First
of three parts
Give Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson credit for this much: When
he called in a consultant to examine the dismal condition of child welfare in
his state, he chose well: He chose the Child
Welfare Policy and Practice Group, headed by Paul Vincent, who led the
transformation of the child welfare system in Alabama into, relatively
speaking, a
national model.
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| Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutshinson |
In a
report about Arkansas issued in July, Vincent found a system
so short of places to put children that some were sleeping in offices or moving
to a different placement every night.
Among the key reasons: A deep-seated hostility to kinship
care – placing children with relatives instead of strangers.
Read all about that hostility, and what it does to children in this excellent story from Arkansas Times - including a case in which one relative after another was turned down, and the children wound up placed in the care of a stranger who adopted them - and abused them.
Only 14 percent of Arkansas children are placed with
relatives. The average for surrounding
states is nearly double – 25 percent. Many
other states that do better still. If
Arkansas simply performed as well on kinship care as its neighbors, a large
part of the “shortage” of placements would be over. In contrast, Arkansas has the worst record
among these states for using the worst form of care – group homes and
institutions – latter-day orphanages.
(Of course, it also would help if Arkansas reduced its rate
of child removal to the rate of, say Alabama.
As of 2014, the rate of removal in Arkansas was nearly 80 percent higher
than Alabama and there are indications the gap may have widened since then.)
Consultants try to use gentle language when writing about
the agencies that hire them, but it’s clear from Vincent’s report that there is
a strong bias against grandparents in the state Division of Child and Family
Services and the courts.
Study after study has shown kinship care to be more humane,
more stable and, most important, safer than what should properly be called
“stranger care” – see this report, and
this one. Nevertheless, Vincent found
DCFS staff and stakeholders identified a number of factors limiting the use of relatives. Attitudes toward the suitability of relatives as caregivers on the part of some staff, judges and other legal partners were frequently mentioned as a barrier. This negative view seems to be most prominent among those who view some extended families as sharing a common lack of caregiving capacities.
And now we learn that not only does this bias remain, it
goes all the way to the top.
At a legislative hearing this month, grandparents spoke of
stepping forward to try to take in their grandchildren, only to be stymied at
every turn by DCFS. The agency director,
Cecile Blucker responded first with
stonewalling, then with bigotry.
Blucker said the situation is complicated. By law, she said she could not comment on the people who made their cases to lawmakers or comment on any specific case. "Only one side of the story can be told and only one side of the facts can be told," she told lawmakers.
If such a law exists in Arkansas, it almost
certainly exists only because DCFS wants it, so the agency can hide its
blunders behind “confidentiality.” If
you really feel hamstrung, Ms. Blucker, ask the legislature to repeal any such
law.
If she means the federal government would
object if she told the agency’s side of the story, then she needs to explain
how it is that at least four states have laws specifically allowing their own
child welfare agencies to comment on cases when they have been disclosed by
another party – and none has been sanctioned.
But then it got worse. Again, according to the story:
Generally speaking, [Blucker] said, grandparents can be complicit when they see abuse and sometimes cannot adequately keep their grandchildren safe from the grandchildren's parents.
In other words, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” That
is precisely the claim that’s been debunked by all those studies. Or, as one of the nation’s leading experts on
kinship care, Prof. Mark Testa of the University of North Carolina, put it: “Fortunately,
trees have many branches.”
In poor communities all over America there are parents who
have waged a battle for decades to save
their children from poverty, despair, and the lure of the
streets. They have been forced to call
upon reservoirs of strength that most of us can only imagine. Is the mother who
won the battle with three children and lost it with a fourth to be denigrated
and discarded when she comes forward to take in that fourth child’s
children? Cecile Blucker seems to think
so.
And the bias may go even higher. In a statement
released Dec. 1, touting “progress” in fixing foster care, Gov. Hutchinson said
not one word about boosting kinship care.
Even worse: He made his remarks at the dedication of a brand
new orphanage.
More on that in the next post about Arkansas.
