[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 125 (Monday, September 30, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1684-E1685]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   CRISIS IN THE CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. GEORGE MILLER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 26, 2002

  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, over the past few days, 
millions of Americans watched their television screens' transfixed by 
the horrific images of a woman repeatedly striking her 4-year-old 
daughter in a department store parking lot. As a result of intense 
media coverage, the mother eventually turned herself in and the state 
took protective custody of the child.
  The unsettling incident has unfortunately played itself out in the 
media like a tragic movie of the week. Clearly, the child needs 
protection to determine if this violence was a pattern of abuse, and to 
prevent additional incidences of mistreatment. The mother faces up to 
three years in prison. The 4-year-old child is left to struggle with 
the emotional scars caused by the mother's physical abuse and the 
subsequent trauma of being removed from familiar, albeit dangerously 
dysfunctional, family surroundings.
  The assumption and hope is that the child is now under the custody 
and supervision of the state and has been placed in a safe home. 
Unfortunately for the thousands of nameless children under the 
protective custody of state child welfare systems, the assurance of a 
safe and healthy enviromnent is inconsistent with the reality.
  Nationwide more than 550,000 children are currently in foster care. 
Class action lawsuits and multiple newspaper reports have documented 
the failure of states to meet the social service needs of vulnerable 
children and families in crisis, despite billions of dollars in federal 
assistance. Across the nation, allegations of limited access to 
services, improper placements, inadequate staff training, poor wage 
compensation coupled with massive caseloads, and high staff turnover 
rates are commonplace.
  In the following article, the Columbus Dispatch identifies an 
innovative program aimed at meeting the challenging objective of 
ensuring child safety and providing much needed support services to 
parents in crisis. The Family to Family program detailed in the article 
is based on the belief that some families in crisis can receive 
services in their own homes. The family preservation program links 
troubled families with social service agencies, community centers, and 
other social service networks. The goal is to coordinate service 
delivery in efforts to increase quality and continuity of services.
  The disturbing incident of child abuse caught on videotape taps into 
our greatest fears about abusive parents and the harmful experiences of 
children, who through no fault of their own, are subjected to 
inadequate care. This incident highlights the need for a competent 
child welfare system that swiftly and effectively meets the needs of 
vulnerable children and families in crisis. To that effect the 
following article presents one possible solution to this ongoing child 
welfare crisis.
  The article follows:


              [From The Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 22, 2002]

Helping Mend Troubled Families; Agency's Innovative Program Keeps Kids 
                           at Home or Nearby

                         (By Encarnacion Pyle)

       Sabrina Martin's oldest daughter told a teacher last winter 
     that her mother had whipped her so hard that she had bruises.
       In the past, a social worker likely would have stopped by 
     Martin's house, packed her two children's clothes into a 
     garbage bag and dropped the kids off at a foster house far 
     from their family, friends and school.
       But under a new program, Franklin County Children Services 
     worked with the single mother from South Linden to safely 
     care for her daughters as it investigated the abuse charge.
       Family to Family is built on the belief that families often 
     can be helped to care for their children in their own homes. 
     Or, when children need to be removed, that they should be 
     placed with a relative, close friend or foster family in the 
     neighborhood.
       The program linked Martin, 31, to St. Stephen's Community 
     House, where she learned new skills for being a parent and 
     the girls learned ways to control their behavior.
       During its investigation, Children Services discovered that 
     a baby sitter had hit 8-year-old Sadie. And although Martin 
     would rather not have been involved with the agency, she 
     said, the Family to Family program helped her become a better 
     parent.
       ``Parenting is hard, especially if you're single and your 
     children are challenging,'' she said. ``I used to be so hot-
     tempered, I'd snatch the girls up by their arms. But I've 
     since learned better ways to discipline them and deal with 
     stress.,'
       Children Services and St. Stephen's introduced Family to 
     Family in North and South Linden in 2000. It was so 
     successful that the agency, with help from the Gladden 
     Community House, expanded the program to Franklinton last 
     year and hopes to start it on the Near East Side in October.
       The Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore created the 
     program 10 years ago as a way of meeting the growing 
     challenges facing the child-welfare system, said John 
     Mattingly, the group's senior associate.
       ``It is not another social-services pilot, fad or new model 
     for child-welfare work,'' he said. ``There is no quick fix.''
       The number of children being cared for away from their 
     parents' homes nationwide has more than doubled from 260,000 
     in the 1980s to more than 550,000 today, with only a few 
     communities reporting a decline in the past few years.
       In Ohio, 26,000 children are in foster care. In Franklin 
     County, 2,585 children are in paid placement, which includes 
     all temporary and permanent custody, said John Saros, 
     executive director of Children Services.
       As a result, social workers carry enormous caseloads, and 
     children are staying longer in foster care and group homes 
     and suffering more-difficult behavioral and physical 
     problems.
       At the same time, the number of foster families nationally 
     has dropped, so that fewer than 50 percent of the children 
     who need temporary placement are placed with foster families. 
     The others go to group homes, institutions and--in some 
     cities but not Columbus--to homeless shelters.
       With Family to Family, instead of automatically taking 
     custody of children, social workers from Children Services 
     and the community centers meet with parents to work out ways 
     to keep them home.
       When that doesn't work, the parents are invited to sit down 
     with foster parents and social workers to plan the child's 
     care.
       Friends, family, teachers, counselors, pastors, juvenile-
     justice workers and anyone else who can help the family are 
     encouraged to attend. That's largely because children today 
     have so many needs that parents must be experts in 
     discipline, special education, learning disabilities, health 
     care and mental health, said Marilyn Mehaffie, associate 
     director of St. Stephens;
       During the meetings, parents are praised for their 
     strengths before their weaknesses are discussed.
       ``Before, we'd start by criticizing them for being a crack 
     addict with no money and no food in the house,'' said Walter 
     Torain, who heads Family to Family and Children Services' 
     north region. ``Now, we'd first praise them for being active 
     in their children's schooling and caring enough to show up to 
     the meeting.''
       Family to Family has placed nine children in foster homes 
     in their Linden-area neighborhoods. Five more stayed in their 
     own homes. Thirteen new foster homes were created in the 
     area.
       The biological parents are encouraged to tell the foster 
     family what their children's favorite foods are, how they 
     like their hair done, what makes them grumpy and how they can 
     be comforted.
       ``That keeps birth parents from trying to find fault with 
     the foster parents,'' said LaTisha Hines, Family to Family 
     coordinator at St. Stephen's.
       Children, who rarely were consulted about what is best for 
     them, often are included in the discussion.
       ``It helps the kids from feeling like something is being 
     forced on them,'' said Marika Sanders, a social worker at St. 
     Stephens. ``And it lessens their anxiety about divided 
     loyalties.''
       To help limit the alienation that comes with removing 
     children from their parents, friends, school and everything 
     they know, Children Services heavily recruits foster parents 
     in the neighborhood.
       ``Keeping kids in their community cuts down on the 
     trauma,'' said Cordelia Foster, 53, who has cared for more 
     than 65 children in 14 years as a foster mother.
       The strategy represents an about-face to the traditional 
     goal of child-welfare agencies of pulling children away from 
     abusive or neglectful parents at all costs, often to the 
     detriment of the child, said Richard Wexler, executive 
     director of the National Coalition for Child Protection 
     Reform in Alexandria, Va.
       ``It's the first good news I've heard about Franklin County 
     Children Services in years.''
       Despite the benefits, the program's introduction presents 
     formidable challenges, notably because child-welfare agencies 
     have to accept a new way of doing business. Compounding the 
     task are the traditionally ill feelings between foster 
     parents and birth parents and the public's general mistrust 
     of child-welfare agencies.
       Still, Mattingly said, the program has flourished.
       It began in Ohio and four other states, and now is in 32 
     communities nationwide. Combined, they've received nearly $75 
     million in grants and technical assistance from the Casey 
     Foundation, a private organization that works to improve the 
     lives of disadvantaged children.

[[Page E1685]]

       ``Child-welfare agencies can improve,'' Mattingly said, 
     ``but it's hard work.''
       To become more community-friendly, Children Services plans 
     to hire more translators and workers who speak foreign 
     languages, because of the growing diversity in the county. 
     And it will create a committee of child-welfare workers, 
     court officials and mental-health and addiction experts to 
     help decide where to place children with severe behavioral 
     and mental-health problems.
       ``We've had such great success with Family to Family, it's 
     time for more-revolutionary changes,'' Saros said.
       Sabrina Martin credits Family to Family with smoothing out 
     her relationship with her daughters.
       ``I don't think we would have been able to get back on 
     track without it,'' she said.

     

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