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| Graphic by Murdocke23 |
The so-called
Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities is gone. But the
dysfunction that characterized its work – and made it resemble perfectly the child
welfare system it studied – lives on.
First the commission
chair, David Sanders, attempted to defend its work in the Chronicle of Social Change.
In the process, he dismissed the scathing dissent written by Cook County Judge Patricia
Martin, the presiding judge of the Court’s Child Protection Division. So Judge Martin wrote a response to Sanders’ column.
In that response,
she criticized the Commission’s signature recommendation, known for most of its
history at the Commission as “the surge.”
At this
Commission meeting alone, it
was called a “surge” at least 45 times. As we explain in our own report on the Commission’s many failures, this
recommendation calls for encouraging or requiring (it’s not clear which) states
to go back and review every child abuse fatality over the past five years
looking for common “risk factors.”
Then a
“multi-disciplinary team” would be sent out into the field to re-investigate
any open case that allegedly had even one such risk factor – thereby re-traumatizing
the children who’d already been investigated - and probably leading to many
more children being needlessly removed from their homes.
The surge is a
wonderful name for this recommendation, since it conjures up images of police
actions and people forcing their way into other people’s homes. (Some Commissioners actually wanted to call
it an “accelerant” – apparently not realizing that this term is commonly used
for something that spreads an arson fire.)
Realizing the
problems with this kind of blunt and accurate terminology, the Commission instructed
staff to find some way to put lipstick on a pig – i.e. find a euphemism. They
came up with “retrospective review.” That’s why the word “surge” does not
appear in the Commission’s final report.
The Commission split
over how to pay for this. One group
called for recommending the expenditure of $1 billion in federal funds. At that same Commission meeting, one member of
this group, Michael Petit, referred to this as a “down payment.”
After Judge Martin
wrote her column, Petit submitted a column of his own. He began a part of
his critique by writing that “Martin states that our recommended review of
cases (incorrectly characterized as a ‘surge’)…” thus leaving the impression
that Judge Martin somehow made up the term herself.
Then Petit claims that “Commissioner
Martin mischaracterizes the need for funding reform as a “down
payment.” But Mike, you’re the one who
used that term in the first place.
It
says a lot about just how bad the Commission recommendations are that Petit has
to run away from any language that describes them honestly.
What
next, Mike? Are you going to deny
telling a Congressional Committee in 2011 that the states that do the best job
preventing and responding to child abuse are the ones with “smaller, whiter
populations”?
