PHOENIX - Arizona’s child welfare system functions in a state of “perennial panic,�

NATIONAL COALITION FOR
CHILD PROTECTION REFORM
53 Skyhill Road (Suite 202) / Alexandria, Virginia, 22314
Phone and Fax: (703) 212-2006 / e-mail: / www.nccpr.org
For release: For further information, Contact:
Monday, August 20, 2007, 12:00 noon Richard Wexler, Executive Director,
Office: 703-212-2006, Cell: 703-380-4252


“PERENNIAL PANIC� PLAGUES ARIZONA CHILD WELFARE,
NATIONAL NON-PROFIT CHILD ADVOCACY ORGANIZATION SAYS

The report discussed in this press release is available online by going
directly to this URL:
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/arizona08202007.pdf


A summary of key findings and
recommendations can be found at the end of this press release.
PHOENIX - Arizona’s child welfare system functions in a state of
“perennial panic,�


endangering children even as it needlessly destroys thousands of
families, a national nonprofit
child advocacy organization and a former Arizona legislator said Monday.
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform released a report
Monday with 14
recommendations, including a “grand compromise� on funding to break what
NCCPR
Executive Director Richard Wexler called “the great Arizona stalemate�
that has stalled all
progress in child welfare.

Wexler and former State Rep. Laura Knaperek (R-Tempe) called for a “fully
transparent� child welfare system, with all court hearings and most
records open to press and
public. And they supported Rep. Jonathan Paton’s call for holding
upcoming hearings on
CPS in public.


“Days after taking office for her first term, Gov. Napolitano told Child
Protective
Services caseworkers to ‘err on the side of protecting the child, and
we’ll sort it out later.’
More than four-and-a-half years later, they still haven’t sorted it
out,� Wexler said. “By the
time the governor figured out that you can’t err on the side of the
child without erring on the
side of the family, it was too late.�


PERENNIAL PANIC IN ARIZONA CHILD WELFARE/2

“There is nothing more important than protecting children. However, the
philosophy
of ‘when in doubt, remove the child’ is a recipe for disaster. It puts a
target on children for
physical, emotional, and educational risk,� said Rep. Knaperek, who has
been fighting to
reform Arizona child welfare for over 17 years. “The real victims are
the kids; measured by
the high rates of everything from abuse in foster care itself to teen
pregnancy, arrest and youth
unemployment.�


Wexler noted that his group, often called “the family values left� and
Rep. Knaperek
“start from very different places ideologically – but we’ve reached very
similar conclusions.
Protecting children is an issue that crosses ideological lines in
unusual ways; that makes
compromise possible. The dreadful state of Arizona child welfare makes
compromise
essential.�

Wexler said that problems in Arizona child welfare go back decades, to
long before
Gov. Napolitano issued her marching orders. “But though she acted with
the best of
intentions, her initial approach to child welfare made everything worse.�


Within months, the number of children torn from their homes skyrocketed.
This
“foster-care panic� backfired, Wexler said. “But it wasn’t just the
children torn from
everyone they knew and loved who suffered. Instead of making children
safer, the panic
overloaded workers to the point that they could investigate no case
carefully enough.


Workers overlooked increasing numbers of children in real danger, even
as they tore other
children from homes that were safe or could have been made safe with the
right kinds of
help.�


Wexler noted that in 2005, Carol Kamin, former President of the
Children’s Action
Alliance, a group he called “cheerleader-in-chief� for the foster-care
panic, justified it by
writing that “Our state has documented too many stories of children
killed — or nearly killed
— by abuse after CPS has left the children at home. In 2003… Arizona
lawmakers …


PERENNIAL PANIC IN ARIZONA CHILD WELFARE/3

proudly reformed state policies and funding to prevent such tragedies
from happening again.�

“But even as Ms. Kamin was writing those words, more children were
dying,� Wexler
said. “Indeed, in 2005, child abuse fatalities set an all-time record.�
Such deaths rose from
36 before the panic to 50 in 2005, the most recent year for which data
are available.

Deaths of
children previously known to CPS also set a record in 2005.
In fact, Wexler said, “I believe all of those who fomented the Arizona
Foster Care
Panic four years ago know it was a terrible mistake. As early as May,
2003, the rhetoric from
the Governor’s office improved dramatically. But it was already too
late. It is far, far easier
to start a foster-care panic than it is to stop one.


“The results have been devastating for the state’s children.�
Wexler noted that the most comprehensive study ever done of outcomes for
maltreated
children, tracking more than 15,000 cases, found that rates of teenage
pregnancy, arrest and
youth unemployment were significantly higher for children placed in
foster care than for
comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. He noted that a
second study,
released last year, reached similar conclusions.


“Fifteen thousand children are trying to tell us that the
take-the-child-and-run
approach, which has dominated Arizona child welfare for more than four
years, is wrong,�


Wexler said. “Don’t we owe it to them to listen?
“Sadly, foster-care panics are not unusual,� Wexler said. “But in most
other states,
after a couple of years, people calm down look around and say the
equivalent of ‘Oh, my
God, what have we done?’ But in Arizona, whenever the panic might calm
down, something
happens to start it up again.�


Wexler said the locus of panic has shifted to Pima County, in the wake
of three deaths
of children “known to the system.� But even before those children died,
Pima County was
taking away children at a rate 50 percent above the state average and
more than double and


PERENNIAL PANIC IN ARIZONA CHILD WELFARE/4

triple the rate of systems around the country widely viewed as,
relatively speaking, models.
“The take-the-child-and-run mentality that dominates child welfare in
Arizona in
general and Pima County in particular did nothing to save the lives of
Brandon Williams or
Tyler and Ariana Payne.


Indeed, it made those tragedies more likely,� Wexler said.
This is Wexler’s third trip to Arizona since 2003. In April of that
year, at Rep.
Knaperek’s invitation, Wexler met with Arizona journalists, legislators,
and staff from the
Department of Economic Security. “At that time, we predicted that if the
Governor and her
allies did not reverse course immediately, the foster-care panic would
engulf the system in
chaos and more children would die. Unfortunately, we were right on both
counts.

Sadly,
nothing NCCPR says in this report is hindsight.
“This was less a matter of predicting than reporting,� Wexler said.
“We’ve seen
foster-care panics do exactly the same to systems all over the country.
Illinois endured the
same kind of foster-care panic as Arizona.

But in Illinois, they learned from their mistakes.

They embraced safe, proven programs to keep families together. Today,
children in Illinois
are taken from their parents at less than half the rate of Arizona, and
less than one-third the
rate of Pima County.

Yet independent, court-appointed monitors have found that, as foster
care has plummeted, child safety has improved.
“Terrible tragedies still happen in Illinois, as they do in every
system, but now they
happen less often.

What makes a system a model is not that it has accomplished everything it
needs to, but that it does better than most.
“But Arizona has resisted learning from its mistakes – and, more than
almost anyplace
else in the country, Arizona has been unwilling to learn from the
successes of other states.


The states, it is said, are laboratories of democracy. But that only
works when people are
willing to read the lab results.�
Wexler said foster care panics backfire “because of a fundamental
misunderstanding


PERENNIAL PANIC IN ARIZONA CHILD WELFARE/5

of who gets caught in the CPS net.
“Contrary to the common stereotype, most parents who lose their children
to foster
care are neither brutally abusive nor hopelessly addicted. Far more
common are cases in
which a family’s poverty has been confused with child “neglect.�

Other cases fall on a broad
continuum between the extremes, the parents neither all victim nor all
villain. What these
cases have in common is the fact that there are a wide variety of proven
programs that can
keep these children in their own homes, and do it with a far better
track record for safety than
foster care.�


Where substance abuse is the issue, Wexler said Arizona should learn from a
landmark study which found that even infants born with cocaine in their
systems did better
when left with birth mothers able to care for them than they did when
placed in foster care.


“For the foster children, being taken from their mothers was more toxic
than the cocaine.
And addiction to methamphetamine is just as treatable as any other
addiction,� Wexler said.


“If we really believe all the rhetoric about putting the needs of
children first we must
put those needs ahead of everything – including how we may feel about
their parents. That
means drug treatment for the parents almost always is a better option
than foster care for the
children.


“Unfortunately,� Wexler said, “when the Governor ordered caseworkers to
“err on the
side of the child� she used what is, for children, the most dangerous
phrase in the child
welfare lexicon.
“When a child is needlessly thrown into foster care, he loses not only
mom and dad
but often brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers,
friends and classmates. He is
cut loose from everyone loving and familiar. For a young enough child
it’s an experience
akin to a kidnapping.


Other children feel they must have done something terribly wrong and
now they are being punished. The emotional trauma can last a lifetime.
One recent study of


PERENNIAL PANIC IN ARIZONA CHILD WELFARE/6

foster care ‘alumni’ found they had twice the rate of post-traumatic
stress disorder of Gulf
War veterans and only 20 percent could be said to be doing well.
“How can throwing children into a system which churns out walking
wounded four
times out of five be ‘erring on the side of the child?’


“All that harm can occur even when the foster home is a good one. The
majority are.

But the rate of abuse in foster care is far higher than generally
realized and far higher than in
the general population.

That same alumni study found that one-third of foster children said
they’d been abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home.
(The study didn’t
even ask about one of the most common forms of abuse in foster care,
foster children abusing
each other). Switching to orphanages won’t help -- the record of
institutions is even worse.


Wexler noted that in the years since the panic began, Patrick Traufler,
Emily Mays
and Dwight Hill all have died in Arizona foster care under suspicious
circumstances.


“Our report includes 14 recommendations to help the state of Arizona
reverse course,
so no more children pay the price of panic.�



PERENNIAL PANIC
Why Child Welfare in Arizona Never Gets Better

KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Findings:
The Arizona child welfare system functions in a state of perennial
panic. Four days after taking
office in 2003, Gov. Napolitano ordered Child Protective Services
workers to “err on the side of
protecting the child, and we’ll sort it out later.� Four-and-a-half
years later, they still haven’t sorted it
out.


The governor accelerated a “foster care panic.� Children are suffering
enormously as a result.


With every caseworker terrified of having the next death of a child
“known to the system� on her
caseload, the number of children torn from their homes skyrocketed.


From October 2002 to October
2004, the number of children taken away soared by 40 percent, the
largest two-year increase in the
country at that time.


Arizona’s children are less safe now than they were when the panic
began. Though it was all done
in the name of making children safer, the panic actually endangers children.


That’s because with
workers so overwhelmed with false reports, trivial cases, and children
who never needed to be taken
away, they have even less time to find children in real danger.
Cheerleaders for the panic promised that the surge in removals would
reduce child abuse deaths.


Instead, both total child abuse fatalities and deaths of children
known-to-the-system increased. Again,


PERENNIAL PANIC IN ARIZONA CHILD WELFARE/7


that’s not surprising. The same thing happened in other systems plagued
by panic – again, because
with workers so overloaded, they have less time to find children in real
danger.


Foster-care panics have swept through other states, but eventually
people calmed down and
realized the harm they’d done.


In Arizona, the panic has not stopped; removals continue at the same
obscene level today. Arizona takes children at a rate more than double
or triple that of systems
nationally regarded as, relatively speaking, models.


In these systems, independent, court-appointed
monitors have found that reforms emphasizing family preservation have
improved child safety.


Foster-care panics backfire because the children in the system are
not who most people think they
are.

Far more common than children beaten raped and tortured are children
whose parents’ poverty
has been confused with neglect. Other cases fall between the extremes,
the parents neither all victim
nor all villain.


The largest study ever done of outcomes for maltreated children found
that, on average, children left
in their own homes did better than comparably maltreated children placed
in foster care. Other studies
have found similar results. That doesn’t mean no child ever should be
taken away.

It does mean that
foster care is an extremely toxic intervention that should be used
sparingly and in small doses.

But for more than four years, Arizona has been prescribing mega-doses
of foster care.

In another study, even infants born with cocaine in their systems
were found to do better left with
birth parents able to care for them than when placed in foster care.

The separation from the mothers
proved more toxic than the cocaine.

That means, for the children’s sake, drug treatment for the
parents almost always is a better option than foster care for the children.

And addiction to
methamphetamine is just as treatable as any other addiction.
The child welfare system is plagued with incentives, many of them
financial, that encourage the
misuse and overuse of foster care and discourage alternatives.
The Governor’s demand that CPS investigate every case was a huge
mistake. Just as the panic
might have eased, workers were deluged with 5,000 more cases per year
that used to be diverted to
private agencies offering voluntary help.

Now 40 percent of cases investigated by CPS are minor.


In every other state to use such a “differential response� system it
has worked without compromising
safety.

Arizona’s version was flawed from the start, but it should have been
fixed, not abolished.

(NCCPR did not oppose the “investigate every case� mandate in 2003,
however, because the reformer
running the Department of Economic Security at the time, Dave Berns,
said he wanted it. We felt his
track record entitled him to the organizational structure he preferred.
We were both wrong.)


Reform in Arizona has been stymied by a left-right stalemate.
Conservatives think DES can be
stopped from needlessly taking away more children by starving the agency.

It can’t. Taking away
children always will be the last thing to be curbed. But when liberals
wring more money out of the
Legislature, they throw almost all of it away on hiring more workers to
take away more children. So
the state winds up with the same lousy system only bigger. Arizona needs
to spend more, but spend smarter.


Recommendations:


Enact a Grand Compromise on child welfare funding in Arizona. In
2008, the legislature should add
double the amount of money the governor asked for in 2007, meaning $54
million in new child welfare
spending.

But every penny should go into safe, proven alternatives to substitute
care. No new money should go to taking away children and holding them in
foster care.

Restore differential response and do it right this time.
Make concrete help available to ameliorate the worst aspects of
poverty. Things like housing
assistance, day care and other help with basic needs.


Create a statewide Intensive Family Preservation Services program for
every family that needs it.

The program should rigorously follow the model established by the first
such program, Homebuilders,


PERENNIAL PANIC IN ARIZONA CHILD WELFARE/8

in Washington State. Such programs have a far better track record for
safety than foster care.

Expand the Family to Family program. This program is an initiative of
the Annie E. Casey
Foundation, which also helps to fund NCCPR. The program has a proven
record for keeping families
together and placing more children who must be taken away with extended
families and in their own
communities – while improving child safety.

Make drug treatment available, on demand, to any parent who wants it.
In particular, parents who
need it should have access to inpatient programs where their children
can live with them.
Accelerate the reduction in use of shelters, group homes and other
institutions.

Arizona has become
exceptionally reliant on the worst form of “care� for children,
institutionalization.

No matter how pretty
the grounds are or how much the staff cares, it’s still
institutionalization and it still does enormous
harm to children. In particular, Arizona needs to stop using parking
place “shelters� as first stops for
young children.


Change financial incentives that encourage prolonged foster care and
discourage finding safe,
permanent homes for children.


Make the system fully transparent. All court hearings in child
maltreatment cases and almost all
documents should be subject to a “rebuttable presumption� of openness.
Over the past 25 years more
than a dozen states have opened court hearings in child welfare cases;
not one has closed them
again. That’s because all the fears of opponents proved groundless.

As one judge put it: “Sunshine is
good for children.� Upcoming legislative hearings also should be public.
The child abuse hotline should not accept anonymous calls. The
hotline still should allow people to
report maltreatment without revealing their names to the accused, except
under very limited
circumstances.

But the hotline should insist on a verifiable name and address.
Anonymous calls are
the least reliable, and the most likely to divert workers from finding
children in real danger.


Raise the standard of proof at all child welfare hearings to “clear
and convincing.� It should take
more evidence to consign a child to foster care than it does to
determine which insurance company
pays for a fender-bender.


Create an institutional provider of defense counsel for families with
support staff to do their own
investigations and recommend alternatives to CPS case plans.
Expand the scope of upcoming hearings. Legislative hearings have been
called to examine the
deaths of Brandon Williams and Tyler and Ariana Payne. Those cases
deserve full public scrutiny.


But so do the deaths in foster care of Emily Mays, Dwight Hill and
Patrick Traufler. The extent to
which lawmakers and the public demand answers should not depend on where
a child happened to
die.


In all places where it appears, the phrase “best interests of the
child� should be replaced with the
phrase “least detrimental alternative.�



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