Last spring, Mary E., who lives in a Chicago suburb, dashed into her home for a few minutes to use the bathroom, leaving her three children, aged 2, 6 and 8, supervised by the oldest, playing in the front yard. In Boston, Dr. Bobbie Sweitzer left her daughters, 1 and 4 1/2, sleeping in the car — with doors locked, safety alarm on and windows cracked — for “20 or 30 seconds” to drop off a roll of film at Sam’s Club.
Even though the children were not harmed during their parents’ brief absence, both women ended up as cases in the child-welfare system as a result of calls by passersby to child-abuse hot lines. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services identified Mary E. as a perpetrator of child neglect. The Massachusetts Department of Social Services found that Sweitzer posed a “moderate to severe risk” to her children.
The same system that labels such “good” parents as risks to their children also puts other children back in the custody of known abusers, as has occurred in a number of high-profile child deaths in the Chicago area. These errors are partly caused by vague standards for child protection, applied without review by investigators who often have too little experience and training.
“We always walk that fine line of the need to protect children and balancing the unwarranted state intervention into families,” said Lorraine Carli of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services after Sweitzer’s encounter with the agency.
Case workers need to make a judgment based on what they see. If they fear accountability, they might err on being certain not to leave a child at risk, said Nicholas Scopetta, commissioner of New York’s child-welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services.
“It hangs over every investigator,” said DCFS investigator Janice Ableman, in reference to media scrutiny of sensational cases. “If it has done anything, it has made me more cautious that I err on the side of the child and don’t give a parent the benefit of the doubt.”
Critics of the system cite the “parent-bashing culture” that pervades child-protection agencies in particular, and society at large, for the growing number of child-abuse investigations. “The culture of hostility toward parents within the department (in Illinois) is very strong. It is the core of the problem,” said Benjamin Wolf, director of the Children’s Initiative Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in Chicago. He said the outrage and anger most people feel toward parents of abused children is a natural response, but that too much of it is harmful. “It creates a parent-bashing culture that inevitably pits the interests of children against their families.”
C.W., a DCFS case worker who wished anonymity, conceded that parent-bashing occurs among agency personnel.
“If you keep seeing dysfunctional and abusive parents, if you keep seeing cocaine-addicted babies and children abused in every way, I think you do begin to form some opinions about parents,” she said. But she said that case workers’ attitudes don’t matter because the agency’s policies are “extremely pro-parent.
“The agency goal is always to give the parent a chance to shape up; the agency policy is always to support parents,” C.W. said. “What individual case workers may feel is one thing, what they do each day is carry out agency policy, which is to support parents and families.”
Ableman has a different view. “Parents are under too much scrutiny,” she said. “I feel there is too much intervention.”
“People need to change their attitude towards parents. They should not be demonized or glorified,” said Wolf. “We need to realize that parents frequently are the best resources for their children, even though we’re angry at them.”
Critics say this culture of hostility toward parents has produced a foster-care population of 51,000 children in Illinois, more than any other state, according to a report of the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse.
The sensational cases have also produced a flood of calls to child-abuse hot lines.
“There is a hysteria about calling the hot line because of the horrendous child-abuse cases that are reported in the media,” said Renny Golden, author of “Disposable Children — America’s Child Welfare System” (Wadsworth Publishers, $21.95).
The anonymity extended to callers who report child abuse to hot lines can mean the difference between life and death for a child in danger. But this anonymity also encourages overzealous child advocates imbued with rigid ideas of parenting and those with a hidden agenda against parents, said Diane Redleaf, a Chicago lawyer who, with partner Robert Lehrer, recently filed a federal class-action lawsuit on behalf of parents caught up in DCFS investigations. As a harassment tool and a weapon to punish a parent, Redleaf said, the hot line has no equal.
In Illinois, the child-abuse hot line in Springfield operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, averaging about 1,200 calls a day. Each hot-line worker, college graduates with at least two years’ experience and 40 hours of special training, handles about 35 calls in a shift.
“A child abuse allegation needs to involve a specific incident and a specific harm to a child under 18 years of age,” said Kathy Herrick, a hot-line worker in Springfield since 1984. “We ask a lot of questions about the incident itself, about the adults who reside with the child and details about all the children under 18 who reside with the adults. If it doesn’t fall within the guidelines, we don’t register the report. For example, a report of educational neglect or truancy, or a child with head lice, does not meet our guidelines. Then we’ll refer the caller to other agencies.”
Nearly 900 calls a day are eliminated during this winnowing process. Landlords who have disputes with tenants, ex-spouses who want to get even, irritated neighbors, and in-laws with an ax to grind against a parent number among those who use the hot line.
Hot-line workers relay the remaining 300 calls per day to the appropriate area Child Protective Services Unit for investigation. Within 24 hours, a DCFS investigator visits the children. This investigation eliminates another 180-200 of the 300 reports of abuse referred by the hot-line workers.
In each case, the investigator makes a finding that child abuse is “indicated,” “unfounded” or “undetermined.” DCFS says “indicated” means the investigator has found credible evidence of child abuse or neglect.
In 1996, investigators filed more than 70,000 reports, “indicating” 24,000 families, involving 44,000 victimized children.
Redleaf’s suit charges that in the last two years, as many as 100,000 people in Illinois were “indicated” for child abuse and neglect based on insufficient evidence.
“They need only weigh credible evidence, that abuse or neglect could have happened,” said Redleaf. “They don’t need to believe that there is abuse or neglect in order to indicate. They don’t need to prove harm to the child.”
Most findings of abuse and neglect are handed down by individual investigators, independently and without supervisory review. This one-person judge and jury practice, combined with non-specific guidelines and an anti-parent climate, helps explain why Mary E. was indicated for child abuse and neglect for going to the bathroom.
Herrick said having the children in her line of vision could have made the difference to Mary E. “The parent or caregiver needs to be able to see the child. The child needs to be within eye view.”
Ableman said she too might have indicated Mary E. “Parents say they’re gone for two minutes, but it’s usually longer,” Ableman said. “It doesn’t take two minutes for something bad to happen to kids; it takes seconds.” Ableman said she would have had to interview the mother for a very long time. Ableman said Mary E. “can live with” the agency’s finding. “It will be a reminder to her never to do that again.”
Redleaf called DCFS investigations unprofessional.
“Determinations have been made based on five-minute conversations, sometimes with very young children,” she said.
In 1996, Redleaf said, an investigator asked leading questions to a 3-year-old cerebral palsy child with significant speech delays, eliciting information that her stepfather had hit her at an unspecified time. That statement led to “indicated” findings of abuse against the stepfather and the child’s mother and the removal of the child from the family home. The couple, identified only as NB and PB, are plaintiffs in Redleaf’s suit.
Ableman said children are often the best source of information. “If a child is verbal, by 4 usually, the child can tell you what happened,” Ableman said.
Investigators, who have special training but not a medical degree, perform medical evaluations and psychological examinations of children. “It takes a qualified pediatrician and a qualified child psychologist to diagnose and evaluate children’s conditions, linguistic development and developmentally appropriate behavior,” said Redleaf.
“There can be complicated medical problems, a child should be taken for an independent examination to a good hospital,” she said.
“Case workers need help in this area,” agreed C.W. “I’ve seen children labeled because case workers wrote down something they didn’t have the knowledge to assess, and these kids go through the system and through school with this in their file.”
Redleaf called for clearer rules and guidelines to help investigators establish abuse and neglect.
Wolf agreed that standards are too low, but he balked at the idea of more rules. “There are too many rules in place already. Nobody knows what the rules are,” he said. “The solution is not to make investigations more straitjacketed. What we need are trained workers who know what they’re doing, making decisions. The agencies that succeed do so not because of more rules, it’s because they have better people making decisions.”
“The whole system of investigation is done so that the agency can justify its existence,” said Mary E. “These people have to validate their jobs. They do it by coming into your home and judging your parenting skills. It is morally reprehensible.”
Redleaf has been campaigning for a requirement of documented harm to the child. She said DCFS guidelines leave too much discretion to the judgment of investigators, who may not have enough training in key areas and who often come from different backgrounds than the parents who are under investigation.
“The standards that even black case workers use are most often of white middle-class family values and how they think these families behave,” said Golden. “Many black parents are direct with their children. They may say to the child, `If you do that again, you’ll get slapped.’ And that is labeled as child abuse because it is not the way good parents ought to conduct themselves.”
But DCFS case workers are not the only ones who must judge parenting styles. Parents too make judgment calls on the risk of harm to their children at any given moment, said Redleaf. One mother may leave a 5-year-old in front of the television to run down to the basement to start a wash cycle. Another may allow a mature 10-year-old to come home from school to an empty house. In the current child-welfare climate, the judgment calls of those legally sanctioned to protect abused and neglected children frequently override the judgment calls of parents.
“Child-welfare systems have a hierarchical culture, a culture that believes that authority comes from above and experts know,” said Golden.
In Illinois, the largest category of reports to the hot line, more than a quarter in 1996, are for “lack of supervision.” Complicating this issue are the reality of working mothers and an ongoing debate among child-welfare professionals about when a child is ready to be left alone. Around the nation, an estimated 14 million children under 15 are latchkey kids at some time during the week.
The law offers no guidance in the matter of supervision of children. According to Michigan’s Department of Social Services, no state has laws regarding the age when a child can be left unsupervised.
Case workers are therefore left to interpret “lack of supervision” by assessing the circumstances and the maturity of the child. A mother leaving a 6-year-old with his teenage sibling could be cited for abuse and neglect of one, both, or neither of the children, depending on the investigator. Mothers of preadolescent latchkey kids could be leaving themselves vulnerable to hot-line reporting and investigators.
“Summer time is a doozie. There’s always an increase in neglect cases because of `lack of supervision’ reports,” said C.W.
“We take into account the maturity level of the child and how long the child is left unsupervised,” Herrick said. “We also look at the safety of the neighborhood in which a child lives and whether there is an adult nearby, or a telephone.”
Ableman said the age at which a child can be left alone is not set in stone, but an 8-year-old is too young. “If you leave the house, you’re not connected, and then it can become a problem.”
Herrick said that 10- and 11-year-old children who are left for extended periods of time to care for younger children and to prepare more than one meal for them are too young. Herrick added that there are instances where even a 15-year-old is not mature enough to be left alone.
In the home, a mother leaving a toddler alone upstairs for the time it takes to run downstairs to do a chore could be cited for lack of supervision.
“The toddler could be roaming around upstairs, getting into electrical sockets, or could fall down the stairs,” said Herrick.
“We get many reports of children getting hurt while their mothers were in another room,” said Ableman.
Medical, school, social-services and law-enforcement professionals are required by law to report child abuse and neglect. Statistics show that DCFS workers give more credence to calls from these mandated reporters than from the general public. Investigations precipitated by a mandated reporter result in “indicated” findings more than 40 percent of the time. Yet critics say that the liabilities affecting these professionals encourage them to over-report to the hot line.
“It allows them to insulate their own judgment,” said Redleaf.
Such childhood rites of passage as a black eye from a speeding baseball, bruises from knocking into a piece of furniture and sprains and broken bones from rambunctious play or sports are suspect and cause for reporting by medical personnel. A toddler’s innocuous word salad of “Daddy kissed me” or “Mommy hit me” can be relayed to the hot line by a concerned counselor.
“I had a case where a mother admitted to her therapist that she lost her temper in front of her baby. She never touched the baby,” said Redleaf, “but the therapist reported her, and she was indicated.”
Redleaf added, “Mandated reporting is an incredible deterrent to getting services to people who need it.”
Ableman conceded some problems in this area. “Mandated reporters sometimes over-report,” she said. “It is troubling that it cuts through doctor-patient confidentiality, but when it relates to child abuse, there is no confidentiality.”
Child-welfare agencies across the country are roundly criticized for failure to save children from harm with each new horror story to hit the news. The agencies have been described as abusive, neglectful and dysfunctional, like the parents they deal with.
“The child welfare system in the United States is a failure. Think multiple organ failure, which amounts to a moral disaster,” the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect said in 1993.
Yet even the most unrelenting critics admit that these agencies are the only hope for protecting abused children. They see reform of child-welfare systems as the answer.
Illinois DCFS has been in a restructuring mode since 1991, when the American Civil Liberties Union won a federal class-action lawsuit against the agency. The resulting court-ordered decree, commonly called the BH decree for the initials of the young plaintiff, forced an agenda of sweeping reforms within the agency.
“BH was about the things that affected kids once they got in to foster care,” Wolf said. “The first changes we made through the decree was to eliminate one excuse after another about why case workers couldn’t do their jobs effectively.” The results were improvement of resources and a larger budget, a dramatic reduction of caseloads from 80 and more to 25 and less, and graduate degree requirements for supervisors. That was the easy part, said Wolf.
The second phase of the reform currently underway includes the training of investigators and front-line case workers and changing the culture of the agency over a period of time.
“They are not the kind of simple solutions that courts and lawyers like, but I think they are the way to produce real change,” said Wolf.
“Previous training was all about how to do their jobs in the narrow sense, not how to make kids’ lives better,” said Wolf. Typical training of most front-line workers in Illinois emphasized process: how to function in the system and how to fill out paperwork. The new training of case workers and investigators is being conducted by the Child Welfare Institute of Atlanta.
The ACLU chose the institute for the work it had done with other troubled child-welfare agencies around the country, including changing the culture of the agency in Alabama.
“The training deals with the issues of culture and competence and attitude and knowledge,” said Wolf. “It focuses on sensitivity to families and includes discussions about balancing safety issues with the psychological devastation that is caused by needlessly shattering families. Even deciding whether abuse and neglect have taken place, and what to do upfront, requires sensitivity and knowledge that the training will address.”
Redleaf and other critics call for changes in reporting and investigations. “They waste resources labeling the wrong families and traumatizing their children by removing them, while children who are really being abused are left unprotected,” said Golden.
Wolf and a team of outside consultants who examined the agency and its reform objectives said that real change within the agency would take another seven to 10 years. “The most difficult thing to get at, that we’re working on right now, is the culture of hostility within the agency towards parents,” said Wolf.
“There is an insensitivity to the bonds between children and their parents. There is a tendency to objectify children and not see them as individuals. Children are seen as objects to be protected in some abstract way.”
Many critics and supporters are quick to add that the current leadership at DCFS is the best hope for the agency, and for the children and families of Illinois. They say that the agency’s director, Jess McDonald, is their most important ally for reforming the organization.
“The leadership has said, `Show us where it works, and we’ll do it,’ ” said Wolf. “The obstacle in the way is that there is no model for a large state that is successful anywhere in the country.”
Meanwhile, the families embroiled in the child-welfare system have been stigmatized by their involvement with DCFS and fear for their children and themselves. Some have lost custody of their children. Many are in debt. Others are working their way through the legal thicket to regain custody or to clear their names. Mary E. still won’t let her children play outside. And Sweitzer spent $15,000 fighting her state’s agency. But both have been lucky in the end, regaining custody and having their cases expunged from state files.
WHAT DCFS IS LOOKING FOR
A DCFS hot-line worker and an agency investigator list some behaviors and conditions they look for that may warrant an investigation of abuse or neglect:
– Spanking of a child other than with an open palm or hand.
– Spanking of a child on body parts other than the bottom.
– Physical punishment of child with objects.
– Bruises, sprains and broken bones on a child.
– Leaving young children unsupervised where they are not within a caregiver’s line of vision.
– Leaving young children unsupervised in a car with keys inside or the engine running.
– Leaving young children in the care of preadolescent sibling or babysitter.
– Leaving children under 13 to supervise younger children for extended periods of time or to prepare more than one meal for them.
– Leaving awake toddlers unsupervised in a different room of the house.
– Leaving children who are not deemed mature (even as old as 15) at home alone, including after school.
– Children playing outside unsupervised for extended periods.
– Drinking by a parent that impairs ability.
– Drug abuse by a parent.
– Poor hygiene in children.
Conditions not listed by case workers as ones they normally look for but that have prompted investigations that eventually led to removal of a child from his or her home:
– Loud quarrels between parents.
– Sexual play by children.
– Genital discharges in young children.
– Breast feeding of children over 3 years of age.
– Extended sharing of bed with parents.
———-
Next week: The 90-year debate between the family preservationists and the child savers.
