We don't have to guess what will happen if opponents of
family preservation get what they want. We don't have to guess what will happen
if family preservation is effectively abandoned.
We
don't have to guess, because it happened -- in Illinois in 1993, in New York
City in 1996 and in Florida in 1999.
In
April, 1993, three-year-old Joseph Wallace was killed by his mother. Joseph was
"known to the system." "Family preservation" quickly became
the scapegoat. It was attacked relentlessly by politicians and much of the
media -- even though most of the programs in Illinois bore little resemblance
to the effective, Homebuilders-based models used in other states (see Issue Paper 10).
As
a result, workers and judges became terrified to leave or return any child home
for fear of becoming the next target of politicians and the Chicago media.
Almost all efforts to keep families together were effectively abandoned amid
claims that such efforts contradict "child protection." Indeed,
Illinois legislators added the words "best interests of the child" to
their child welfare law in at least 30 different places to make sure everybody
got the point.
By
1996, a child was more likely to be placed in foster care in Illinois than in
any other state. But instead of saving lives, child abuse
deaths went up. They soared from 78 before family preservation was abandoned to
82 the first year after, to 91 in fiscal 1997[1].
That's not surprising. The abandonment of family preservation led to a foster
care panic that overwhelmed the system to the point that it created a backlog
of more than 5,000 uncompleted investigations[2].
In the first two years of the panic, foster care placements the Illinois foster
care population soared by 44. Child abuse deaths in foster care in
Illinois went from zero in the year before the foster care panic to five in the
first year afterwards -- an all-time record. [3]
The
pattern showed itself in a new way in fiscal 1998, when the Illinois foster
care panic finally began to abate. That year, the number of child abuse deaths
finally fell below the number before the panic began. And that year also was
the first year since the panic in which the total number of Illinois children
in foster care actually declined.[4] The decline has continued; indeed, Illinois reversed course,
embraced family preservation and cut its foster care population
dramatically. And at the same time,
safety outcomes have improved.[5]
But
during the years family preservation was abandoned, it led to other tragedies
in Illinois:
· Having supposedly "put
children first," Illinois officials soon found they had no place to put
children at all. So they were jammed into a hideous shelter, then overflowed
into offices. Streetwise teens were thrown together with vulnerable younger
children; infants were jammed into urine-soaked cribs. An 11-year-old got hold
of a gun and fired it.[6]
· Children were jammed into any
foster home with a bed, with little screening of foster parents or foster
children. As a result, according to Benjamin Wolf of the Illinois Affiliate of
the American Civil Liberties Union, the Illinois foster care system became
"like a laboratory experiment to produce the sexual abuse of
children."
· A study by the Child Welfare
Institute found that, as a result of the foster care panic, at least one
third of the children now in foster care in Illinois could safely have been
returned to their own homes.[7]
Abandoning
family preservation took a bad system and made it, in Wolf's words,
"unquestionably worse." [8]
|
CASE HISTORY: IN THE CHICAGO SHELTER What was it like for children suddenly swept up in the Chicago
Foster Care Panic, taken from their parents and left in the city's makeshift
shelter? This account is from the Chicago Tribune "A surly teenager with a bad attitude struts and shouts swear
words a few yards away from the abused and neglected little ones, so young
they can barely tell you their names ... 16-year-old Harry is boasting: 'I
stole 50 cars this week!' A few yards away is 5-year-old Michael, so very
scared and trying with all his might not to cry. 'I'm the big brother,'
Michael explains, gently stroking the hair of Christopher, 4, who gulps
heavy, sleepy breaths and sucks his thumb on a cot in a corner. ... When a
visitor tried to shake the little boy's hand, he threw his arms around her,
starving for a hug ... "'I want my mom,' Michael said ..."[9] |
And
what about the case that started it all? What was the role of family
preservation in the case of Joseph Wallace? A family preservation worker
recommended that the Wallace family not be preserved -- he recommended to
a judge that the child be removed. The judge agreed. The child was removed, but
the records were lost when the family moved to another county. Only then was
the child sent home to his death. [10]
Not
only was family preservation not the cause of the Wallace death -- family
preservation almost saved Joseph Wallace's life.
Other
Foster Care Panics
Nearly
three years later it was New York City's turn. Again, this time in late 1995, a
child "known to the system" died. Again officials blamed "family
preservation" - even though deaths of children previously known to the
child welfare system had declined by more than 40 percent since 1991.[11] Once again, they set off a foster care
panic, overwhelming the system. The result: Thousands of children were forced
to sleep, often on chairs and floors, in a violence-plagued, emergency
makeshift shelter created from city offices,[12]
a four-year-old foster child was beaten and starved to death in a foster home
opened by one private agency, apparently desperate for beds, after another had
closed it down,[13] and the decline in child
abuse deaths ended. Between 1996 and 1998, deaths of children previously
"known to the system" increased by 50 percent.[14] Just as in Illinois, the death toll among children known to the
system fell below the pre-panic level only after the panic had abated in 1999
and the City was taking away fewer children.[15]
Like Illinois, New York City learned from its mistakes, reversed course, and
embraced family preservation – though another high-profile case has led to
backsliding, and another increase in deaths.
And
then came Florida. The death of a child
“known to the system” and the appointment of a state child welfare agency chief
staunchly opposed to keeping families together combined to set off a foster
care panic in 1999. Again the foster
care population soared. And again,
deaths of children “known to the system” increased, from an average of 25 per
year in the four years before the Florida Foster Care Panic to an average of 32
per year in the five years since.[16]
These
data don't prove that child abuse deaths always will go up when family
preservation is abandoned. But the critics of family preservation premise their
entire argument on the assumption that if family preservation is eliminated, or
at least drastically curtailed, such deaths will decrease.
At
a minimum, the results from Illinois, New York, and Florida -- particularly
when compared to states like Alabama, and to what happened when Illinois and
New York reversed course -- suggest that it's the people who want to abandon
family preservation who have a lot of explaining to do. It's time for the
burden of proof to shift from those who want to keep more children with their
parents to those who want to take them away.
Updated January 1, 2008
1. State of Illinois, Department of Children and Family
Services, Office of Quality Assurance, Executive Statistical Summary,
January, 1998. Back to Text.
2. Sharman Stein, "DCFS Coordinator Puts
Family Values to Work," Chicago Tribune, March 8, 1995. Back to Text.
3. Peter Kendall and Terry Wilson, "Boy's Death
Casts Shadow on Foster Care," Chicago Tribune, Feb.28, 1995. Back to Text.
4. Executive Statistical Summary (Note 1, Supra)
November, 1998. Back to Text.
5. Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Signs
of Progress in Child Welfare Reform (www.state.il.us/dcfs/signscerap.shtml)
The report documents that reabuse of children left in their own homes has
declined as the foster care population has fallen. Back to
Text.
6. See the following stories from the Chicago Tribune:
Rob Karwath, "Abused Kids Sleep in DCFS Offices," June 29, 1993;
Ellen Warren, "Toddlers, Troubled Teens All Wait Together at DCFS,"
July 21, 1993, p.1; Douglas Holt, "Boy Finds Gun at DCFS, Injured,"
Sept. 3, 1993, p.1; Rob Karwath, "Child Welfare Specialist Hired to
Coordinate Overhaul of DCFS Site," Sept. 10, 1993; Rob Karwath, "DCFS
Center Receives OK to House Kids," Dec. 17, 1993.Back to
Text.
7. Bruce Dold, "Kids Suffer Under DCFS Reform
Efforts," Chicago Tribune, Sept. 22, 1995, Sec.1, p.19. Back
to Text.
8. Personal Communication. Back to
Text.
9. Ellen Warren, "Toddlers, Troubled Teens All Wait
Together At DCFS," Chicago Tribune, July 21, 1993, p.1 Back
to Text.
10. Joel J. Bellows, et. al., The Report of the
Independent Committee to Inquire into the Practices, Processes, and Proceedings
in the Juvenile Court as they Relate to the Joseph Wallace Cases, Oct. 1, 1993.
Back to Text.
11. New York City
Administration for Children's Services, Progress on ACS Reform Initiatives:
Status Report 3 (March, 2001) Chart, P.38. Back to Text.
12. Rachel L. Swarns, "For Children Awaiting Foster
Care, Another Night on Office Cots," The New York Times, November
29, 1997; Russ Buettner, "Foster Kids Glut System; Surge Worst Since Crack
Heyday" New York Daily News, May 12, 1997; Russ Buettner, "Bid
to End ACS Office Hell," New York Daily News, May 14, 1997. Back to Text.
13. Rachel L. Swarns, "Agency Was Warned About
Foster Mother Charged in Girl's Death," The New York Times, July 2,
1997, p.B3. Back to Text.
14. Status Report 3, Note 16, Supra, Chart, p.38.
Back to Text.
15.
Ibid. Back to Text.
16. 1995-1998: Florida Department of
Children and Families, Child Abuse and Neglect Deaths: Calendar Year 1999 (Tallahassee,
FL: March 2001); 1999
through 2002: Florida Department of Health, Florida Child Abuse Death
Review (Annual Reports), 2003: Michael
Mayo, “2003 child abuse tally: 81 dead, infinite heartbreak,” South Florida
Sun-Sentinel September 19, 2004.