[Death Watch] A COLLATERAL DAMAGE ASSESSMENT FROM ARIZONA

A COLLATERAL DAMAGE ASSESSMENT FROM ARIZONA



Officially, the document is known as the “Arizona Child
Fatality Review Program: Thirteenth Annual Report.” A better title
might be “Assessment of the Collateral Damage from the Arizona
Foster-Care Panic.” The report found that both total child maltreatment
fatalities and child maltreatment deaths among children “known to the
system” hit an all-time record in 2005.



And that may explain why the state’s largest newspaper, The
Arizona Republic, has paid almost no attention to the findings.



That’s quite a change from the fall of 2002, when the Republic was
writing story after story about the death of a child “known to the
system.” The Republic, the state’s leading child advocacy organization
and, most important Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Janet
Napolitano, all were on a tear, attacking efforts to keep families
together. They would become the Iron Triangle of child welfare policy
in Arizona.



Napolitano won. Just days after taking office, in January, 2003, she
told a meeting of child protective services workers to “err on the side
of the child, and we’ll sort it out later.” And of course, she named an
OBRC (Obligatory Blue Ribbon Commission).



It went on for about five months. Then all three corners
of the triangle tempered the rhetoric and tried to change course. In
part the changes were because of NCCPR; in part it was because the
governor’s advisor for Human Services at the time, Noreen Sharp, who
chaired the OBRC, started doing the research the Governor should have
been doing while she was still running for office. Sharp was the first
to figure out that her boss’ approach was backfiring.



Only Sharp knows what she whispered in the governor’s ear,
but by May, 2003, there was a dramatic change in the rhetoric. The
Governor hired a noted reformer, Dave Berns, to run the state human
services agency, which oversees child welfare. (He left this year to
join a foundation.)



But it was too little. All three corners of the Iron
Triangle wanted to change course without admitting they’d been wrong in
the first place, so they didn’t send a clear enough message. (Not
surprisingly, the corner of the triangle most insistent that it could
not possibly have been mistaken was the newspaper.) And though the
change began only five months after Napolitano took office, it also was
too late. Because it is far, far easier to start a foster care panic
than to stop one. So between 2002 and 2004, the number of Arizona
children taken from their parents over the course of a year soared by 40
percent. And in 2005, it went up another seven percent.



Things have finally started to get a little better. Most
notably, the state is cramming fewer infants and very young children
into parking place “shelters,” which are among the worst forms of
placement. (The shelter operators were also among those egging on the
panic).



But after about a year, the Republic declared victory and
got out. The children’s beat, which had featured aggressive coverage of
child welfare for at least six years, was “gentrified” – becoming a beat
devoted largely to “service journalism” about the cares and concerns of
middle-class families.



Meanwhile, one metro columnist has ignored everything that
has gone wrong; she still keeps trying to goad the state into taking
away even more children.



So it’s been left to the alternative weekly New Times to
tally the price of panic, first in an excellent cover story on October
26, and now in the only in-depth examination of the latest report from
the Fatality Review Program.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2006-...ath-watch/full

The story may be the best ever written about a fatality report because
it takes enormous care to explain how such deaths are measured, the
limits of using them as a measure of system performance and the
impossibility of comparing this measure across jurisdictions. But most
important is the detailed account of what the committee found.
According to New Times:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2006-...-the-children/


“…though more kids than ever are in foster care, deaths from child abuse
and neglect have continued to rise. The 2005 statistic isn't an anomaly,
it's part of a steady uptick that began in 2002. More than two times the
number of kids have died from abuse on Napolitano's watch than in a
similar period under Governor Jane Hull.

Part of that … is that the terms have changed. [Dr. Mary] Rimsza, the
task force chair, says that her team clarified its definition of
"maltreatment" deaths in 2002 to include more cases, and numbers jumped
accordingly. But it's also clear that since then, abuse-related deaths
have continued to rise.

Even more troubling for the agency, more kids are being killed while
their CPS files are still open.

State Senator John Huppenthal, a Chandler Republican, says that the
funding increases were supposed to prevent just that. So was putting
more kids in foster care.

"Their solution was, 'Pull out more kids, and the kids will be safer,'"
he says. "But we've found there's no correlation between removal rates
and safety. None at all. You would hope that, on some level, they would
realize that this has failed." [Emphasis added].



“Err on the side of the child and we’ll sort it out later,”
Gov. Napolitano told workers in 2003. Apparently, they still haven’t
reached the sorting-it-out stage.


BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEIR
"FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...

What do you do when the alleged ""cure"" is worse than the disease?
Do you keep using the ""cure""?

On Mar 27, 12:25 am, fx wrote:
A COLLATERAL DAMAGE ASSESSMENT FROM ARIZONA

Officially, the document is known as the "Arizona Child
Fatality Review Program: Thirteenth Annual Report." A better title
might be "Assessment of the Collateral Damage from the Arizona
Foster-Care Panic." The report found that both total child maltreatment
fatalities and child maltreatment deaths among children "known to the
system" hit an all-time record in 2005.

And that may explain why the state's largest newspaper, The
Arizona Republic, has paid almost no attention to the findings.

That's quite a change from the fall of 2002, when the Republic was
writing story after story about the death of a child "known to the
system." The Republic, the state's leading child advocacy organization
and, most important Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Janet
Napolitano, all were on a tear, attacking efforts to keep families
together. They would become the Iron Triangle of child welfare policy
in Arizona.

Napolitano won. Just days after taking office, in January, 2003, she
told a meeting of child protective services workers to "err on the side
of the child, and we'll sort it out later." And of course, she named an
OBRC (Obligatory Blue Ribbon Commission).

It went on for about five months. Then all three corners
of the triangle tempered the rhetoric and tried to change course. In
part the changes were because of NCCPR; in part it was because the
governor's advisor for Human Services at the time, Noreen Sharp, who
chaired the OBRC, started doing the research the Governor should have
been doing while she was still running for office. Sharp was the first
to figure out that her boss' approach was backfiring.

Only Sharp knows what she whispered in the governor's ear,
but by May, 2003, there was a dramatic change in the rhetoric. The
Governor hired a noted reformer, Dave Berns, to run the state human
services agency, which oversees child welfare. (He left this year to
join a foundation.)

But it was too little. All three corners of the Iron
Triangle wanted to change course without admitting they'd been wrong in
the first place, so they didn't send a clear enough message. (Not
surprisingly, the corner of the triangle most insistent that it could
not possibly have been mistaken was the newspaper.) And though the
change began only five months after Napolitano took office, it also was
too late. Because it is far, far easier to start a foster care panic
than to stop one. So between 2002 and 2004, the number of Arizona
children taken from their parents over the course of a year soared by 40
percent. And in 2005, it went up another seven percent.

Things have finally started to get a little better. Most
notably, the state is cramming fewer infants and very young children
into parking place "shelters," which are among the worst forms of
placement. (The shelter operators were also among those egging on the
panic).

But after about a year, the Republic declared victory and
got out. The children's beat, which had featured aggressive coverage of
child welfare for at least six years, was "gentrified" - becoming a beat
devoted largely to "service journalism" about the cares and concerns of
middle-class families.

Meanwhile, one metro columnist has ignored everything that
has gone wrong; she still keeps trying to goad the state into taking
away even more children.

So it's been left to the alternative weekly New Times to
tally the price of panic, first in an excellent cover story on October
26, and now in the only in-depth examination of the latest report from
the Fatality Review Program.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2006-...ath-watch/full

The story may be the best ever written about a fatality report because
it takes enormous care to explain how such deaths are measured, the
limits of using them as a measure of system performance and the
impossibility of comparing this measure across jurisdictions. But most
important is the detailed account of what the committee found.
According to New Times:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2006-...-the-children/

"...though more kids than ever are in foster care, deaths from child abuse
and neglect have continued to rise. The 2005 statistic isn't an anomaly,
it's part of a steady uptick that began in 2002. More than two times the
number of kids have died from abuse on Napolitano's watch than in a
similar period under Governor Jane Hull.

Part of that ... is that the terms have changed. [Dr. Mary] Rimsza, the
task force chair, says that her team clarified its definition of
"maltreatment" deaths in 2002 to include more cases, and numbers jumped
accordingly. But it's also clear that since then, abuse-related deaths
have continued to rise.

Even more troubling for the agency, more kids are being killed while
their CPS files are still open.

State Senator John Huppenthal, a Chandler Republican, says that the
funding increases were supposed to prevent just that. So was putting
more kids in foster care.

"Their solution was, 'Pull out more kids, and the kids will be safer,'"
he says. "But we've found there's no correlation between removal rates
and safety. None at all. You would hope that, on some level, they would
realize that this has failed." [Emphasis added].

"Err on the side of the child and we'll sort it out later,"
Gov. Napolitano told workers in 2003. Apparently, they still haven't
reached the sorting-it-out stage.

BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEIR
"FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...