that it affects all aspects of child protective decision making."
Besharov continues, citing a program director who described what happened after the was indicted for "allowing" a child to be killed:
Upon learning of the indictments, caseworkers and their supervisors became aware of their own vulnerability. As a result, paperwork increased to account for everyone's actions and for a while more children were removed from their homes. Supervisors told me that these removals seemed unnecessary but that caseworkers were afraid.[5]
TIP OF THE ICEBERG?
Just how prevalent the practice is may be indicated by an Illinois study conducted in 1994 by the Child Welfare Institute. The study found that one third of a sample group of foster children were in placement not for reasons of abuse or neglect, but for reasons of caseworker protection.
A Chicago Tribune reporter estimated that as many as 14,000 children in Illinois may be in placement as a direct result of this unspoken policy.[6]
These figures may well represent the tip of the iceberg.
Diane Redleaf, formerly of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago estimated that between 25 and 50 percent of children in foster care in Illinois could safely be returned to their homes if proper services were provided.
Benjamin Wolf, who filed a landmark suit against the Illinois child welfare agency, estimates that between 55 to 90 percent could safely be returned home, an estimate he said was based on comments made to him off-the-record by system insiders.[7]
The needless removal of children from their homes has long been documented, and is so prevalent that it is often accepted as a reasonable consequence of child protective activities.
"Child protective staff fear errors, especially the failure to take endangered children into care, and the subsequent public response to deaths or severe abuse and neglect," observed Sheila Kamerman and Alfred Kahn of the Columbia University School of Social Work.[8]
"Social workers may more quickly--but prematurely--remove children from troubled families rather than risk being sued on behalf of an abused child," notes Yale Law School Professor Peter Schuck.[9]
Leroy Schultz, social work professor at the University of West Virginia conducted a survey of child protective caseworkers, finding at least one worker who "tries to get state custody of all suspected abused children just to protect herself from liability."[10]
Evidently, there are many other child protective caseworkers just like her.
In Florida, one social worker was so quick to tear children away from their homes that he was given the nickname "Cap'n Hook." It is a title he wore with pride, and he was reportedly admired by his fellow caseworkers.[11]
CHECKS AND BALANCES?
What of legislative efforts to protect children against the harm inflicted by the countless caseworkers like Cap'n Hook and the one Schultz identified?
Invariably, efforts at imposing civil liability against caseworkers for wrongful removals of children from their homes have been met with tremendous resistance.
One such amendment, proposed in Missouri, would have imposed penalties for removing a child without a strong case to support abuse. The amendment was defeated by a House vote of 78-48.[12]
Nor have the courts adopted a position favorable to the innocent families and children impacted by these needless interventions. A 1996 Michigan Court of Appeals decision held that families cannot sue caseworkers for wrongful removals of children, holding that it would impede the investigation of abuse by social workers.
The suit was filed by a family whose children had been kept in foster care for four years before being returned to them.[13]
Not even the Congress is able to stem the tide of wrongful removals. Nearly a decade after the passage of the Adoption Assistance Act, which was intended, in part, to address the problem of needless placements, the Congress held hearings aptly entitled Programs and Services Designed to Prevent Unnecessary Foster Care Placement. The Ways and Means Committee determined that needless removals remain a major concern.[14]
ERRING ON THE SIDE OF THE CHILD -- OR THE CASEWORKER?
Like many other fields of work, child welfare seems to have its own peculiar vocabulary to describe wrongful removals of children from their homes. Industry professionals invariably call this "erring on the side of the child."
So prevalent is the use of this term to deflect criticism over wrongful removals that one may wonder if courses in child protective apologetics might be taught in some training centers.
Just as needless removals of children skyrocketed in New York after the reports of Elisa Izquierdo made headlines, removals skyrocketed in Utah after the National Center for Youth Law sued the state over its treatment of children in foster care.
"We saw a dramatic increase" in removals, said Suzanne Timmerman of the Division of Child and Family Services. "Workers are afraid of making a mistake and would rather err on the side of caution."
"We do believe the lawsuit has heightened awareness that if it's a really difficult judgment call, we need to err on the side of protection of the child, which means removal," said Robin Arnold-Williams, director of the Department of Human Services.[15]
The effects in Utah have been similar to those of reform efforts elsewhere. Increased spending and the hiring of more intake workers have resulted in more needless removals, and foster care placements have increased. Hence, conditions for these children are worse than they were prior to the reform effort.
In a 1996 case, Los Angeles officials took five of seven children into custody, based in part on a dream one of the children recounted during questioning.
The case stemmed from an entry into the families home by an intruder. Even after the father had captured the intruder, and evidence had been found by police linking him to the crime, the children were kept in foster care for three weeks.
County social workers then coerced the family into signing an agreement to have the entire family attend counseling sessions in exchange for the return of their children.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich called for an investigation, saying the case "raises questions with regard to the powers exercised by the Department of Children and Family Services."
Betsy Azariah, a children's services administrator, disagreed, saying that she had reviewed the case and found no irregularities. Asked if caseworkers might have overreacted, Azariah said, "We always err on the side of caution."[16]
Sound familiar?
Does it ever occur to caseworkers who employ defensive social work that they are hurting the very children they are supposed to protect? Do they recognize the trauma they inflict when they remove a child from a loving family, tossing him into the home of strangers?
Journalist Richard Wexler examined these and similar questions, determining that for the most part, they don't. Wexler explained:
The answer is, I think, that child savers live in a foster-care fantasyland. They see in front of them children living in poverty, perhaps with a struggling single parent, and they fantasize that they can take the children away and place them in a nice middle-class suburban home with two cars, two dogs, and two parents.[17]
Bruce Boyer, supervising attorney for the Children and Family Justice Center of Northwest Law School has represented many Illinois children, parents and families in abuse and neglect cases.
"The DCFS caseworker who doesn't try hard enough to get into the home, to do an investigation that subsequently gets front page in the news, gets hung out to dry," says Boyer.
"On the other hand, there are a set of harms that follow a kid in foster care even if they are treated as well as the foster care system is capable of treating them. For those kinds of harms there is no mechanism for holding decision makers accountable; the only person who suffers is the child."[18]
"The urge is to remove kids and ask questions later," says Gail Smith, executive director of Chicago Legal Aid to Incarcerated Mothers.
"This floods the system," says Smith, creating cases such as that of Amanda Wallace, in which a child was inappropriately returned to an abusive mother. "One overwhelmed caseworker can misidentify a serious case."[19]
Benjamin Wolf, of the Illinois Civil Liberties Union, describes the impact of defensive social work on the Illinois foster care population: "Permanancy planning declined while the DCFS population exploded... the number of cases closed dropped off the table. In 1987, DCFS had 14,000 cases; in 1994, they had 45,000. It's disastrous."[20]
Just as in New York and Utah, there was a precipitating series of events that triggered the massive increase in removals of children from their homes in Illinois.
These events were the Wallace case, which demonstrated the widespread breakdown in the Department of Children and Family Services, and the Keystone case, which involved related mothers whose children were removed, and whose parental rights were terminated for reasons of poverty.
In Illinois, unnecessary or not, foster care placements are often permanent. Says Benjamin Wolf: "After Joey Wallace and Keystone, no kid went home."
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/defensive.htm
From Lifting the Veil
"I would like the caseworkers to err on the side of protecting the children," said Nicholas Scoppetta, the former prosecutor named by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to revamp the troubled New York City agency after the tragic and avoidable death of Elisa Izquierdo.
Shortly after her death made headlines, defensive social work took hold in New York City, and removals of children from their homes skyrocketed.
What is defensive social work?
A Brooklyn judge, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained to a New York Times reporter:
It's classic cover-your-rear-end behavior by people who are either genuinely frightened or cynical. I don't know if they are servicing people better, but all of a sudden, I have tons of cases, cases that they would not have normally filed.
Said Jane Spinak, head of the Legal Aid Society's Juvenile Rights Project: "They are bringing many, many more cases into court. The question is whether they are cleaning up their act or whether, to protect themselves, they are shifting the burden of responsibility to the judges."
According to Faye Moore, a senior official with the Social Services Employees Union Local 371: "People are working not to make mistakes, and that may not necessarily be in the best interests of the children. How so? Unnecessary removals."[1]
But needless and traumatic removals would appear to have long been the rule, rather than the exception in New York City.
According to one former child protective worker, the "classic cover-your-rear-end behavior" spoken of by the Brooklyn juvenile court judge was specifically taught at the New York City Training Academy.
Former New York City child protective caseworker Lisa Clampitt explained: "They would literally say it all through training: You have to cover your ass. Everyone's going to try and dump work on you and get you in trouble."[2]
Says former New York City caseworker Marc Parent: "Our thing was go out, see if the kid's safe. If the kid's safe, leave him. If the kid's not safe, take him. If you're not sure, take him."[3]
If you're not sure, take him?
BEST DEFENSE--A REAL OFFENSE
Douglas Besharov refers to needless removals of children as "defensive social work." It would appear that the unconscionable practice of removing a child to protect a career, or to prevent liability is quite common. Besharov explains:
The dynamic is simple enough to understand: negative media publicity and a lawsuit are always possible if the child is subsequently killed or injured; but there will be no critical publicity if it turns out that intervention was unneeded, and much less chance of a lawsuit. Joanne Selinske, formerly director of the American Public Welfare Association's child abuse project, characterized this approach as the "'better safe than sorry' attitude that permeates the child protection system."[4]
The former NCCAN director adds that while no one knows exactly how much defensive social work goes on, there is no denying "that it affects all aspects of child protective decision making."
Besharov continues, citing a program director who described what happened after the was indicted for "allowing" a child to be killed:
Upon learning of the indictments, caseworkers and their supervisors became aware of their own vulnerability. As a result, paperwork increased to account for everyone's actions and for a while more children were removed from their homes. Supervisors told me that these removals seemed unnecessary but that caseworkers were afraid.[5]
TIP OF THE ICEBERG?
Just how prevalent the practice is may be indicated by an Illinois study conducted in 1994 by the Child Welfare Institute. The study found that one third of a sample group of foster children were in placement not for reasons of abuse or neglect, but for reasons of caseworker protection.
A Chicago Tribune reporter estimated that as many as 14,000 children in Illinois may be in placement as a direct result of this unspoken policy.[6]
These figures may well represent the tip of the iceberg.
Diane Redleaf, formerly of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago estimated that between 25 and 50 percent of children in foster care in Illinois could safely be returned to their homes if proper services were provided.
Benjamin Wolf, who filed a landmark suit against the Illinois child welfare agency, estimates that between 55 to 90 percent could safely be returned home, an estimate he said was based on comments made to him off-the-record by system insiders.[7]
The needless removal of children from their homes has long been documented, and is so prevalent that it is often accepted as a reasonable consequence of child protective activities.
"Child protective staff fear errors, especially the failure to take endangered children into care, and the subsequent public response to deaths or severe abuse and neglect," observed Sheila Kamerman and Alfred Kahn of the Columbia University School of Social Work.[8]
"Social workers may more quickly--but prematurely--remove children from troubled families rather than risk being sued on behalf of an abused child," notes Yale Law School Professor Peter Schuck.[9]
Leroy Schultz, social work professor at the University of West Virginia conducted a survey of child protective caseworkers, finding at least one worker who "tries to get state custody of all suspected abused children just to protect herself from liability."[10]
Evidently, there are many other child protective caseworkers just like her.
In Florida, one social worker was so quick to tear children away from their homes that he was given the nickname "Cap'n Hook." It is a title he wore with pride, and he was reportedly admired by his fellow caseworkers.[11]
CHECKS AND BALANCES?
What of legislative efforts to protect children against the harm inflicted by the countless caseworkers like Cap'n Hook and the one Schultz identified?
Invariably, efforts at imposing civil liability against caseworkers for wrongful removals of children from their homes have been met with tremendous resistance.
One such amendment, proposed in Missouri, would have imposed penalties for removing a child without a strong case to support abuse. The amendment was defeated by a House vote of 78-48.[12]
Nor have the courts adopted a position favorable to the innocent families and children impacted by these needless interventions. A 1996 Michigan Court of Appeals decision held that families cannot sue caseworkers for wrongful removals of children, holding that it would impede the investigation of abuse by social workers.
The suit was filed by a family whose children had been kept in foster care for four years before being returned to them.[13]
Not even the Congress is able to stem the tide of wrongful removals. Nearly a decade after the passage of the Adoption Assistance Act, which was intended, in part, to address the problem of needless placements, the Congress held hearings aptly entitled Programs and Services Designed to Prevent Unnecessary Foster Care Placement. The Ways and Means Committee determined that needless removals remain a major concern.[14]
ERRING ON THE SIDE OF THE CHILD -- OR THE CASEWORKER?
Like many other fields of work, child welfare seems to have its own peculiar vocabulary to describe wrongful removals of children from their homes. Industry professionals invariably call this "erring on the side of the child."
So prevalent is the use of this term to deflect criticism over wrongful removals that one may wonder if courses in child protective apologetics might be taught in some training centers.
Just as needless removals of children skyrocketed in New York after the reports of Elisa Izquierdo made headlines, removals skyrocketed in Utah after the National Center for Youth Law sued the state over its treatment of children in foster care.
"We saw a dramatic increase" in removals, said Suzanne Timmerman of the Division of Child and Family Services. "Workers are afraid of making a mistake and would rather err on the side of caution."
"We do believe the lawsuit has heightened awareness that if it's a really difficult judgment call, we need to err on the side of protection of the child, which means removal," said Robin Arnold-Williams, director of the Department of Human Services.[15]
The effects in Utah have been similar to those of reform efforts elsewhere. Increased spending and the hiring of more intake workers have resulted in more needless removals, and foster care placements have increased. Hence, conditions for these children are worse than they were prior to the reform effort.
In a 1996 case, Los Angeles officials took five of seven children into custody, based in part on a dream one of the children recounted during questioning.
The case stemmed from an entry into the families home by an intruder. Even after the father had captured the intruder, and evidence had been found by police linking him to the crime, the children were kept in foster care for three weeks.
County social workers then coerced the family into signing an agreement to have the entire family attend counseling sessions in exchange for the return of their children.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich called for an investigation, saying the case "raises questions with regard to the powers exercised by the Department of Children and Family Services."
Betsy Azariah, a children's services administrator, disagreed, saying that she had reviewed the case and found no irregularities. Asked if caseworkers might have overreacted, Azariah said, "We always err on the side of caution."[16]
Sound familiar?
Does it ever occur to caseworkers who employ defensive social work that they are hurting the very children they are supposed to protect? Do they recognize the trauma they inflict when they remove a child from a loving family, tossing him into the home of strangers?
Journalist Richard Wexler examined these and similar questions, determining that for the most part, they don't. Wexler explained:
The answer is, I think, that child savers live in a foster-care fantasyland. They see in front of them children living in poverty, perhaps with a struggling single parent, and they fantasize that they can take the children away and place them in a nice middle-class suburban home with two cars, two dogs, and two parents.[17]
Bruce Boyer, supervising attorney for the Children and Family Justice Center of Northwest Law School has represented many Illinois children, parents and families in abuse and neglect cases.
"The DCFS caseworker who doesn't try hard enough to get into the home, to do an investigation that subsequently gets front page in the news, gets hung out to dry," says Boyer.
"On the other hand, there are a set of harms that follow a kid in foster care even if they are treated as well as the foster care system is capable of treating them. For those kinds of harms there is no mechanism for holding decision makers accountable; the only person who suffers is the child."[18]
"The urge is to remove kids and ask questions later," says Gail Smith, executive director of Chicago Legal Aid to Incarcerated Mothers.
"This floods the system," says Smith, creating cases such as that of Amanda Wallace, in which a child was inappropriately returned to an abusive mother. "One overwhelmed caseworker can misidentify a serious case."[19]
Benjamin Wolf, of the Illinois Civil Liberties Union, describes the impact of defensive social work on the Illinois foster care population: "Permanancy planning declined while the DCFS population exploded... the number of cases closed dropped off the table. In 1987, DCFS had 14,000 cases; in 1994, they had 45,000. It's disastrous."[20]
Just as in New York and Utah, there was a precipitating series of events that triggered the massive increase in removals of children from their homes in Illinois.
These events were the Wallace case, which demonstrated the widespread breakdown in the Department of Children and Family Services, and the Keystone case, which involved related mothers whose children were removed, and whose parental rights were terminated for reasons of poverty.
In Illinois, unnecessary or not, foster care placements are often permanent. Says Benjamin Wolf: "After Joey Wallace and Keystone, no kid went home."
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/defensive.htm
DECISION MAKING IN CHILD WELFARE A Critical Look At The Child Welfare System
DECISION MAKING IN CHILD WELFARE
A Critical Look At The Child Welfare System
From Lifting the Veil
DECISION MAKING IN CHILD WELFARE
Since the late 1950s, the suggestion has been made that research in child welfare should focus on the decision-making process, so that the variables entering into any given decision can be defined and a decision-making framework to guide child welfare caseworkers could be devised.[1]
In 1983, Theodore Stein and Tina Rzepnicki examined the literature on decision-making by child welfare workers, explaining:
For over two decades, researchers have made efforts to discern the processes that child welfare workers engage in when making decisions for children. This research proceeded on the assumption that if key decision-making points could be identified and the decision-making process described, a decision-making framework to guide child welfare staff in making critical choices could be developed inductively from practice knowledge.
"Unfortunately, consistent decision-making principles have not been identified," they concluded. [2]
In 1994, Duncan Lindsey, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California, again reviewed the literature, concluding that "the child welfare field does not possess an adequate scientific knowledge base for determining which cases are best served in-home and which need out-of-home care."[3]
THE CRITICAL QUESTIONS
As Stein and Rzepnicki explored the literature on decision-making, they identified a number of critical questions which investigators over the years had sought to answer.
Among these fundamental questions were "How do workers make intake decisions?", "What is the basis for deciding whether children should be placed in out-of-home care?", "Should children be placed in institutions or foster family homes?", "When should children who are in placement be reunited with their biological parents?", "What are the criteria for selecting foster parents and adoptive applicants?"
Significantly, Stein and Rzepnicki noted that at the time of their study, that in more recent years the question had turned to one of how to determine whether or not a child had been abused or neglected.[4]
"Upon what evidence did child welfare professionals decide to place these children in foster care? What factors influenced the decision? Were the decisions reliable, consistent, fair?"
The answers to such questions are the key to evaluating the direction, fairness, and effectiveness of the child welfare system, Lindsey explains. Reliable and valid decisions thus represent the linchpin of the current child welfare system. The decision-making process involved in determining which children are removed from their parents is central to the operation of the child welfare system. Decision-making must have a scientific basis to ensure that the decision to remove children is not biased or prejudicial.[5]
EXAMINING THE LITERATURE
A 1995 study of child protective services caseworker decision making conducted in Texas found that "no clear pattern regarding the decision to provide services or to remove the child from the home emerged."
Admission or denial on the part of the alleged perpetrator, the capacity of the caregiver as represented by the absence of parenting skills, unrealistic expectations of the child, as well as the refusal to accept parental responsibility were among some of the placement factors the researchers identified.[6]
Bernice Boehm studied caseloads in an effort to identify the criteria used by caseworkers in making the decision to place a child out of the home or to provide at-home services, finding that workers had a "tendency to use a model family as a frame of reference, and to evaluate problem behaviour by the extent of deviation from ideal parenting."
She concluded that all families deviated from the model, whether or not the children were placed, and suggested that the problem at hand was to distinguish between placement and non-placement families.
Boehm went on to ask workers to submit lists of "behavioural itmes" they used to evaluate family adequacy. Of the items dealing with the father, only his "interest in and affection toward the child" was related to placement decisions. Boehm ultimately concluded that "the decision for placement is based largely on an evaluation of maternal care."[7]
Similarly, Alfred Kadushin reported a study by Eugine Shinn which pointed to "maternal pathology" as the most frequently cited reason for placing a child in state care.[8]
Let us compare these findings against a study conducted by Michael Phillips, Ann Shyne, Edmund Sherman, and Barbara Haring.
Phillips and colleagues examined intake decisions for 309 children in three state agencies located in two eastern cities. No single item or combination of factors pointed strongly to a placement decision.
In contrast to the findings of Boehm and Shinn, they noted that in two-parent families, "the traits of the father were the single most important cluster of variables" in placement decisions, and that neither the "mother's functioning nor her relationship to the child were important considerations in reaching a decision."[9]
Edmund Mech reported a study that sought to delineate factors involving whether a child should be maintained in custody or returned to the parent. Differential factors related to either decision could not be identified. Mech concluded that no framework for decision-making existed, and the development of one was vital.[10]
In one of the most comprehensive of the early studies of decision-making criteria, William Ryan and Laura Morris studied the total intake (N = 683) of thirteen public, voluntary, and sectarian agencies constituting the basic child welfare system in metropolitan Boston. An intensive case reading analysis was then conducted of the 265 cases ultimately accepted for services.
The data suggested that intake decisions were made on a very stereotypical basis, largely unrelated to individual case need. The lack of flexibility in intake policies and decision-making processes, combined with the lack of necessary resources, made it impossible for the participating agencies to accept and serve many of the clients referred for services.
Ryan and Morris concluded that diagnostic criteria play no role in critical intake decisions, and that the concept of a comprehensive child welfare service network in metropolitan Boston was essentially a myth.[11]
Theodore Stein analyzed 68 intake and service worker interviews, finding that between 59 to 78 percent of the information gathered during intake the interview was not related to the objective of reaching a placement decision, and between 22 to 90 percent of the information in service interviews did not relate to the interview goals set by the workers.[12]
Similarly, Naomi Golan found that workers gather excessive amounts of information in community health centers. She reported a "lack of uniformity in the data gathered" by the 12 workers studied. There was either much data that appeared superfluous, or omissions in the data which appeared to be vital to decision-making.
Golan concluded that it "appears inescapable" that workers could carry out more economical and productive interviews, and arrive at more helpful decisions, if they knew what to focus on and which areas would yield the most significant data.[13]
In one of the earliest studies on the reliability of foster care decision-making, Scott Briar examined the basis for making foster home vs. institutional placement decisions. Forty-three workers participated in his study, using hypothetical case material.
Briar reported that while there was a relationship between the degree of disturbance and the type of placement recommended, the direction of the relationship was variable and unpredictable, and that predictions about a child's probable future varied substantially from caseworker to caseworker.[14]
In 1980, Donnelly examined foster care placement decisions by asking experienced caseworkers in four California counties to make recommendations on fifteen hypothetical cases. The decision to remove a child from the home varied substantially between the caseworkers. Those in Riverside and Alameda counties were more likely to remove a child than were their counterparts in San Bernadino and San Francisco counties, despite the geographic proximities.[15]
Such variations in decision-making are to be found throughout the states.
A 1995 South Carolina audit notes that while one county office confirmed abuse or neglect in 89 percent of reported abuse and neglect allegations, another county office confirmed only 14 percent.
The variations in substantiation rates were found to be even wider when the broader category of "maltreatment" was alleged. The variations in substantiation rates varied from one county office's determination that no maltreatment allegations were unfounded to another county office's determination that 74 percent of the allegations were unfounded.
The auditors noted that "the percentage of confirmed allegations among counties varied more than could be explained by outside factors."[16]
Judges reliability would appear to be equally as variable. Phillips and colleagues compared decisions reached by three independent judges, each of whom had more than five years of experience in child welfare. The judges agreed with each other and with the caseworkers on less than half of the cases, and when they did agree, they did not identify the same factors.[17]
In a follow-up study, Phillips, Haring and Shyne sought to assess the reliability of the decisions made by experienced child welfare caseworkers and judges in recommending for or against removal.
In examining 127 child placement cases, the researchers found considerable disagreement between not only judges and caseworkers, but between judges themselves.
The overall agreement between the six judges examined was less than 25 percent. Of particular significance was the wide variation between two judges, with one being four times more likely to recommend in-home services than another. While the one judge acceded to removal in 17 percent of cases, the other acceded to remove the child in an astounding 72 percent of the cases studied.
Even in those cases in which the judges agreed to remove a child, they varied substantially on the type of case plan or services to be provided.[18]
Nor would the reliability of decision-making seem to improve once a child has been removed and placed into foster care.
Deborah Shapiro reported that caseworkers with more experience were more likely than those with lesser experience to discharge children from foster placement during the first year in care.[19]
What does this suggest in terms of the high turnover in the field today?
A 1996 study conducted by Trudy Festinger sought to identify those factors which would serve as predictors for reentry into foster care.
While the results were inconclusive, six variables relating to the decision were identified: parenting skills, social support, unmet service needs, caregiver problems, organizational participation, and caseworker experience.
The results showed the two factors which were the strongest predictors of reentry were "limited parenting skills, such as assessed problems in communicating with their children, understanding child development, and handling discipline" and "a limited level of support from family, friends and neighbors."
In results somewhat similar to those of Shapiro, Festinger identified the length of experience in the field of child welfare as having some bearing on the decision.[20]
As to decisions involving the selection of foster parents, Martin Wolins found that the amount of information in a case record had a marked impact on the decisions made by judges. Agreement between judges climbed from a low of .47 when the entire case record was used, to a high of .81 when judges were provided only the material most relevant to the decision.
Of particular interest is that when 80 percent of the case record was randomly discarded, the level of agreement between judges was as high or better than it was when the entire case record was read.[21]
THE WHEN AND WHERE OF DECISION MAKING
The choices made at any single point can set the course for future transactions between worker and client, as well as between members of a family.
As Stein and Rzepnicki explain, "the accuracy and quality of data are conditioned by whether workers decide to conduct assessments in the office, in the client's home, or both; whether they elect to gather information through verbal exchanges during interviews, through client self-reports, through direct observation of family members, through reports by third parties, or a combination of these methods."[22]
Hence, the questions of how and where such critical decisions are made are significant. Just how and where are they made?
Dennis Lepak, a probation officer for Contra Costa County, California, and vice president of the State of California Organization of Mental Health Advisory Boards, explains that: "Most tragically, children are placed with little or no services to prevent their removal from families. Children are often removed from homes that no representative of the removing agency has even visited." Instead, says Lepak, decisions to remove children are based on information from old reports, office interviews, and phone calls.[23]
Similarly, sociologist John Hagedorn reports that in Milwaukee, investigations are often conducted and decisions made without the caseworkers so much as leaving the agency lunchroom.[24]
In Texas, an ABC Television affiliate examined child welfare procedures, finding that found that almost 50 percent of Child Protective Services caseworkers never actually leave their office or inspect the conditions or circumstances of the children they are charged to protect. Caseworkers instead often rely on ex parte conversations with attorneys, or the reports of court appointed psychologists, rather than following established procedures.[25]
Some caseworkers do continue to make home visits, while some others extend themselves to calling the accused family in for a face-to-face interview before making a placement decision.
Says Adrienne Cox, assistant director of the Department of Family and Youth Services in the Las Vegas area, her Child Protective Services division prefers to conduct interviews at government offices because resources are more accessible, and the safety of social workers can be more readily ensured.[26]
Decision-making in the area of adoption would similarly appear to require improvement.
In one of the earliest studies of the decision-making process in adoptive placements, Donald Brieland tape-recorded interviews with five couples who were adoptive applicants, playing these tapes for 184 workers in 13 states.
During and after each interview, the caseworkers were asked to rate the suitability of the couples for adoptive placement.
Brieland reported that decisions were based on information contained in the first half on the interview, and that the information in the second half bore no relationship to the decisions the workers made. He concluded that the workers had become "locked into" a decision during the first half of each interview, and that the remaining data did not contribute to the final outcome in any way.[27]
Fiscal incentives contribute significantly to the problem. As Stein and Rzepnicki observed: "The fiscal incentives in federal policy have a direct influence on the policies and actions of state-level administrators, and these, in turn, shape the professional decision-making environment in which child welfare practioners must function." Despite the value placed on family sanctity, and on the rights of parents to raise their children free of outside interference, federal funds for programs to prevent placement of children or for services to reunify families after children enter care have historically been low.[28]
In contrast, federal funds for foster care placements have historically been high. By the end of the 1970s, nearly three quarters of all child welfare dollars were being spent on foster care supervision and payments.[29]
As a result, argues sociologist John Hagedorn, the investigation of poor families and the removal of children from their homes have crystalized as the core tasks of social work, those functions which define what a social worker does on a day-to-day basis.[30]
With foster care being the primary service child welfare agencies possess, the decision of whether or not remove a child into state care is often the only decision a caseworker worker has to make.
Just how do Child Protective Services caseworkers arrive at their decisions today? Recent research would indicate that they frequently make decisions about cases before assessments and/or paperwork is completed.
Writing in the industry journal Child Welfare, Diana English and Peter Pecora conclude: "At present, caseworkers rely on intuitive processes based on supervision, experience, and training to make decisions."[31]
Yet it is precisely the lack of supervision, experience, and training that serve as the rules, rather than the exceptions, among far-too-many Child Protective Services caseworkers today. As a recent performance audit in the state of Utah explains: "Better training, more focused supervisory review, and changes in staffing will help ensure that children are protected, families are preserved where possible, and a permanent home is established."[32]
THE LACK OF DEFINITIONS
Add to this the lack of clear definitions as to what constitutes child abuse and neglect, coupled with lack of clearly defined intake guidelines, and it becomes clear why Child Protective Services cannot deliver on its mandate to protect children--even as it continues to needlessly destroy families. As Douglas Besharov explains:
These laws set no limits on intervention and provide no guidance for decision making. They are a prime reason for the system's inability to protect obviously endangered children even as it intervenes in family life on a massive scale.[33]
As Jeanne Giovannoni and Rosina Becerra explain, "Many assume that, since child abuse and neglect are against the law, somewhere there are statutes that make clear distinctions between what is and what is not child abuse. But this is not the case. Nowhere are there clear-cut definitions of what is encompassed by the terms."[34]
Stein and Rzepnicki note that the problems created by the absence of guidelines for gathering and using information are sufficient to explain the decision-making problems uncovered by investigators. Without criteria to guide data gathering, the process breaks down in its earliest stages.[35]
Nor are there legal standards to protect a family once it has entered the system, as existing legislation grants judges and caseworkers virtually unrestricted dispositional authority. As a result, "decision making is left to the ad hoc analysis of social workers and judges."[36]
Existing legislation invests judges and state agency personnel "with almost limitless discretion to act in accord with their own child-rearing preferences in areas generally under the exclusive control of parents." Identifying children whose placement should be called into question requires more than vague and subjective language, and statutes must be revised in order to "prevent judges, lawyers, social workers, and others from imposing their personal views upon unwilling parents."[37]
Add to this mix a darker side of human nature in the form of overt bias or prejudice. A recent grand jury investigation in California examining the disproportionate impact of foster care on black children suggests that racial bias may indeed be a significant placement factor.
The jury reported that case records and court reports for white children were "consistently more detailed, better prepared and oriented toward family reunification, adoption or guardianship" than cases involving minority children. While white children's files had "well-documented" plans for permanent placement, such as adoption or guardianship, minority children's files did not contain any evidence of a permanent placement plan.[38]
In a New Jersey case, an Hispanic father began beating his children after suffering a head injury at work. When asked why she had removed the children without looking to see if some other treatment methods may have prevented removal, the caseworker reportedly said: "Those people shouldn't have their kids anyway because those people have too damn many kids."[39]
The Native American continues to bear the brunt of such prejudice, and the problem is not limited to the caseworkers. Says Art Martinez, Ph.D., Clinical Supervisor with the Tolyabe Indian Health Project, "I've had judges tell me, 'I thought we killed all the Indians.'"[40]
If there is one personal bias which manages to creep across all racial boundaries, it is that which Dana Mack has described as "the pernicious confusion of poverty with neglect."[41]
There remains an additional placement factor which is exceptionally difficult to quantify--that of defensive social work. Notes Douglas Besharov, founding director of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, there is no denying that it affects all aspects of child protective decision making.[42]
As one former New York City caseworker explains: "If the kid's safe, leave him. If the kid's not safe, take him. If you're not sure, take him."[43]
CHILD PLACEMENT AS A RANDOM PROCESS
In 1994, University Professor Duncan Lindsey revisited the literature on child welfare decision-making, applying a hypothetical model which viewed decision-making as a stochastic (random) model.
In applying a reliability factor of .25 to the model--a reliability factor higher than that found in the studies he had examined--Lindsey concluded that "the low reliability leads to a system that is unable to discern which child should be removed and which child should be left at home."
The most salient feature of this model is that it does not require assumptions of bias or prejudice on the part of the child welfare caseworker to account for the removal of a great many children not in need of placement or the returning home of a large number of children in true need of placement.
Caseworkers in doubt about a child's situation make the safe decision to remove a child. Too often, the caseworker is in doubt, thus the caseworker too often places the child in foster care. Lindsey explains:
It is hard to imagine how the results of the stochastic model could be more distressful, in terms of what it suggest for the outcome of children considered for removal. If the level of reliability were to slip much further than .25, all children, except in the most extreme cases, would have an equal likelihood of being placed in foster homes, meaning that the decision-making process would be roughly equivalent to a lottery![44]
What must be remembered is that behind all of these decisions stand very real families--and very real children. They deserve better than the results of a lottery when it comes to decisions which may bear an impact on the rest of their lives.
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/decision.htm
A Critical Look At The Child Welfare System
From Lifting the Veil
DECISION MAKING IN CHILD WELFARE
Since the late 1950s, the suggestion has been made that research in child welfare should focus on the decision-making process, so that the variables entering into any given decision can be defined and a decision-making framework to guide child welfare caseworkers could be devised.[1]
In 1983, Theodore Stein and Tina Rzepnicki examined the literature on decision-making by child welfare workers, explaining:
For over two decades, researchers have made efforts to discern the processes that child welfare workers engage in when making decisions for children. This research proceeded on the assumption that if key decision-making points could be identified and the decision-making process described, a decision-making framework to guide child welfare staff in making critical choices could be developed inductively from practice knowledge.
"Unfortunately, consistent decision-making principles have not been identified," they concluded. [2]
In 1994, Duncan Lindsey, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California, again reviewed the literature, concluding that "the child welfare field does not possess an adequate scientific knowledge base for determining which cases are best served in-home and which need out-of-home care."[3]
THE CRITICAL QUESTIONS
As Stein and Rzepnicki explored the literature on decision-making, they identified a number of critical questions which investigators over the years had sought to answer.
Among these fundamental questions were "How do workers make intake decisions?", "What is the basis for deciding whether children should be placed in out-of-home care?", "Should children be placed in institutions or foster family homes?", "When should children who are in placement be reunited with their biological parents?", "What are the criteria for selecting foster parents and adoptive applicants?"
Significantly, Stein and Rzepnicki noted that at the time of their study, that in more recent years the question had turned to one of how to determine whether or not a child had been abused or neglected.[4]
"Upon what evidence did child welfare professionals decide to place these children in foster care? What factors influenced the decision? Were the decisions reliable, consistent, fair?"
The answers to such questions are the key to evaluating the direction, fairness, and effectiveness of the child welfare system, Lindsey explains. Reliable and valid decisions thus represent the linchpin of the current child welfare system. The decision-making process involved in determining which children are removed from their parents is central to the operation of the child welfare system. Decision-making must have a scientific basis to ensure that the decision to remove children is not biased or prejudicial.[5]
EXAMINING THE LITERATURE
A 1995 study of child protective services caseworker decision making conducted in Texas found that "no clear pattern regarding the decision to provide services or to remove the child from the home emerged."
Admission or denial on the part of the alleged perpetrator, the capacity of the caregiver as represented by the absence of parenting skills, unrealistic expectations of the child, as well as the refusal to accept parental responsibility were among some of the placement factors the researchers identified.[6]
Bernice Boehm studied caseloads in an effort to identify the criteria used by caseworkers in making the decision to place a child out of the home or to provide at-home services, finding that workers had a "tendency to use a model family as a frame of reference, and to evaluate problem behaviour by the extent of deviation from ideal parenting."
She concluded that all families deviated from the model, whether or not the children were placed, and suggested that the problem at hand was to distinguish between placement and non-placement families.
Boehm went on to ask workers to submit lists of "behavioural itmes" they used to evaluate family adequacy. Of the items dealing with the father, only his "interest in and affection toward the child" was related to placement decisions. Boehm ultimately concluded that "the decision for placement is based largely on an evaluation of maternal care."[7]
Similarly, Alfred Kadushin reported a study by Eugine Shinn which pointed to "maternal pathology" as the most frequently cited reason for placing a child in state care.[8]
Let us compare these findings against a study conducted by Michael Phillips, Ann Shyne, Edmund Sherman, and Barbara Haring.
Phillips and colleagues examined intake decisions for 309 children in three state agencies located in two eastern cities. No single item or combination of factors pointed strongly to a placement decision.
In contrast to the findings of Boehm and Shinn, they noted that in two-parent families, "the traits of the father were the single most important cluster of variables" in placement decisions, and that neither the "mother's functioning nor her relationship to the child were important considerations in reaching a decision."[9]
Edmund Mech reported a study that sought to delineate factors involving whether a child should be maintained in custody or returned to the parent. Differential factors related to either decision could not be identified. Mech concluded that no framework for decision-making existed, and the development of one was vital.[10]
In one of the most comprehensive of the early studies of decision-making criteria, William Ryan and Laura Morris studied the total intake (N = 683) of thirteen public, voluntary, and sectarian agencies constituting the basic child welfare system in metropolitan Boston. An intensive case reading analysis was then conducted of the 265 cases ultimately accepted for services.
The data suggested that intake decisions were made on a very stereotypical basis, largely unrelated to individual case need. The lack of flexibility in intake policies and decision-making processes, combined with the lack of necessary resources, made it impossible for the participating agencies to accept and serve many of the clients referred for services.
Ryan and Morris concluded that diagnostic criteria play no role in critical intake decisions, and that the concept of a comprehensive child welfare service network in metropolitan Boston was essentially a myth.[11]
Theodore Stein analyzed 68 intake and service worker interviews, finding that between 59 to 78 percent of the information gathered during intake the interview was not related to the objective of reaching a placement decision, and between 22 to 90 percent of the information in service interviews did not relate to the interview goals set by the workers.[12]
Similarly, Naomi Golan found that workers gather excessive amounts of information in community health centers. She reported a "lack of uniformity in the data gathered" by the 12 workers studied. There was either much data that appeared superfluous, or omissions in the data which appeared to be vital to decision-making.
Golan concluded that it "appears inescapable" that workers could carry out more economical and productive interviews, and arrive at more helpful decisions, if they knew what to focus on and which areas would yield the most significant data.[13]
In one of the earliest studies on the reliability of foster care decision-making, Scott Briar examined the basis for making foster home vs. institutional placement decisions. Forty-three workers participated in his study, using hypothetical case material.
Briar reported that while there was a relationship between the degree of disturbance and the type of placement recommended, the direction of the relationship was variable and unpredictable, and that predictions about a child's probable future varied substantially from caseworker to caseworker.[14]
In 1980, Donnelly examined foster care placement decisions by asking experienced caseworkers in four California counties to make recommendations on fifteen hypothetical cases. The decision to remove a child from the home varied substantially between the caseworkers. Those in Riverside and Alameda counties were more likely to remove a child than were their counterparts in San Bernadino and San Francisco counties, despite the geographic proximities.[15]
Such variations in decision-making are to be found throughout the states.
A 1995 South Carolina audit notes that while one county office confirmed abuse or neglect in 89 percent of reported abuse and neglect allegations, another county office confirmed only 14 percent.
The variations in substantiation rates were found to be even wider when the broader category of "maltreatment" was alleged. The variations in substantiation rates varied from one county office's determination that no maltreatment allegations were unfounded to another county office's determination that 74 percent of the allegations were unfounded.
The auditors noted that "the percentage of confirmed allegations among counties varied more than could be explained by outside factors."[16]
Judges reliability would appear to be equally as variable. Phillips and colleagues compared decisions reached by three independent judges, each of whom had more than five years of experience in child welfare. The judges agreed with each other and with the caseworkers on less than half of the cases, and when they did agree, they did not identify the same factors.[17]
In a follow-up study, Phillips, Haring and Shyne sought to assess the reliability of the decisions made by experienced child welfare caseworkers and judges in recommending for or against removal.
In examining 127 child placement cases, the researchers found considerable disagreement between not only judges and caseworkers, but between judges themselves.
The overall agreement between the six judges examined was less than 25 percent. Of particular significance was the wide variation between two judges, with one being four times more likely to recommend in-home services than another. While the one judge acceded to removal in 17 percent of cases, the other acceded to remove the child in an astounding 72 percent of the cases studied.
Even in those cases in which the judges agreed to remove a child, they varied substantially on the type of case plan or services to be provided.[18]
Nor would the reliability of decision-making seem to improve once a child has been removed and placed into foster care.
Deborah Shapiro reported that caseworkers with more experience were more likely than those with lesser experience to discharge children from foster placement during the first year in care.[19]
What does this suggest in terms of the high turnover in the field today?
A 1996 study conducted by Trudy Festinger sought to identify those factors which would serve as predictors for reentry into foster care.
While the results were inconclusive, six variables relating to the decision were identified: parenting skills, social support, unmet service needs, caregiver problems, organizational participation, and caseworker experience.
The results showed the two factors which were the strongest predictors of reentry were "limited parenting skills, such as assessed problems in communicating with their children, understanding child development, and handling discipline" and "a limited level of support from family, friends and neighbors."
In results somewhat similar to those of Shapiro, Festinger identified the length of experience in the field of child welfare as having some bearing on the decision.[20]
As to decisions involving the selection of foster parents, Martin Wolins found that the amount of information in a case record had a marked impact on the decisions made by judges. Agreement between judges climbed from a low of .47 when the entire case record was used, to a high of .81 when judges were provided only the material most relevant to the decision.
Of particular interest is that when 80 percent of the case record was randomly discarded, the level of agreement between judges was as high or better than it was when the entire case record was read.[21]
THE WHEN AND WHERE OF DECISION MAKING
The choices made at any single point can set the course for future transactions between worker and client, as well as between members of a family.
As Stein and Rzepnicki explain, "the accuracy and quality of data are conditioned by whether workers decide to conduct assessments in the office, in the client's home, or both; whether they elect to gather information through verbal exchanges during interviews, through client self-reports, through direct observation of family members, through reports by third parties, or a combination of these methods."[22]
Hence, the questions of how and where such critical decisions are made are significant. Just how and where are they made?
Dennis Lepak, a probation officer for Contra Costa County, California, and vice president of the State of California Organization of Mental Health Advisory Boards, explains that: "Most tragically, children are placed with little or no services to prevent their removal from families. Children are often removed from homes that no representative of the removing agency has even visited." Instead, says Lepak, decisions to remove children are based on information from old reports, office interviews, and phone calls.[23]
Similarly, sociologist John Hagedorn reports that in Milwaukee, investigations are often conducted and decisions made without the caseworkers so much as leaving the agency lunchroom.[24]
In Texas, an ABC Television affiliate examined child welfare procedures, finding that found that almost 50 percent of Child Protective Services caseworkers never actually leave their office or inspect the conditions or circumstances of the children they are charged to protect. Caseworkers instead often rely on ex parte conversations with attorneys, or the reports of court appointed psychologists, rather than following established procedures.[25]
Some caseworkers do continue to make home visits, while some others extend themselves to calling the accused family in for a face-to-face interview before making a placement decision.
Says Adrienne Cox, assistant director of the Department of Family and Youth Services in the Las Vegas area, her Child Protective Services division prefers to conduct interviews at government offices because resources are more accessible, and the safety of social workers can be more readily ensured.[26]
Decision-making in the area of adoption would similarly appear to require improvement.
In one of the earliest studies of the decision-making process in adoptive placements, Donald Brieland tape-recorded interviews with five couples who were adoptive applicants, playing these tapes for 184 workers in 13 states.
During and after each interview, the caseworkers were asked to rate the suitability of the couples for adoptive placement.
Brieland reported that decisions were based on information contained in the first half on the interview, and that the information in the second half bore no relationship to the decisions the workers made. He concluded that the workers had become "locked into" a decision during the first half of each interview, and that the remaining data did not contribute to the final outcome in any way.[27]
Fiscal incentives contribute significantly to the problem. As Stein and Rzepnicki observed: "The fiscal incentives in federal policy have a direct influence on the policies and actions of state-level administrators, and these, in turn, shape the professional decision-making environment in which child welfare practioners must function." Despite the value placed on family sanctity, and on the rights of parents to raise their children free of outside interference, federal funds for programs to prevent placement of children or for services to reunify families after children enter care have historically been low.[28]
In contrast, federal funds for foster care placements have historically been high. By the end of the 1970s, nearly three quarters of all child welfare dollars were being spent on foster care supervision and payments.[29]
As a result, argues sociologist John Hagedorn, the investigation of poor families and the removal of children from their homes have crystalized as the core tasks of social work, those functions which define what a social worker does on a day-to-day basis.[30]
With foster care being the primary service child welfare agencies possess, the decision of whether or not remove a child into state care is often the only decision a caseworker worker has to make.
Just how do Child Protective Services caseworkers arrive at their decisions today? Recent research would indicate that they frequently make decisions about cases before assessments and/or paperwork is completed.
Writing in the industry journal Child Welfare, Diana English and Peter Pecora conclude: "At present, caseworkers rely on intuitive processes based on supervision, experience, and training to make decisions."[31]
Yet it is precisely the lack of supervision, experience, and training that serve as the rules, rather than the exceptions, among far-too-many Child Protective Services caseworkers today. As a recent performance audit in the state of Utah explains: "Better training, more focused supervisory review, and changes in staffing will help ensure that children are protected, families are preserved where possible, and a permanent home is established."[32]
THE LACK OF DEFINITIONS
Add to this the lack of clear definitions as to what constitutes child abuse and neglect, coupled with lack of clearly defined intake guidelines, and it becomes clear why Child Protective Services cannot deliver on its mandate to protect children--even as it continues to needlessly destroy families. As Douglas Besharov explains:
These laws set no limits on intervention and provide no guidance for decision making. They are a prime reason for the system's inability to protect obviously endangered children even as it intervenes in family life on a massive scale.[33]
As Jeanne Giovannoni and Rosina Becerra explain, "Many assume that, since child abuse and neglect are against the law, somewhere there are statutes that make clear distinctions between what is and what is not child abuse. But this is not the case. Nowhere are there clear-cut definitions of what is encompassed by the terms."[34]
Stein and Rzepnicki note that the problems created by the absence of guidelines for gathering and using information are sufficient to explain the decision-making problems uncovered by investigators. Without criteria to guide data gathering, the process breaks down in its earliest stages.[35]
Nor are there legal standards to protect a family once it has entered the system, as existing legislation grants judges and caseworkers virtually unrestricted dispositional authority. As a result, "decision making is left to the ad hoc analysis of social workers and judges."[36]
Existing legislation invests judges and state agency personnel "with almost limitless discretion to act in accord with their own child-rearing preferences in areas generally under the exclusive control of parents." Identifying children whose placement should be called into question requires more than vague and subjective language, and statutes must be revised in order to "prevent judges, lawyers, social workers, and others from imposing their personal views upon unwilling parents."[37]
Add to this mix a darker side of human nature in the form of overt bias or prejudice. A recent grand jury investigation in California examining the disproportionate impact of foster care on black children suggests that racial bias may indeed be a significant placement factor.
The jury reported that case records and court reports for white children were "consistently more detailed, better prepared and oriented toward family reunification, adoption or guardianship" than cases involving minority children. While white children's files had "well-documented" plans for permanent placement, such as adoption or guardianship, minority children's files did not contain any evidence of a permanent placement plan.[38]
In a New Jersey case, an Hispanic father began beating his children after suffering a head injury at work. When asked why she had removed the children without looking to see if some other treatment methods may have prevented removal, the caseworker reportedly said: "Those people shouldn't have their kids anyway because those people have too damn many kids."[39]
The Native American continues to bear the brunt of such prejudice, and the problem is not limited to the caseworkers. Says Art Martinez, Ph.D., Clinical Supervisor with the Tolyabe Indian Health Project, "I've had judges tell me, 'I thought we killed all the Indians.'"[40]
If there is one personal bias which manages to creep across all racial boundaries, it is that which Dana Mack has described as "the pernicious confusion of poverty with neglect."[41]
There remains an additional placement factor which is exceptionally difficult to quantify--that of defensive social work. Notes Douglas Besharov, founding director of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, there is no denying that it affects all aspects of child protective decision making.[42]
As one former New York City caseworker explains: "If the kid's safe, leave him. If the kid's not safe, take him. If you're not sure, take him."[43]
CHILD PLACEMENT AS A RANDOM PROCESS
In 1994, University Professor Duncan Lindsey revisited the literature on child welfare decision-making, applying a hypothetical model which viewed decision-making as a stochastic (random) model.
In applying a reliability factor of .25 to the model--a reliability factor higher than that found in the studies he had examined--Lindsey concluded that "the low reliability leads to a system that is unable to discern which child should be removed and which child should be left at home."
The most salient feature of this model is that it does not require assumptions of bias or prejudice on the part of the child welfare caseworker to account for the removal of a great many children not in need of placement or the returning home of a large number of children in true need of placement.
Caseworkers in doubt about a child's situation make the safe decision to remove a child. Too often, the caseworker is in doubt, thus the caseworker too often places the child in foster care. Lindsey explains:
It is hard to imagine how the results of the stochastic model could be more distressful, in terms of what it suggest for the outcome of children considered for removal. If the level of reliability were to slip much further than .25, all children, except in the most extreme cases, would have an equal likelihood of being placed in foster homes, meaning that the decision-making process would be roughly equivalent to a lottery![44]
What must be remembered is that behind all of these decisions stand very real families--and very real children. They deserve better than the results of a lottery when it comes to decisions which may bear an impact on the rest of their lives.
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/decision.htm
Investigative Techniques Strip Searches of Children
Investigative Techniques
Strip Searches of Children
From Lifting the Veil
STRIP SEARCHES OF CHILDREN
At 3 A.M. the telephone rings, awakening you from a sound sleep. The gruff voice on the other end identifies himself as a child abuse investigator, threatening immediate removal of your children if you hang up. The following afternoon, caseworkers enter your home, look through your refrigerator, and question your two-and five-year-old children. The case is closed, labeled as unfounded.
Two months later, another child protective services caseworker appears to strip-search your children, a task the first worker had neglected to perform. He leaves, admonishing that your failure to comply with another such possible search will result in the immediate removal of your children.
Such was the harrowing sequence of events for one family in New York City, in October and December of 1995.[1]
This drama plays out daily, inflicting needless trauma on hundreds of young children. Lacking any evidence of wrongdoing beyond an anonymous tip, social workers enter homes or remove children from their classrooms to perform such "examinations" as they look for possible signs of abuse.
Consider the case of the Kennedy family, of Covina, California. On August 19, 1995, the family was planning a birthday party for one of their children. It was almost 5 P.M. when a caseworker from the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services arrived with two police officers from the Covina Police Department in tow.
Although neither the police nor Aluzri had a search warrant, they entered the home over the objections of the Kennedy family. The caseworker then explained that they were investigating an anonymous report.
Caseworker Aluzri first conducted a partial strip search on two of the older Kennedy boys. She then requested immunization records, names of pediatricians, and the names of the schools the children attended. She then proceded to search the home--a process which lasted for at least a full hour. Before leaving the home, caseworker Aluzri told the Kennedys that they could expect a follow-up visit from another social worker.[2]
Or consider the plight of the Calabretta family, of Yolo County, California. On November 10, 1994, caseworker Jill Floyd, along with Woodland Police Department officer Nicholas Schwall, entered the Calabretta home without a search warrant under the threat that if entry was refused, a forced entry would be considered.
Floyd went into a room with the oldest child to question him for approximately 15 to 30 minutes. It was then that Mrs. Calabretta and the officer heard the child crying. Caseworker Floyd had instructed him to pull down the pants of his three-year-old sister so she could examine her.[3]
These families were fortunate, in that the children were not removed from their homes and placed into foster care for several weeks, months or years. The trauma inflicted by these needless interventions will forever remain with these families.
In Westchester County, New York, a child protective services caseworker somehow ended up with the wrong information about a particular family's address. As it turned out, the family to be investigated lived in a town with the same name as the street the Beck family lived on.
By the time she arrived at the schools the Beck children were attending, the caseworker knew all of this. Nevertheless, she took it upon herself to interrogate and strip search both children. First sixteen-year-old Jennifer, then thirteen-year-old David. She lied to young David, telling him that she had found bruises and welts on Jennifer's body.
"I felt like I had been attacked," Jennifer wrote later. "I felt so alone and afraid and I realized that no one else who was in that room cared to protect me." What upset her the most, she wrote, was that she was unable to protect her brother.
The Becks sued Westchester County, and while refusing to accept only monetary damages, they demanded that systemic reforms be implemented and limits on strip searching be put in place. They won those limits in a consent decree. This was in 1988.[4]
How effective were these reforms is curbing the practice? In 1997, Westchester County agreed to pay out over $50,000 to a Mt. Vernon couple who charged that their children had been strip searched during a wrongful child protective services investigation.[5]
In a New Jersey case, "Alethea Clark" endured five separate midnight raids by child protective services caseworkers and police. Each time her two pre-school aged children were awakened, taken from their beds, and stripped naked at the insistence of the caseworker who looked them over from head to toe, each time finding nothing. Each of the five reports was labelled as unfounded.[6]
A question asked of Abigal Van Buren in her syndicated Dear Abby column was whether a "Colorado Mother" should keep her child home from school in the event that she receives a minor injury. A former Assistant Commissioner of Public Welfare in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Vorenberg, corrected the advice Van Buren originally gave in her column:
I can tell you "Colorado Mother" acted wisely, and you are mistaken.
Schoolteachers are instructed to report a child's "black eye" or bruise on the chance that the child has been physically abused at home. Yes, children have been pulled out of class and interrogated, even strip-searched (for more bruises) -- a terrifying experience for any child.[7]
Given the extremely high rate of false allegations entering the child welfare system, particularly those phoned in by anonymous callers, the use of this technique is certain to impact on countless innocent children and families. Marc Parent recounts his experience as a New York City caseworker:
Once in a while, cases generated by anonymous callers proved to be true, but not usually. Reported crack houses with children locked in small crates covered in bruises and urine often turned out to be buildings with doormen and well-cared-for children tucked tightly in bed. The toll of the false reports was exhausting. It was sickening to to visit families in the middle of the night, make parents wait outside, wake up children and strip them naked to look for bruises that were never there.
"More often than not," he adds, "victims of false reports turned out to be people in the midst of completely unrelated feuds with a neighbor or two. Strange coincidence."[8]
The allegation which precipitates an investigation apparently need not necessarily involve physical or sexual abuse for a strip search to be conducted.
Consider the case of Shirley and James Dumas, of Indiana. They were told that state welfare agents had come to their church looking for them on January 23rd, 1996. Later that evening, there was a knock at the door.
Dr. Charles R. Attwood, M.D., F.A.A.P., who as a practicing pediatrician has served as the primary physician for his community's child protection agency, describes what happened next:
There, she was confronted by two members of Child Protective Services (CPS), a social welfare agency of the State of Indiana, and two armed policemen. They insisted, she said, that she strip the clothing from Jeremiah, the 17 month old son she and James had adopted 8 months earlier. They inspected the child for bruises and then asked if they could look in the refrigerator. Shirley reports that when she said "no," and demanded to know what this was all about, it was opened anyway. She was told that their daughter was being taken into state custody because she and James were not feeding him proper food. The refrigerator search was done to confirm that there was no meat in the house. It was known at CPS that the Shirley and James were vegetarians.
An isolated case? Dr. Attwood recounts a similar case in California, in which a child was removed from her home and placed in state care simply because she ate a vegetarian diet.[9]
In Illinois, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit during the early 1980's, alleging that warrantless searches of homes and strip-searching of children were "routine" practices in child abuse investigations.[10]
Douglas Besharov, founding director of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, vividly describes this traumatic and humiliating practice as it was alleged to have occurred in the Illinois action:
Authority to look for signs of maltreatment on a child's body is not license to humiliate the child. In E.Z. v. Coler, for example, the parents alleged that the male worker completely undressed their 2-year-old daughter in the presence of her 4-year-old brother and a neighbor. They further alleged that he "held her up to a light, spread-eagled, for visual inspection of her vaginal area. [He] placed [her] on a couch and lifted her legs over her head to make a visual inspection of her anus."[11]
In briefs filed with the court, The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services argued that any restriction on strip-searches "would immediately bring the child-abuse-hotline investigations to a halt." The Department claimed it had the right to strip-search any child at any time based on information in any report to its hotline, regardless of the substance or nature of the report.
Ner Littner, a prominent Chicago child psychiatrist who testified for the ACLU in the Illinois case, stated in an interview that even the best adjusted child is likely to suffer "upset, sleep difficulties, nightmares, and difficulty eating" after such an experience. Littner indicated that for the more emotionally vulnerable child, the experience can significantly worsen any condition the child may have, and in some cases leave permanent damage.[12]
The potentially devastating impact of these strip searches on children is illustrated by a sobbing 16-year-old girl who was searched in a California Youth Guidance Center.
"Apparently the search involved two men who held her arms while three women conducted the strip search," said San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan.
Since the search, the girl "has been vomiting blood and having nightmares," the girl's mother told reporters.
"She's not a bad kid. She is extremely shy -- won't even wear shorts on the street because she doesn't want her body exposed."
At night, her daughter seemed to be at her worst, her mother said. "She has dreams he is holding her down and sometimes he is chasing her," she said.[13]
In the state of Iowa, the governor rejected a proposal by the Department of Human Services that would authorize social workers to strip-search and photograph school children without their parents knowledge. It was found that the workers had been using this practice without authorization, and wanted to make it legal primarily because of lawsuits by parents.[14]
Evidently, some social workers consider strip-searching of children to be a routine and harmless matter. In Texas, a female social worker took a lunch companion along with her as she conducted a strip search of a teen-aged boy in his school.
If there is one thing that some social workers do better than inflicting trauma on innocent children, it is committing perjury, and this social worker would prove no exception. She denied having taken anyone with her to the school while testifying under oath.
Like Alethea Clark, this family was the victim of multiple false allegations. This was the eighth investigation the family endured at the hands of the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services.[15]
At least a few legislators are beginning to take notice.
In Missouri, during debate surrounding a 1994 bill intended to remove allegations of neglect from the child protective investigations unit, Senator John Russell, R-Lebanon, called for the reactivation of unit in the Department of Public Safety that reviewed improper behavior by its Division of Family Services during investigations of child abuse reports.
Russell told fellow lawmakers of a case in which a caseworker visited a child at her school. The child was called to the principal's office, then taken to another room "where she was stripped to determine if there was any abuse."
"Every senator on this floor knows of a case that merits no investigation by the DFS or anyone else," said Senator Emory Melton, R-Cassville.
The bills sponsor, Joe Moseley, D-Columbia, said he had not personally heard any of the "horror stories" until he filed the bill. Since then, he said, numerous people had written him letters complaining about their treatment at the hands of the agency.[16]
Evidently, the use of this dehumanizing and frightening procedure has extended itself to the private agencies as well. A social worker employed by Catholic Charities in Illinois reportedly disrobed a five-year-old boy and his 6-year-old sister looking for evidence of abuse.
Not only does widespread strip-searching inflict needless trauma on thousands of children who have not been abused, but it very often fails to detect abuse in those who have.
The value of the technique is perhaps best illustrated by the tragic outcome of this case. Finding no evidence of abuse, the caseworker labeled the report as unsubstantiated. A few weeks later, five-year-old Arturo Barrera was dead--thrown to the floor by his mother's boyfriend.[17]
Police have also conducted strip searches of children, in one case entering an apartment late at night to investigate an anonymous tip claiming that a seven-year-old girl had been abused. Upon demanding entry into the apartment, the parent objected and was told no warrant was necessary. The police officers "with no indication that the child was injured . . . stripped and inspected [her] body, ostensibly for marks or injuries. No injuries were found."
On appeal, the officer argued that if social workers are allowed to conduct strip searches as a matter of routine, that a police officer certainly must be allowed as well.
The court, while declining to address the issue of whether social workers are allowed to conduct such strip searches without a search warrant, ruled against the officer, ruling that police officers specifically do not have the right, and that he had violated the constitutional rights of the family.[18]
Thus have we given social workers powers and immunity provisions that far exceed those of the police. They conduct these searches with impunity, systematically abusing hundreds of thousands of children every year in the name of child protection.
Veteran journalist and university professor Richard Wexler recently testified before a Congressional Committee, detailing the widespread prevalence of these techniques:
When the caseworker comes to the door, demands entry, pulls a small child aside and starts asking traumatic questions; when the worker then strip searches the child looking for bruises, how is that erring on the side of the child?
Such strip searches are common practice. In America today, Timothy Mcveigh has more protection against a search of his home or his person, than does an innocent child. The child savers constantly speak of "children's rights," but for some reason, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure never seems to be one of them.
"But the problem with this system is not that it hurts parents, though of course it does," Wexler explained to the Committee. "The problem with this system is that it hurts children."[19]
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/invest03.htm
Strip Searches of Children
From Lifting the Veil
STRIP SEARCHES OF CHILDREN
At 3 A.M. the telephone rings, awakening you from a sound sleep. The gruff voice on the other end identifies himself as a child abuse investigator, threatening immediate removal of your children if you hang up. The following afternoon, caseworkers enter your home, look through your refrigerator, and question your two-and five-year-old children. The case is closed, labeled as unfounded.
Two months later, another child protective services caseworker appears to strip-search your children, a task the first worker had neglected to perform. He leaves, admonishing that your failure to comply with another such possible search will result in the immediate removal of your children.
Such was the harrowing sequence of events for one family in New York City, in October and December of 1995.[1]
This drama plays out daily, inflicting needless trauma on hundreds of young children. Lacking any evidence of wrongdoing beyond an anonymous tip, social workers enter homes or remove children from their classrooms to perform such "examinations" as they look for possible signs of abuse.
Consider the case of the Kennedy family, of Covina, California. On August 19, 1995, the family was planning a birthday party for one of their children. It was almost 5 P.M. when a caseworker from the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services arrived with two police officers from the Covina Police Department in tow.
Although neither the police nor Aluzri had a search warrant, they entered the home over the objections of the Kennedy family. The caseworker then explained that they were investigating an anonymous report.
Caseworker Aluzri first conducted a partial strip search on two of the older Kennedy boys. She then requested immunization records, names of pediatricians, and the names of the schools the children attended. She then proceded to search the home--a process which lasted for at least a full hour. Before leaving the home, caseworker Aluzri told the Kennedys that they could expect a follow-up visit from another social worker.[2]
Or consider the plight of the Calabretta family, of Yolo County, California. On November 10, 1994, caseworker Jill Floyd, along with Woodland Police Department officer Nicholas Schwall, entered the Calabretta home without a search warrant under the threat that if entry was refused, a forced entry would be considered.
Floyd went into a room with the oldest child to question him for approximately 15 to 30 minutes. It was then that Mrs. Calabretta and the officer heard the child crying. Caseworker Floyd had instructed him to pull down the pants of his three-year-old sister so she could examine her.[3]
These families were fortunate, in that the children were not removed from their homes and placed into foster care for several weeks, months or years. The trauma inflicted by these needless interventions will forever remain with these families.
In Westchester County, New York, a child protective services caseworker somehow ended up with the wrong information about a particular family's address. As it turned out, the family to be investigated lived in a town with the same name as the street the Beck family lived on.
By the time she arrived at the schools the Beck children were attending, the caseworker knew all of this. Nevertheless, she took it upon herself to interrogate and strip search both children. First sixteen-year-old Jennifer, then thirteen-year-old David. She lied to young David, telling him that she had found bruises and welts on Jennifer's body.
"I felt like I had been attacked," Jennifer wrote later. "I felt so alone and afraid and I realized that no one else who was in that room cared to protect me." What upset her the most, she wrote, was that she was unable to protect her brother.
The Becks sued Westchester County, and while refusing to accept only monetary damages, they demanded that systemic reforms be implemented and limits on strip searching be put in place. They won those limits in a consent decree. This was in 1988.[4]
How effective were these reforms is curbing the practice? In 1997, Westchester County agreed to pay out over $50,000 to a Mt. Vernon couple who charged that their children had been strip searched during a wrongful child protective services investigation.[5]
In a New Jersey case, "Alethea Clark" endured five separate midnight raids by child protective services caseworkers and police. Each time her two pre-school aged children were awakened, taken from their beds, and stripped naked at the insistence of the caseworker who looked them over from head to toe, each time finding nothing. Each of the five reports was labelled as unfounded.[6]
A question asked of Abigal Van Buren in her syndicated Dear Abby column was whether a "Colorado Mother" should keep her child home from school in the event that she receives a minor injury. A former Assistant Commissioner of Public Welfare in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Vorenberg, corrected the advice Van Buren originally gave in her column:
I can tell you "Colorado Mother" acted wisely, and you are mistaken.
Schoolteachers are instructed to report a child's "black eye" or bruise on the chance that the child has been physically abused at home. Yes, children have been pulled out of class and interrogated, even strip-searched (for more bruises) -- a terrifying experience for any child.[7]
Given the extremely high rate of false allegations entering the child welfare system, particularly those phoned in by anonymous callers, the use of this technique is certain to impact on countless innocent children and families. Marc Parent recounts his experience as a New York City caseworker:
Once in a while, cases generated by anonymous callers proved to be true, but not usually. Reported crack houses with children locked in small crates covered in bruises and urine often turned out to be buildings with doormen and well-cared-for children tucked tightly in bed. The toll of the false reports was exhausting. It was sickening to to visit families in the middle of the night, make parents wait outside, wake up children and strip them naked to look for bruises that were never there.
"More often than not," he adds, "victims of false reports turned out to be people in the midst of completely unrelated feuds with a neighbor or two. Strange coincidence."[8]
The allegation which precipitates an investigation apparently need not necessarily involve physical or sexual abuse for a strip search to be conducted.
Consider the case of Shirley and James Dumas, of Indiana. They were told that state welfare agents had come to their church looking for them on January 23rd, 1996. Later that evening, there was a knock at the door.
Dr. Charles R. Attwood, M.D., F.A.A.P., who as a practicing pediatrician has served as the primary physician for his community's child protection agency, describes what happened next:
There, she was confronted by two members of Child Protective Services (CPS), a social welfare agency of the State of Indiana, and two armed policemen. They insisted, she said, that she strip the clothing from Jeremiah, the 17 month old son she and James had adopted 8 months earlier. They inspected the child for bruises and then asked if they could look in the refrigerator. Shirley reports that when she said "no," and demanded to know what this was all about, it was opened anyway. She was told that their daughter was being taken into state custody because she and James were not feeding him proper food. The refrigerator search was done to confirm that there was no meat in the house. It was known at CPS that the Shirley and James were vegetarians.
An isolated case? Dr. Attwood recounts a similar case in California, in which a child was removed from her home and placed in state care simply because she ate a vegetarian diet.[9]
In Illinois, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit during the early 1980's, alleging that warrantless searches of homes and strip-searching of children were "routine" practices in child abuse investigations.[10]
Douglas Besharov, founding director of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, vividly describes this traumatic and humiliating practice as it was alleged to have occurred in the Illinois action:
Authority to look for signs of maltreatment on a child's body is not license to humiliate the child. In E.Z. v. Coler, for example, the parents alleged that the male worker completely undressed their 2-year-old daughter in the presence of her 4-year-old brother and a neighbor. They further alleged that he "held her up to a light, spread-eagled, for visual inspection of her vaginal area. [He] placed [her] on a couch and lifted her legs over her head to make a visual inspection of her anus."[11]
In briefs filed with the court, The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services argued that any restriction on strip-searches "would immediately bring the child-abuse-hotline investigations to a halt." The Department claimed it had the right to strip-search any child at any time based on information in any report to its hotline, regardless of the substance or nature of the report.
Ner Littner, a prominent Chicago child psychiatrist who testified for the ACLU in the Illinois case, stated in an interview that even the best adjusted child is likely to suffer "upset, sleep difficulties, nightmares, and difficulty eating" after such an experience. Littner indicated that for the more emotionally vulnerable child, the experience can significantly worsen any condition the child may have, and in some cases leave permanent damage.[12]
The potentially devastating impact of these strip searches on children is illustrated by a sobbing 16-year-old girl who was searched in a California Youth Guidance Center.
"Apparently the search involved two men who held her arms while three women conducted the strip search," said San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan.
Since the search, the girl "has been vomiting blood and having nightmares," the girl's mother told reporters.
"She's not a bad kid. She is extremely shy -- won't even wear shorts on the street because she doesn't want her body exposed."
At night, her daughter seemed to be at her worst, her mother said. "She has dreams he is holding her down and sometimes he is chasing her," she said.[13]
In the state of Iowa, the governor rejected a proposal by the Department of Human Services that would authorize social workers to strip-search and photograph school children without their parents knowledge. It was found that the workers had been using this practice without authorization, and wanted to make it legal primarily because of lawsuits by parents.[14]
Evidently, some social workers consider strip-searching of children to be a routine and harmless matter. In Texas, a female social worker took a lunch companion along with her as she conducted a strip search of a teen-aged boy in his school.
If there is one thing that some social workers do better than inflicting trauma on innocent children, it is committing perjury, and this social worker would prove no exception. She denied having taken anyone with her to the school while testifying under oath.
Like Alethea Clark, this family was the victim of multiple false allegations. This was the eighth investigation the family endured at the hands of the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services.[15]
At least a few legislators are beginning to take notice.
In Missouri, during debate surrounding a 1994 bill intended to remove allegations of neglect from the child protective investigations unit, Senator John Russell, R-Lebanon, called for the reactivation of unit in the Department of Public Safety that reviewed improper behavior by its Division of Family Services during investigations of child abuse reports.
Russell told fellow lawmakers of a case in which a caseworker visited a child at her school. The child was called to the principal's office, then taken to another room "where she was stripped to determine if there was any abuse."
"Every senator on this floor knows of a case that merits no investigation by the DFS or anyone else," said Senator Emory Melton, R-Cassville.
The bills sponsor, Joe Moseley, D-Columbia, said he had not personally heard any of the "horror stories" until he filed the bill. Since then, he said, numerous people had written him letters complaining about their treatment at the hands of the agency.[16]
Evidently, the use of this dehumanizing and frightening procedure has extended itself to the private agencies as well. A social worker employed by Catholic Charities in Illinois reportedly disrobed a five-year-old boy and his 6-year-old sister looking for evidence of abuse.
Not only does widespread strip-searching inflict needless trauma on thousands of children who have not been abused, but it very often fails to detect abuse in those who have.
The value of the technique is perhaps best illustrated by the tragic outcome of this case. Finding no evidence of abuse, the caseworker labeled the report as unsubstantiated. A few weeks later, five-year-old Arturo Barrera was dead--thrown to the floor by his mother's boyfriend.[17]
Police have also conducted strip searches of children, in one case entering an apartment late at night to investigate an anonymous tip claiming that a seven-year-old girl had been abused. Upon demanding entry into the apartment, the parent objected and was told no warrant was necessary. The police officers "with no indication that the child was injured . . . stripped and inspected [her] body, ostensibly for marks or injuries. No injuries were found."
On appeal, the officer argued that if social workers are allowed to conduct strip searches as a matter of routine, that a police officer certainly must be allowed as well.
The court, while declining to address the issue of whether social workers are allowed to conduct such strip searches without a search warrant, ruled against the officer, ruling that police officers specifically do not have the right, and that he had violated the constitutional rights of the family.[18]
Thus have we given social workers powers and immunity provisions that far exceed those of the police. They conduct these searches with impunity, systematically abusing hundreds of thousands of children every year in the name of child protection.
Veteran journalist and university professor Richard Wexler recently testified before a Congressional Committee, detailing the widespread prevalence of these techniques:
When the caseworker comes to the door, demands entry, pulls a small child aside and starts asking traumatic questions; when the worker then strip searches the child looking for bruises, how is that erring on the side of the child?
Such strip searches are common practice. In America today, Timothy Mcveigh has more protection against a search of his home or his person, than does an innocent child. The child savers constantly speak of "children's rights," but for some reason, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure never seems to be one of them.
"But the problem with this system is not that it hurts parents, though of course it does," Wexler explained to the Committee. "The problem with this system is that it hurts children."[19]
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/invest03.htm
A Critical Look At The Child Welfare System Interrogation Techniques
A Critical Look At The Child Welfare System
Interrogation Techniques
From Lifting the Veil
INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES
Although the methods typically employed in an abuse or neglect investigation have long been discredited, they continue to be used in many child protective services agencies. Children are often kept from their parents only to be threatened, coerced or otherwise intimidated into providing the responses deemed appropriate.
Coercive interviewing techniques such as these have recently resulted in the overturning of several high-profile cases. While some child advocates argue that such reversals are the result of a mere "technicality," in reality these so-called technicalities involve the near complete lack of reliability on the part of the child witnesses, as a direct result of the methods used in the interogations.
In a recent ruling on the Margaret Kelly Michaels case, the New Jersey Supreme Court wrote:
We therefore determine that a sufficient consensus exists within the academic, professional, and law enforcement communities, confirmed in varying degrees by courts, to warrant the conclusion that the use of coercive or highly suggestive interrogation techniques can create a significant risk that the interrogation itself will distort the child's recollection of events, thereby undermining the reliability of the statements and subsequent testimony concerning such events.[1]
In a 1995 decision overturning the wrongful conviction of Donna Sue Hubbard, the 5th District Court of Appeals in Fresno came to a remarkably similar conclusion:
We conclude that the interrogating techniques used in this case were suggestive and coercive, and there is a substantial likelihood that the children's resulting trial testimony was false and thus unreliable in violation of her constitutional right to due process of law.[2]
Exploration into the reliability of child testimony obtained by these methods is not a new field of research. Diane K. Schetky, M.D. and Harold Boverman, M.D. cited some examples of coercive interviewing techniques during the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1985:
According to one of the therapists treating a child in the Jordan, Minnesota case, an 8-year-old child alleged to have been sexually abused was kept in foster care for one year and told by a psychologist that he wouldn't be allowed to return home until his mother admitted that the sexual abuse had occurred.
In case no. 3 an 8-year-old boy was told by his mother that he could never return home, never ride his bike, never see his father again and would have to go to the hospital where they would stick needles in him unless he admitted that his father had touched his bottom. The child's eventual admission resulted in father receiving a life sentence.[3]
Promises are often made to children by child protective caseworkers that they will be allowed to leave, and return to their parents, once they "disclose" the alleged abuse.
"Just tell us what happened, and you can go home," and similar phrases are in common use today. The desired effect is to elicit disclosure by offering the frightened child a thinly veiled opportunity to end the interrogation.
The Committee of Concerned Social Scientists described this process as it was used on children in the Michaels case, in a brief submitted to the New Jersey Supreme Court:
The interviewer comes close to bribing the child for a disclosure, by implying that the aversive interview can be terminated as soon as the child repeats what he said earlier. Popsicles and playing with a tape recorder are offered as rewards.
"If you tell me real quick, we can go get popsicles," was among the promises made by interviewers to one child.[4]
Duress and coercion continue to remain central elements in such investigations, whether delivered by prosecutors, police, therapists or child protective caseworkers.
Psychiatrist Lee Coleman and attorney Patrick Clancy describe in detail the process whereby children's false accounts of sexual abuse are often created through coercive interviewing techniques.
Writing in the law journal Criminal Justice, Coleman and Clancy argue that child protection workers are not expected to be impartial investigators searching for evidence of wrongdoing. Rather, they perceive themselves as advocates for children, and commonly act on the presumption that children have been victimized.
Coleman and Clancy's examination of videotapes of the interaction between therapists and children being interviewed found that overzealous investigators often use leading questions, the cuing of desired responses, praise for desired answers, and manipulated fantasy play.
Should the child deny having been involved in sexual acts, it is taken as evidence that he or she is repressing memories of terrifying abuse which the child protection worker is morally obligated to bring out. If the child exhibits anxiety, the anxiety is often regarded as evidence of repressed memories, rather than anxiety due to the circumstances of being interrogated by unfamiliar child protection workers.
Coleman and Clancy argue that the results of all this can be devastating. Children "may come to believe in these inventions with all the sincerity that real events would call forth," potentially compromising not only the investigation, but the child's emotional well-being as well.
In our experience, which adds up to hundreds of allegations and about fifteen hundred hours of audio- or videotaped interviews with children being investigated for possible molestation, children quite regularly make allegations that can be factually proven not to be true. When this happens, it is rare for the child to be the true initiator of the false statements. In most cases, the child's false statements are the product of an interviewing style that leads the child gradually to construct a mental picture of abuse. This picture becomes the child's "memory." The result can be disastrous, not only for the justice process, but also for the child's emotional well-being...[5]
Douglas Besharov, founding director of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, explained the inherently coercive nature of these interventions during his testimony before the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, arguing that "the CPS process is a coercive often traumatic one that should be limited to situations in which the danger to the child overrides our traditional reluctance to force services on unwilling parents."[6]
LEADING AND REPEATED QUESTIONING
The use of leading and repeated questions is typical in abuse investigations, due in large part to the predisposition on the part of many workers that children deny or repress memories of abuse. Repeated denials on the part of a child often result in continued questioning until the child finally "discloses" the alleged abuse.
Children often recant disclosers obtained by these methods once removed from the duress imposed on them by the the relentless questioning. Rather than raising doubts as to the validity of the disclosure obtained by the use of coercion, social workers typically view a recantation as having been subsequently coerced by a parent, or as part of an "accommodation syndrome".
In addition to the issue of coercion, the use of leading and repeated questioning was directly addressed by the New Jersey Supreme Court in the Margaret Kelly Michaels case:
The use of incessantly repeated questions also adds a manipulative element to an interview. When a child is asked a question and gives an answer, and the question is immediately asked again, the child's normal reaction is to assume that the first answer was wrong or displeasing to the adult questioner.
The insidious effects of repeated questioning are even more pronounced when the questions themselves over time suggest information to the children.
In the now infamous McMartin preschool case, interviewers led by Kee MacFarlane of Children's Institute International used similar techniques.
MacFarlane, together with her social workers at her Children's Institute, interviewed nearly 400 children between August 1983 and March 1984, concluding that 369 of them had been molested.
Before the interviews, which were videotaped, none of the children except one had said that anything had happened to them at the preschool. The lone girl making accusations was dropped from the case by prosecutors because her claims were too bizarre.
The jury ultimately concluded that the interviews had not only hopelessly contaminated the case, but were so suggestive and coercive that the children were in reality taught their stories of abuse from a script.[7]
Gail S. Goodman, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at the University of California, has been cited in several U.S. Supreme Court decisions and has published widely on children's testimony and memory development.
"Although there may be times when one needs to ask specific questions of children, several important caveats must be heeded," writes Goodman in Children Today. She continues, providing a framework for conducting proper investigations:
First, in actual practice, leading questions should be avoided when possible: Even if the child can maintain an accurate report, his or her and the interviewer's perceived credibility are likely to suffer. Second, there is a broad range of suggestion and coercion that can characterize an interview, and probably almost everyone would agree that some interviewers and parents go too far. Browbeating a child through repeated suggestive questioning is quite different from asking a few specific questions.[8]
Stephen J. Ceci, Ph.D., and Maggie Bruck, Ph.D., authors of Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony, found that suggestive interviewing techniques and repeated questioning can lead children to get wrong not only peripheral details, but the central gist of events they experienced, even events affecting their bodies that could have sexual implications.
Ceci and Bruck explore in depth these and the many other factors that may influence the outcome of an investigation, including interviewer bias, the predisposition toward a specific outcome, and the lack of independence on the part of the investigator.[9]
Significantly, these were all factors in the Margaret Kelly Michaels case. Writes the New Jersey Supreme Court:
We note that a fairly wide consensus exists among experts, scholars, and practitioners concerning improper interrogation techniques. They argue that among the factors that can undermine the neutrality of an interview and create undue suggestiveness are a lack of investigatory independence, the pursuit by the interviewer of a preconceived notion of what has happened to the child, the use of leading questions, and a lack of control for outside influences on the child's statements, such as previous conversations with parents or peers.
Diane K. Schetky, M.D. and Harold Boverman, M.D. illustrated these points during their presentation during the Annual Meeting of The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law:
In Massachusetts a case against a daycare center was overturned when the judge refuted the social worker's investigation saying, "I found her methods so suggestive, coercive, and repetitious and that any information obtained by her from the children was so tainted as to be totally unreliable."
Their presentation also encompassed interviewer bias, the use of leading questions, coercive tactics, failure to take family dynamics into account, and inadequate investigations.
DIVIDING THE FAMILY
One of the techniques commonly used by child protective caseworkers is to cast the person thought to have perpetrated the abuse in an unfavorable light in the eyes of the child. Repeated critism of a parent may result in the desired disclosure. Similarly, this technique is reportedly often used to divide parents, effectively pitting one against the other through the technique of the social workers presenting their findings or suspicions in an authoritative manner.
The New Jersey Supreme Court examined the use of these techniques in the Margaret Kelly Michaels case:
The explicit vilification or criticism of the person charged with wrongdoing is another factor that can induce a child to believe abuse has occurred. Similarly, an interviewer's bias with respect to a suspected person's guilt or innocence can have a marked effect on the accuracy of a child's statements.
Threats, bribes, promises of rewards, and other forms of psychological duress are often applied by social workers as the seek disclosure from children. The New Jersey Supreme Court addressed these issues directly in its ruling:
The transmission of suggestion can also be subtly communicated to children through more obvious factors such as the interviewer's tone of voice, mild threats, praise, cajoling, bribes and rewards, as well as resort to peer pressure.
Copyright © 1996 - 2006 Rick Thoma
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/invest02.htm
Interrogation Techniques
From Lifting the Veil
INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES
Although the methods typically employed in an abuse or neglect investigation have long been discredited, they continue to be used in many child protective services agencies. Children are often kept from their parents only to be threatened, coerced or otherwise intimidated into providing the responses deemed appropriate.
Coercive interviewing techniques such as these have recently resulted in the overturning of several high-profile cases. While some child advocates argue that such reversals are the result of a mere "technicality," in reality these so-called technicalities involve the near complete lack of reliability on the part of the child witnesses, as a direct result of the methods used in the interogations.
In a recent ruling on the Margaret Kelly Michaels case, the New Jersey Supreme Court wrote:
We therefore determine that a sufficient consensus exists within the academic, professional, and law enforcement communities, confirmed in varying degrees by courts, to warrant the conclusion that the use of coercive or highly suggestive interrogation techniques can create a significant risk that the interrogation itself will distort the child's recollection of events, thereby undermining the reliability of the statements and subsequent testimony concerning such events.[1]
In a 1995 decision overturning the wrongful conviction of Donna Sue Hubbard, the 5th District Court of Appeals in Fresno came to a remarkably similar conclusion:
We conclude that the interrogating techniques used in this case were suggestive and coercive, and there is a substantial likelihood that the children's resulting trial testimony was false and thus unreliable in violation of her constitutional right to due process of law.[2]
Exploration into the reliability of child testimony obtained by these methods is not a new field of research. Diane K. Schetky, M.D. and Harold Boverman, M.D. cited some examples of coercive interviewing techniques during the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1985:
According to one of the therapists treating a child in the Jordan, Minnesota case, an 8-year-old child alleged to have been sexually abused was kept in foster care for one year and told by a psychologist that he wouldn't be allowed to return home until his mother admitted that the sexual abuse had occurred.
In case no. 3 an 8-year-old boy was told by his mother that he could never return home, never ride his bike, never see his father again and would have to go to the hospital where they would stick needles in him unless he admitted that his father had touched his bottom. The child's eventual admission resulted in father receiving a life sentence.[3]
Promises are often made to children by child protective caseworkers that they will be allowed to leave, and return to their parents, once they "disclose" the alleged abuse.
"Just tell us what happened, and you can go home," and similar phrases are in common use today. The desired effect is to elicit disclosure by offering the frightened child a thinly veiled opportunity to end the interrogation.
The Committee of Concerned Social Scientists described this process as it was used on children in the Michaels case, in a brief submitted to the New Jersey Supreme Court:
The interviewer comes close to bribing the child for a disclosure, by implying that the aversive interview can be terminated as soon as the child repeats what he said earlier. Popsicles and playing with a tape recorder are offered as rewards.
"If you tell me real quick, we can go get popsicles," was among the promises made by interviewers to one child.[4]
Duress and coercion continue to remain central elements in such investigations, whether delivered by prosecutors, police, therapists or child protective caseworkers.
Psychiatrist Lee Coleman and attorney Patrick Clancy describe in detail the process whereby children's false accounts of sexual abuse are often created through coercive interviewing techniques.
Writing in the law journal Criminal Justice, Coleman and Clancy argue that child protection workers are not expected to be impartial investigators searching for evidence of wrongdoing. Rather, they perceive themselves as advocates for children, and commonly act on the presumption that children have been victimized.
Coleman and Clancy's examination of videotapes of the interaction between therapists and children being interviewed found that overzealous investigators often use leading questions, the cuing of desired responses, praise for desired answers, and manipulated fantasy play.
Should the child deny having been involved in sexual acts, it is taken as evidence that he or she is repressing memories of terrifying abuse which the child protection worker is morally obligated to bring out. If the child exhibits anxiety, the anxiety is often regarded as evidence of repressed memories, rather than anxiety due to the circumstances of being interrogated by unfamiliar child protection workers.
Coleman and Clancy argue that the results of all this can be devastating. Children "may come to believe in these inventions with all the sincerity that real events would call forth," potentially compromising not only the investigation, but the child's emotional well-being as well.
In our experience, which adds up to hundreds of allegations and about fifteen hundred hours of audio- or videotaped interviews with children being investigated for possible molestation, children quite regularly make allegations that can be factually proven not to be true. When this happens, it is rare for the child to be the true initiator of the false statements. In most cases, the child's false statements are the product of an interviewing style that leads the child gradually to construct a mental picture of abuse. This picture becomes the child's "memory." The result can be disastrous, not only for the justice process, but also for the child's emotional well-being...[5]
Douglas Besharov, founding director of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, explained the inherently coercive nature of these interventions during his testimony before the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, arguing that "the CPS process is a coercive often traumatic one that should be limited to situations in which the danger to the child overrides our traditional reluctance to force services on unwilling parents."[6]
LEADING AND REPEATED QUESTIONING
The use of leading and repeated questions is typical in abuse investigations, due in large part to the predisposition on the part of many workers that children deny or repress memories of abuse. Repeated denials on the part of a child often result in continued questioning until the child finally "discloses" the alleged abuse.
Children often recant disclosers obtained by these methods once removed from the duress imposed on them by the the relentless questioning. Rather than raising doubts as to the validity of the disclosure obtained by the use of coercion, social workers typically view a recantation as having been subsequently coerced by a parent, or as part of an "accommodation syndrome".
In addition to the issue of coercion, the use of leading and repeated questioning was directly addressed by the New Jersey Supreme Court in the Margaret Kelly Michaels case:
The use of incessantly repeated questions also adds a manipulative element to an interview. When a child is asked a question and gives an answer, and the question is immediately asked again, the child's normal reaction is to assume that the first answer was wrong or displeasing to the adult questioner.
The insidious effects of repeated questioning are even more pronounced when the questions themselves over time suggest information to the children.
In the now infamous McMartin preschool case, interviewers led by Kee MacFarlane of Children's Institute International used similar techniques.
MacFarlane, together with her social workers at her Children's Institute, interviewed nearly 400 children between August 1983 and March 1984, concluding that 369 of them had been molested.
Before the interviews, which were videotaped, none of the children except one had said that anything had happened to them at the preschool. The lone girl making accusations was dropped from the case by prosecutors because her claims were too bizarre.
The jury ultimately concluded that the interviews had not only hopelessly contaminated the case, but were so suggestive and coercive that the children were in reality taught their stories of abuse from a script.[7]
Gail S. Goodman, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at the University of California, has been cited in several U.S. Supreme Court decisions and has published widely on children's testimony and memory development.
"Although there may be times when one needs to ask specific questions of children, several important caveats must be heeded," writes Goodman in Children Today. She continues, providing a framework for conducting proper investigations:
First, in actual practice, leading questions should be avoided when possible: Even if the child can maintain an accurate report, his or her and the interviewer's perceived credibility are likely to suffer. Second, there is a broad range of suggestion and coercion that can characterize an interview, and probably almost everyone would agree that some interviewers and parents go too far. Browbeating a child through repeated suggestive questioning is quite different from asking a few specific questions.[8]
Stephen J. Ceci, Ph.D., and Maggie Bruck, Ph.D., authors of Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony, found that suggestive interviewing techniques and repeated questioning can lead children to get wrong not only peripheral details, but the central gist of events they experienced, even events affecting their bodies that could have sexual implications.
Ceci and Bruck explore in depth these and the many other factors that may influence the outcome of an investigation, including interviewer bias, the predisposition toward a specific outcome, and the lack of independence on the part of the investigator.[9]
Significantly, these were all factors in the Margaret Kelly Michaels case. Writes the New Jersey Supreme Court:
We note that a fairly wide consensus exists among experts, scholars, and practitioners concerning improper interrogation techniques. They argue that among the factors that can undermine the neutrality of an interview and create undue suggestiveness are a lack of investigatory independence, the pursuit by the interviewer of a preconceived notion of what has happened to the child, the use of leading questions, and a lack of control for outside influences on the child's statements, such as previous conversations with parents or peers.
Diane K. Schetky, M.D. and Harold Boverman, M.D. illustrated these points during their presentation during the Annual Meeting of The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law:
In Massachusetts a case against a daycare center was overturned when the judge refuted the social worker's investigation saying, "I found her methods so suggestive, coercive, and repetitious and that any information obtained by her from the children was so tainted as to be totally unreliable."
Their presentation also encompassed interviewer bias, the use of leading questions, coercive tactics, failure to take family dynamics into account, and inadequate investigations.
DIVIDING THE FAMILY
One of the techniques commonly used by child protective caseworkers is to cast the person thought to have perpetrated the abuse in an unfavorable light in the eyes of the child. Repeated critism of a parent may result in the desired disclosure. Similarly, this technique is reportedly often used to divide parents, effectively pitting one against the other through the technique of the social workers presenting their findings or suspicions in an authoritative manner.
The New Jersey Supreme Court examined the use of these techniques in the Margaret Kelly Michaels case:
The explicit vilification or criticism of the person charged with wrongdoing is another factor that can induce a child to believe abuse has occurred. Similarly, an interviewer's bias with respect to a suspected person's guilt or innocence can have a marked effect on the accuracy of a child's statements.
Threats, bribes, promises of rewards, and other forms of psychological duress are often applied by social workers as the seek disclosure from children. The New Jersey Supreme Court addressed these issues directly in its ruling:
The transmission of suggestion can also be subtly communicated to children through more obvious factors such as the interviewer's tone of voice, mild threats, praise, cajoling, bribes and rewards, as well as resort to peer pressure.
Copyright © 1996 - 2006 Rick Thoma
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/invest02.htm
DCYF/CPS Investigative Techniques
Investigative Techniques
From Lifting the Veil
Introduction
The social workers and counselors are so eager to find child
abuse or neglect. The bottom line is you give a lot of people
a stick and they are going to swing it.
Judge Ralph Adam Fine --
Wisconsin Court of Appeals
INTRODUCTION
An investigation into allegations of child abuse can be the most devastating event a family may ever face. Even when found innocent of these charges, friends, neighbors and employers may have been contacted and interviewed, and the stigma of being falsely branded a child abuser often remains. Douglas Besharov, the original director of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, explained this process in during his 1987 testimony before the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families:
Unfortunately, the determination that a report is unfounded can only be made after an unavoidably traumatic investigation that is, inherently, a breach of parental and family privacy. To determine whether a particular child is in danger, case-workers must inquire into the most intimate personal and family matters. Often, it is necessary to question friends, relatives, and neighbors, as well as school teachers, day care personnel, doctors, clergymen, and others who know the family.[1]
"These programs are the largest, and often the most controversial, complex and challenging of any programs administered by the department," writes Daniel M. Stone, Director of the Virginia Beach Department of Social Services.
"More than 21 social workers and supervisors respond to about 444 reports of suspected child abuse each month. Investigators must go into homes, schools and neighborhoods to talk with children who have reportedly been abused and with the adults who have allegedly abused them."[2]
The toll of an investigation on a family can be high, writes Dana Mack of the Institute for American Values, noting that the investigation can last as long as six months.
"Typically, caseworkers will enter a home for the first time at an odd hour, with no previous announcement, giving no information about the nature of the charge held against the family, nor who has made it," writes Mack. The homes of accused families are always checked, with refrigerators opened and the bathrooms inspected.
"Neighbors and school personnel are questioned about the family, particularly about the reputation, behavior and habits of the parents," writes Mack, noting that it is not unusual in some jurisdictions for child welfare workers to enter homes in the middle of the night, stripping children naked and probing their genitals for evidence of abuse.[3]
Writing in the professional journal Social Work, Elizabeth Hutchinson argues that the costs of mandatory reporting laws far outweigh the benefits, and that greater emphasis needs to be placed on the development of family preservation programs. Hutchinson describes the long-term impact such an investigation may have on a family:
Investigation of a report of child maltreatment is not an innocuous intrusion into family life. By the time an investigation is complete, the family has had to cope with anxieties in both their formal and informal support systems alerted to state suspicion of their parenting. Even if the report is expunged from the central registry due to lack of substantiation, it is seldom expunged from the mind of the family--or from the memories of persons in the support system.[4]
Such investigations may involve repeated and relentless interrogations of children, and a battery of psychological testing for both the parents and their children. These tests are often conducted by a parade of court-appointed psychologists and therapists.
Notes author Thomas Sowell, somewhere between 2 million and 3 million allegations of child abuse and neglect tie up the nation's hotlines every year. Of that number, 60 per cent are deemed false and dropped.
Of the remaining 40 per cent that lead to investigations, writes Sowell, about half eventually are dismissed, "but not before children have been strip-searched, interrogated by a stream of social workers, police officers, and prosecutors, psychologically tested, and sometimes placed in foster care. Such actions usually occur without search warrants, parental consent, court hearings, or official charges -- and often solely on the basis of the anonymous telephone call."[5]
Child protection caseworkers may overstep reasonable boundaries during their investigation, explains Besharov. In Virginia Beach, for example, the child protective services agency agreed to pay $4,000 to settle a father's claim that he was subjected to "a course of conduct amounting to harassment, including threats of prosecution for crimes and conduct of which the plaintiff was innocent."
The father also alleged that the workers "maliciously and falsely addressed remarks to third persons, the substance of which were that the plaintiff was an alcoholic; that the plaintiff was mentally unstable and was 'a very sick man'; that he was guilty of child molestation; that they were going to take his child or children away from him; and that he would be prosecuted criminally."
Besharov explains that such problems may be particularly acute when it comes to allegations of child sexual abuse: "Some agencies intervene on the most tenuous evidence, especially in cases of sexual abuse. It is almost as if the presumption of innocence has been suspended in these cases. Thus, lawsuits for the unjustified removal of children have been settled for amounts ranging from $10,000 to $35,000."[6]
While police require probable cause before they may conduct a search or seizure, the reality is that the standard of evidence social workers apply is often all but non-existent. Children are often removed from their homes without any evidence, while social workers conduct their investigation. The removal may be based entirely upon an anonymous call, or an "instinct" on the part of a social worker.
In Texas, a 1991 case involved a social worker who came in and took two young boys on allegations of sexual abuse. A 17-year-old social worker applied for a court order to remove the children based on a "feeling" that they were being abused. A trial consultant associated with the case describes what happened next:
Based on her authority, she came out with a dozen assault weapon-armed sheriffs deputies at 3 a.m., and this young father wakes up with rifles at his head. That was a 17-year-old who hadn't finished high school.
Two years later, the father has passed three lie-detector tests and a plethsymograph, a test that purports to measure sexual response to photographs of naked adults and children. But the children remained in foster care as the father fought to prove his innocence and regain custody.[7]
In a candid interview with Massachusetts News, the Chair of the Legislative Committee on Foster Care, State Rep. Marie Parente, leveled serious charges at the Department of Social Services saying, the department is "perverting the system" by conducting their business without regard to due process for families.
Parente explained that one caseworker in a DSS office talked about child molestation all of the time, even going to the extent of bringing leaflets and books on the subject into her office. "She'd been molested as a child," Parente explained, "and in every case she handled she saw child molestation whether it was there or not."
Parente asserts that psychological testing should be administered to social workers in order to weed out the most obsessive among them, having asked one commissioner: "Has it ever occurred to you that they may be as sick as the people they are interviewing? You don't think that people bring their problems to the job?"[8]
Indeed, Kenneth Lanning of the FBI notes that many caseworkers may have entered the field of child protection because they have themselves been abused as children. They go about the task of investigating with a "hidden agenda"--recruiting children they question into "the brotherhood and sisterhood of the sexually abused."[9]
As Judge Ralph Adam Fine, who now presides over the Wisconsin Court of Appeals and who once worked in children's court, explains:
The social workers and counselors are so eager to find child abuse or neglect. The bottom line is you give a lot of people a stick and they are going to swing it. The rules aren't structured to provide the kind of due process that America supposedly prides itself in.[10]
In Washington, State Representative Val Stevens, R-Arlington, has occasionally taken her fight against CPS into her constituents' living rooms, joining parents to resist when a child protective worker worker shows up to try to remove a child.
"I believe that oftentimes the family is not as broken as CPS would have us believe," says Stevens.[11]
Says Missouri State Representative Glenn Hall, R-Grain Valley, investigators bring along police and "come to your door with a gun in their hand saying, 'Give me your kids or you die.'"
During House debate on a measure intended to make child abuse and neglect investigations less adversarial, the Kansas City area lawmaker attempted to amend the bill to impose civil penalties on the division if it removes children from their homes without a strong case to show child abuse.
As an attorney, he said he has represented clients fighting the "Nazilike tactics" of child abuse investigators.[12]
During his Congressional testimony, Douglas Besharov explained the relationship between the high volume of unfounded reports entering the system, and the apparent zeal with which child protective investigators conduct investigations of vague reports:
The current flood of unfounded reports is overwhelming the limited resources of child protective agencies. For fear of missing even one abused child, workers perform extensive investigations of vague and apparently unsupported reports. Even when a home visit based on an anonymous report turns up no evidence of maltreatment, they usually interview neighbors, school teachers, and day care personnel to make sure that the child is not abused.
Besharov suggested to the Committee that a better screening system be implemented to reduce the number of investigations stemming from false allegations of abuse, suggesting that calls be more effectively screened; that clear definitions be established as to what constitutes abuse and neglect; and that an intake system be developed:
The kind of intake decision-making that I am proposing cannot be done by clerks, nor by untrained caseworkers. The agency's best workers should be assigned to intake--where they can have the greatest impact. In fact, I would suggest that we make assignment to intake a promotion, in which we place our most experienced and qualified staff.
"But in seeking to protect children, it is all too easy for courts and social agencies to ignore the legitimate rights of parents. This is a massive and unjustified violation of parental rights," said the former NCCAN director.
Social workers must be better trained to distinguish between actual cases of abuse and neglect, and those which do not merit further investigation. Guidelines must be established to assist the social workers in understanding and respecting the civil rights of parents.
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/invest01.htm
From Lifting the Veil
Introduction
The social workers and counselors are so eager to find child
abuse or neglect. The bottom line is you give a lot of people
a stick and they are going to swing it.
Judge Ralph Adam Fine --
Wisconsin Court of Appeals
INTRODUCTION
An investigation into allegations of child abuse can be the most devastating event a family may ever face. Even when found innocent of these charges, friends, neighbors and employers may have been contacted and interviewed, and the stigma of being falsely branded a child abuser often remains. Douglas Besharov, the original director of the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, explained this process in during his 1987 testimony before the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families:
Unfortunately, the determination that a report is unfounded can only be made after an unavoidably traumatic investigation that is, inherently, a breach of parental and family privacy. To determine whether a particular child is in danger, case-workers must inquire into the most intimate personal and family matters. Often, it is necessary to question friends, relatives, and neighbors, as well as school teachers, day care personnel, doctors, clergymen, and others who know the family.[1]
"These programs are the largest, and often the most controversial, complex and challenging of any programs administered by the department," writes Daniel M. Stone, Director of the Virginia Beach Department of Social Services.
"More than 21 social workers and supervisors respond to about 444 reports of suspected child abuse each month. Investigators must go into homes, schools and neighborhoods to talk with children who have reportedly been abused and with the adults who have allegedly abused them."[2]
The toll of an investigation on a family can be high, writes Dana Mack of the Institute for American Values, noting that the investigation can last as long as six months.
"Typically, caseworkers will enter a home for the first time at an odd hour, with no previous announcement, giving no information about the nature of the charge held against the family, nor who has made it," writes Mack. The homes of accused families are always checked, with refrigerators opened and the bathrooms inspected.
"Neighbors and school personnel are questioned about the family, particularly about the reputation, behavior and habits of the parents," writes Mack, noting that it is not unusual in some jurisdictions for child welfare workers to enter homes in the middle of the night, stripping children naked and probing their genitals for evidence of abuse.[3]
Writing in the professional journal Social Work, Elizabeth Hutchinson argues that the costs of mandatory reporting laws far outweigh the benefits, and that greater emphasis needs to be placed on the development of family preservation programs. Hutchinson describes the long-term impact such an investigation may have on a family:
Investigation of a report of child maltreatment is not an innocuous intrusion into family life. By the time an investigation is complete, the family has had to cope with anxieties in both their formal and informal support systems alerted to state suspicion of their parenting. Even if the report is expunged from the central registry due to lack of substantiation, it is seldom expunged from the mind of the family--or from the memories of persons in the support system.[4]
Such investigations may involve repeated and relentless interrogations of children, and a battery of psychological testing for both the parents and their children. These tests are often conducted by a parade of court-appointed psychologists and therapists.
Notes author Thomas Sowell, somewhere between 2 million and 3 million allegations of child abuse and neglect tie up the nation's hotlines every year. Of that number, 60 per cent are deemed false and dropped.
Of the remaining 40 per cent that lead to investigations, writes Sowell, about half eventually are dismissed, "but not before children have been strip-searched, interrogated by a stream of social workers, police officers, and prosecutors, psychologically tested, and sometimes placed in foster care. Such actions usually occur without search warrants, parental consent, court hearings, or official charges -- and often solely on the basis of the anonymous telephone call."[5]
Child protection caseworkers may overstep reasonable boundaries during their investigation, explains Besharov. In Virginia Beach, for example, the child protective services agency agreed to pay $4,000 to settle a father's claim that he was subjected to "a course of conduct amounting to harassment, including threats of prosecution for crimes and conduct of which the plaintiff was innocent."
The father also alleged that the workers "maliciously and falsely addressed remarks to third persons, the substance of which were that the plaintiff was an alcoholic; that the plaintiff was mentally unstable and was 'a very sick man'; that he was guilty of child molestation; that they were going to take his child or children away from him; and that he would be prosecuted criminally."
Besharov explains that such problems may be particularly acute when it comes to allegations of child sexual abuse: "Some agencies intervene on the most tenuous evidence, especially in cases of sexual abuse. It is almost as if the presumption of innocence has been suspended in these cases. Thus, lawsuits for the unjustified removal of children have been settled for amounts ranging from $10,000 to $35,000."[6]
While police require probable cause before they may conduct a search or seizure, the reality is that the standard of evidence social workers apply is often all but non-existent. Children are often removed from their homes without any evidence, while social workers conduct their investigation. The removal may be based entirely upon an anonymous call, or an "instinct" on the part of a social worker.
In Texas, a 1991 case involved a social worker who came in and took two young boys on allegations of sexual abuse. A 17-year-old social worker applied for a court order to remove the children based on a "feeling" that they were being abused. A trial consultant associated with the case describes what happened next:
Based on her authority, she came out with a dozen assault weapon-armed sheriffs deputies at 3 a.m., and this young father wakes up with rifles at his head. That was a 17-year-old who hadn't finished high school.
Two years later, the father has passed three lie-detector tests and a plethsymograph, a test that purports to measure sexual response to photographs of naked adults and children. But the children remained in foster care as the father fought to prove his innocence and regain custody.[7]
In a candid interview with Massachusetts News, the Chair of the Legislative Committee on Foster Care, State Rep. Marie Parente, leveled serious charges at the Department of Social Services saying, the department is "perverting the system" by conducting their business without regard to due process for families.
Parente explained that one caseworker in a DSS office talked about child molestation all of the time, even going to the extent of bringing leaflets and books on the subject into her office. "She'd been molested as a child," Parente explained, "and in every case she handled she saw child molestation whether it was there or not."
Parente asserts that psychological testing should be administered to social workers in order to weed out the most obsessive among them, having asked one commissioner: "Has it ever occurred to you that they may be as sick as the people they are interviewing? You don't think that people bring their problems to the job?"[8]
Indeed, Kenneth Lanning of the FBI notes that many caseworkers may have entered the field of child protection because they have themselves been abused as children. They go about the task of investigating with a "hidden agenda"--recruiting children they question into "the brotherhood and sisterhood of the sexually abused."[9]
As Judge Ralph Adam Fine, who now presides over the Wisconsin Court of Appeals and who once worked in children's court, explains:
The social workers and counselors are so eager to find child abuse or neglect. The bottom line is you give a lot of people a stick and they are going to swing it. The rules aren't structured to provide the kind of due process that America supposedly prides itself in.[10]
In Washington, State Representative Val Stevens, R-Arlington, has occasionally taken her fight against CPS into her constituents' living rooms, joining parents to resist when a child protective worker worker shows up to try to remove a child.
"I believe that oftentimes the family is not as broken as CPS would have us believe," says Stevens.[11]
Says Missouri State Representative Glenn Hall, R-Grain Valley, investigators bring along police and "come to your door with a gun in their hand saying, 'Give me your kids or you die.'"
During House debate on a measure intended to make child abuse and neglect investigations less adversarial, the Kansas City area lawmaker attempted to amend the bill to impose civil penalties on the division if it removes children from their homes without a strong case to show child abuse.
As an attorney, he said he has represented clients fighting the "Nazilike tactics" of child abuse investigators.[12]
During his Congressional testimony, Douglas Besharov explained the relationship between the high volume of unfounded reports entering the system, and the apparent zeal with which child protective investigators conduct investigations of vague reports:
The current flood of unfounded reports is overwhelming the limited resources of child protective agencies. For fear of missing even one abused child, workers perform extensive investigations of vague and apparently unsupported reports. Even when a home visit based on an anonymous report turns up no evidence of maltreatment, they usually interview neighbors, school teachers, and day care personnel to make sure that the child is not abused.
Besharov suggested to the Committee that a better screening system be implemented to reduce the number of investigations stemming from false allegations of abuse, suggesting that calls be more effectively screened; that clear definitions be established as to what constitutes abuse and neglect; and that an intake system be developed:
The kind of intake decision-making that I am proposing cannot be done by clerks, nor by untrained caseworkers. The agency's best workers should be assigned to intake--where they can have the greatest impact. In fact, I would suggest that we make assignment to intake a promotion, in which we place our most experienced and qualified staff.
"But in seeking to protect children, it is all too easy for courts and social agencies to ignore the legitimate rights of parents. This is a massive and unjustified violation of parental rights," said the former NCCAN director.
Social workers must be better trained to distinguish between actual cases of abuse and neglect, and those which do not merit further investigation. Guidelines must be established to assist the social workers in understanding and respecting the civil rights of parents.
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/invest01.htm
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Funding will boost child protection programming
(Well at least Anoka County has the right idea. It would be nice if the rest of the nation followed suit!)
Funding will boost child protection programming
Friday, 19 February 2010
by Peter Bodley
Managing editor
Anoka County has received state dollars to boost its child protection family group decision making program, which is designed to keep children with their families and out of foster care.
Last year, the Anoka County Board shifted money from its out of home placement budget to the family group decision making project in an effort to be more pro-active and involve families, not just parents, in the process.
In a competitive grant process, the county has been successful in obtaining a $150,000 two-year grant, $75,000 each year, from the Minnesota Department of Human Services from Jan. 1, 2010 through Dec. 31, 2011.
“We got all the money that we asked for which was very encouraging,” said Bill Pinsonnault, county social services and mental health director.
“It will enhance our efforts to deal with abuse and neglect at the front end without having to go through the full legal system.”
With the state money, the county will be able to help more families through the program, according to Pinsonnault.
Last year, the county board approved a staff recommendation to shift $300,000 from its out of home placement budget to the family group decision making program to launch the new effort, Pinsonnault said.
With that money, the county contracted with two vendors to bring two social workers on board who work out of the human services department specifically on the family group decision making process, he said.
The county board through its 2010 budget funding has continued the emphasis of the family group decision making program rather than out of home placement, Pinsonnault said.
The purpose of the change of focus in the family group decision making program, which began July 1, 2009, is that not only is it in the best interests of the child to remain in a family setting rather than in foster care, but out of home placement is a major expense for the county, Pinsonnault said.
“Families are involved in safety planning for their children,” he said. “The goal is to keep the child at home or with family members.”
This can include the family making informal relative placements, reducing the need for out of home placements through the court system, Pinsonnault said.
“These services have reduced the out of home placement of children, reduced court ordered child protective services and prevented the repeat of maltreatment,” he said.
The family decision making meetings support families in making decisions and developing plans that nurture children and prevent abuse and neglect, according to Pinsonnault.
But families in child protection cases of “an egregious nature” are not eligible for the family group decision making program and the program is also voluntary, Pinsonnault said.
Safety of the child remains the primary focus in all these cases, he said.
But there is an added incentive for families to be part of the program and avoid out of home placement of their children – the case of maltreatment may not end up on their record for 10 years, he said.
“We are using our resources on the front end, rather than the back end,” Pinsonnault said.
According to Cindy Cesare, manager of children and family services in the county social services department, the state money will help offset some of the county dollars in the program, but it will also be used to provide crisis financial help to families in such critical areas as housing, utilities and transportation.
While the family group decision making process has been part of the child protection program for several years, the decision to change emphasis and move resources to upfront services was based on research that keeping kids with their families has benefits, Cesare said.
Some 50 families have gone through the volunteer program since its inception some seven months ago, she said.
“The results have been good,” Cesare said. “We have been able to get children back with their parents sooner and we have found relatives who have had kids live with them.”
“We have also had a great deal of support from parents, families and the community.”
Peter Bodley is at peter.bodley@ecm-inc.com
http://abcnewspapers.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11151&Itemid=26
Funding will boost child protection programming
Friday, 19 February 2010
by Peter Bodley
Managing editor
Anoka County has received state dollars to boost its child protection family group decision making program, which is designed to keep children with their families and out of foster care.
Last year, the Anoka County Board shifted money from its out of home placement budget to the family group decision making project in an effort to be more pro-active and involve families, not just parents, in the process.
In a competitive grant process, the county has been successful in obtaining a $150,000 two-year grant, $75,000 each year, from the Minnesota Department of Human Services from Jan. 1, 2010 through Dec. 31, 2011.
“We got all the money that we asked for which was very encouraging,” said Bill Pinsonnault, county social services and mental health director.
“It will enhance our efforts to deal with abuse and neglect at the front end without having to go through the full legal system.”
With the state money, the county will be able to help more families through the program, according to Pinsonnault.
Last year, the county board approved a staff recommendation to shift $300,000 from its out of home placement budget to the family group decision making program to launch the new effort, Pinsonnault said.
With that money, the county contracted with two vendors to bring two social workers on board who work out of the human services department specifically on the family group decision making process, he said.
The county board through its 2010 budget funding has continued the emphasis of the family group decision making program rather than out of home placement, Pinsonnault said.
The purpose of the change of focus in the family group decision making program, which began July 1, 2009, is that not only is it in the best interests of the child to remain in a family setting rather than in foster care, but out of home placement is a major expense for the county, Pinsonnault said.
“Families are involved in safety planning for their children,” he said. “The goal is to keep the child at home or with family members.”
This can include the family making informal relative placements, reducing the need for out of home placements through the court system, Pinsonnault said.
“These services have reduced the out of home placement of children, reduced court ordered child protective services and prevented the repeat of maltreatment,” he said.
The family decision making meetings support families in making decisions and developing plans that nurture children and prevent abuse and neglect, according to Pinsonnault.
But families in child protection cases of “an egregious nature” are not eligible for the family group decision making program and the program is also voluntary, Pinsonnault said.
Safety of the child remains the primary focus in all these cases, he said.
But there is an added incentive for families to be part of the program and avoid out of home placement of their children – the case of maltreatment may not end up on their record for 10 years, he said.
“We are using our resources on the front end, rather than the back end,” Pinsonnault said.
According to Cindy Cesare, manager of children and family services in the county social services department, the state money will help offset some of the county dollars in the program, but it will also be used to provide crisis financial help to families in such critical areas as housing, utilities and transportation.
While the family group decision making process has been part of the child protection program for several years, the decision to change emphasis and move resources to upfront services was based on research that keeping kids with their families has benefits, Cesare said.
Some 50 families have gone through the volunteer program since its inception some seven months ago, she said.
“The results have been good,” Cesare said. “We have been able to get children back with their parents sooner and we have found relatives who have had kids live with them.”
“We have also had a great deal of support from parents, families and the community.”
Peter Bodley is at peter.bodley@ecm-inc.com
http://abcnewspapers.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11151&Itemid=26
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