How the Oregon “child welfare” agency wants to make it even easier for “providers” to get away with abusing children in their care

 

The Oregon State Capitol

 Second of three parts.  Read part one here. 

Faced with an artificial “shortage” of foster homes caused by the fact that Oregon still tears apart families at a rate well above the national average (which is, itself, too high), the Oregon family police agency, the Department of Human Services, and Gov. Tina Kotek have decided the best answer is to loosen the already minimal rules concerning abuse of children in foster care, especially group homes and institutions.  They’ve proposed legislation to do just that. 

The minimal rules already are minimally enforced.  We know this because the official rate of abuse in foster care in Oregon is roughly 50 times lower than the rate found in multiple independent studies, including two specific to Oregon. (For details see the previous post). 

But according to one state official, Anna Williams, executive director of something called the Governor’s System of Care Advisory Council, as a result of these minimal laws minimally enforced the state is “bleeding providers” – at best an inapt choice of words. 

Yesterday’s post discussed the excuses those favoring this legislation have put forward.  This post discusses some of the specific provisions. 

Agency use of restraints would be almost unrestrained 

Among the most often exposed abuses in “residential treatment” is the overuse of various forms of “restraint” such as physically “restraining” a child who is, in some way, “acting out” or putting the child in “seclusion,” a euphemism for solitary confinement.  As the Oregonian reported, the bill waters down restrictions on physical restraint and seclusion to the point that if it’s not being done with the specific intent to punish the child or for the provider’s convenience, it’s just fine.

Willams explained that: “If a hold or seclusion is used for the safety of the child and it’s done with training, then it’s not investigated because that’s not wrong.” 

But, of course, those saintly providers for which Williams has such concern don’t go around admitting they use restraints for punishment or convenience – they always say they only use restraints when absolutely necessary for the safety of the child. You find out if that’s true or not by, um, investigating. 

The bill also narrows the definition of “chemical restraint” – doping up children to make them docile for their caretakers.  Again, this has been the subject of numerous exposes across the country.  But the Oregon bill would give institutions a blank check to do this to children as long as “a licensed physician or other qualified health professional…” prescribes the drugs and administers them.  (And who employs and/or contracts with the medical professionals used by residential treatment centers?) 

The bill even narrows the definition of sexual abuse when it happens in foster care.  As the Oregonian story explains: 

[I]t’s currently defined as sexual abuse for a child or youth up to age 20 in foster care or an institutional care facility to have sexual contact with anyone responsible for providing care or services to the child. The planned legislation would define sexual contact as abuse if it occurred only with a person employed by a child caring agency or foster home. 

So if, say, a therapist not directly employed by a group home or institution takes advantage of the inherent imbalance of power to have sex with an older foster youth, that’s OK?  

But wait, there’s more

Other provisions of the bill would: 

● Make it harder for DHS to suspend or revoke the license of a private foster care agency. 

● Reduce the amount of information about abuse in foster care that DHS must report to lawmakers. 

● Extend the amount of time children can be filed away and forgotten in what are often the worst placements of all – parking place “shelters.” 

● Make it easier to ship children all over the country to often abusive institutions. (Recall how well that worked) and reduce the information available to lawmakers and the public about how often this happens – or even which institutions are receiving Oregon foster youth. 

And, apparently fearful about what all this might say about racial bias and bias against the disabled in their system, DHS would no longer have to give anyone 

Demographic information about all children or wards the department currently has placed in out-of-state facilities, including but not limited to age, gender or gender identity, race, ethnicity, tribal status and, if disclosed by the child or ward, sexual orientation; [or] The number of children or wards the department currently has placed in out-of-state facilities who have autism, intellectual disabilities or developmental disabilities 

The bill amends 90 pages of existing law, so there may be other awful provisions I’ve missed.

It also has two good provisions: One would end the practice of making older foster youth in “independent living” programs pay part of their own housing costs.  The other would repeal a provision of existing law that was so dumb it boggles the mind to think it ever became law in the first place. 

I’ll discuss that on this blog tomorrow.