A story
in the Providence Journal on Thursday
ran under the headline “Rhode Island Kids Count says state relies too heavily
on group homes.”
To which I must respectfully reply: Tell us something we don’t know.
Seven years ago, NCCPR released a comprehensive report on
Rhode Island child welfare emphasizing the same point: Rhode Island is way
out of line in its misuse and overuse of the worst form of “care” – group homes
and institutions.
We included a section comparing Rhode Island’s dismal record
to Maine, a state which once had the same problem, but dramatically reformed.
(There since has been some backsliding in Maine – as one would expect given
that the state currently is run by Paul LePage, the man Politico called “America’s
craziest governor.” – but it still does better than Rhode Island.)
But unlike Kids Count which gave the usual knee jerk (and wrong)
explanation for this overreliance – a supposed shortage of foster homes - we
examined the real reason: Rhode Island was tearing apart families at one of the
highest rates in the nation.
That’s still true.
The most recent
comparative data available, from 2015, show that Rhode Island took children
from their homes at a rate more than 70 percent higher than the national
average – even when rates of child poverty are factored in. Rhode Island’s rate of removal is double and
triple the rate of states that are, relatively speaking, models for keeping
children safe.
So, as we’ve said about other states with similarly absurd
rates of removal, either Rhode Island is a cesspool of depravity, with vastly
more child abuse than most places, or Rhode Island is taking away too many
children.
No, it’s not because of opioids
And no, the all-purpose excuse for high rates of child removal,
the “opioid epidemic” doesn’t hold up either.
● Rhode Island has been an extreme outlier for at least 16
years, since long before this latest “drug plague”
● Other states hard hit by opioids, such as Connecticut, do
not take children at nearly as high a rate. That’s because Connecticut is
responding by beefing
up drug treatment instead of simply jerking its knee and tearing apart
families. (For more about how the opioid epidemic has become a phony excuse for
taking away children, see
this NCCPR Issue Paper.)
So no, Rhode Island doesn’t have too few foster parents.
Rhode Island has too many foster children. Get the children who don’t need to
be in foster care back into their own homes and there will be plenty of room in
good, safe foster homes for the children who really need to be there - and no need to warehouse children in
institutions. That’s how Maine did it.
Rhode Island’s failure to face up to the real reason it
misuses group homes and institutions led us to call our 2010 report “State of
Denial.”
Sadly, the denial has only grown deeper.
