Is it abuse or bad parenting?

Is it abuse or bad parenting?

BY LIZ STEVENS

Knight Ridder Newspapers

FORT WORTH, Texas - (KRT) - The caller spoke calmly, but her request
was urgent.

A 5-month-old baby girl was in danger.

On the other end of the phone line, an intake specialist for Child
Protective Services asked for details: Had CPS been involved before?
In what way was the infant at risk?

The caller explained: The baby's 19-year-old mother, abandoned by the
child's father, had talked about smothering the infant. The mother
would leave the child with the baby's godmother even on days when she
had nothing to do. And today, the caller said, the mother was
especially on edge.

"If (the baby) came home right now," the caller relayed, "it would be
a problem."

The phone call lasted 15 minutes; a report was made, a CPS
investigator immediately dispatched. In the end, the child was removed
from the home.

This wasn't a typical call to the Texas Child Protective Services'
statewide intake office in Austin: The person making it was the baby's
own mother - reporting herself. The vast majority of calls to the CPS
hot line come from people who can only guess at whether a child is
being abused or neglected, or is about to be.

So how do you know when to make the call? After all, parenting is a
highly subjective topic. Some mothers and fathers spank, some leave
their children alone in the house after school, some don't pay much
attention to their kid's dirty face and fingernails.

One person's definition of effective child-rearing may be another
person's definition of bad parenting and still another person's
definition of abuse.

"And there's also the worry that you don't really want to get into
anybody's else's business," acknowledges LouAnn Pressler, a prevention
educator at the Parenting Center in Fort Worth.

But Pressler, like other children's advocates, views the issue of when
to call CPS as black and white.

"The law is very clear," she says. "If you see it, hear it, suspect it
- report it."

In Texas, state law defines abuse and neglect in the Texas Family
Code. And CPS follows the letter of that law when determining whether
to investigate an alleged case of either. Certain situations meet
definitions in the code and certain ones don't, says CPS spokeswoman
Marleigh Meisner.

In and of itself, spanking does not meet the code. Head lice does not
meet code. And a family whose electricity has been turned off is not
necessarily abusing its children, Meisner says.

"Again, all of these are in and of themselves," she adds. "It's very
important to remember that we look at risk, and if you have 10 of
these (risk factors) . . . then certainly we look at the whole
picture."

In 2003, CPS received 186,160 reports of alleged abuse or neglect of
children. Twenty percent of those calls came from school-district
employees, 15 percent came from medical professionals, 13 percent came
from law enforcement personnel and 12 percent from relatives. The rest
were a combination of calls from friends, parents, the victims
themselves, child-care facilities and anonymous sources.

Most of those calls came through the statewide hot line in Austin,
where up to 100 intake specialists at a time staff the phone lines,
says Pam Chick, statewide intake program administrator. It's these
folks who decide whether a report meets the criteria for abuse and
neglect and assign the case a priority depending on its urgency.

The intake specialists receive three weeks of classroom training. They
learn state law, CPS policies and how to interview callers to get the
information that they need. They spend several days listening in on
calls made to the hot line. And they spend a period of time taking
calls with a supervisor's help.

The calls they handle can be as easy as providing a referral phone
number or as difficult as "a long, drawn-out, multi-family,
multi-dynamic" situation, says four-year intake specialist Eric
Semlear.

Most of the everyday people who use the hot line (i.e.
nonprofessionals) aren't sure what CPS needs to know, he notes. The
caller might say, "I saw this kid, and this kid was dirty, and the
house was filthy," Semlear says. "But we can't go by adjectives . . .
so we try to (get them to) be as specific as we can about what's going
on. 'When you say dirty, can you describe that, tell me what it looked
like?' "

"There can be some emotionally heavy lifting in what we do," he adds.

Texas law states that "any person" who thinks a child might be abused
or neglected is required to report it. But individuals who work
directly with children - school-district employees, mental-health and
medical providers, and day-care workers - "can be reprimanded up to
termination," says Meisner, for failing to do so within 48 hours of
first having suspicions.

"It's a hard call, and I want to tell you that we have many times done
it," says Nancy Cotten, director at All Saints Episcopal Hospital Fort
Worth Child Care and Learning Center. In a day-care situation, Cotten
says, teachers might see children act out their experiences in play
and/or talk about things that might merit calling CPS. "It can be
violent and it can be of a sexual nature," she notes.

But Cotten says she never places a call to CPS "lightly."

"It is so hard because what happens is that it just turns the parents'
world upside down," she says.

At the 38 day-care centers run by Child Care Associates in Fort Worth,
which provides subsidized day care for at-risk families, teachers
begin the day with a "morning health check," says Bob Duke, vice
president for direct-care services.

It's "no more than a real quick, warm hug of the child, feel body
temperature, rub their hand across the (child's) back and see whether
they flinch," Duke explains.

All employees of the Fort Worth school district receive a "safety
management procedures flip chart" from Director of Health Services
Jackie Thompson at the start of the school year. The chart includes a
section with Texas Family Code definitions of abuse and neglect, and
stresses to employees their responsibility to call CPS, whether they
are a custodian or a principal.

You can risk making a family uncomfortable and embarrassed, "or a
child can be abused and end up sustaining bodily injury," Thompson
says.

"If in doubt, call it in," adds Meisner, a former CPS caseworker. "If
you truly believe that a child is being abused or neglected, if you
don't necessarily know what meets the criteria for abuse or neglect,
put that burden on CPS."
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