Oregon’s “child welfare” agency wants to narrow definitions of abuse – but only when THEY are the abuser!

In Oregon, "child welfare" has become a pathetic
game of whack-a-mole. Looks like lawmakers
are about to take another whack.

                            

When a state takes away too many children it becomes a seller’s market for “providers” who institutionalize those children. They can set the terms for how they’re regulated.  There are two possible solutions to this: Pander to the providers at the expense of the children or stop taking away so many children needlessly.  Guess what Oregon’s family police agency wants to do.

 First of three parts

 In 2015, the Portland, Oregon alternative weekly Willamette Week exposed horrific abuse at one private agency’s group homes.  They also revealed that Oregon’s family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency) knew about the abuse for at least 18 months and did nothing.  As I wrote at the time: 

Why did [the Oregon Department of Human Services] allow all this state-sanctioned child abuse for all this time?   The Willamette Week stories make clear that political connections had something to do with it.  But the bigger reason is the problem that has plagued Oregon child welfare for decades: Oregon is begging for places to put children it takes from their parents, and beggars can’t be choosers. 

And the reason for that is not because there are too few foster parents.  Rather, it’s because Oregon takes away far too many children. 

When a child is abused in foster care, the abuser is not only the individual who committed the abuse.  The abuser also is the family police agency – because that agency put the child in that dangerous foster home, group home or institution in the first place. 

Rather than address needless removal the Legislature passed bills to marginally tighten regulation of group homes and institutions and raise standards for family foster homes.  But even minimal standards were enough to prompt some institutions to close. 

And so began Oregon’s pathetic game of whack-a-mole.  As I wrote in 2016: 

[A]n expose of abuse in foster care by the alternative weekly Willamette Week whacked the state into raising standards for foster homes.  So the state wound up warehousing foster children in offices and jails.  So -- whack! -- a child advocacy group brought a lawsuit to prohibit the practice.  The Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) settled.  And children promptly wound up warehoused in hotels. So –whack! – there was another lawsuit and another settlement. 

So then DHS shipped children to horrible out-of-state institutions.  Then, -- whack! – that was exposed, so DHS went back to warehousing children in what they called  “repurposed juvenile jails.” 

And now, the game of whack-a-mole may come full circle: Gov. Tina Kotek and DHS are backing draft legislation to repeal regulations curbing abuse in group homes and institutions.  

Oregon, like every other state, already grossly underestimates abuse in foster care.  Officially, Oregon claims that in any given year only three-tenths of one percent of foster children are abused in care.  In other words, Oregon DHS wants us to believe that if you gathered 300 former foster children in a room and asked “How many of you were abused during your last year in foster care?” only one would raise her or his hand.  The average length of stay in Oregon foster care is two years, so, if official figures are to be believed, only an average of six-tenths of one percent of Oregon foster children are abused at any point while in care. 

Nobody really believes this. 

Independent studies, including two specific to Oregon, repeatedly find abuse in one-quarter to one-third of family foster homes – and the rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is even worse.  

In a story about the proposals, The Oregonian points out that under terms of a consent decree Oregon has to reduce abuse in foster care and an independent court monitor will be – well, monitoring that.  (Although the monitor is excellent, the settlement is a result of another dreadful McLawsuit of the kind that has failed all over the country. So this settlement probably will do little good and may make things worse.)  

It’s not clear what data the monitor will use, since, DHS claims there’s already almost no abuse in foster care. But could just the presence of the monitor have something to do with why DHS wants to narrow the definition of abuse – but only for abuse in foster care? 

Another reason was offered up by Anna Williams, a former lawmaker who now is executive director of something called the Governor’s System of Care Advisory Council. She told The Oregonian: 

“The reason we need to address provider concerns is we are bleeding providers and if kids need care, they have to get that from providers.” 

So, we have to loosen regulations about abusing kids because the providers are bleeding? 

The worst excuse for this bill 

That reason is dumb and it ignores the real problem of wrongful removal, but at least Williams probably really believes it.  Another reason put forward by DHS should send everyone’s b.s. meter off the scale. 

Essentially DHS stole our argument for narrowing a very different set of laws affecting birth parents and tried to use it to advance their own interests. 

They claim, presumably with a straight face, that the current supposedly overbroad definitions of abuse in foster care – but only abuse in foster care -  are swamping the state child abuse hotline, making it harder for them and for investigators, to identify real abuse. 

Here’s why that’s b.s. 

In 2022, Oregon’s hotline received 73,278 reports alleging child abuse or neglect.  Also in 2022, 7,410 children spent at least one day in some form of Oregon foster care.  A very rough estimate (projecting from the number in care on any given day) is that fewer than 600 of them spent even one day in a group home or institution. 

So even if every single child who ever spent so much as a day in an Oregon group home or institution were the subject of a report to the Oregon child abuse hotline, that would account for less than one percent of all hotline calls.  Even if every child in any form of foster care for even a single day were reported to the hotline as abused it still would be only 10.1% of the calls. 

So no, allegations about abuse in foster care are not what’s overwhelming the hotline. 

What is overwhelming the hotline are false allegations trivial cases concerning birth parents and cases in which birth parents’ poverty is confused with neglect. 

That is a problem that absolutely could be ameliorated by narrowing definitions.  Because right now here’s how Oregon defines neglect: 

The term ‘abuse’ includes negligent treatment or maltreatment of a child, including but not limited to, the failure to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, or medical care that is likely to endanger the health or welfare of the child. 

In other words, there is hardly an impoverished child in Oregon who couldn’t be called into the state hotline as allegedly “neglected.” 

But, despite amending some 90 pages of existing Oregon law, the bill the Governor and DHS want does nothing to change that definition. 

Tomorrow: Some of the awful things the bill would do.