Advocates: Abused Child Policy Changes 'Risky'

Pitfalls Of Present System Cannot Be Fixed Without Change

There is no way to know if a new policy aimed at reducing the number of children in foster care will work until it is tried, said local and state child advocates.

“Ask me in a year,” said Beverly Engle, executive director of the Children’s Advocacy Center in Little Flock. “This is risky.”

By the Numbers

Child Abuse, Foster Care

-33,849: Reports of child abuse and neglect investigated by the state

-21,461: Cases managed by the state in that time period

-13,502: Managed cases needing protective or support services

-7,959: Managed foster care cases

*Numbers are for state fiscal year ended June 30, 2012

Source: Arkansas Department Of Human Services

The public wants certainty “when kids’ lives are at stake, but there’s no way to know before you start,” she said.

The state will implement the policy this year and hopes it will result in fewer children taken from their homes. The Arkansas Department of Human Services will work with local counselors to assist troubled families in reported abuse or neglect cases.

“There are situations that lead to abuse, and once you take care of those situations, the abuse goes away,” said Amy Webb, spokeswoman for the department. “One is the stress from poverty. You can teach a family how to budget and help them with resources. If you can do that, you not only keep their family intact, but you keep them from being entangled in the system again.”

The state received a waiver from the federal Health and Human Services Department, giving Arkansas leeway to spend some of its federal money for adoption and foster care on family counseling and other assistance instead. Arkansas was one of 10 states to receive the waiver this year but is the only state with plans to make changes statewide. The other nine states adopted more limited programs that focus on specific age groups or geographic areas.

Plans in Arkansas include hiring a supervisor for monitoring in-home cases, training social workers in alternatives to foster care and helping grow community-based programs such as afterschool care for children who would otherwise go home unsupervised.

Leaving a child in a home where abuse happened is not easy for people who make a career of helping children, said both Engle and Brenda Zedlitz. Zedlitz is director of children’s services for EOA Children’s House in Springdale, a shelter for abused children. Taking a child away from home, however, is always wrenching for the child. The new policy seeks to avoid that trauma while keeping the child safe, Zedlitz and Engle said.

“I took away children from their parents in Texas,” said Zedlitz, a former social worker in that state. “Not a one said ‘Hooray. I’m glad you’re doing this. Let me get my things.’”

Engle agreed.

“What I do know is that children want to go home,” she said. “There was one case in particular that was just horrendous and the mother was not stopping it. The case worker from the Department of Human Services was telling the child that they weren’t going home, and the child kept saying ‘I want to go home now.’ After kids have been in a place where they’re safe and fed and cared for, things change.”

Family counseling succeeds and the child returns in the best cases in which a child is removed from the home. This return, however, is another major upheaval and transition in the child’s life and those of the other family members, Zedlitz and Engle said.

Jennifer Ferguson, deputy director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, agreed the new policy has risks, but the risks and disadvantages of the existing system should not be ignored. Advocates is a nonprofit group that advocates child health and safety policies and legislation.

“There are not ever enough foster families to go around,” Ferguson said. “We need to be sure the kids we’re placing in foster homes are the kids who really need it. All the states are going to be watching us, because removing a child from the home is always such a traumatic experience for the child and for the family involved,” Ferguson said.

Other states will be interested to see if Arkansas can manage to reduce the need for foster care, she said.

Northwest Arkansas is relatively well-prepared compared to other areas of the state when it comes to providing more local support, Zedlitz said. The region has a history of strong support for children.

“I’ll never forget one case when I took a child out of a home and asked the mother how she could let what she did happen to a child,” Zedlitz said. “She replied ‘I thought that happened to every child. That’s what happened to me.’ That’s when it became clear to me that abuse goes from generation to generation. They’re raising their children the way they were raised. If you don’t change it, that’s the way the next generation will be raised, too.”

In the current system, much of the supervision of parents involved in abuse or neglect cases is by the courts. How much would change under the new system is still being discussed, Zedlitz said. She hopes judges will retain a major role rather than have the department supervise parents without court intervention.

“There’s just something about having to go before a judge,” she said. “People will do things a judge tells them to that they won’t do for any other reason.”

Making this new system work will take greater support from the community, said Ben McLintock, senior development officer for EOA of Washington County. For instance, teaching cooking will require space with a kitchen, which will require community groups with such space to make it available, he said.

The biggest challenge this new approach faces is to get families to buy into the goal of changing how they relate to each other, Zedlitz said.

“We have to make sure they’re not just hitting all the marks to get their kids back,” she said.

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