The Interests Of The Child

Typically the public outrage starts when a child is brutally murdered by a parent and the press discovers that the child welfare agency knew about the family situation but did nothing. The public debate suggests that the agency, as a matter of policy, had become overly concerned about the rights of families, overly committed to reuniting families and callous to the pain of children. Task forces are formed and bills are proposed to make "the best interests of the, child" paramount.

Professionals in the child welfare field, reading the newspapers, know that badly carried out protective services are being confused with family preservation. Most often these stories are really about under staffing, poorly trained staff and criminally poor administration. In other words the real problem is most often not about philosophy -- it is about performance.

It is not about philosophy when we learn that complaints to the child welfare agency were never followed up on -- that no one went to the home to see if the, child was, in fact, being harmed. Nor is it a matter of philosophy when an agency returns a previously abused child to the home of the abusive parent and only makes follow up visits to the home every few months (if ever) to see if things are okay. This is malpractice. It is like a fire department not answering a call that says a home is on fire -- the community would not and should not tolerate that level of performance from a fire department nor should it from a child welfare agency. It is convenient for politicians, the press and the public to act as though the problem is policy or philosophy. You can change policy over night by passing a bill. But poor performance, under-funding and tragically inept service delivery practices defy quick fixes and cost a lot to repair.

Certainly there is a legitimate policy debate but it needs to be put in context. At the extreme ends there are Child Protection zealots and Family Preservation zealots and they seem to be framing the debate. The Child Protection extremists want to remove children from the homes of teen mothers, welfare recipients and lots of people of allegedly poor character -- never mind that this would entail millions and millions of foster homes, or orphanages, that it is traumatic for a child to be removed from even an inadequate parent and that foster care is not 100% safe either.

The Family Preservation extremists would have you believe that every family is salvageable, that every parent wants the best for their children despite their psychological or social problems and that proper treatment can turn things around. Never mind that there are parents who murder, torture and prostitute their children, treating them in ways that are inhuman. Politically speaking, family preservation is indefensible in today's climate. Forget the merits of the debate -- the political fact is that it can be attacked in two sentences but takes 30 minutes to defend. For a politician being tough on child abuse, like tough on crime or drugs, can only help. Fortunately there are some reasonable people, who are neither politicians nor extremists, still in the child welfare field, on the juvenile court benches and in the state legislatures. They operate from the belief that, whenever possible and when safety concerns are not overwhelming, children are best off in their family home. They believe that irreparable damage can be done by unnecessarily removing a child from his/her home and as well by setting unreachable benchmarks for reunification. They see that in many parts of the country children languish far too long in foster care. They believe that intensive, high quality services -- particularly when bolstered by the involvement of relatives and the immediate community -- can in some cases reduce or eliminate the need for out of home placement.

The reasonable people understand that it does not serve the community well if children are taken from their families to solve problems which can be solved in other ways. Reasonable people can distinguish between economic difficulties, short term emotional crises and child abuse. They understand as well that there are people who do unspeakable things to their children or are wholly indifferent to their welfare. They do not see child molestation or torture as the beginning of a case plan, as something to begin to work on. They see these acts as clear signals that a child needs to be protected, right now, and most likely for the long term.

Politics aside -- as if that were possible -- there is daily tragedy in big city child welfare systems across the country. It goes far beyond the periodic headline story and it is not about policy or philosophy. It is about real life boring things like staffing levels, good professional practice and sound administration. One only has to read the complaints filed in child welfare class action lawsuits (read New York City's for example) and, if you only believe 10% of what is alleged, these departments are out of control. They are a nightmare of horrible administration, indifference, callousness, corruption, patronage, fear and an acceptance that things cannot and will not get better.

It has been estimated that there were 3 million children reported to be abused in 1994, double the number for ten years ago, and over 1000 children die of abuse or neglect each year. Some relate the rise in child abuse reports to drug abuse, to better public information leading to increased reporting or to the increase in teen parents and single parent households. Whatever the causes, the job to be done is massive if children are to be properly protected. But if we are going to get anywhere there needs to be some truth telling at the outset. The first truth is that while some states and localities do an acceptable job of providing child welfare services, there are a large number of state and local child welfare agencies which cannot even carry out their statutory duties. The ACLU and others have proven this time and time again but court orders to improve

services are stonewalled and years and decades later the level of improvement in agency practices is often negligible. This is not about reaching the state of the art -- it is about doing the basics: investigating complaints, assessing risk, bringing actions to court, providing quality services, following up on cases promptly, keeping records, training staff, hiring good people and firing incompetents.

The second truth is that things are most likely to get worse before they get better. The federal government is considering turning child welfare over to the very states and localities that are now failing so miserably. Not that federal oversight has been effective -- the federal government has not required much of states for the hundreds of millions of dollars it gives them and has only rarely used funds to leverage real change. But a block grant, a blank check that implies that the states are doing a good job, is the height of hypocrisy. Twenty one states, as we speak, are under federal court orders for doing an inexcusably shoddy job. The third truth, the hardest to accept, is that fixing deeply broken child welfare systems may cost more -- financially and politically -- than most communities are prepared to spend. The child welfare story, after all, competes for attention with education, health care, housing, economic development, new stadiums and all the other societal needs. And it only gets public attention, every year or two, when a newspaper runs the familiar "Murdered Child And Agency Knew" story.

Ira Cutler has worked for state and county governments and was a executive with the Annie E. Casey Foundation. He is now a partner in the Cornerstone Consulting Group, which he founded with Sharon Edwards, In his own words, Ira's columns include "thoughts and ideas that fall outside the mainstream, that are too funny, too irreverent, too iconoclastic, or just too nasty for polite, serious, and self important company."