Pubdate: Mon, 08 Aug 2005
Source: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (NY)
Copyright: 2005 Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
Contact:  http://www.democratandchronicle.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/614
Author: Richard Wexler
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

USE SAFE, PROVEN WAYS TO KEEP FAMILIES INTACT

A child dies, allegedly abused by a parent. The child was previously known 
to authorities. In fact, it soon becomes clear that the case file had more 
"red flags" than a Soviet May Day parade.

As investigations begin, caseworkers panic. Fearful of having the next such 
case on their watch, they tear far more children from their homes.

Rochester, 2005?

No. New York City, 1996. The child's name was Elisa Izquierdo. And 
Rochester can learn a lot from what New York City did wrong after she died, 
and then what it did right.

The first reaction was panic.

By 1998, the number of children torn from their parents over the course of 
a year had soared 50 percent. But instead of making children safer, deaths 
of children "known to the system" increased by 50 percent.

That's not as surprising as it sounds. When a child "known to the system" 
dies, it's almost always because an overwhelmed, undertrained caseworker 
didn't have time to make a good decision.

A foster-care panic overwhelms workers even more. With so many new cases to 
deal with, caseworkers have even less time to find children in real danger. 
New York City's experience is not unusual.

Similar panics in Illinois and Florida also were followed by increases in 
fatalities.

So New York City reversed course and embraced safe, proven approaches to 
keep families together. It cut the number of children taken from their 
parents in half.

In 2003, a child was twice as likely to be taken from his parents in Monroe 
County as in New York City, after adjusting for child poverty rates. And 
while Monroe County is projecting little change, in New York City, the rate 
of removal continues to fall.

Again, New York City is not alone. Illinois learned from its mistakes and 
now takes away proportionately far fewer children than Monroe County -- and 
independent, court-appointed monitors have found that child safety in 
Illinois has improved.

This, too, is not as surprising as it sounds. Though it is cases like the 
death of A.J Gibson that naturally make headlines, most parents who lose 
their children to foster care are neither brutally abusive nor hopelessly 
addicted.

Far more common are cases in which a family's poverty has been confused 
with neglect. Other cases fall between the extremes, the parent neither all 
victim nor all villain.

But the reason to avoid a foster-care panic is not for the sake of the 
parents. A recent study of 600 foster-care "alumni" found that only 20 
percent are doing well. One-third said they were abused by a foster parent 
or another adult in a foster home. Another study found that even infants 
born with cocaine in their systems developed better when left with birth 
mothers able to care for them than they did in foster care. That means drug 
treatment for a parent is almost always a better choice than foster care 
for her child.

And it means that the reaction to a child-abuse tragedy should never be to 
mindlessly sweep more children into a system that churns out walking 
wounded four times out of five.

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Wexler, a former Rochester-area journalist, is executive director of the 
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (www.nccpr.org) based in 
Alexandria, Va.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom