When White House advisor
Kellyanne Conway tried to explain away false claims made by White House Press
Secretary Sean Spicer, she branded those claims “alternative facts.” To which
Chuck Todd, who was interviewing Conway on Meet the Press,
replied: “Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods.”
But the
Trump Administration has no monopoly on this Orwellian approach to truth.
It’s been a staple of hype and hysteria about child abuse for decades.
So this
seems like a good time to bestow the first – drum roll, please:
Sean Spicer / Kellyanne Conway Award for Most Creative Use of
“Alternative Facts” in Child Welfare
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| Kellyanne Conway (Photo by Gage Skidmore) |
And the winner is: The
group that calls itself California Advocates for Change for “Are There Too Many
Children in Foster Care?,” a “policy brief” sure to become a classic in the
alternative facts genre.
The
brief states that “There is no data indicating that the prevalence of child
abuse has decreased.” That is a classic “alternative fact,” since it is simply
not true.
§ The
federal government’s annual Child Maltreatment reports have
measured the rate of alleged child abuse and neglect since 1990. The rate of
child maltreatment peaked in 1993. It has declined almost every year since. It
rose slightly in 2014 and 2015 but it is still 40 percent below the 1993 peak.
§ The
federal government’s most recent National
Incidence Study, which seeks to go beyond officially
reported cases to estimate the actual prevalence of child abuse and neglect,
found a dramatic decrease in child abuse compared with the three previous NIS
studies.
It’s fine to argue about
the validity of these studies – or any others. But to deny their very
existence, by claiming that there are no data
indicating child abuse is declining, is an “alternative fact” – a falsehood.
The
brief deserves other awards as well. So I am pleased to hereby confer
upon it:
The Golden Fruit Basket Award …
… for
comparing apples to oranges.
Right
after falsely claiming there are no data showing child abuse has declined, the
report says:
“On the contrary, recent
studies suggest that annual rates of confirmed maltreatment understate the
cumulative number of children confirmed to be maltreated during childhood.”
But, as I’ve noted before, saying that more
children are abused over the course of 18 years than over the course of one is
not exactly shocking. And it does not mean that child abuse is increasing.
The use
of the term “confirmed” also is misleading. It means only that a
caseworker checked a box on a form indicating
her or his belief that it is at least slightly more likely than not that
maltreatment took place. Sometimes it means even less.
The authors of the
“policy brief” do cite Child Maltreatment reports
when it suits them, while ignoring more reliable data. The brief argues that
“only” 21 percent of “substantiated” cases of alleged maltreatment lead to
foster care. This is based on a Child Maltreatment 2014 report
estimate of 702,000 such children (since
revised downward to under 684,000, by the way), of whom 147,762 were said
to have entered foster care.
But the Child Maltreatment reports are based on a
voluntary survey of states. The mandatory, and more reliable, AFCARS database reports 264,746
entries into foster care in 2014; that would be at least 35 percent of cases
workers claim are “substantiated.”
But the key question is
not what percentage of children are in foster care, but what percentage should be. States such as Illinois and Alabama have improved child safety by emphasizing family preservation,
reducing entries to well below the national average. This shows that the
national average is way too high, and there’s plenty of room to further reduce
entries into foster care.
The Silver Straw Award …
…for
ignoring the mountain of research on the harm of foster care while grasping at
a single straw: one study that, taken out of context, allegedly suggests
otherwise.
The research literature
is filled with studies documenting the rotten outcomes for foster children.
There’s this one. And this one. And, as always, the
two great big studies that directly compare outcomes in typical cases for foster
children and children left in their own homes (and a third, smaller study that reached the
same conclusion).
So what do the
“California Advocates” do? They find one study from one state which does not
even contradict those dismal findings. Rather that one study, the CalYOUTH
study, questions children while they’re still in foster
care and finds that 57 percent said they felt “lucky” to be
there.
I’ve previously
discussed, in detail, the problems with the CalYOUTH study in
general and this figure in particular. But for starters: The foster children
haven’t yet experienced what it’s like to face adult life after foster care.
And
while some undoubtedly are lucky to be in foster care, and really feel that
way, it may be hard to speak candidly knowing that after the interview, you
have to go back to the same foster home or institution.
More important, the
California Advocates brief uses the same CalYOUTH study to claim that foster
children are taken only in cases of the most severe, most horrifying abuse. If
that’s true, then 43 percent of foster children are saying, in effect, that
foster care is as bad or worse than severe, horrifying abuse. That’s not
exactly a ringing endorsement of foster care. (In fact, as is discussed in more detail here, a close look at the
full CalYOUTH definitions does not support the claim about most children being
taken because of severe abuse.)
The La-La-Land is the Center of the Universe Award
The
brief claims that Los Angeles County was “one of the most aggressive in
reducing caseloads …” but that now those caseloads are increasing. Therefore,
it is argued, if Los Angeles can’t further reduce foster care, no place can.
This is
misleading on several counts.
Los Angeles caseloads
declined because they were so outrageously high to begin with. Even now, after all that
caseload reduction, Los Angeles tears apart families at a rate well
above the average for America’s biggest cities and their surrounding
counties – and triple the rate of Chicago, where as noted earlier, independent
monitors have found that the state-run system improved child safety while
emphasizing family preservation.
Foster care is going up
again in Los Angeles because of years of mediocre leadership and political interference by the Board of
Supervisors. The experience of Chicago and other cities shows that L.A. and
most of the rest of the country still can save thousands more children from the
harm of needless foster care.
The Stephen Colbert Truthiness Medal …
 |
| Stephen Colbert |
… for
taking numbers out of context.
When you define neglect
as lack of adequate food, clothing and shelter, there is a good chance that
child welfare systems will confuse
poverty with “neglect.”
To divert our attention
from this, the brief offers up a scare number: “42 to 45 percent of child
fatalities are caused by neglect alone.” That would be up to 751 fatalities,
according to the just-released Child Maltreatment 2015.
But according to that
same report, 514,299 children were “substantiated” victims of neglect. In other
words, 99.85 percent of allegedly neglectful parents did not kill their children in 2015. So the figure the
brief pulls out of context tells us nothing about whether we really need to put
those 500,000-plus other children into foster care.
And
finally…
The George Orwell Achievement Award … … for
abasing the English language. Who could be more deserving than a group that
demands we maintain the system of substitute care essentially as it has been
for well over a century, rejects any real reform, but calls itself “California
Advocates for Change”?