Connecticut,
1995: Emily Hernandez, a child-known-to-the-system, dies. Gov.
John Rowland demands that caseworkers tear apart more families. There is a
foster care panic, a huge increase in children torn from their families.
Children continue to die.
Connecticut,
2003: Another child-known-to-the-system, Al-Lex Daniels, dies. Rowland sets off
another foster-care panic. Children continue to die.
Connecticut,
2016: Another child-known-to-the-system, known in news accounts as Dylan,
nearly dies, this time in the kinship foster home of a relative. But
Connecticut does things differently now. The failings that led to the tragedy
are identified, workers are disciplined, but there is no foster-care panic.
Connecticut has a
different governor now (Rowland wound up in jail for corruption related to
construction of a juvenile prison). As NCCPR discusses in detail inthis report, the current governor, Dannel Malloy, and the Commissioner of
his Department of Children and Families (DCF), Joette Katz, have brought a culture
change to child welfare: They’re refusing to play politics with children’s
lives.
Historically, when DCF had a
bad outcome, everything would change. The next week, 500 children would be
removed. We don’t do that. We know that wasn’t good for the kids.
Less Foster Care, No Compromise of Safety
What is good for the kids is taking away fewer
children. In 2009 the state took children at a rate more than 45 percent above the national average. By 2014, the rate of removal was
down to the national average – though, sadly, still above the rate in states
that are, relatively speaking, national models for keeping
children safe.
In
2010, Connecticut used the worst form of “care” – group homes and institutions
– at a rate more than 30 percent above the national average. Since then,
institutionalization has declined by two-thirds.
In
2010, Connecticut used the least harmful form of foster care – kinship care –
at a rate about 25 percent below the national average. Now it’s about 25
percent above the national average.
After all that, child
safety improved according to the most reliable standard indicator, the rate at
which children known-to-the-system are re-abused.
Of course for someone
like Marie Cohen, who’s never met an orphanage she didn’t like and who even sang
the praises of an institution after it was exposed as a hellhole, all
this success is terribly upsetting. So she has seized on a report by the state’s official “child advocate” to
try to blame Connecticut’s reforms for the most recent tragedy.
After
acknowledging that Katz is right when she says a single tragedy “should not be
used to reverse needed policy changes,” Cohen proceeds to urge exactly that.
She
cites weasel-worded claims from the child advocate’s report concerning how some
documents “appear to reference…” this, some workers “seemed to be” that, and
some events “raise the specter” of children being at risk.
But
even the child advocate said the issue was failure to follow policy and
ignorance of policy, not the policy itself.
A Heaping Helping of Innuendo
Cohen
then piles her own innuendo on top of the child advocate’s innuendo, claiming
workers might be placing children in unsafe kinship homes in order to please
Katz and senior management.
But a
key problem in Dylan’s case was the failure to obtain a waiver approving the
home where the abuse allegedly took place. Precisely because of identified risk
factors in that home, it falls into a category for which a waiver must be
approved personally by Katz, a level of accountability almost unheard-of in
child welfare. Another key problem: One caseworker essentially bragged in
an email about her laziness.
Ignorance,
laziness, refusal to follow procedures, and failure to get the Commissioner’s
personal permission when required seem like odd ways to suck up to the boss.
The larger problem is the
fact that “child advocate” offices almost always operate in the same way –
investigate the worst horror stories and draw sweeping conclusions. The
problems with this methodology should be obvious (and, in fact, a former child
advocate in New Jersey found a better way).
The Connecticut child
advocate actually missed the single biggest failure in Dylan’s case. Excellent reporting by The Day in New London makes clear that Dylan never
needed to be taken from his own home, if only his mother had received the right
kinds of help. The real problem with the culture change in Connecticut is that
it hasn’t gone far enough. [UPDATE, MARCH, 2018: And tragically, in still another indication that the change hasn't gone far enough, DCF is relentlessly pushing to terminate the parental rights of Dylan's mother not only to Dylan, but to all her children.]
If only there were a
better way to evaluate child welfare systems. If only Connecticut had some
fully independent authority; say, someone appointed by a court, who could
review the entire system, examine representative cases and see if things really
are getting better or worse, then we’d – oh, wait, Connecticut has such an authority.
Thanks to a consent decree
that dates to 1989, an independent monitor performs comprehensive assessments
of the system. For decades those assessments were dismal. But now, things have
improved to the point that all sides have agreed to a streamlined decree that
even the lawyer suing the state calls “a
recognition of sustained progress by DCF in significant areas of its practice, particularly during this administration.” [Emphasis
added.]
As long
as Malloy and Katz refuse to cave in to the take-the-child-and-run crowd, the
progress will continue.
