The Broken Foster System of L.A.

How badly broken is the foster system in Los Angeles?

So badly that a County Department of Children and Family Services social worker ordered to take an ailing infant to see a doctor last month instead clocked out, saying she'd already put in an 11-hour shift without a break. The baby died.

So badly that when DCFS actually tried to do the right thing by a kid it bollixed it up so badly that a court stepped in -- and made matters worse. That's what happened last week when a California Court of Appeal panel ruled that DCFS failed to provide adequate reunification services in the case of a daughter who'd been taken from a mother who tested positive for cocaine when her child was born (as did the baby) and ordered it to try again.

L.A. County has roughly 50,000 kids in its system, either in direct foster care or referred to the system with substantiated allegations of abuse or neglect (there are by some counts 500,000 kids in foster care nationwide), and the mantra at DCFS for the last few years has been reunification above all else.

It's a policy not uncommon in protective services circles around the country and under certain circumstances it makes a lot of sense. Sometimes bad things happen to good people and strong families make for a strong society. So sure, do what you can to keep them together.

But sometimes building a strong society means putting a kid in the kind of safe, nurturing environment in which he/she can thrive. As in all things, it's the details -- not the rules -- that count.

In L.A., where outrage at DCFS is a regular occurrence, the reunification issue boiled over in 2005 when a 2-year-old girl was taken from a safe, loving foster home on a couple-hours notice and moved to her great aunt and uncle. She was dead of blunt force trauma not long after.

The latest death on DCFS's watch, of a seven-week-old who had spent her whole life in a Skid Row mission, came in early August. The L.A. Times reported last week that a DCFS social worker ordered to take an ailing infant to a 24-hour clinic for assessment said "she was 'unable to go back' to the mission because she had already worked '11 hours without a break' and thought she could take the child the next day."

The baby died before being taken to the clinic of what the coroner ruled was homicide by starvation, dehydration and neglect. There's plenty of blame to go around on this one -- the mom (who's now in the wind), the staff at the mission, and yes, DCFS. Sure, caseloads are overwhelming. The L.A. County Civil Grand Jury reviewed DCFS's handling of abuse cases and reported earlier this year that the agency handled nearly 157,000 referrals in 2006, about the same as in 2005, when about 90 percent required an in-person visit.

(The Grand Jury report said that in 2006, 121 children under DCFS supervision died, among them 53 homicides. The report said that nationwide an estimated 1,440 child under protective services care died in 2004, the most recent data available.)

Perhaps the heavy caseload explains last week's loss in the appellate court, in which the judge ruled that "DCFS knew very early on that (the mother) had serious mental health issues. Yet, despite the juvenile court's order... to provide (her) with referrals for a psychiatric evaluation, DCFS did not comply with this directive for more than five months...

"As we will be ordering reinstitution of the reunification services," the ruling went on, "DCFS should do so promptly so as to ensure that (she) has a chance to reunify with her daughter."

I, for one, have my fingers crossed for the little girl born with cocaine in her system.

Comments

[rwexler648]

And finally ...

The reason Los Angeles County keeps childen safer while taking proportionately fewer than other California counties (a pattern seen all across the country)touches on another point Diamond raises: Child welfare systems are overwhelmed. But a lot of what is overwhelming them is children who did not need to be taken away in the first place. They are taken in part because the due process protections taken for granted in every other field of justice don’t apply in child welfare cases; and sadly, it is largely the left that has made sure it stays that way. All those children needlessly taken overwhelm the system, leaving workers little time to find children in real danger.

The real mantra of the child welfare system, for more than 150 years, can be boiled down to “take the child and run.” As a result, thousands of children are emotionally crippled for life by needless foster care placement, many others suffer abuse in foster care itself, where the rate of such abuse is far higher than generally realized. And, again, all that needless removal steals workers’ time from finding children in real danger.

The right certainly bears plenty of responsibility for a lot of this, but unfortunately, much of the left has been complicit.

Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
(The Family Values Left)
www.nccpr.org
And see the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog at www.nccpr.blogspot.com

[rwexler648]

Continuing my response to Mr. Diamond (part two of three):

More generally, Diamond repeats the myth of the Vast Family Preservation Conspiracy, the claim that, as Diamond puts it “the mantra at DCFS for the last few years has been reunification above all else.” This myth is rebutted in detail in our brief review of recent child welfare history, available on our website here: http://www.nccpr.org/index_files/page0006.html

But for starters consider: Actual child maltreatment peaked in this country in 1993. Yet in almost every year since 1985, the number of children taken from their parents has increased over the year before, reaching a record 309,000 in 2005. A system hellbent on reunifying families wouldn’t be tearing anywhere near so many apart in the first place.

Indeed, the very case Diamond cites illustrates how things usually work: The child is taken away, then filed away and forgotten with little or no help to the family. If DCFS’ mantra really was “reunification above all else” why did a court ever have to order the agency to reunify this mother and child?

That said, though the county still has a system in need of enormous improvement, Los Angeles County has, in fact, been taking away fewer children – and it’s been paying off in improved child safety outcomes. One need only compare outcomes for child safety in Los Angeles to counties that take proportionately far more children to see that Los Angeles actually does a better job of keeping children safe. For details, please see the NCCPR California Rate of Removal Index on our website here: http://www.nccpr.org/reports/californiaror.pdf .

A final post to finish this thought, will follow. (Assuming, of course, it's approved).

Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
(The Family Values Left)
www.nccpr.org
And see the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog at www.nccpr.blogspot.com

[rwexler648]

Part one of three:
Mr. Diamond’s comment is a sad illustration of how often it turns out that all you have to do is whisper “child abuse” in the ear of one of my fellow liberals and he will embrace infringements on civil liberties that would make John Ashcroft blush.

I’m sure Diamond’s concern for the welfare of vulnerable children is sincere, but he repeats common myths about child welfare that often destroy children in order to save them.

For example: University of Florida Medical Center researchers studied two groups of infants born with cocaine in their systems, like the child whose case is discussed in this post. One group was placed in foster care, the other with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, the children placed with their birth mothers did better. For the foster children, being taken from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.

It is extremely difficult to take a swing at “bad mothers” without the blow landing on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric about putting the needs of children first, then we need to put those needs ahead of everything – including how we may feel about their parents. That doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with addicts – it does mean that drug treatment for the parent is almost always a better first choice than foster care for the child. Yet Diamond objects to the very fact that a court ordered Los Angeles County to do what almost certainly will be best for this child – provide help for the mother.

As I have reached the word limit for a single response, I’ll try to continue in another post.

Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
(The Family Values Left)
www.nccpr.org
And see the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog at www.nccpr.blogspot.com