Paying the price of panic in Texas foster care

Paying the price of panic in Texas foster care
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/14947116.htm
By RICHARD WEXLER
Special to the Star-Telegram
After sifting millions of Medicaid claims and other pieces of data, state
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn has painted a devastating portrait of
Texas foster care. For all the talk of "reform," the system is worse than
ever.

State officials say Strayhorn is politically motivated. Maybe she is. She
also happens to be right.

And that should come as no surprise. The real tragedy of Strayhorn's
findings is that they were entirely predictable. In fact, our organization
essentially forecast them in the report we released on Texas child welfare
in January 2005.

We argued that Texas was in the midst of a foster-care panic -- a sudden
spike in removals of children from their homes in response to highly
publicized deaths of children "known to the system." We argued that many of
those children were taken from parents who were neither brutally abusive nor
hopelessly addicted. Instead, their poverty had been confused with
"neglect." Worst of all, we said, all those children needlessly removed from
their homes would distract caseworkers from finding children in real danger.

We said Texas needed to pour new money into safe, proven alternatives to
tearing children from their parents. If, instead, it just hired more
caseworkers, the new caseworkers would chase after the new cases, and Texans
would be left merely with a larger version of the same lousy system.

But the Legislature opted to virtually ignore alternatives to foster care in
favor of an approach that can be boiled down to "Take the child and run."
Strayhorn's findings reveal the result: the same lousy system, only bigger.

The number of children taken from their parents in Texas shot up 30 percent
in a single year -- from 13,431 in fiscal 2004 to 17,428 in fiscal 2005.
That probably will turn out to be the worst foster-care panic in any state
in 2005.

This also means that, even when the poverty rates of the two states are
factored in, Texas is taking away children at a rate more than 20 percent
higher than Illinois. But it is Illinois that is, relatively speaking, a
national model.

As that state's foster care population plummeted, independent,
court-appointed monitors found that child safety improved. Rather than learn
from the Illinois experience, Texas opted for the same
take-the-child-and-run approach that has failed all over the country.

And who pushed hardest for more of the same? My fellow liberal, former Judge
Scott McCown, director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities.

McCown is a man of noble purpose and pure motive. But whisper the words
"child abuse" in some liberals' ears, and they'll support infringements on
civil liberties that would make John Ashcroft blush.

McCown has the solutions flat wrong. There is a detailed discussion of
McCown's errors in an appendix to our Texas report, which is available at
www.nccpr.org.

McCown has been campaigning relentlessly to tear more children from their
parents for nearly a decade. The first time he succeeded (in 1999), removals
of children shot up 27 percent, eating up hundreds of millions in new
spending that was supposed to improve the system. Sound familiar?

But in child welfare, nothing succeeds like failure. So when child abuse
fatalities were in the news again in 2005, McCown again told the Legislature
and state officials to jump. And, afraid of being labeled soft of child
abuse, they replied: "How high?" Now another panic is eating up the new
dollars that were supposed to fix the system.

And what is the Department of Family and Protective Services reduced to
doing in response to Strayhorn's revelations about the price of panic?
Debating whether conditions for Texas children are, as Strayhorn says, even
worse than before or merely no better.

DFPS responds to Strayhorn's specific findings about deaths in foster care
by saying that some deaths were not related to abuse or neglect. DFPS may
regret suggesting such a comparison -- because even if you count only the 11
deaths in foster care attributable to abuse or neglect, that's about 10
times the child abuse death rate of the general Texas population.

And that assumes that the state's official figure of 11 is accurate. Whether
to call a death neglect or an accident often is a judgment call, and when
the state is investigating itself, there is a strong incentive to check the
"accident" box.

Fatalities are not, in fact, the best way of measuring safety -- for a
reason for which we all should be grateful. Though each is a tragedy, the
raw number of deaths in foster care is small enough to fluctuate because of
random chance. But there is a mountain of other evidence, much of it cited
in NCCPR's Texas report, that the overall rate of abuse in foster care is
far higher than in the general population, and far higher than generally
realized.

For example, one recent study of foster care alumni from systems better than
the one in Texas found that one-third said they'd been abused by a foster
parent or another adult in a foster home. The same study found that only 20
percent of foster care alumni could be said to be doing well.

But Strayhorn also makes a crucial error. She repeatedly refers to children
as being even worse off in Texas foster care than they were with their birth
parents. In other words, she maintains, children go only from bad to worse.
That reinforces false stereotypes about birth parents. In fact, many
children suffer no maltreatment at all at home -- they suffer only from
poverty. They are not abused until they are forced into foster care.

How long will Texas officials blindly follow a policy that says the primary
solution to family problems is to shovel children into a system that churns
out walking wounded four times out of five? How many more Texas children
will pay the price of panic?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child
Protection Reform.
www.nccpr.org

Honkey Dorie wrote:
Paying the price of panic in Texas foster care
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/14947116.htm
By RICHARD WEXLER
Special to the Star-Telegram
After sifting millions of Medicaid claims and other pieces of data, state
Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn has painted a devastating portrait of
Texas foster care. For all the talk of "reform," the system is worse than
ever.

State officials say Strayhorn is politically motivated. Maybe she is. She
also happens to be right.

And that should come as no surprise. The real tragedy of Strayhorn's
findings is that they were entirely predictable. In fact, our organization
essentially forecast them in the report we released on Texas child welfare
in January 2005.

We argued that Texas was in the midst of a foster-care panic -- a sudden
spike in removals of children from their homes in response to highly
publicized deaths of children "known to the system." We argued that many of
those children were taken from parents who were neither brutally abusive nor
hopelessly addicted. Instead, their poverty had been confused with
"neglect." Worst of all, we said, all those children needlessly removed from
their homes would distract caseworkers from finding children in real danger.

We said Texas needed to pour new money into safe, proven alternatives to
tearing children from their parents. If, instead, it just hired more
caseworkers, the new caseworkers would chase after the new cases, and Texans
would be left merely with a larger version of the same lousy system.

But the Legislature opted to virtually ignore alternatives to foster care in
favor of an approach that can be boiled down to "Take the child and run."
Strayhorn's findings reveal the result: the same lousy system, only bigger.

The number of children taken from their parents in Texas shot up 30 percent
in a single year -- from 13,431 in fiscal 2004 to 17,428 in fiscal 2005.
That probably will turn out to be the worst foster-care panic in any state
in 2005.

This also means that, even when the poverty rates of the two states are
factored in, Texas is taking away children at a rate more than 20 percent
higher than Illinois. But it is Illinois that is, relatively speaking, a
national model.

As that state's foster care population plummeted, independent,
court-appointed monitors found that child safety improved. Rather than learn
from the Illinois experience, Texas opted for the same
take-the-child-and-run approach that has failed all over the country.

And who pushed hardest for more of the same? My fellow liberal, former Judge
Scott McCown, director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities.

McCown is a man of noble purpose and pure motive. But whisper the words
"child abuse" in some liberals' ears, and they'll support infringements on
civil liberties that would make John Ashcroft blush.

McCown has the solutions flat wrong. There is a detailed discussion of
McCown's errors in an appendix to our Texas report, which is available at
www.nccpr.org.

McCown has been campaigning relentlessly to tear more children from their
parents for nearly a decade. The first time he succeeded (in 1999), removals
of children shot up 27 percent, eating up hundreds of millions in new
spending that was supposed to improve the system. Sound familiar?

But in child welfare, nothing succeeds like failure. So when child abuse
fatalities were in the news again in 2005, McCown again told the Legislature
and state officials to jump. And, afraid of being labeled soft of child
abuse, they replied: "How high?" Now another panic is eating up the new
dollars that were supposed to fix the system.

And what is the Department of Family and Protective Services reduced to
doing in response to Strayhorn's revelations about the price of panic?
Debating whether conditions for Texas children are, as Strayhorn says, even
worse than before or merely no better.

DFPS responds to Strayhorn's specific findings about deaths in foster care
by saying that some deaths were not related to abuse or neglect. DFPS may
regret suggesting such a comparison -- because even if you count only the 11
deaths in foster care attributable to abuse or neglect, that's about 10
times the child abuse death rate of the general Texas population.

And that assumes that the state's official figure of 11 is accurate. Whether
to call a death neglect or an accident often is a judgment call, and when
the state is investigating itself, there is a strong incentive to check the
"accident" box.

Fatalities are not, in fact, the best way of measuring safety -- for a
reason for which we all should be grateful. Though each is a tragedy, the
raw number of deaths in foster care is small enough to fluctuate because of
random chance. But there is a mountain of other evidence, much of it cited
in NCCPR's Texas report, that the overall rate of abuse in foster care is
far higher than in the general population, and far higher than generally
realized.

For example, one recent study of foster care alumni from systems better than
the one in Texas found that one-third said they'd been abused by a foster
parent or another adult in a foster home. The same study found that only 20
percent of foster care alumni could be said to be doing well.

But Strayhorn also makes a crucial error. She repeatedly refers to children
as being even worse off in Texas foster care than they were with their birth
parents. In other words, she maintains, children go only from bad to worse.
That reinforces false stereotypes about birth parents. In fact, many
children suffer no maltreatment at all at home -- they suffer only from
poverty. They are not abused until they are forced into foster care.

Nonsense. Wexler's language, as always, is full of limiting qualifiers,
rather than solid data. Notice in the sentence, "In fact, many
children suffer no maltreatment at all at home," the limiter, "many."

How does that actually relate to the number of children that do come
into state foster care? Who are these children that are not abused but
taken into care? Are they another "many?"

How long will Texas officials blindly follow a policy that says the primary
solution to family problems is to shovel children into a system that churns
out walking wounded four times out of five? How many more Texas children
will pay the price of panic?

You have to accept the weak and carefully qualified (by foggy words like
"many") as being a valid premise to presume that the children in the
system were not abused prior to entering at a rate NOT 4 to 5 times the
population. Usually that ARE.

"Many" is a muddy water term.

An interesting and much needed experimental model was tried out in
Illinois, to intervene in drug and poverty effected families. Some title
4E monies were redirected to this project....the famous, "put the money
into prevention services" argument.

The outcome?

http://cfrcwww.social.uiuc.edu/pubs/...nterimeval.pdf
.... "SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Substance abuse is a major problem in child welfare. It is estimated
that the
abuse of alcohol and other drugs not only increases the risk of child
maltreatment, but delays and often obstructs efforts to reunify children and
families. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services
applied for
a Title IV-E waiver in June 1999 and approval was granted by ACF for a
fiveyear
demonstration on September 29, 1999. The purpose of this demonstration
project is to improve permanency outcomes for children of parents with
substance abuse problems. To achieve this purpose, Recovery Coaches assist
parents with obtaining AODA treatment services and negotiating departmental
and judicial requirements associated with drug recovery and permanency
planning. This report serves as an interim update and evaluation of the
progress of the Illinois AODA waiver.

Eligible families for the demonstration include foster care cases opened
on or
after April 28, 2000 in Chicago and suburban Cook County. To qualify for the
project, parents in substance affected families were referred to the
Juvenile
Court Assessment Program (JCAP) at the time of their Temporary Custody
hearing or at any time within 90 days of the hearing. JCAP staff conducted
AODA assessments and referred families for treatment, if indicated. The
parents that were randomly assigned to the control group received
traditional
substance abuse services. This was not a “no treatment” control group. The
parents that were randomly assigned to the demonstration group received
traditional services plus the services of a Recovery Coach. The Recovery
Coach
worked with the parent, child welfare caseworker, and AODA treatment agency
to remove barriers to treatment, engage the parent in treatment, provide
outreach to re-engage the parent if necessary, and provide ongoing
support to
the parent and family through the duration of the child welfare case. It was
hypothesized that Recovery Coaches would positively affect key child welfare
outcomes (e.g. permanency). More specifically, the evaluation focused on the
following four research questions (1) Are parents in the demonstration group
more likely to access and complete AODA treatment? (2) Are children in the
demonstration group more likely to be safely reunified with their
parents? (3)
Do children in the demonstration group spend less time in foster care?
(4) Are
families in the demonstration group less likely to experience subsequent
maltreatment?

Treatment access: the demonstration group is more likely to access substance
abuse treatment (60% control vs. 69% demonstration). Similarly, there is
additional evidence to suggest that these same clients are accessing
substance
services more quickly (median days: 28 control vs. 14 demonstration). We are
currently unable to report on rates of treatment completion.
Reunification: only 6.0% of the children in the control group and 8.4%
of the
children in the demonstration group were living in the home of their
parents.
This difference is not statistically significant. Regarding permanency
goals,
the majority of children in both the demonstration and control group have
“return home” as their permanency goal (69% vs. 75% respectively).
48
Length of time in substitute care placement: children in the demonstration
group experienced fewer days in foster care relative to the children in the
control group (282 for the demonstration group vs. 309 days for the control
group). It should be noted that there were no differences between the
demonstration and control groups in terms of the number of foster care
placements (3.67 days for the demonstration group vs. 3.79 days for the
control
group).

Safety: there were no significant differences between the rates of
subsequent
allegations of maltreatment. The rates of subsequent maltreatment are quite
low (4%) for both the demonstration and control group.

In closing, the demonstration is achieving some of its stated objectives
withregards to access to substance abuse treatment (demonstration group
morelikely to access treatment) and with regards to time to first
treatment episode(demonstration group accesses substance abuse treatment
more quickly).However, we do not see major differences between the
control anddemonstration groups with regards to reunification or safety.
Given thedifficulty and amount of time associated with substance abuse
recovery(especially for parents with extensive history of substance
abuse), thesefindings are not entirely surprising. Many parents in the
project have chronicproblems with alcohol and drugs. The repeated
delivery of substance exposedinfants indicates the seriousness of such
problems. Thus, it is possible thatthese families require additional
time to recover and reunify. Despite thedifficulties and length of time
associated with recovery, we anticipate that thetimely entry into care
and increased participation rates will eventuallytranslate into higher
rates of program completion and reunification. " ...

My challenge is to reconcile the claim that children are better off with
their parents than in foster care, in the state of Illinois given that
parents where the children came from did NOT respond successfully to
intervention.

And, in addition, if the children would have been safe residing at home
instead of in foster care, why could the parents NOT respond to
intervention?

The answer, of course is that Wexler is mistaken. They were NOT
un-abused children.

And this, folks, is the model he held up, the state of Illinois.


http://www.state.il.us/dcfs/child/index.shtml

.... "Approximately 26.4 percent of all reports are "indicated" or
confirmed after investigations are completed. Of the 104,258 child
reports taken in Fiscal Year 2004, 27,508 were indicated as victims of
abuse or neglect. Indicated reports of child abuse or neglect are kept
by the Department for a minimum of five years. Indicated reports of
death or sexual penetration are kept for 50 years, while reports
involving serious physical injury are kept for 20 years. Unfounded
reports are retained for a shorter period of time varying from 30 days
to one year.

The number of children reported to the state's Child Abuse Hotline
nearly doubled between Fiscal Years 1986 and 1995. In Fiscal Year 1986,
70,425 children were reported to the Hotline as abused or neglected.
The highest number recorded was in Fiscal Year 1995, with 139,720
children reported abused or neglected. The number of reports taken since
that time has gradually declined to a low of 97,428 child reports taken
in Fiscal Year 2003, then rose to 104,248 in Fiscal Year 2004 and
111,711 in Fiscal Year 2005." ...

Whatever the policies are about foster placement it is NOT effecting the
actual rate of child abuse in Ill. So the argument is a pile of crap.

AND if you look at:
http://www.state.il.us/dcfs/foster/index.shtml

You will see that the decline in rates of foster placement had, just
like the most of the country, began declining long long before any
"program" to reduce placement had taken place.

In fact, the high water year, (true all over the country) was
1996...with steady declines since.

Big, DEAL.

This is what I mean by cherry picking...and the concealing of OTHER
RELEVANT DATA to create a false impression and carry an argument that
is, sadly, full of holes.

The gradual defunding of child protection (NOT child welfare which
includes prevention) defunds the area where the pain is being felt by
the child. Where the abuses take place.

All it will do is create, for a time, a false impression (just like this
example of Illinois) that something 'wonderful is happening' with the
reduction in foster care placement.

No, nothing wonderful is happening. Except child abuses are being swept
under the carpet.

Even Illinois does it:

"DCFS has taken steps to reduce the number of children who require
substitute care. Through new early intervention services, called Front
End Redesign, families are given help immediately after their needs
become apparent, even before a child abuse or neglect investigation is
completed. These services may help prevent the need for a child to be
placed into substitute care. In accordance with state and federal laws,
an increased emphasis has been placed on early permanency that includes
a child's return home, adoption, or guardianship. At its height in
Fiscal Year 1997, 51,331 Illinois children were living in substitute
care. Because of an increased emphasis on early intervention and
permanency services such as adoption, that number has declined to 17,415
children in February 2006 -- a 62 percent decline compared to June 1998."

Consider the study of how front end services actually worked. They
didn't. I suspect we are seeing a rush to send children home to reabuse.

Reduce the state response to reports of reabuse and viola! You have your
magic. Rabbit from a hat with a false bottom.

The truth that is being hidden?

The claim that these children in state care were not abused before hand
by their parents?

Read:

http://www.childabuse.com/fs14.htm





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child
Protection Reform.
www.nccpr.org

Wexler has been singing this song for years. It's his trademark. And he
does it by being a cherry picking journalist, not a scientific researcher.

For instance there is no mention, when remarking on the better child
safety in Illinois (while trying to link it to fewer children in out of
home - foster - care), of employment rates.

Every responsible researcher in child welfare KNOWS the two are linked.
When joblessness goes up, so does child abuse and neglect. When it goes
down, child abuse follows.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

Illinois was enjoying a remarkable reduction in unemployment.

This is the kind of 'reporting' I consider irresponsible.






--
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what
to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb
contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin (or someone else)