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Triage at the White House -- Are Children at Risk Merely an "Additional Issue"?
There's a sense of urgency emanating from The White House. Political analyst David Gergen has described it as the actions of an ambitious president for whom things are going well. And that's good. There's nothing herky-jerky about it. All seems well planned and, with few glitches, well executed. It's promising, not only because it's happening so soon, but also because President Obama displays the energy and intellect required pull rabbits out of some hats that we'd had every reason to consider empty.
But one crucial issue gets little attention during this necessitated triage. Listed on the White House website as an "additional issue," it barely even came up during the campaign. Yet we read about it nearly everyday -- babies and children being beaten, drowned, burned or neglected to death.
While our leaders don't intend to be dismissive about the lives of children, President Barack Obama has shown us anew that words matter -- and that how we think about things matters. The ways in which the new administration prioritizes, frames and presents issues tells us whether Obama believes they are urgent or belong on the back burner.
So consider the following:
- In 2006, nearly 1 million children were victims of abuse or neglect, government data show.
- More than 1,500 children perished from abuse and neglect. Of those who died, 3 out of 4 were toddlers under the age of 3. Nearly half of them were mere infants.
- Beyond the intolerable loss of innocent lives, the economic consequences of child abuse and neglect costs our country more than $100 billion every year.
Yet the USA's child protection "system" is a case study in broken bureaucracy. With 2,200 individual jurisdictions, with mountains of inconsistent rules and procedures, this fractured patchwork of purported protection has created barriers that actually prevent children from reaching safe home environments or gaining crucial access to effective judicial remedies.
A 2008 study by the child advocacy organization First Star found that state confidentiality policies regarding child fatalities and near-fatalities often protect agencies and perpetrators over children. When states were graded on this problem, ten flunked, among them Maryland, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Tennessee.
- Another First Star study found that most states do not provide abused and neglected children with adequate legal representation, leaving their voices muffled while decisions are made about their futures. When graded, fifteen states flunked, among them states from which candidates in the last election hailed -- Illinois, Delaware, and Alaska.
President Obama can apply a strong federal hand in shaping policies to ensure that a child protected well in one state not be endangered simply by moving to a neighboring state where protection is woefully inadequate.
As a first step, he could press for the reauthorization and full funding of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. There should also be certification programs for all those involved in protecting at-risk children, including judges and attorneys. President Obama could also launch a Caseworker Education and Training Corps to recruit, train, and financially support college students in return for a pledge to work in the field helping to protect America's children and reward colleges and universities that create campus-based support for children at risk.
Stronger laws are needed to ensure that abused and neglected children have skilled and effective advocates. In addition, information related to how abuse and neglect cases are handled by state agencies needs to be more accessible to the public and the media to promote and enforce agency accountability. Although the identity of child victims would still be protected, repetitive bureaucratic error would not be.
There are some promising signs. Congress recently passed and President Bush signed a law designed to keep siblings in foster care together and provide additional services to young adults who age out of the foster care system, 53 percent of whom are unemployed after a year of living on their own. Several states have also begun to overhaul their systems.
But we need to go much further.
In Philadelphia efforts are being made to institute an ombudsman to oversee agencies where intentions are good but children too often fall through the cracks.
Despite these actions, each day the toll in lives lost and futures squandered is a tragedy we all share.
Candidate Obama offered hope for America's future and the country believed him. America's children living in fear pray that President Obama extends this hope to them.
When the triage is over, let's be sure children at risk for abuse and neglect aren't waiting in the wings as "additional issues," their lives and futures at stake. That wouldn't be change; that would be shamefully more of the same.
Dr. Kathleen Reardon is co-author of "Childhood Denied: Ending the Nightmare of Child Abuse and Neglect," a First Star Trustee, and also blogs at bardscove -- where you can see if your state is failing children, contact your senators and representatives and save children's lives.
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We should start arresting child abusers and stop arresting children who are abused.
Child abuse and child protection services is a federal issue. State child protection services are paid for by our social security tax dollars--Title IV-E, Title IV-D, etc. States have discovered that every child in custody is a source of federal dollars. These federal dollars are targeted at foster care and adoption services. Therefore, state agencies provide foster care and adoption services which are the money generators. Family preservation and family services just don't pay well.
If a child is declared "special needs" by the state, the flow of federal dollars increases in multiples. It's easy to declare a child as "special needs" by diagnosising them as needing remedial classes, "oppositionally defiant", etc. Any mental health diagnosis means the child is drugged into a compliant state.
The laws emasculate the parents who do not have the right to see the evidence against them, do not have the right to face their accusors, are presumed guilty, etc.
The child is isolated. With confidentiality being imposed in most of the child protective systems, this leaves the child vulnerable to any pedifile with access.
After creating a system with absolute secrecy and absolute power, why be surprised at accusations of corruption, child trafficking, etc. Guilty officials hide behind "confidentiality." Innocent officials cannot defend themselves.
The first step is to stop the flow of federal dollars that reward states for taking children and placing them in foster care.
The amount of power and money involved in child welfare is massive, involving multiple funding streams of Social Security and Medicaid, yet pails to the levels of waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars. Poverty is codified as the crime of abuse and neglect for eligibility of a child entering foster care is strictly based on being impoverished. Hence, as poverty increases so shall the number of child removals to foster care.
Billions of dollars of federal fraud are found through only cursory audits conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and U.S. Department of Justice, Additionally, OIG has identified a number of State financing arrangements and other revenue-maximization tactics that inappropriately increase Federal Medicaid payments to States. Children are being double-billed, provided for unnecessary medical services and phantom programs are funded that bill fictitious children and services. This is what is called fraud, or more intuitively, federal false claims.
Every year, lawyers across the nation are settling an increased number of lawsuits against states, child placing agencies and foster parents to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, all because the nation has not had the opportunity to be exposed to the child welfare industry for what it is: a market. Shrouded by the FOIA laws, states are able to construct federal funding schemes in what is termed as "the best interests of the child".
Beverly Tran
Legally Kidnapped
Agree that foster homes are the solution of choice for states and municipalities but when I was working with the mothers and their children who had been cited for abuse there were few foster homes to be had and many of them were perhaps as nasty and abusive as the original homes. In one county there were over 300 cases of abuse but only 3 foster homes available. The school I worked with tried to solve the problem by working with the mothers, counseling them, educating them; however, the mothers were often the survivors of abuse themselves. Survivors often seem to believe that such abuse is more or less normal. Generation after generation the women had been isolated, abused and sometimes murdered.
As one of the posts below states, your blog seems to start with an indictment of Obama because child abuse and solutions for solving the problem are not yet to be found in the plans of the administration. This issue, this enormous problem, ranks right up there with illiteracy when it comes to educating children. And more and more the schools, either in pre-school and/or in kindergarten, often try to solve the problem themselves, a risky and uneven task with only limited success. Teachers make home visits, flyers go home with suggestions as to dress, the amount of sleep that might be necessary, the noise level in the home environment, on and on. As mandated reporters many teachers observe the effects of physical abuse early on and report it. Emotional abuse is much tougher and a lot more prevalent. Short of having a social services' agent going into the homes of each and every child there is little that can actually be done. I taught in a special school where that was the case and although the abuse was noted there is little that can end it. Foster homes are often the biggest source of physical and emotional abuse of children. No wonder no federal plans are being drawn up for this problem; the states have found no magic bullet to solve the problem. The federal government would be entering a snake pit of problems with the public and with families.
Dear Dr. Reardon,
Excellent essay/post, that's why I'll always heart ya! Agape, dap
The last Admin had no problems passing the joke that is "No Child Left Behind" and forcing ALL schools to meet federal mandates to obtain necessary funding. The same can/could be done for Child Protective Services - in fact, the two could be modeled on the same type of standards - caseworkers must meet minimum educational and experience/background requirements and undergo continuing testing and education, children under state supervision must show measurable improvements in several areas, such as grades in school, social skills, physical health, all calls must be followed up on within 48 hours , etc etc etc - or the state/local office loses certification and suffers sanctions. The Fed Govt does not have to take over CPS, we just need to figure out a way to enforce compliance, make all the states meet the same measurable standards for at risk kids and make sure the proper funds are available for CPS to do it's job.
As usual, it seems CPS lacks even minimal oversight and enforcement of regulations/laws etc. What good is it to pass stricter laws/requirements if CPS has no oversight,no funding, no options?
We have to begin saving and taking care of the "born" kids before we focus on the unborn ones. So much time and attention and money being spent on unborn children while every day children already born die from neglect, abuse, poverty and poor health care. Just seems backwards.
social workers are educated and compensated fairly well. Most have close to a masters if not a masters, there are continue ed standards in place. What happens though, and I never thought I would say the words, is that bad social workers face no repercussions in large part because of their union. The situations faced by social workers are difficult, but the way they become jaded is disgusting. There are some basic common sense things that they simply won't do, and they fight for the system way more than they fight for the kids. Now that isn't all social workers, it isn't even the majority of them. But it is way way way too many. Further, mental health services for kids in the system are almost non-existent. They system needs something and it will take smarter people than me. I don't know what O can do about state run systems, but he has to do something. It can't be the first thing he does though, it will take billions of dollars and it would prevent anything else from being accomplished for months.
Wow, thanks for raising these concerns. No one should make light of them, and there needs to be action taken, but I'd say 'additional concerns' is about right in the hierarchy of America's needs right now.
Child abuse is such a monumental problem that it should be a first-tier issue for the Obama administration. Criminality and antisocial behavior are linked to child abuse so it is in everyone's interest to do something about it.
High risk households with pre-school children need proactive assistance: a social worker to teach parenting skills, delineate unacceptable practices, help arrange for day care and doctor visits and watch for signs of abuse/neglect.
Those first 3-4 years of life are crucially important, and all of society has a stake in the outcome. There is nothing I would rather have tax dollars spent on than abuse prevention.
See Kathleen Reardon's Profile
And given how capable President Obama is at multi-tasking, waiting until other issues are fixed isn't necessary and leaves many children in harm's way. If there were more consistency across states and a higher level of effectiveness in protecting children, including the solutions you mention, we might have the luxury of more time. But we don't.
Are you seriously complaining about the header "additional issues"? I don't think anyone in this country feels like child abuse or children's issues are not important...but for a President who has been an office for all of two weeks Obama is doing a remarkable job. I have never heard him marginalize ANY issue...but get real...his attention needs to be focused on getting this country on track. That's an incredibly large order, so to complain about the wording of a header on a website is beyond petty!
If Obama doesn't focus 110% on the economy, there will be MANY more children in at-risk situations. First things first.
While I agree this is a serious problem, I do not agree that this or many other serious problems can or should be solved by the President or the federal government. Protection of children may be everyone's duty, but it is the legal duty of the States, at least according to the Constitution - Health, Safety and Welfare Clause. Beyond use of the bully pulpit, I do not believe the federal government needs or effectively can participate in solutions to this problem. This is first a police issue and second a social welfare issue. Just as people don't want the federal government deciding their local school issues, they should not ask them to solve their local police issues. This is a critical problem, but the federal government can do little that will help. In addition, child abuse is directly related to the economic condition of the nation. Unfortunately, as times get hard adults take their problems out on their children. Therefore, it is critical that the President and the federal government stay focused on the larger economic problem. The state and local governments must play the key role in addressing this problem. We cannot put everything on Mr. Obama's back, we must do some things for ourselves.
The problem is that child abuse has been going on for a long time.
The most effective short term way to improve the treatment of children is probably to reduce the impact of the economic depression. Stressed out families where the father or mother have recently been laid off and the family is facing foreclosure, often treat their children badly So if this situational child abuse could be reduced, the way would then be clear to start working on the rest of the child abuse.
Child 'Protective' 'Services' does need massive overhaul and the federal level is the best way to do it. But it needs a full and complete regulatory overhaul, not simply minor fixes. As it stands now, it persecutes parents without protecting truly at-risk children sufficiently and is rife for abuse by over-officious neighbors or teachers.
How sadly true.
I don't disagree with the sentiment of this article, but it seems to be written with an undertone that asserts that Obama is interested in writing off the issue as opposed to the issue not having risen yet to an actionable level in the Federal government. Furthermore, how do you really address this, since most of the activity is at the state and local level? You shore-up the finances of those state and local governments so that they have the additional resources necessary to attack such problems. A significant chunk of the stimulus plan is intended to do just that. It's all connected.
See Peter Samuelson's Profile
Strong and appropriate words from the expert who actually WROTE THE BOOK on child abuse, neglect and what needs to be done about fixing systems that are so cleartly broken. And yes, I was also worried by the shunting off to the side in the new Agenda of this big pillar of our Nation's future: Its children. One has the sense that The First Lady was not in that room.
UNICEF has us ranked one from dead last in the First World by measures of children's welfare. What does Europe know that we don't, or Australia, or Japan? And BTW, we spend more money on doing worse!
Hello Administration, please read Professor Reardon's book ASAP. This is kids we are talking about here. A lot of us reading this killed ourselves achieving the happy, wonderful election result. One prime reason is that we believed (and still believe) that the new Administration has its ethics and social priorities right, a far cry from the last lot in power. Please may it be so in this case? RSVP. psamuelson@firststar.org
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