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Youth
Work in Hurricanes: The Impact: Buildings lost, staff and kids scattered
By Patrick
Boyle, John Kelly, Jennifer Moore, Georgia Siegchrist and Bridget Joyce
The executive
director of the Youth Empowerment Project was trying to hold her agency
together from a Holiday Inn in Houston, where she was staying with
her dog after Hurricane Katrina sent her packing from New Orleans. Melissa Sawyer wanted to
pay her employees, but they were scattered across several states, the
agency's bank was shut down by the storm, she couldn't find all of her
board members, she wasn't sure she could use grant money for the payroll
when no one was working, and she had no paychecks anyway.
"There's
nothing in the policies and procedures to deal with a situation like
this," Sawyer said. "I'm just making this up as I go
along."
Things looked more
upbeat in Omaha, Neb., where the staff and youth
from several New Orleans-area Girls and Boys Town facilities arrived on two
huge buses to find hundreds of cheering kids and youth workers. The
evacuees got clean beds and classrooms, and recreated their programs on
the national campus.
Those are among the
tales from Katrina that show how her impact on youth agencies depended on
the same factors that determined her impact on people: geography, luck
and resources.
Youth-serving
agencies largely heeded government warnings to evacuate as the storm
approached. But the demolition of buildings and scattering of youth,
staff and volunteers across the South left many of those agencies
stripped of anything resembling a youth program.
Now those agencies
face unprecedented challenges for the year ahead and beyond. Many will be
permanently changed; some probably won't survive.
Then it seemed
about to get worse, as many of the same agencies evacuated in late
September when Hurricane Rita headed for Texas.
Big Brothers Big
Sisters of America reported on its website that Katrina "has had a
devastating impact" on its agencies.
"The agency is underwater, and I am currently trying to reach my
staff," Dolores Medina-Whitfield, CEO of the BBBSA Southeast
Louisiana office in New Orleans, wrote to her colleagues.
"We are in a very grim situation."
The Boys &
Girls Clubs of America said 20 of its clubs were damaged, including six
clubs destroyed in Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss., and two destroyed in Mobile, Ala.
For many agencies,
the most significant damage might be not to facilities, but to their
network of youth workers, volunteers and kids. The BBBSA estimated that
more than 3,400 of its Big Brother and Big Sister matches were
"directly impacted" by Katrina.
Many public and private child welfare agencies faced a similar nightmare:
They were left with responsibility for kids whose whereabouts are unknown
and who may never be found.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children said late last month that it had received 3,652 reports of
children separated from caregivers in the wake of Katrina. The center
stressed that some of those children were safely in the hands of other
caregivers; 966 of the cases had already been resolved.
Many of those
children were in towns that escaped the brunt of the storm and were then
flooded by a human surge of evacuees. Youth workers who lived in or fled
to those towns spent their days scurrying to track down their staffs and
their youths, or to help the thousands of children and families that
poured into public buildings and youth agency facilities.
Messages posted on the YWCA's website reflected the mood:
"Our community
is inundated with refugees," wrote Barbara Brister, CEO of YWCA
Alexandria, La. "This is unreal. … Say a prayer for
everyone."
"I am in a
state of shock," wrote Roxann Pedesclaux Johnson, CEO of YWCA
Northwest Louisiana, in Shreveport. "The women break down
and cry constantly, the men are in shock, and the children play, happy to
have new friends. … phones are out, food is coming too slow.
… The people in the shelters are getting tired and impatient."
But there were also
messages of hope, as youth workers and agencies pitched in to help the
communities and each other.
They'll need it. The ordeal wasn't just a matter of getting through a
couple of hellish weeks. "This is not just an emergency. The needs
of homeless and displaced youth will increase over the next few
months," said Theresa Tod, executive director of the Texas Network
of Youth Services.
Ironically, the
National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth had
planned to hold its annual conference in New Orleans in late October. The
conference has been moved to Kansas City.
Illustrating how
long it will be until the area approaches normalcy, Tulane University in New Orleans bowed out of hosting the
Gulf-South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement – which
was scheduled for March 2006.
The Response:
Youth agencies charge into relief
Before Hurricane Katrina's assault on the South, the YMCA in Gonzales, La., didn't host after-school
programs. But when a few thousand hurricane evacuees camp outside your
door, the next thing you know, you're running basketball games for the
kids every afternoon and movies for the families at night.
And "we're
open 24/7 now, because we have a National Guard unit living in our
building," said Chris Hester, executive director of the YMCA at Lamar-Dixon Expo Center.
Similar scenes
played out across the South last month as youth-serving agencies played a
central role in the region's recovery effort, giving countless thousands
of children, families and relief workers everything from food, shelter
and medical care to social services, emotional support and recreation.
"The youth
organizations are stretching their mandates to rise to what needs to be
done," said Carl Triplehorn, an emergency education specialist
dispatched to the South by Save the Children to work with schools and
youth groups. "This will be a very good thing for youth work,
because it is pushing people beyond their limits."
Just about any
youth program that had a recreation center, group home or cabins still
standing was drafted into service.
The YMCA of Baton Rouge, La., served as a gathering place for up to 20
groups, including the National Guard, the FBI, sheriffs' departments and
teachers from out of town, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "I just got off the
phone with EPA," Chief Operating Officer Tim Bergstresser said one
night. "They've got 50 ladies they want to shower."
At Lake Charles in southwest Louisiana, about 100 mentally and
physically disabled adults from a residential home, along with their
staff, moved into a camp run by an affiliate of Camp Fire USA. They camp had been closed
for the season; now it scurried to house evacuees through October.
The Clyde Austin
4-H Center in Greenville, Tenn., canceled a youth camp and
set up cots to take in more than 100 evacuees – and hosted a
wedding for two of them, whose New Orleans nuptials were wiped out by
Katrina.
Meanwhile,
out-of-school-time programs popped up all over the Gulf Coast region, even though in many
cases, there wasn't a school any more. About one-third of the people in
shelters soon after the hurricane were children, the director of
emergency services for the Central Mississippi Red Cross told ABC News.
"People are
living in shelters that are just large gyms filled with masses of people
on cots, with no privacy," said Triplehorn of Save the Children.
"There's no real place for children to play. It's a very difficult
environment for children."
One woman who has run
child development programs for the military set up instant youth programs
at shelters in several towns, using donated balls and books – then
shut them down as the shelters emptied, moving on to open others
elsewhere.
The Boys &
Girls Clubs of America affiliate in Baton Rouge worked with the local Big
Buddy mentoring program to provide academic help and recreation in two
schools that were created to handle displaced youth. The BGCA staff
members gave the teachers supplies, served as teachers' aides and taught
some lessons using academic enrichment materials from their after-school
programs, said Pat VanBerkleo, executive director of the Boys & Girls
Clubs of Greater Baton Rouge.
When Boy Scout
council leaders noticed growing restlessness among kids and their parents
at a shelter in Tuscaloosa, Ala., they opened up their nearby Scout camp
and created a regular program of activities like volleyball, canoeing and
barbecues.
Youth pitched in to help in what seemed to be record numbers, turning the
Katrina relief effort into perhaps the largest civic engagement project
in the nation's history.
Kids in just about
every American community drew attention for collecting money, clothes and
supplies for hurricane victims. In Charleston, S.C., more than three
dozen teen moms at the Florence Crittenton Programs thought up and ran a
donation drive, boosted by their own media campaign. The girls loaded a
truck with more than 100 care packages, then put together first-aid kits
for other girls' facilities.
Do Something, the New
York-based nonprofit that encourages and supports youth activism,
launched a drive to get kids around the country to put together backpacks
with school supplies, healthy snacks and personal-care items.
Next come more
complicated efforts that will extend for months and years ahead.
Youth-serving agencies are figuring out how to rebuild not only their own
programs, but much of the region as well.
YouthBuild Aims
to Rebuild
A program heralded
for building homes while rebuilding the lives of youth now has to rebuild
itself in much of the Gulf Coast.
"The New Orleans program, for the moment, does not exist," said
YouthBuild USA spokeswoman Anne Leslie.
In the days
immediately following hurricane Katrina and ensuing flood, YouthBuild
USA, which supports agencies funded under the federal YouthBuild program,
scurried to secure funding for the seven sites affected by Katrina. The
site in New Orleans, for instance, will have to be completely
resurrected, while the Baton Rouge, La., site needs $500,000 to refurbish
houses that could shelter evacuees.
In the long term,
YouthBuild USA President Dorothy Stoneman sees a larger role for her
organization in the rebuilding process. She's been talking with the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Corporation for
National and Community Service about funding a larger Katrina-related
project. The choices, Leslie said:
• Take 2,500
displaced youth from the affected area and assign them to YouthBuild
sites around the country. "We can help them continue their education,
get counseling, while also receiving construction training … and
then send them back home with skills they could use to help with
rebuilding," Leslie said.
•
"Select one community, probably a rural community, since they have
largely been ignored down there in the media, and focus on rebuilding
that. Send YouthBuild crews to those sites we choose; do something like
1,000 homes in 1,000 days."
Each plan has its
challenges. For the first, said Leslie, finding room and board is the
biggest obstacle. The second plan would carry greater risks, with
YouthBuild participants being dispatched to a relatively unstable area
where disease might be a risk.
CIS Helps Kids
Start School
The approximately
1,200 children evacuated to Austin, Texas, and its immediate surroundings
because of Katrina put tremendous pressure on the local schools and their
services, such as after-school programming. Workers with Communities in
Schools (CIS) have been helping to enroll the youths and screen them for
special needs, said Vanessa Rhoades, spokeswoman for CIS of Central
Texas.
And because CIS was
already running programs at five of the seven schools in which evacuee
children are enrolling, Rhoades said CIS expects enrollment in those
programs to grow.
The local agency,
part of a national network of CIS programs that forges partnerships with
schools, has also been coordinating donations from nonprofits around the
country. One of them is Encompass, a youth development organization in
the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles, which serves 13- to
19-year-olds. They've been collecting donations of supplies from the
community and shipping them off. One popular item: clothes, especially
large T-shirts.
"Everyone else
was raising money to send to the Red Cross – we wanted to do
something more youth-specific," Executive Director Lori Nelson
explained in an e-mail.
"They don't
have anything," Rhoades said of the hurricane evacuees in Texas.
"They don't have paper to take notes."
Boy Scouts
Relieve Boredom
Although Katrina
evacuees are grateful to get to shelters that have been set up in towns
and cities throughout the South, a problem soon becomes apparent: They
have nothing to do. Boy Scout leaders delivering clothes and ice to a
shelter in Tuscaloosa, Ala., noticed that the kids and families were
growing restless, according to the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).
So they offered the use of their 500-acre Camp Horne, just a few miles
away, the BSA said. It said local churches provide buses and vans to take
shelter families to the camp on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.
The organization said the activities include volleyball and canoeing. It
was unclear how long the camp would continue, as more families moved from
the shelter into local apartments and houses.
The Future:
Agencies Look to Rebuild
"How do you
manage a caseload … that's absent?"
That question, from
Marketa Garner-Gautreau, assistant secretary for Louisiana's Office of
Community Services, hits at one of the central dilemmas facing
youth-serving agencies that try to recover from Hurricane Katrina.
The storm scattered
thousands of youth workers and volunteers, wrecked many of their homes
and their agencies' facilities, and, according to the U.S. Department of
Education, destroyed or damaged the homes and schools of 372,000
children.
Those factors have created an unprecedented challenge for both the near
and distant future.
"Our first
concern has been to get the staffers back on their feet so they can reach
out to the community," said YMCA of the USA spokesman Arnie Collins.
"There are staffers down there who lost their homes and have only
the clothes that they're wearing."
Youth programs
around the country have offered to temporarily hire workers displaced by
the storm. The Boys & Girls Clubs of America said it will create a
repository of nationwide job information for employees whose agencies or
homes were wrecked by the storm.
Nevertheless, Gulf
Coast youth agencies need much of their staff to come home when they can.
If too many people settle elsewhere, those agencies will find themselves
competing with other industries – not the least of which will be
the schools – for workers.
In an effort to
avoid such a manpower crisis, some groups are exploring how to provide
temporary housing for displaced staff. Last month the YMCA was
considering "providing some sort of housing down there for Y
staffers who have lost their homes,"
Collins said. The
ideas included trailers, recreational vehicles and houseboats.
Girls and Boys Town (GBT) hoped to move some displaced youth and staff
back to the Gulf Coast region from its Omaha, Neb., headquarters near the
end of September, but "the challenge there is going to be staff
housing," said Dan Daly, associate executive director of youth care.
Federal officials
have discussed setting up temporary housing sites for people who have
essential jobs, and Daly said GBT is "trying to make sure child care
and meeting these kids' needs is somewhere on that list."
But agencies also
have to keep their fingers crossed that their volunteers and kids return
home soon, as well. Otherwise, they'll have to rebuild their volunteer
and client bases almost from scratch.
Big Brothers Big
Sisters of America tried to hold its network together by tracking down
many of its adult mentors ("bigs") and its youth
("littles") and reconnecting them, at least by phone. It set up
a web service and toll-free number to help bigs and littles find each
other.
For many agencies,
the key to solving some of these dilemmas lies in the schools.
"We've been told by people in Orleans Parish that they will not have
school this academic year," said Daly of GBT.
That's bad news: It
would leave many communities with fewer children, fewer places for the existing
youth to officially gather, and fewer venues to conduct their programs.
For instance, the
town of Bogalusa in southeast Louisiana was hit especially hard, and the
Camp Fire USA website says, "There is a lot of uncertainty as to
when they [the Camp Fire council] could expect to provide programming,
since they do so via the schools."
On the other hand,
in places that took in thousands of refugees, the schools are
overflowing, and new schools have suddenly opened in empty buildings.
That has created a massive increase in the need for out-of-school
activities.
So far, however,
youth development and other enrichment activities often haven't even
risen to the point of afterthoughts for most government agencies.
"The youth
issue is being dropped, as far as looking at what are kids doing if
they're not in school," said Carl Triplehorn, an emergency education
specialist for Save the Children, who is helping schools and youth
agencies in the damaged areas. "In this situation, out-of-school
activities are not a luxury; they are a necessity."
Linda Spears,
spokeswoman for the Child Welfare League of America, sees lots of new
issues ahead for child welfare agencies as they work both with people who
remain displaced and those who return home.
"The long-term
consequence is there will be more stress-related youth and family
problems, and we're starting to think about that now," Spears said.
Child Welfare:
An Agency Flees
When the Bethlehem
Children's Center in New Orleans had to evacuate its children and staff
to Baton Rouge, La., Katherine Kerr drove there from Austin, Texas, for
what she thought would be good publicity.
"I thought it
would make for a feel-good story," said Kerr, vice president of
public relations for Lutheran Social Services of the South (LSS), which runs
the center.
When the levees in
New Orleans broke, destroying the center, her job suddenly got a lot more
serious. Kerr had to help plan a move for the 45 youth, ages 5 to 17, in
Bethlehem's care.
She found a refuge
at the Bokenkamp Center, one of LSS' four children's homes in Texas.
Based in Corpus Christi, the home was in the midst of a $1.5 million
expansion and had two new dormitories that were nearly completed. The
plan was to put the children in the new dorms, find housing for the 10
Bethlehem staff members who made the trip, and go from there.
"But you don't
just move 45 kids in foster care across state lines," Kerr said.
"We had to get permission from Texas to move them. We're licensed to
serve 60 kids [at Bokenkamp], so we had to get permission to increase
capacity. And of course, we had to get permission from Louisiana to take
their kids across state lines."
"I was making
calls on landlines" from Baton Rouge, she said. "You could dial
30 times in a row and not get through. It was insane."
The Austin staff
had better luck with the Texas governor's office, which said to do
whatever was necessary to accommodate the New Orleans kids.
How long they will
have to stay is hard to say. "It will probably take us a year and $3
million to rebuild the center," Kerr said. "They will stay at
Bokenkamp while we rebuild."
But just when the
hard part looked to be over, it was moving time again. As Hurricane Rita
approached in late September, LSS had to at least temporarily evacuate
the Bokenkamp Center to a church camp in Gonzales, Texas.
"The last
thing we wanted to do was move these children and the staff yet
again," said LSS Chief Executive Officer Kurt Senske.
The charity also
evacuated its home in Katy, near Houston, along with 23
"primary medical needs" foster children from along the Gulf Coast.
Youth Programs
Start in Disaster Areas
At a time when most
youth-serving programs in areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina were shut
down, Paige Ellison decided to start a few.
Ellison took a
leave of absence from her pharmaceutical company to create Project
K.I.D., which establishes and runs youth programs at shelters operated by
the Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The
programs keep kids busy, using volunteer staff and donated supplies, such
as toys and books.
Talk about doing
youth work on the fly: As of mid-September, Ellison's project didn't even
officially exist. "I'm filing the paperwork to incorporate
tomorrow," she said.
She did, however,
have a hastily crafted website: www.project-kid.org.
"We do a lot
of big muscle play, a lot of balls, Hula Hoops and jump ropes," she
said. There are also "quieter activities: books, puzzles, coloring,
finger painting."
Her program in Ocean Springs, Miss., is in a
"luxurious" setting by current standards, she said: an
abandoned department store.
Her biggest problem has been finding and keeping enough volunteers, as
people keep moving from place to place. "We've come in greater and
greater demand with FEMA – greater demand than I can meet right
now," she said.
To help, she uses
some older teens as volunteer staff for younger kids.
Ellison, an account
manager for GlaxoSmithKline, said she ran child development programs for
the military. Her church, Daphne United Methodist Church in Daphne, Ala., serves as the "fiscal
agent" for the project, according to the project's website.
As the number of families and potential volunteers dwindled at shelters,
Ellison closed some programs and moved to other areas of need.
It'll be good news
when her program fades. The website says: "Project: K.I.D does not,
however, seek to be a long-term provider of child care in devastated
areas. Our presence at any site will last only as long as there is clear
need for our services."
Teen Mothers Do
Youth Work
A teen mother
living in a group home might understandably think she has a tough life
– until she sees what the Katrina hurricane victims are going
through.
So the 40 parenting
teens at the Florence Crittenton Programs in Charleston, S.C., launched their own youth
development initiative. The 12- to 19-year-olds in the agency's
residential and day programs created "Mothers Helping Mothers"
to send supplies to hurricane victims.
To get donations,
they sent out e-mails throughout the community, and wrote and sent press
releases to the local news media, said Executive Director Andrea Thomas.
In the first week,
Thomas said, the girls put together 110 baskets of personal care items.
She said the girls loaded them onto a truck that a local United Methodist Church was using to take relief
supplies to Houston.
Next, the girls put
together first-aid kits, Thomas said. "They want it to go to other
girls' homes," she said.
Girls and Boys
Town Hits the Road (BLUE FONT)
It's one thing to
suddenly move from New Orleans to, say, Houston. Imagine waking up in
Omaha.
That's where more than 60 youth, youth workers and family members landed
after 10-day journeys to the main national campus of Girls and Boys Town
(GBT).
While much has been
made about why some people and organizations didn't evacuate before
Katrina hit, GBT evacuated relatively smoothly because it was old hat:
This marked the third time in two years that its New Orleans area
facilities have bugged out because of hurricane and flood warnings, said
Dan Daly, associate executive director of youth care.
"We're pretty good at this by now," he said.
What they're not
used to is taking everyone all the way to Nebraska, which poses new
challenges for the youth, the staff and the organization, both now and in
the immediate future.
GBT had – and
maybe still has – four group homes and two shelters in and around
New Orleans. They are staff-secure facilities with comprehensive services
for youth placed by the state's child welfare and youth corrections
agencies.
When state officials
urged people to leave the area before the storm hit, GBT contacted the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which provided two large
buses. Onto those buses climbed not only 35 kids, but about 21 staff
members and nine of their children.
Some of the youths
wanted to leave the GBT facilities to be with their own families, Daly
said, but only one boy did.
The buses pulled out two days ahead of the storm and drove to a Baton
Rouge hotel that GBT has used during previous evacuations. They arrived
only to find that "they had given our space away," Daly said.
He can laugh about
it now, saying "Maybe we've got to put down a deposit."
That was one of several wrinkles that led the buses to San Antonio, where
GBT has other facilities, Daly said. He said those facilities have a
relationship with a church that provided an empty building where the kids
and adults stayed. National GBT officials met them there, Daly said.
Soon it was off to
Dallas, where they stayed in a hotel. Then Omaha.
There, the buses
were met with waving crowds and open arms, 10 days after leaving New Orleans. Two of the 71 homes on the
campus were empty and ready to accommodate many of the evacuees, Daly
said. GBT converted two other buildings for their use, as well.
By evacuating the
kids and staff together, Daly said, GBT has been able to provide some
stability for the youth and continue providing services that they're used
to.
Aside from bringing
in enough extra staff, he said, "the biggest administrative
challenge is that we're dealing with a group of kids and staff who would
prefer not to be here."
"Everybody's
been great," he said. But GBT has worked hard to help the youth and
staff find their families, who "are spread all over the South."
The youth who fled
a GBT facility for his family didn't find them, Daly said. He stayed in
the Houston Astrodome for a while, then was on his way to the GBT campus
in Omaha.
Running Her
Agency by Long Distance
As she sat in a Houston hotel, the executive
director of the Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) wasn't sure she was
allowed to do some of what she's been doing to keep her agency together.
With her staff,
board of directors and youth clients scattered around the country,
Melissa Sawyer has been paying workers who aren't working, tapping into
grant money that's intended to produce results for kids who aren't being
served, and getting approval from board members who can't even get on the
phone at the same time.
"It's a time
when you don't really want to be running an organization," Sawyer
said.
YEP, based in New Orleans, provides case management
to help adjudicated youth return to their communities. "Our kids and
families – they were the people who were trying to hunker
down" in their homes, she said.
As for YEP's staff
of five, Sawyer said they "just kind of took off to where they could
make it." Some left before the storm; some stayed. One man, she
said, "ended up having to float out of his house and made it Baton Rouge." Others ended up in Texas; one is in California.
Sawyer landed at a
Holiday Inn in Houston, where hurricane evacuees
could stay for free for two weeks, and where she could take her dog.
She considered
trekking to the Houston Astrodome to help other evacuees, but admits that
"for the first few days, I was so shaken up by all of this that I
couldn't get down there. I felt like I wasn't even able to help myself,
let alone someone else."
Colleagues from other New Orleans social services
organizations later told her that they went to the Astrodome but weren't
allowed in.
Sawyer has spent
days and nights "trying to pay my staff as long as possible to make
sure people's lives aren't destroyed." One wrinkle: "Three of
our people didn't even have direct deposit," she said. Here's what
that little detail meant: Sawyer didn't have paychecks with her. It took
her a week to reach the agency's bank. The bank sent checks to the woman
who handles YEP's payroll. That woman was at the home of her parents, who
didn't have the right computer software. The woman wrote the checks by
hand and sent them by Fed Ex to Sawyer at the hotel, who shipped them
out. "It's just an absolute fiasco," she said.
She also called her
local funders. "They've given us money for general operating
support, but they also want to see outcomes," she said. "Am I
allowed to use that money for payroll?"
The funders told
her "to just keep going."
That she did, in a
way the funders didn't intend: As Hurricane Rita approached in late
September, Sawyer's hotel was evacuated.
By the time YEP's
staff returns home, there's no telling whether any of their youth clients
will be around, or whether YEP will have an office. Despite the looting
in the city, Sawyer is hopeful that people didn't bother hauling away the
office computers, because there was no electricity.
"I heard
people went in, took a bunch of those big water jugs" from some
buildings, she said. "That's fine by me. I'm glad people have
water."
Juvenile
Justice: Rehab on Hold
Things were finally
changing in Louisiana's juvenile justice system,
and it all started with Bridge City Center for Youth, which peers at New Orleans from across the Mississippi River.
Overcrowding and
violence had long plagued the state's juvenile justice facilities when
Gov. Kathleen Blanco took office in January 2004. Envisioning a wholesale
reform, she brought in consultants to shape the Bridge City site in the mold of the
highly touted Missouri model.
But plans for a
more rehabilitative approach are now on hold, as the area and its systems
struggle to rebuild. Bridge City incurred only minor damage, including a
torn roof and downed fences. But because it is the closest facility to
the ravaged New Orleans area, officials say, it will be a while before
youth set foot in Bridge City again.
The good news is
that the 70 youth housed there when Katrina struck are fine. They were
evacuated three days before the storm to Jetson, a juvenile facility in
Baton Rouge, La. Jetson can accommodate all of Bridge City's youth, said
Catherine Heitman, communications director for the state's Office of
Youth Development (OYD).
"We have
disaster plans in place," Heitman said. "We know where the
youth are to be moved. It's just a matter of executing those plans as
soon as possible."
Detention centers
in the affected areas also evacuated some 250 youths to Jetson, although
more permanent plans for those youths were less settled.
OYD now faces
several challenges in dealing with kids whose homes, and possibly
families, are gone.
"Youth are
very concerned, and the staff is responding to that," said Heitman.
As the Gulf Coast struggled to recover, OYD relied on the Red Cross
system to track down family members of the Bridge City kids.
Another challenge
is that many of OYD's adjudicated wards will be up for release before the
situation stabilizes along the Gulf Coast.
And yet another
problem: Of those in detention awaiting trial, about 50 were admitted
right before the hurricane hit; their records were washed away. So
there's no paper trail explaining why each one is locked up. "These
kids could have not gone to school or missed class – or they could
have committed armed robbery," OYD Deputy Secretary Simon Gonsoulin
told the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
As the courts
opened in mid-September, lawyers began to appeal to Orleans Parish
Juvenile Judge Mark Doherty to release pre-adjudicated youth to their
families.
"OYD did a
really good job locating parents," says David Utter, director of the
Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana. "Hopefully, the judge will
let these kids go home."
Camps Become
Shelters
Camp Fire USA. 4-H.
Faith-based. If any organization had a camp that was still standing after
Katrina, it was probably drafted to house evacuees.
The American Camp
Association (ACA) reports that 58 of its member camps in 10 states were
pressed into service.
A Camp Fire program in Lake Charles, in southwest Louisiana, took in
about 100 mentally and physically disabled adults and the staff from a
residential facility called Rest Care, according to the national office.
It said the camp was also trying to find and bring in the children of the
Rest Care staff.
Such hospitality
raises new issues for many of the facilities. At Lake Charles, the
council sought donations to help fix up one of the camp's roads, so that
vans could come and go with the Rest Care residents.
For all the camps,
directors had to face the fact that "they may or may not be
reimbursed for what they're providing," said Wanda DeWaard of the
Heart of the South region of the ACA. "The food, the electricity and
the water are going to add up."
Government and such groups as the Red Cross are helping with costs, but
it's not clear how far they'll go. And DeWaard said the camps are being
told they can expect to house hurricane refugees for two to three months.
"Everybody was
happy to jump and provide," she said, "but now everybody is
asking: How do we sustain this?"
A YMCA Opens Its
Doors
When the Red Cross
set up a shelter for Katrina evacuees at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in
Gonzales, La., the world inside the local YMCA turned upside down.
The Y is on the
ground floor of the expo center – and suddenly, several thousand
men, women and children were camped outside its doors.
What's more, relief workers from miles around were beating a path to
those same doors, because the Y had so much of what was in short supply:
Showers. Working phones. Cots. Clean places for people to hold meetings
or just take a break.
The Y, about 15 miles south of Baton Rouge, is primarily a
membership health club. Soon after the evacuees arrived, however, it
began running recreation and academic enrichment programs for the kids
every afternoon. The youth have been divided into two large groups,
rotating through the club in one-hour sessions, Hester said. One group
does homework and gets tutoring, while the other "is burning some
energy" through such activities as basketball, indoor soccer,
parachute games and jump rope.
The Y has run
several movie nights, projecting favorites such as "The
Incredibles" on a wall. There's popcorn, soda and candy. Evacuees
and relief workers also get to use the club. "Some play basketball,
some come and work out on the equipment, some sit in the bleachers and
socialize," said Executive Director Chris Hester. "I think it's
therapeutic for a lot of parents to have their kids somewhere safe, so
they can put their minds on something else."
Relief workers came
from as far away as New Orleans (about 50 miles southeast) just to take
showers. The 35 members of the National Guard who are staying on cots
there have "taken over our conference room, our kitchen and a couple
of offices," Hester said.
Two weeks after
Katrina, Hester estimated that 2,000 evacuees and 1,200 relief workers
had used his Y. "It's been a challenge to balance our services for
paying members and also the services we're trying to provide for the
evacuees," Hester said.
Because the local
school population has suddenly grown with the influx of children, so has
enrollment in after-school programs that the Y runs at several schools.
The same is true of Ys in other areas that are taking in evacuees.
Doing all of this
takes more manpower. Volunteers and paid staff have come from the
community and from other Ys, Hester said. Fourteen came for several days
from a Y in Ashland, Ky. Particularly useful, Hester said, was that
"a couple were nurses." Other Ys have sent supplies.
Some of the YMCA
staff also went into the Red Cross shelter to serve meals and provide
other help, Hester said. While the demands on the Y will recede somewhat
as evacuees return home or settle somewhere else, the facility will need
to run at a higher level for quite some time.
Many of the evacuee
children now attend a new school created at a nearby church. They're
bused back to the Y each day for after-school activities, Hester said.
"We've been
told [by the Red Cross] to plan in 90-day blocks," he said. "So
we know we'll have evacuees out there [in the expo center] until
mid-November."
Child Welfare:
The System
Not surprisingly,
the Louisiana child welfare system was no match for Katrina.
"They're really scrambling," said Frank Eckles, executive director
of the International Child and Youth Care Network, based in College
Station, Texas.
The woman running
the system is inclined to agree. "We're struggling greatly with
determining what is a short-term and long-term goal here," said
Marketa Garner-Gautreau, assistant secretary for the Office of Community
Services within the state's Department of Social Services.
The main long-term
concerns will be finding space for youth in residential centers,
accounting for displaced youth in foster and kinship care, and
reconnecting with missing staff members.
The nine
residential child welfare centers in the affected area were evacuated
before the storm. But the youth are now squeezed into facilities that
weren't meant to hold them. Catholic Charities' Southern Louisiana
residential center moved its 84 kids to its northern center. "But
[that building] can't handle those kids for long," Garner-Gautreau
said.
She said it will be
difficult to move youth in the residential centers into other parts of
the child welfare system. "They are typically those with behavior
disorders, or who are unruly," she said. "Most are teens, and
all are among the hardest to place."
Youth in foster and kinship care might be harder to manage. Many aren't
even in the state any more, and many of their caseworkers are dealing
with their own personal crises.
"I guess the
task that's most daunting is figuring out how to deploy staff to the
affected areas, and what to do then," Garner-Gautreau said.
Her office
activated a toll-free number for foster parents, youth and dislocated
child welfare staff to check in. One of the major concerns is ensuring
that youth who need medication get it.
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Katrina Resources
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A selected listed
of youth-related agencies and initiatives seeking and offering help.
American
Camp Association (ACA)
www.acacamps.org
Information for and about camps involved in the disaster and relief
efforts, including contact information for ACA regions with camps
serving as evacuation sites, and a list of considerations – such
as insurance coverage – for camps hosting evacuees.
Big
Brothers Big Sisters of America
www.bbbsa.org
Home page includes "Katrina's Effect" button that links to a
form to donate money or volunteer services, and to a way for
"bigs" and "littles" from the affected areas to
find and contact each other.
Boys
& Girls Clubs of America
www.bgca.org
Offers a summary of damage to clubs, stories of how clubs and youth are
helping hurricane victims, and advice for helping kids cope with
disaster.
Boy
Scouts of America
www.goodturnforamerica.org/katrina/index.htmlForms
on the "Hurricane Katrina Recovery" pages allow units to seek
or offer assistance to scouting offices in affected areas. A
"local council locator" enables users to find troop relief efforts
in their communities, and another link lets visitors make financial
donations.
Camp Fire
USA
www.campfireusa.org
Needs include volunteers, money and building supplies to repair
facilities for both youth and evacuees. The site lists contact
information and specific requests for hurricane-affected councils.
Campaign
for Youth
www.nyec.org/CFY-katrinal.pdf
The campaign calls on youth-serving agencies to "unite, set aside
turf and blend their expertise," while restoring hope and promise
to young people in the Gulf region. Includes recommendations and action
plans for youth development efforts in affected areas.
Child
Welfare League of America
www.cwla.org/katrina
Website includes updates about member agencies in stricken states, and
member agencies can log on to a disaster relief bulletin board. Also
has information about the Katrina Kids Fund, which provides immediate
support to children and families served by the child welfare system,
and about an upcoming celebrity auction for Katrina relief.
Coalition
on Human Needs
www.chn.org/issues/katrina/index2.html
Information on access to Medicaid, food stamps, Head Start,
unemployment benefits and other services for people displaced by the
storm.
Connect
for Kids
www.connectforkids.org/node/3372
Resources on policies developed by government agencies to help the
displaced; donating, volunteering, and receiving help from various
nonprofit agencies; and support for kids and families dealing with
post-hurricane trauma.
Food
Research and Action Center
www.frac.org
Details on federal hunger and nutrition assistance programs for
Hurricane Katrina victims, including food stamps, National School
Lunch, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, Summer Food Service and
WIC.
Girl
Scouts of the USA
www.girlscouts.org
Lists requests for help from Girl Scout councils in hurricane-affected
areas. Needs include duffle bags, gift cards from national retail
chains, children's books and games, and cash.
Government
Services
www.hhs.gov/katrina/index.html
A comprehensive guide to health, safety and other government services
from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Hope
Venture Grants
www.youthventure.org
MTV and Youth Venture are offering Hope Venture grants of up to $1,000
to youths who wish to start an organization, club or business to help
people affected by Katrina. Grants are available to groups of two or
more people, ages 13 to 20, who submit plans for immediate relief
efforts or long-term community projects.
Hurricane
Katrina LGBT Relief Fund
www.nyacyouth.org
Links to a secure donation site set up by the National Youth Advocacy
Coalition to benefit lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth and
their families in the region. The site includes links to partner
agencies assisting in LGBT hurricane relief efforts.
Katrina's
Kids
www.katrinaskidsusa.org
Web portal set up by America's Promise-The Alliance for Youth to steer
people to mentoring, after-school, children's health and other programs
seeking money, supplies and volunteers.
National
Foster Parent Association
www.NFPAinc.org
Contact information and donation requests from local foster parent
associations coordinating donations for victims, and links to sites
that offer information on the educational needs of displaced children
and housing for displaced families.
National
Youth Court Center
www.youthcourt.net
Accepting donations to help National Youth Court Center colleagues who
have lost homes and workplaces in the hurricane region.
Scholarship
America
www.scholarshipamerica.org
Donations designated "Disaster Relief Fund" will provide
assistance to low-income youth attending institutions in Alabama,
Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi counties that are declared federal
disaster areas.
We've Got
Your Back
www.dosomething.org
An initiative urging kids to fill backpacks with school supplies,
nonperishable food and personal care items and send them to a
distribution location in Houston – and to mobilize other kids at
their schools to do the same.
Youth
Service America
www.ysa.org
Lists organizations involved in the relief effort, and provides project
planning tools and resources, including a downloadable project planning
toolkit, to help youth set up and carry out relief efforts.
YMCA
of the USA
www.ymca.net
Seeks donations to help rehabilitate YMCAs damaged by the hurricane.
YWCA USA
www.ywca.org
Posts messages from YWCAs in the hurricane area, collects donations for
Ys, and offers help for victims through the YWCA.
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New
Homes for Foster Care’s Old Folks
California
serves as a lab for transitional living innovations by nonprofits,
churches, businesses and government agencies.
By Martha Shirk
After a day of
hustling between college classes and two jobs, 19-year-old Sean
Dachtler is ready to fall into bed in his neatly kept apartment.
Many emancipated
foster youth don't have that luxury. "I know a lot of kids who
ended up couch surfing and not knowing where they were going to sleep
the next night," Dachtler says.
Housing the
estimated 20,000 young people who age out of foster care each year is a
struggle in communities around the country, but no where is that
struggle more urgent than in California – home to one-fifth of
the nation's emancipated foster youth. So it is no surprise that
California government agencies, nonprofits, businesses and faith-based
groups have developed innovative approaches to help youths like
Dachtler – approaches that suggest ways for other states to
finance more housing options for youth transitioning from foster care
or juvenile justice programs.
Dachtler is one
of 32 emancipated foster youths who live in a supportive housing
program run by Rising Tide Communities, a partnership of Orange County
business leaders, the Orangewood Children's Foundation and Mariners
Church.
At a time when
foster youth advocates believe that up to half of the youth who age out
of foster care become homeless within 18 months, California serves as
the most glaring example of the challenges they face. A 2002 study by
the California
Department of
Social Services concluded that 65 percent of the 4,355 foster youth who
aged out in the previous year lacked stable housing. The National
Low-Income Housing Coalition ranks California as the "least
affordable" state, with an hourly wage of $16.88 needed to afford
a one-bedroom apartment. Compounding the problem is that youth here are
generally discharged from foster care at 18, while youth in most other
large states can remain in foster care until they're older and more
likely to be self-sufficient.
Things seem
likely to get worse. "We're seeing an increasing proportion of
adolescents in foster care, which means we're likely to see more
emancipating," notes Michele Byrnes, director of Honoring
Emancipated Youth (HEY) in San Francisco, a project of United Way.
"Many of them are children who have been raised by the child
welfare system and have not been prepared to live on their own."
The best
transitional living programs combine subsidized housing with case
management and life-skills training, says Roxana Torrico of the Child
Welfare League of America, who recently completed a study of housing
options for emancipated foster youth. "A lot of these young people
are just not prepared to live on their own," she said. "They
don't understand that they need to respect their neighbors or pay their
rent on time. To help them succeed, a program has to meet them where
they are. It's also really important to help connect them with the
community, because eventually they won't have a case manager."
Here are snapshots of two highly lauded California programs that have
taken differing approaches to the problem: Rising Tide Communities, in
Santa Ana, and First Place Fund for Youth, in Oakland.
Rising Tide
In 1998, John
Pentz, a shopping center developer in Newport Beach, was inspired by a
motivational speaker who challenged successful Christians to use their
wealth as "venture capital" for new social ministries. Over
the next year, Pentz brought together five other successful businessmen
and a professional facilitator for monthly discussions about Orange
County's unmet social needs. They dubbed themselves the Rising Tide
Guys.
The group settled
on helping youth transition from foster care. "We very quickly
focused on their need for housing," recalls Dennis Sweeney,
chairman of the Rising Tide Joint Venture Board. "They had a lot
of problems, but it was hard to figure out how they'd work on them
without a roof over their heads."
The men decided
to put up the down payment to buy an apartment complex. "The idea
was that our equity would get paid back with cash flow, and we could
then use it to purchase subsequent apartment complexes," Sweeney
says. They formed a special-purpose nonprofit organization, the Tustin
Affordable Housing Corp., to purchase a property.
They knew that
providing housing wouldn't be enough. "We realized that we needed
to not only provide housing, but help them find jobs, finish school,
get counseling – basically provide a support network that would
help them take whatever steps they needed to take to achieve
independence," Sweeney says.
They recruited
the Orangewood Children's Foundation, which has funded foster
care-related programs since 1981, to design the support services.
The foundation's
executive director, Gene Howard, was dazzled by the proposal. "So
many programs fail because there's no continuing funding, and here were
these very successful businessmen with a business plan for a program
that would be sustainable," he says.
The businessmen
also secured an agreement from their church, the 10,000-member Mariners
Church in Newport Beach, to provide mentors.
Armies of
attorneys and accountants spent months putting together the deal. The
businessmen put up the down payment on the 33-year-old Flanders Pointe
complex in Tustin; the rest of the $5 million purchase price, plus
about $500,000 in closing costs, was financed with tax-exempt revenue
bonds. The bonds require the complex to rent three-quarters of the 80
units to low-income residents for 30 years. Eight of the units are
reserved for emancipated foster youth.
They didn't stop
there. Less than two years later, the businessmen formed the Garden
Grove Housing Corp. to acquire Orange Tree Apartments, an 82-unit
complex in Garden Grove. The Samueli Foundation donated $650,000 for
the bulk of the down payment, with the rest of the $7 million purchase
price again financed by tax-exempt revenue bonds. Again, eight of the
units were reserved for emancipated foster youth.
In both complexes,
pairs of youth share furnished one-bedroom units. Their rent payments
increase gradually over nine months, maxing out at $350 for each youth.
(The market rate is $1,000 per apartment.) When a youth pays his rent
on time, $50 is put into an escrow account that he receives when he
leaves the program. Each resident can also receive $50 a month in a
savings match.
A resident
manager with counseling credentials organizes social events, mediates
roommate disputes and conducts twice-monthly housekeeping inspections.
Each youth has a case manager at the foundation and a mentor, usually
from Mariners Church. The youths are encouraged to participate in Young
Life, a Christian youth group.
The program costs
about $450,000 a year, or about $14,062 per resident. Income from the
properties subsidizes about half the cost. Rising Tide expects the
program to become self-supporting over the next few years, as rates
rise in the units that rent to the public.
The support
services are continually evolving. Mental health services were beefed
up as the residents' emotional problems, particularly anxiety and
depression, became more apparent. Figuring out what kind of
relationships to have with their family members is difficult for many.
And personal budgeting is a problem for almost all of them. "Many
have never had cash before, and they don't have the self-discipline to
defer gratification," says Linda Levshin, the housing program's
executive director.
The residents who do best are those who tried to make it on their own
for a while without much success. "They've been out there and seen
how tough it is, and now they're ready to commit to our
community," says Levshin. Youth can stay in the program for two
years, or until they turn 21.
Except for a few
months when he tried out another program, Dachtler has been part of
Rising Tide since the day after his August 2003 emancipation from
foster care. He attends community college and works full-time as a
waiter and part-time as a peer counselor for Orangewood. He appreciates
not only having a safe, affordable place to live, but also his
relationships with the staff.
"They're not
just in it for the paycheck," he said. "They've really been
there to guide me and help me and keep me positive."
First Place
Fund
At about the same
time the businessmen were starting Rising Tide Communities, two
graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley were
patching together their left-over student loan funds with a $20,000
grant from the Echoing Green
Foundation to
form the First Place Fund for Youth, a micro-lending and housing
program for former foster kids.
In seven years, the brainchild of public policy students Amy Lemley and
Deanne Pearne has evolved into a $1.7 million-a-year program that has
won national recognition. This month, the fund was one of 14 nonprofits
chosen from a field of more than 300 for a $1 million, four-year grant
from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
First Place Fund
has helped about 310 former foster youth live for up to two years in
safe, affordable apartment units scattered around the East Bay. About
85 percent of the program's graduates have continued to live in stable
housing, sometimes in the same units, after the fund's services ended.
The program kicks
off with an eight-week course in economic literacy. Completing it
qualifies a youth for a $1,400 loan to pay the security deposit and
first month's rent on an apartment secured by the fund. Two youths
share each two-bedroom unit (except for pregnant or parenting participants,
who get one-bedroom apartments). First Place Fund either holds the
lease on the apartment, subleasing it to the youths, or the youths
themselves sign the lease and the fund gives the landlord a rent
guarantee.
For the first
three months, the rent is 10 percent of market rent. It rises to 20
percent for the next three months, and then increases periodically,
until a youth is paying half of the full market rate – up to
$1,200 for a two-bedroom apartment – at the end of two years.
Each youth must
take part in four to six hours a week of support services. The
nonprofit agency's 19 staffers teach life skills and help residents
find jobs, medical care and educational aid. Financial incentives are
used to establish good habits. For instance, a youth who pays the rent
on time and attends all scheduled meetings in a month earns a $50
grocery certificate. Making the weekly loan payments and attending
weekly loan class meetings earns monthly transit passes. Monthly social
activities build a sense of community. Eligibility extends until age
23.
The program
houses 49 former foster youth and 16 of their children. In a typical
month, 92 percent pay their rent on time, and 86 percent make the loan
payments on time, says Lemley, the fund's executive director. Key to
the program's success is the high quality of the housing and the
respect with which the staff members treat the youths, she believes.
"Even though they're often homeless when they come to us, we treat
them as informed and empowered consumers," she says.
The program costs
the agency about $21,600 a year per youth. Funding initially came from
private donations and grants from foundations and the city of Oakland.
Then in October 2003, the agency figured out how to tap into the state
Transitional Housing Placement Program, known as THP Plus, which was
enacted in 2001 but had not yet been utilized. Counties can draw money
from the state program, but must provide local funds equal to 60
percent of the project cost – a requirement that dampened demand.
The First Place Fund
put up matching funds on behalf of Alameda County and drew $115,000
from the state program, which partially subsidized 15 youths for a
year. Last year, the fund increased the match from Alameda County,
subsidizing 21 youths for a year. A similar deal with Contra Costa
County covers housing for 10 youths, while San Francisco County put up
$500,000 to draw the state match, then contracted to house 31 youths
through the First Place Fund and Larkin Street Youth Services.
First Place Fund's success with the fund has persuaded other counties
that the benefits are worth the money and the trouble, Lemley said.
This year, San Mateo County has drawn on it, and Santa Cruz, Los
Angeles, Kern and Lassen counties are expected to.
An offshoot of
the First Place Fund, the Alameda County Foster Youth Alliance, is
collaborating with Honoring Emancipated Youth (HEY) on the statewide
Campaign for Safe Transitions for Foster Youth to build public support
for helping emancipated foster youth with housing. The campaign is pushing
a bill in the state legislature that would increase the state fund to
$10 million, lower the county match to 40 percent, and extend the
eligibility age to 23.
"There are
close to 5,000 youth aging out of care each year, and only 80-some beds
funded by THP Plus," notes Amy Freeman, the Alliance's director.
"We aren't even close to meeting the need."
Lemley would like
to see the state fund increased to $50 million. "This fund is the
future," says Lemley, who is leaving First Place Fund in August to
work on public policy issues. "It needs to grow, so that every
youth who ages out of care in every county has safe and affordable
housing."
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Resources
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Gene
Howard,
Executive Director
Orangewood Children's Foundation
1575 East 17th St.
Santa Ana, CA 92705
(714) 619-0200
www.orangewoodfoundation.org
Amy
Lemley,
Executive Director
First Place Fund For Youth
1755 Broadway
Oakland, CA 94612-2155
(510) 272-0955
www.firstplacefund.org
More
Innovations in Transitional Housing
With more youth
aging out of care each year than in any other state, California
serves as laboratory for innovation in transitional housing. The
California programs below have won praise for creatively melding
multiple funding sources and integrating support services with
affordable housing:
Catholic
Charities Home Base Transitional Youth Housing Program, Napa
Houses 22
emancipated foster youth in two buildings owned by Catholic
Charities. Ten young women, including up to seven who are pregnant or
parenting, live communally in an eight-bedroom Victorian home. Next
door, 12 residents (both male and female) share six one-bedroom
apartments. The program is financed mostly by private donations and
foundation grants. Rehabilitation costs are funded by community
development block grants and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development's (HUD) Home Investment Partnership (HOME) program.
Contact: (707) 224-4403.
LaVerne
Adolfo Housing Program, Sacramento
Named after a
longtime foster mother, this transitional and permanent housing
program was started in 2001 by the Great Start Emancipation
Collaborative, a coalition of county agencies and Volunteers of
America, Casey Family Programs, Lutheran Social Services and numerous
community organizations.
The
transitional program, managed by Volunteers of America, houses 20
former foster youth in two leased houses and a leased apartment
complex. Funding comes from private donations and several federal
programs: Welfare-to-Work, HOME and the Chafee Foster Care
Independence Program.
The permanent
housing program, managed by Lutheran Social Services, houses 12
emancipated youth with disabilities in privately owned apartments. It
gets financial support from several HUD programs and Welfare-to-Work.
Contact: Volunteers of America (916) 349-2876; Lutheran Social Services
(916) 453-2900.
Bill Wilson
Center, Santa Clara
This
10-year-old program houses thirty-seven 18- to 22-year-olds, and up
to 19 of their children, for as long as 18 months at seven houses and
apartment complexes scattered around the San Jose area. The services
include counseling, parenting classes and independent living skills
and job-readiness training, and are financed with private donations
and by various federal housing and homeless youth programs. Contact:
(408) 925-0229.
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Child
Welfare’s Harsh Test
CFSRs
force changes in state systems, but critics say the reviews measure the
wrong things.
By Barbara White Stack
When the federal
government introduced a bold system five years ago to evaluate state
child welfare systems, it drew cheers from case workers, administrators
and researchers.
No longer would
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) judge systems
primarily by processes that are often unrelated to quality of care,
such as checking to see if forms were signed. Instead, HHS would look
at outcomes and procedures that reflect service delivery, such as case
worker training and how quickly youth are moved out of government care.
Since then, every state, along with Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico,
has gone through the new Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSR)
– and every one has failed. Any state that doesn't improve to the
satisfaction of HHS faces millions of dollars in fines.
Are the nation's
child welfare systems that bad? Or is the CFSR a bad test?
Child welfare
administrators and researchers have complained about the test so much
that HHS hired a consultant to recommend improvements and created a
committee of state representatives and critics to discuss the problems
and develop solutions. Susan Orr, associate commissioner of the
Children's Bureau within HHS, expects some "tweaking" for the
next round of reviews.
But while critics
claim that the CFSR is flawed in fundamental ways that create
inaccurate assessments of child welfare systems, HHS says the test is
fundamentally sound.
Even as officials
in some states complain about the CFSRs, they are working to meet the
standards, which HHS believes will improve child welfare systems.
"Yes, people
are complaining," says Steve Christian, program director at the
National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). "At the same
time, most people in the field would say the reviews have had a
positive impact on the process and the way things are done."
Built to Fail?
The evaluations
were destined to be controversial.
The CFSR's roots
date to 1994, when amendments to the Social Security Act required
outcomes-based evaluations of state child welfare systems. The CFSRs
use self-assessments by each state and on-site reviews by HHS to
measure seven child outcomes and seven system standards. States that
achieve what HHS calls "substantial conformity" in all 14
areas are spared reviews for five years. States that don't achieve
substantial conformity must write improvement plans, to be approved by
HHS. (For more on how the reviews are conducted, see page 19.)
If the federal
agency determines two years later that those improvement plans are not
being sufficiently implemented, fines are to be imposed. The fines vary
by how much federal child welfare funding each state gets and the
number of instances in which the state failed to meet the standards.
California faces the biggest potential penalty: $18 million.
No one expected
all or even most of the states to be in compliance in all 14 areas. The
CFSRs, after all, were designed in part to compel states to improve
their child welfare systems. But the first wave of evaluations in 2001
delivered a disturbing wake-up call: All 17 states that were evaluated
failed, a pattern that continued through last year.
To Mark Testa,
director of the Children and Family Research Center at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the perfect failure rate makes the
CFSR's shortcomings obvious: If he administered a chemistry exam and
all 52 students failed, he would suspect that the test was flawed.
A new evaluation
measuring such disparate and complex systems was bound to have initial
flaws, HHS says. The department says some state concerns will be
addressed before the upcoming second round of reviews.
While praising
HHS for moving to qualitative reviews, critics say problems with the
measures and the threat of financial penalties could lead states to
change their policies and practices in ways that would be detrimental to
children. Or all the states could fail again, which would intensify
doubts about the validity of the reviews.
"The idea of
CFSRs is good," Testa says. "If they had the right data, it
would be better."
The threat of
federal fines appears to have made state officials circumspect when
publicly discussing the CFSRs. Child welfare researchers are hesitant
as well, because they want to work with HHS to improve the measures.
Nevertheless, they raise several key issues:
Adequate
sampling: HHS' on-site evaluations include a review of 50 randomly
selected cases – far too few, critics say, to be representative
of a state system, especially when the cases come from only three
counties in each state. Testa says it's impossible for 50 cases to be a
valid sample in a state like California, where 90,000 children are in
foster care.
The Government
Accountability Office (GAO) criticized the small sample size in a
report last year, saying it allowed for a very large margin of error.
In assessing
Arizona, where Gov. Janet Napolitano has made child welfare a top
priority, HHS relied too heavily on the 50 cases, says Katherine
Guffey, human services specialist in the state Administration for
Children, Youth and Families. Those assessments included focus groups
with people involved in the child welfare system.
"During the
on-site focus groups, you may have a foster parent or attorney who
brings up a concern that is anecdotal, and there is no way for the
people doing the interviews to know if that is a trend," Guffey
says. "Those single comments too often become part of the final
report."
AFCARS data:
Among the areas evaluated by the CFSRs are the waiting times for foster
children to be reunified with their families or adopted. To set these
standards, HHS looks at data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis
and Reporting System (AFCARS). From that, it can answer such questions
as: Of the children adopted this year, how many were adopted within 24
months of entering foster care? Of the children who were reunified this
year, how many returned home within 12 months? The HHS standard
dictates that at least 32 percent of the children adopted in a given
year must have been adopted within 24 months of entering foster care.
The researchers
say this skews what is happening with foster children in a state,
because it only counts those who were adopted or reunited with
families. In a paper titled, "Time to Improve on a Good
Idea," three researchers from the Center for Social Services
Research in Berkeley, Calif., and the Chapin Hall Center for Children
at the University of Chicago, say HHS should add "entry
cohort" data into the mix – that is, tracking children from
the time they enter care.
One of the
researchers, Fred Wulczyn of Chapin Hall, explains it like this:
"If you were studying cancer therapy, would you follow only those
patients who survived or only those patients who died to understand
whether a given therapy was effective? Or would you follow all of the
people who received treatment from the time the treatment started? The
answer is obvious."
The writers say
HHS should track all children for 24 months from their entry into a
child welfare system. Some states collect such data for themselves, and
the GAO report urged HHS to consider using longitudinal data for states
that have it.
Long-time foster
children: Researchers say that for states that pushed for the adoption
of children who had been in foster care a long time, such as Illinois,
the measure used by HHS punishes good behavior. That's because by
trying to find adoptive homes for children who have been in care for at
least four years, a state hurts its chances of meeting the standard
that 32 percent of its adopted children be adopted within two years.
Critics say this
is a distorted measure that doesn't accurately reflect how well a state
is doing at moving children out of government custody. They warn that
to achieve the national standard, a state might reduce its efforts to
find adoptive placements for older children.
Compared with
what? Some researchers, including Rob Geen, director of child welfare
research at the Urban Institute, suggest that states be compared with
themselves rather than held to standards based on national data. A
baseline could be set for each state and improvement measured from
there. This would eliminate the problem of comparing very different
state programs.
For example, some states serve large numbers of status offenders, such
as truants and runaways, making their foster care re-entry rates higher
than in states that don't serve as many teens. "It would be more
useful and fair to look at the same state over time," Geen says.
This Test Is
Best
HHS says it recognizes shortcomings in the measurements, but the CFSR
is the best it can do. Department officials say the 50-case review and
the measures based on exit data are reasonable, partly because neither
is used in isolation to judge any of the 14 outcomes or systemic
factors.
To some extent,
HHS was damned for not looking at outcomes of cases before CFSRs and is
damned now for looking at outcomes in too few cases.
HHS doesn't claim
that the 50 case studies produce a statistically valid sample.
Officials say the review gives a sense of the kind of practices
occurring in a state. They say every child and family brought to the
attention of the agency should be properly served, and the case reviews
indicate whether that is happening.
They concede that
the data sources being used, such as AFCARS, were not intended to serve
in an outcomes-based evaluation. Their purpose was to take child
welfare censuses. So their usefulness in this new role is limited.
Tracking entry
cohorts has limitations as well, the officials say. An entry cohort
would have to be followed for at least two years to determine what
percentage of the children are adopted within 24 months. Also, many
state systems are not set up for such tracking. Some struggle just to
produce accurate information for AFCARS.
Orr, the HHS
associate commissioner, notes that processes are built into the CFSRs
for states to challenge negative findings.
HHS hired a consultant to convene a committee of state representatives
and critics to talk about problems with the CFSRs and how they can be
resolved.
Those looking for
fundamental changes appear headed for disappointment. Susan
Mitchell-Herzfeld, director of the bureau of evaluation and research
for the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, wanted
HHS to let New York measure adoption and reunification rates based on
entry cohort data, just as the GAO, Wulczyn and his fellow researchers
suggest.
"We had a number of meetings with the federal officials where we
talked about problems with the federal measures,"
Mitchell-Herzfeld says. She says HHS rejected any substitutions.
Some See
Improvements
Despite the complaints, child welfare administrators and observers say
the CFSRs may help to improve child welfare systems. While systems
around the country are instituting significant changes for a variety of
reasons, the CFSR "is what seems to be, in some cases, driving the
changes," says Christian at the NCSL.
The CFSR process
overall "was extremely valuable, as much as it was a lot of hard
work," says Sheila Duranleau, policy and planning chief for the
family services division of Vermont's Department for Children and
Families. "It helped us focus on some things we knew we had to pay
attention to but had not because of time and resources."
Vermont is one of
eight states that have been spurred by the reviews to "beef up
their quality assurance efforts," according to Christian. Vermont
worked with the Children's Research Center, a division of the National
Council on Crime and Delinquency, to create a system to evaluate the
quality of its services and improve documentation, and it created an
ongoing self-evaluation process. (See story, page 19.)
But the reviews
are not bringing states more money for improvements. "Most states
are doing this without any new resources," Christian says.
Pennsylvania officials told GAO researchers that a state budget
shortfall would leave them with no additional money to implement the
state's improvement plan.
The NCSL says
three state legislatures provided more funding for child welfare
because of the reviews: Alaska, West Virginia and Wyoming. The money
was used to hire more staff and decrease caseloads, Christian says.
Mitchell-Herzfeld
in New York believes that if every state approached HHS about using
alternative measures, such as entry cohort data, HHS would agree.
"I think they are going to have to adjust and accommodate
this," she says.
In the meantime,
states are working to implement their improvement plans to the
satisfaction of the federal government. James Payne, director of the
Department of Child Services in Indiana, which received a letter of
commendation from HHS for its improvement plan and no longer faces
financial penalties, says the process was valuable.
"There is a
tendency to inertia, to keep doing what you are doing," he says.
"The review said we cannot do that any more."
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Resources
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Sheila
Duranleau, Policy and Planning Chief
Vermont Family Services Division
Department for Children and Families
(802) 241-2669, www.dcf.state.vt.us
Susan Mitchell-Herzfeld,
Director
Bureau of Evaluation and Research
New York State Office of Children and Family Services
(518) 474-9486, susan.mitchell-herzfeld@dfa.state.ny.us
Barbara Needell, Principal
Investigator
Child Welfare Research Center
University of California at Berkeley
(510) 642-1893, bneedell@berkeley.edu
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Susan
Orr, Associate Commissioner
Children's Bureau
U.S. Administration on Children, Youth and Families
Washington, D.C.
(202) 619-0257, www.os.dhhs.gov
Mark Testa, Director
Children and Family Research Center
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
(217) 244-1029, www.social.uiuc.edu/HTM/testa.htm
Fred Wulczyn, Research
Fellow
Chapin Hall Center for Children
University of Chicago
(773) 753-5900, fwchapin@mindspring.com
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Shelter
Care vs. Foster Family Care
By Shay
Bilchik
Youth Today
recently drew attention to an important issue: the debate about what
type of emergency care – shelter or family foster care – is
best suited for children who are removed from their families because of
alleged abuse or neglect.
To appropriately serve these children, communities must have an array
of placement environments that are sensitive to the trauma of
children's maltreatment and placement away from their families, and
that meet their safety, health, treatment and education needs.
An upcoming Child
Welfare League of America (CWLA) publication, which was previewed at
the league's national conference, explores several options for a
child's first placement, commonly known as emergency care. These
include shelter care, family foster care and receiving centers.
Emergency care
should be part of a full array of treatment and placement options that
begins with family supports for children who can remain safely at home
and includes kinship care, family and therapeutic foster care, and
residential treatment. It must also integrate community-based support
networks for children placed in family settings or residential
facilities.
The conference
workshop highlighting the CWLA's upcoming publication, "The Role
of Emergency Care as a Child Welfare Service," caused some
controversy when several providers perceived it as being biased against
the use of emergency shelter services. While the authors do recommend
eliminating or reducing the use of shelter care, they also make clear
that we lack reliable information about the impact of both emergency
shelter and family foster care on the children served.
Because many
studies have lacked control groups and involved inadequate samples and
insufficient rigor, there is a desperate need for more comparative
research about emergency care. Yet policy is being made on the untested
assumption that care within residential settings like emergency
shelters should always be the last resort, and that alternatives are
always preferable. The truth is that we don't know if this holds true
for each child, and whether it addresses each one's unique needs and
circumstances.
Psychologist
Abraham Maslow said, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, all your
problems are going to look like nails." Conversely, if you put an
exquisite array of precise tools fitted for every task into the hands
of sensitive, well-trained professionals, they will be equipped to meet
the individual needs of each child and family.
Both the upcoming
publication and CWLA's "Standards of Excellence for Services for
Abused and Neglected Children and Their Families" describe the
factors to be considered before deciding which placement option is best
for a child.
It is important
to note that virtually every child welfare service provider prefers to
see that all children remain safe with their families or extended
families. Most would like to see less demand for their services because
we have eradicated child maltreatment.
So this discussion
should not be about who cares about kids, and who cares only about
their business. It should be about children getting what they need. It
should also not be about what kind of care is better than another.
Every type of care is valuable if it meets the needs of a child.
We need to ensure
that we have the right placement options available when they're needed
– options that reflect a dynamic paradigm that contemplates the
least restrictive, appropriate placement. We need to determine which
setting best protects and nurtures the child at the time of initial
placement, and protects other children if the child's behavior becomes
violent. We need to learn which setting can best provide for each
child's treatment needs – given the child's stage of development and
appropriate cultural considerations.
It is also
critically important that we send children to well-trained and
supported foster families. Likewise, we must ensure that emergency
shelter facilities are staffed with the highest caliber of workers;
serve an appropriate number of children (avoiding overcrowded
institutional settings); provide the assessment-based services needed
by the children placed in their care; and are not seen as open-ended
placements. High-quality care is an absolute necessity when meeting the
needs of children facing the trauma of maltreatment and the emotional
challenges of leaving their homes.
As leaders in
child welfare, we must always look to provide what is best for the
children in our care. So let's not categorically assume how each should
be treated. It will take a variety of approaches to best meet their
needs. For our children's sake, we must remain open-minded about the
alternatives if we are to best provide for their care.
Shay Bilchik is
CEO of the Child Welfare League of America. (202) 638-2952.
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Testing
Drugs on Foster Children
A
debate erupts over protecting kids in experiments that can produce
life-saving treatments.
By Jennifer Moore
"AIDS Tots
Used As 'Guinea Pigs,' " proclaimed a headline in The
New York Post in February of last year.
The story told of
a city health department investigation into drug research on foster
children living at the Incarnation Children's Center (ICC), a large
residential facility in Manhattan. More than a year. later, the
ramifications of that story are still spreading: A federal
investigation recently determined thin the experiments at ICC violated
the rights of the foster youth, a congressional subcommittee held. a
hearing on the issue in May and an independent review throughout New
York City is due to' issue findings next month.
At issue: Should
foster children be enrolled in clinical trials for experimental drugs,
and if so, under what conditions?
Advocates of the
practice say the trials are often the only way to give disadvantaged
children" access to cutting edge treatments for chronic and fatal
illnesses such as AIDS and cancer and federal regulations protect the
children. Critics say those regulations are seldom followed, leaving
foster children open to exploitation.
How it Began
In the 1980's and
1990's some 50 children living at ICC were enrolled in clinical trials
of AIDS treatment medications conducted at Columbia Presbyterian
Medical Center and funded by the National Institute of Health. At that
time, ICC cared exclusively for HIV infected children.
A city health
department investigation into the trials prompted the Post's February
2004 story, in which scientists and advocates such as, Vera Sharav,
president of the New York based Alliance for Human Research Protection,
expressed outrage after reviewing the abstracts of some of the 36
experiments. One biochemist said that drugs' potential side effects
included liver damage, cancerous tumors, muscle wasting, anemia and
severe rashes.
NIH funded
researchers felt differently. "Through these trials, children at
the ICC…gained access to state of the art treatments for HIV, a
Columbia spokeswoman told the newspaper.
Soon thereafter,
Sharav's group filed a complaint with the Office of Human Research
Protections in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
and with the Office of Compliance in the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA). The group called for a moratorium on the
enrollment of foster children in clinical trials and said federal
regulations designed to protect children as research subjects in such
trials had been violated.
Those regulations
stipulate that before foster children are included in clinical research
involving "greater than minimal risk," the institutional
review board of the medical facility conducting the research must appoint
an independent medical advocate for each child. The federal agencies
did not move quickly – but the new head of New York City's child
welfare agency did.
Breakthroughs
Soon after
becoming commissioner of the city's Administration for Children's Services
in August 2004, John Mattingly learned of the allegations about the
drug trials, says Sharman Stein, the agencies communications director.
She says Mattingly started getting calls from "attorneys and some
members of the African-American community, including some city
councilman," who were "concerned about whether these
vulnerable children had adequately monitored and protected.
Mattingly ordered
an internal review of the cases, but Stein says later realized that if
the agency "wanted to provide as complete a picture as possible
and answer all the questions, we needed to go to an outside source.
So in April, the
agency announced it had contracted with the Vera Institute of Justice
"to conduct an independent review of [the agency's] policy and
practice" concerning the drug trials and would assemble a panel of
national health care experts to examine the findings, which are due in
August. "If people in our community began to feel we have done the
things these fringe groups are saying, the community won't be able to
trust us to investigate abuse and neglect," Mattingly told
reporters. His announcement was covered by several national news
organizations. On May 4, The Associated Press took the story
nationwide. It reported that foster children in Illinois, Louisiana,
Maryland, North Carolina, Colorado, and Texas had also been enrolled by
child welfare agencies in NIH-sponsored clinical trials, often without
independent advocates and without consent from their biological
parents.
Newspapers across
the country ran stories and editorials about the issue. On May 11, Rep.
Wally Harper, (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Ways and Means
subcommittee on human resources, announced a hearing on the issue,
citing "recent media reports" that had "raised concerns."
Political
Fact-Finding
At the hearing,
seven days later, Herger said he worried about Federal and State
protections for foster children in clinical trials are often "not
enforced or inadequate."
Those who favor
the trials said they represent an advance for foster children. Dr.
Donald Young, principal deputy assistant secretary at HHS, cited his
agency's 1989 report urging child welfare agencies to reduce barriers
to foster children's participation in clinical trials. Young testified
that while 16 to 22 percent of the nation's foster children were HIV
positive in 1989, less than 2 percent of that group had been enrolled
in drug trials by that year.
Dr. Alan
Fleischman, an ethics advisor at the National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development testified that "it would have been
unconscionable and unjust" not to offer poor minority children,
many of whom were in foster care, "the very best prospect of
life-saving and life-enhancing treatment. Enrollment in clinical trials
was the only way to accomplish that goal."
Some state
welfare agencies have reduced barriers to enrollment in recent years.
The Associated Press reported in May that Federal Officials estimate
that 5 to 10 percent of the nearly 14,000 children who have
participated in NIH-funded HIV/AIDS drug trials since the 1980's were
in foster care at the time.
Many foster
children have benefited from gains in treating pediatric HIV and AIDS.
The number of pediatric AIDS deaths plummeted from 548 in 1993 to 65 in
2001, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. However, not
all child welfare administrators are convinced that the benefits
outweigh the risks. Tennessee and Wisconsin prohibit the enrollment of
foster children in medical research trials.
Robert Harris,
deputy secretary of Wisconsin's Department of Health and Family
Services, testified that such research would compromise the agency's
ability to provide a safe, nurturing environment and make it difficult
to earn the trust and confidence of families. Harris questioned whether
parents would feel that giving consent to enroll their children was
"truly voluntary," because the agency has authority over the
children's return to those parents.
Among states that
allow the practice, Young testified, there is "wide variance"
regarding permission procedures. While some states allow officials such
as judges, child welfare officials, or court-appointed guardians to
grant permission for nonstandard medical treatments like clinical
trials, others require approval from the biological parents.
Nevertheless,
Young testified that HHS believes "that the framework established
by the existing regulation offers adequate protection for individuals
participating in trials."
But not everybody
follows them. In late May, the federal Office of Human Research Protections
– responding to AHRP's allegations about the research on children
at ICC – sent a "letter of determination" to Columbia
University Medical Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital. The
letter said that facilities failed to obtain sufficient information
about the selection of foster children as research subjects, the
process of obtaining permission from their parents or guardians, or the
"additional safeguards mandated for subjects likely to be
vulnerable to coercion or undue influence."
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The
Meth Epidemic: Hype vs. Reality: How Foster Care and Other Child
Welfare Agencies Have Coped
By Martha
Shirk
To even the most
casual observer, the news media this summer gave the impression that a
methamphetamine epidemic has created a child abuse problem that is
overwhelming the nation's child welfare system. Reports suggested that
meth addicts are untreatable, that their children are irreparably
damaged and that child-welfare agencies all over the country are being
strained as never before.
"In every
way, shape and form, this is the worst drug ever for child
welfare," Jay Wurscher, director of addiction services for
Oregon's child welfare agency, told The New York Times.
"We have so
many in foster care, we're running out of homes," Joy Swing, a
child protective services agent in Clermont County, Ohio, told
"NBC Nightly News."
While some child
welfare agencies are struggling with growing caseloads and new
challenges stemming from parental meth use, experts on meth addiction
and child welfare say the recent coverage promulgated some myths: that
meth-related child abuse is worse than it is, that meth addicts are
harder to treat than they are, and that the nation's child-welfare
system is overwhelmed, when many agencies are coping well.
Many experts
worry that the recent reporting on meth's connection to child abuse may
erode public support for drug treatment programs and
family-strengthening services that can keep children out of foster
care, just as hyped reporting on crack cocaine did in the 1980s and
'90s. In July, more than 90 leading physicians, scientists and
treatment specialists urged that public policies on meth "be based
on science, not presumption or prejudice."
"We are
concerned that policies based on false assumptions will result in
punitive civil and child welfare interventions that are harmful to
women, children and families, rather than in the ongoing research and
improvement and provision of treatment services that are so clearly
needed," said a statement from the group, the National Advocates
for Pregnant Women.
One of the signatories was Dr. Ira Chasnoff, the pediatrician who
sounded the alarm in 1985 about what the media came to call "crack
babies." Chasnoff later said his research had been misinterpreted.
Meth is
undeniably a nasty, dangerous drug, and a parent's addiction can place
a child in harm's way. Some children need to go into foster care for
their protection, and an upsurge in cases might overwhelm child welfare
agencies in some localities. But here are some facts that got lost in
the recent coverage:
• Despite claims that
prenatal exposure to meth is creating a new class of disabled
"meth babies," there is little research on long-term effects,
says Barry Lester, director of the Brown University Center for the
Study of Children at Risk and the principal investigator for the first
large-scale, long-term study of the prenatal effects of meth.
"I don't
want us to make the same mistake with meth that was made with
cocaine," he says. "We don't know that meth-exposed babies
are harmed, and if the meth effect is anything like the cocaine effect,
it is mild and treatable."
• Meth addicts are as
treatable as cocaine addicts, says Richard A. Rawson, associate
director of the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs. Rawson was
the principal investigator for the Methamphetamine Treatment Project,
the first large-scale, randomized clinical trial of eight types of
behavioral therapies for meth addiction.
• Effective practice models
exist for meth-related child abuse. "We know how to assess for
child safety and risks, and those lessons and skills should be used
with families across the spectrum of substance use, abuse and
dependence," says Nancy Young, director of Children and Family
Futures in Irvine, Calif., which operates the National Center on
Substance Abuse and Child Welfare for the federal government.
"Those jurisdictions that have put effort into working across
agency lines to address these issues seem fairly well prepared to work
with families with methamphetamine use, abuse and dependence."
• The foster care system as
a whole has not been overwhelmed by meth-related admissions. Nationally,
the foster care population has declined every year since 1999, when it
peaked at 570,000. (In 2003, the latest year for which national data
are available, it was 523,000.)
Without recent
national data, it's too soon to know whether increases reported by some
jurisdictions are localized aberrations or predictors of more
widespread increases to come. Tellingly, in California and Illinois,
among the few states to report statistics for 2004 and early 2005, the
foster care populations have continued to decline, despite entrenched
meth problems in those states.
• Meth is not even close to
being the most abused drug. Nationally, meth was the drug of choice for
only 7 percent of people who sought treatment in 2003, according to a
federal database published by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration.
Alcohol abuse
accounted for almost 42 percent of treatment admissions, opiates for
almost 18 percent, marijuana for almost 16 percent and cocaine for
almost 14 percent.
Behind the
Scare
Many of the summer's meth stories were pegged to the release in July of
surveys of county law enforcement and child welfare officials that were
commissioned by the National Association of Counties (NACo). "Many
children are being grossly neglected by their addicted parents, and
these same children are being exposed to the harmful side effects of
the production of the drug, if they live in close proximity to a
lab," the association said in a report on the surveys.
Most media
accounts adopted NACo's alarmist tone, reporting that 40 percent of
child welfare officials claimed an increase in meth-related out-of-home
placements in the past year. But that also means that 60 percent
reported no increase.
News outlets also
commonly reported that 71 percent of the responding counties in
California claimed an increase in meth-related out-of-home placements,
but didn't note that only seven of California's 58 counties were
surveyed.
The survey seemed
designed to provide context for the announcement several weeks later by
NACo's new president, Bill Hansell of Umatilla County, Ore., that one
of his three initiatives would be to gain more federal funding for
counties' meth-fighting efforts. The association backs four
meth-related bills pending in Congress.
Also in July,
Valerie Brown, a county supervisor from Sonoma County, Calif.,
testified before Congress that the Bush administration's proposal to
eliminate $804 million from the Justice Assistance Grant Program would
jeopardize counties' meth enforcement, treatment and prevention
efforts. She also expressed the association's opposition to the
administration's proposal to transform foster care from open-ended
entitlement to a capped allocation.
"If the
counties that are experiencing an increase in foster care caseloads
because of methamphetamine use had been operating under a capped
allocation, they would not have had the resources to respond
quickly," she testified before the House subcommittee on criminal
justice, drug policy, and human resources.
Richard Wexler,
executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection
Reform in Alexandria, Va., believes that fear of losing the foster care
entitlement underlies much of the hyperbole about meth. "That's a
huge threat to child welfare agencies that exist on endless per-diem
payments for endless foster care," says Wexler, who advocates for
more family preservation efforts and less use of foster care.
Michael Arsham,
executive director of the Child Welfare Organizing Project in New York
City, agrees. Annual admissions to foster care in New York City have
fallen by one-third since 2000. Nevertheless, Arsham says, private
foster care agencies are pressing the city's child welfare agency to
maintain foster care slots in case there's an upsurge in parental meth
use.
"If they are
concerned about the well-being of children, the questions they should
be asking are whether there are effective treatment models that have
been developed elsewhere in the country, or whether we should be
looking more at kinship and guardian arrangements, " says Arsham,
whose project is a partnership of parents and professionals dedicated
to child welfare reform.
Some Areas Hit
Hard
To be sure, some child welfare agencies have good reason to be alarmed
by meth.
Although meth
abuse has been a problem in the West for years, it is spreading to
other regions, creating challenges for child welfare systems whose
experience with substance abuse has been limited largely to marijuana
and alcohol. Even a small upsurge in meth-related child abuse can have
a disproportionately large impact in rural areas and small towns, where
substance treatment programs, social service providers and foster homes
are scarce or stretched thin.
"We find
that workers leave the agency because of personal risks, the nature of
these cases and the challenges of working with these families,"
Freida Baker, deputy director of Alabama Family and Children's
Services, said at the House subcommittee hearing in July. "We find
that an already strained child welfare work force of young, inexperienced
staff is further burdened with the complex dynamics of crystal
meth."
In Vigo County,
Ind., which includes Terre Haute, a child-welfare official told the
Louisville Courier-Journal this summer that about 70 percent of
children entering foster care had parents who abused meth. In Oklahoma,
state officials say meth is a major reason that the foster care
population is up 16 percent from a year ago. Even in relatively
resource-rich Tulsa, The New York Times reported in July that siblings
in child protection cases were forced to share beds in an emergency
shelter because meth cases had pushed the shelter's population to
double its licensed capacity.
Probably the
major reason for the alarm over meth is that it can be produced in home
kitchens, which may expose children – and abuse and neglect
investigators – to toxic chemicals and the risk of burns. From
2000 to 2003, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says,
eight children died and 96 were injured through home meth production.
Because of the
special dangers that meth production poses both to children and first
responders such as police and child abuse investigators, the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy has pressed states and
counties to establish multidisciplinary Drug Endangered Children (DEC)
teams. So far, 25 states or regions have established teams, and 5,500
professionals from law enforcement, child protection, public health and
other public agencies have been trained, the drug control office says.
"Collaboration
is the key to success," says Ronald Mullins, training coordinator
for the San Diego-based National Alliance for Drug-Endangered Children.
"If you develop standardized protocols and make those agreements
in your community, the children get the medical attention they need,
the psychosocial attention they need and the placement they need."
The alliance's
protocols allow only specially trained law-enforcement officials to
enter homes where meth is produced. Children must be washed at the site
and immediately taken for medical examinations, including tests for
exposure to chemicals.
Although the alliance's focus is on children threatened by meth
production, the numbers are fairly low. Young, of the National Center
on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare, says federal data show that from
2000 through 2003, about 10,000 children were "affected" by
meth manufacturing, including 4,662 who lived in homes where meth was
produced. Some 2,881 of them entered foster care, Young says –
less than one-third of 1 percent of all the children who entered foster
care during that same period.
Learning from
Others
Rather than feeling overwhelmed, experts say, child welfare agencies
that are experiencing increases in meth-related child abuse and neglect
can find guidance from jurisdictions with experience.
Many social
service agencies in California have been dealing with meth-related
abuse or neglect since the early 1990s and have learned how to
intervene effectively. "Addiction is addiction," says Toni
Moore, administrator of the Alcohol and Drug Services Division for
Sacramento County, where more than half of those who enter treatment
cite meth as their drug of choice. "Although there may be some
difference in how you approach someone who uses meth and someone who
uses cocaine, the basic problem is addiction."
UCLA researchers
have found that traditional 12-step programs are not as effective with
meth users as with marijuana and alcohol abusers, which means that
treatment professionals may need additional training. Research has
shown that meth abusers respond similarly to behavioral and
cognitive-behavioral treatment strategies that work with cocaine
abusers, says Rawson of UCLA.
The National
Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare provides technical
assistance to states and counties that are struggling with meth-related
child abuse. Young, the center's director, says the most effective
strategies include stationing staff with substance abuse expertise in
child welfare offices and courts; giving parents who face abuse charges
priority for treatment; using facilitators to help parents access
treatment, and setting up a dependency drug court to monitor parents'
compliance with treatment plans.
Because most
mothers entering substance abuse treatment have experienced domestic
violence and abuse or neglect as children, Young says, it's important
that they also get help for those problems. In addition, she notes,
"We learned during the cocaine epidemic that mothers in treatment
with all of their children had the best outcomes."
The crack cocaine
epidemic of the 1980s and early '90s produced lessons that many experts
say are highly relevant today. Research has found that most problems
that had initially been attributed to prenatal exposure to crack
resulted from poverty, that a childhood spent in foster care can be
more harmful than the parental behavior that prompted the child's
removal, and that prenatally exposed infants who stay with their
mothers achieve developmental milestones earlier than those who go into
foster care.
Says Lester, the
Brown University researcher: "If we overreact to meth, the effect
will be, as with cocaine, flooding an already overburdened foster care
system, breaking up families and having kids bouncing around from
foster home to foster home during the first few years, when they need
to develop strong attachment relationships. These children may wind up
with behavior problems, not because of the drugs, but because they were
improperly socialized.
"We need to move toward more of an understanding of drug abuse as
a treatable mental health disease, not a crime against the child or
society."
A Model for
Helping the Children of Drug Abusers
In Sacramento
County, Calif., about 80 percent of child abuse cases involve parents
with alcohol or drug problems, and more than half of these parents cite
meth as their drug of choice. Nevertheless, child welfare workers there
have trouble understanding why media reports say meth has paralyzed the
nation's child welfare system.
"We've got
big meth issues in Sacramento County, but they're not paralyzing
anybody," says Martha Haas, a program planner who has also worked
as an investigator, intake worker and supervisor during 10 years with
the county's Child Protective Services division.
Sacramento County
(population: 1.3 million) has been widely lauded for developing
effective interventions for families in which parents abuse drugs and
abuse or neglect their children. The National Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse, the federal Treatment Improvement Exchange, the Child
Welfare League of America and the National Center on Substance Abuse
and Child Welfare have all cited the county for implementing systems
changes that have increased parents' access to treatment and decreased
children's stays in foster care.
Here are the key
elements to Sacramento's success:
More training, treatment: Meth abuse, along with alcohol and cocaine
abuse, was already a big problem in 1994, when the county got a
two-year, $200,000 grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation to better
serve children who were being abused or neglected by parents with drug
or alcohol problems.
"We realized
that alcohol and drug use were a major driving factor for many of our
health and social problems, and we wanted to increase the likelihood
that people who were abusing drugs and alcohol would get treatment,"
says Toni Moore, who served as project director for the Alcohol and
Other Drug Treatment Initiative.
The initiative
began by providing intensive training in alcohol and substance abuse
assessment to child welfare workers, public health nurses and community
service providers. Some 7,000 have been trained so far. Then the county
gave treatment priority to parents with substance abuse problems who
were involved with child protective services.
"If you
don't have an organized system where you give some sort of priority to
specific groups, it's typically going to be the most motivated client
who gets in, or the one who knocks the loudest, and that may not be the
one who needs it the most," explains Moore, administrator of the
county's Alcohol and Drug Services Division.
Through a
creative melding of funds from about a dozen federal and state
programs, the county came up with $32 million a year for treatment.
Remove barriers:
The county also added three early intervention specialists to make sure
logistical problems don't keep parents from accessing treatment. Two of
them work in the courthouse. "When families come into the system,
the service comes to them," Moore says. "That immediate
linkage happens."
Monitor progress:
To help keep parents on track, the county got money from the state's
tobacco litigation settlement to fund STARS (Specialized Treatment and
Recovery Services), which deploys recovery specialists – some of
them recovered drug abusers – to monitor and support parents in
treatment. "I'm convinced that it's those relationships that
families build with STARS workers that are crucial to success,"
says Haas of Child Protective Services. "When parents are in
crisis, it's the STARS worker who responds and motivates them."
Special court: In
2001, the county added the final element of its cross-agency approach:
a dependency drug court, which monitors the treatment progress of
substance-abusing parents accused of abuse or neglect. Parents must
appear there every month for at least three months to report on their
treatment progress. In many other jurisdictions, they would be lucky to
reach the top of a waiting list for treatment in that amount of time.
"These
hearings are something between a revival and an Alcoholics Anonymous
meeting," says Laurie Slothower, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento
County Department of Health and Human Services. "People show up in
their best suits, and they're crying and thanking their CPS worker and
their case manager. The judge tells them what a good job they're doing
and gives them these little rocks that say 'Hope' or 'Faith.' Coming
from a judge, that carries a lot of weight."
Results:
Sacramento's approach is being evaluated by researchers at Children and
Family Futures, a nonprofit policy research firm in Irvine, Calif. So
far, the evaluation has found that 86 percent of parents referred to
Dependency Drug Court entered treatment, compared with about half of a
comparison group. Of those who entered treatment, two-thirds completed
it. On average, their children spent far less time in out-of-home care
than the comparison group.
Besides
reunifying families more quickly, the evaluation found, the strategy
saved the county nearly $3 million in out-of-home care costs over two
years.
"Our
approach has made a difference in our families," Haas says.
"I'm hoping that in a few more years, we'll see more families
getting hooked up with services in their neighborhoods before their
kids need to come into care."
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Resources
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Nancy
Young, Director
Children and Family Futures
Irvine, Calif.
(714) 505-3525,
nkyoung@cffutures.org
Richard A. Rawson,
Associate Director
UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs
Los Angeles
(310) 445-0874, ext. 311
rrawson@mednet.ucla.edu
Barry Lester, Director
Brown University Center for the Study of Children at Risk
Providence, R.I.
(401) 453-7640 Barry_Lester@Brown.edu
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Toni
Moore, Administrator
Alcohol and Drug Services Division
Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services
Sacramento, Calif.
(916) 875-2055
mooret@saccounty.net, www.sacdhhs.com
Meth Resources
Informational website sponsored by federal agencies.
www.MethResources.gov
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The
Abysmal State of Foster Care Alumni
A study
calculates how improving servsices might help foster youth do better as
adults.
By Jennifer Moore
Foster children
are so handicapped by their experiences in the child welfare system
that four out of five fail to thrive as adults, and more than half
experience clinical mental health problems, according to a
comprehensive study of foster care alumni.
"Improving Family Foster Care: Findings from the Northwest Foster
Care Alumni Study," finds that significant numbers of foster care
alumni lack the hallmarks of a successful adulthood, such as high
school diplomas and jobs with adequate pay. (See Report Roundup, page
30, for a related study.)
"The
findings underscore the urgent need to improve the support provided to
children and youth in foster care," Ruth Massinga, CEO of Casey
Family Programs, said in a statement when the study was released. Casey
led the collaborative research with Harvard Medical School, the
University of Michigan, the Washington Office of Children's
Administration Research, the University of Washington and the Oregon
Department of Human Services.
In an innovative
effort to identify critical areas needing improvement, the researchers
developed a complex simulation model that allowed them to measure
hypothetical outcomes for youth when positive foster care experiences
were optimized and negative experiences were minimized.
Each year, 20,000
youth between ages18 and 21 leave foster care; various studies have
found that most are woefully unprepared for adulthood.
Adult
Functioning
The researchers
reviewed the records of 659 foster care alumni whose cases were managed
by Casey or the state child welfare agencies in Washington and Oregon.
They also interviewed 479 of those alumni.
The study focused
on measuring key foster care experiences that could be linked to better
functioning in adulthood, including placement history; educational
support services; access to mental health services; preparation for
leaving care, including employment training and gathering resources;
and positive relationships with at least one member of the foster
family and the agency staff.
Most alumni
reported unstable living conditions while in foster care. The average
number of foster care placements was more than six; nearly one-third of
alumni had eight or more. Nearly 12 percent had two or more
reunification failures with their birth parents, and more than 21
percent had run away from a placement at least twice. Nearly one-third
of the alumni had 10 or more school changes from elementary school
through high school.
While nearly nine
in 10 had access to supplemental education services, less than half
actually used those services. Most received mental health, substance
abuse or group therapeutic services.
Fifty-six percent
said they felt somewhat or very prepared for independent living when
they left care, but a close look reveals that they had few resources to
do so. Only one-third had a driver's license, fewer than four in 10 had
at least $250 in cash, and less than one-quarter had dishes and
utensils with which to set up housekeeping.
Three-quarters of
the alumni reported participating in "fun activities" with
their foster families. Forty-six percent had an adult mentor. More than
eight in 10 reported that they "felt loved while in care,"
although the study does not indicate by whom.
Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child
Protection Reform, points out that one-third of the alumni case files
contained reports of maltreatment by a foster parent or another adult
in the foster home – a finding relegated to one paragraph in the
30-page study and omitted from the press release.
Predicting Outcomes
To identify the
most critical areas for improvement, the researchers used a form of
regression analysis.
First, they
created a score for each alumnus in three "domains": mental
health, education and employment/finances. Within each domain several
positive outcomes were listed, such as "did not experience major
depression during the last 12 months" and "completed high
school via high school diploma." Domain scores were based on the
number of positive outcomes an alumnus experienced within each domain,
ranging from zero (no positive outcomes) to five (all positive
outcomes).
Second,
researchers plugged each person's domain scores into a regression
equation and calculated a "pre-optimized" outcome score for
each domain, based on the alumnus's actual foster care experiences,
such as time in care and number of foster placements.
Then each
person's outcome variables were hypothetically "optimized"
– scored again as if the alumnus had experienced optimal foster
care conditions as defined by the researchers, such as less than 31û2
years in care and fewer than three placements.
Finally, the optimized scores were placed into a second equation that
allowed researchers to estimate the outcome scores that could be
achieved in each of the three domains by optimizing each of the foster
care experiences.
Thus, the
researchers came up with a way to answer the question: How much better
off would these alumni be now if they had been provided with the best
foster care possible?
Making
Improvements
Optimizing the
educational experiences of foster youth produced a 13 percent reduction
in negative mental health outcomes. Improving the resources available
to youth upon leaving care reduced negative education outcomes by
nearly 15 percent and negative employment/finance outcomes by 12
percent.
The biggest
impact in individual domains came from reducing the number of foster
care placements to three or less. That reduced negative mental health
outcomes by 22 percent and negative education outcomes by 18 percent.
Yet even the most
"optimized" foster care yielded disappointing results. The
researchers found that when all foster care experiences were optimized
simultaneously, there was a 22.2 percent reduction in estimated
undesirable outcomes in mental health, education and economics,
combined.
"The key
lesson from the study," Wexler concludes, "is that the only
way to fix foster care is to have less of it. … The study shows
that if you made foster care almost perfect, you would reduce the
rotten outcomes by only 22.2 percent. That's not good enough."
Eliminating the
need for foster care is a long-term mission for Casey Family Programs,
Massinga said in an e-mail, but the study "provides new
statistical evidence of the value of implementing certain key program
reforms that will improve child welfare systems around the nation
now."
(Alumni Struggles
Below should be placed in blue resource box style)
Alumni
Struggles
Among those surveyed:
22% – Experienced homelessness afterfoster care.
25% – Experienced post-traumatic stress disorder after foster
care.
33% – Earn below the federal poverty line.
33% – Don't have health insurance.
15% – Don't have a high school diploma.
84% – Don't have a vocational degree.
98% – Don't have a bachelor's degree.
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Foster
Care Population Rises and Falls
By John
Kelly
The
number of youth in Foster Care continues to drop, but the number of
children entering foster care went up in 2004, new federal figures say.
A total of the 518,000 youth were in care in care at the end of fiscal
2004, down some 34,000 from fiscal 2000, according to figures posted by
the U.S. Administration for children and families (ACF). But the number
of entries into foster care-was up from 293,000 in 2000, according to
ACF.
"States
have been doing good work," says Susan Orr, associate commissioner
of ACF's Children's Bureau. "They're moving children more quickly,
so they aren't waiting as long to become adopted."
But the
number of youth exiting the system cannot completely explain the drop
in the total number of youth in care. ACF recorded nearly 1.4 million
exits from the system from 2000 through 2004, but the number of
recorded entries eclipsed that by more than 100,000.
Richard
Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child
Protection Reform, calls the rise in entries "a tragedy for
America's children – particularly the impoverished,
disproportionately minority children who often are needlessly torn from
loving homes when family poverty is confused with neglect."
Wexler,
whose organization favors putting fewer children in out-of-home
placements, blames the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (AFSA)
for the higher number of entries. The act provides financial incentives
to states for each finalized adoption, which Wexler believes prompted
an increase in youth entering the system between 1998 and 2004.
In
March 1998, four months after AFSA was enacted, 520,000 children were
in foster care, and just 2,000 fewer were in care in late 2004,
according to ACF. The agency reports that adoptions from foster care
rose from 31,000 in 1997 to 51,000 by 2000, but has leveled off since
then.
Orr concedes that a rise in entries is not
necessarily good, but laughs at the notion that states have put more
youth in foster care because of AFSA.
"Looking at the number of children
entering the system nationally, one can't possibly tell whether those
are good or bad decisions," Orr says. "But I don't know how
AFSA, which was all about moving children to permanency, would drive children
into care."
"You
can tell they are bad decisions, because there are model systems around
the country that aren't making these bad decisions," Wexler says.
"They're taking far fewer children and improving child
safety."
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Recent
News and Research in Foster Care
By John
Kelly, Bridget Joyce, & Jennifer Moore
For-Profits
Win Access to Federal Funds
By John Kelly
President Bush
signed a bill last month that puts for-profit therapeutic foster care
agencies on an equal footing with nonprofits in getting federal funds.
The Fair Access
Foster Care Act of 2005 (S. 1894) allows federal funds for foster care
maintences payments to flow through for profit agencies that places
children with therapeutic foster care (TFC) providers. TFC providers
service foster children who have special physical, psychological
emotional and behavioral needs.
Sen. James Inhofe
(R-Okla.) and Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) sponsored identical versions of
the bill in the Senate and House after learning that one-third of the
agencies in Oklahoma that arrange and supervise TFC placements were
for-profits. Both bills passed almost unanimously. Under the new law,
all licensed TFC agencies nationwide – regard less of their
profit status – can receive funding directly from the federal
government, which should help for-profits streamline maintnance
payments to foster parents who provide the therapeutic care.
The federal funds
in question include Medicaid reimbursements and payments under the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services' Title IV-E programs. Although
an amendment to the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 Title IV-E funds, only
state child welfare agencies and nonprofits under contract with states
were allowed to make federal foster care maintenance payments directly
to foster family homes providing TFC. Basically, it was a snafu,"
said
Michele Johnson,
executive director of Choices for Life, a for-profit agency in Oklahoma
that places children in TFC homes. "Years ago, when the language
changed it cleared [direct maintenance payments] for group homes and
those kind of facilities, but it did not include therapeutic foster
care homes." Jay Berlin, executive director of Alternative Family
Services, a nonprofit foster and adoption serv ices agency in San
Francisco, said he has come to see blanket discrimination against
for-profits in the child welfare industry as unnecessary. "I'm
aware of really good for- profits and really good nonprofits, and
really bad for-profits and really bad nonprofits," he said.
"It's not the business model that determines the quality of
care."
•
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Guilty of
Starving Foster Kids
By Bridget Joyce
In the legal
wrap-up of a case that drew national attention, Vanessa Jackson pleaded
guilty in a New Jersey Superior court last month to endangering the
welfare of her four adopted sons. She faces up to seven years in
prison. Jackson and her late husband, Raymond Jackson Sr., were accused
of starving the boys and refusing to provide them with medical
attention.
The Jacksons were
arrested in October 2003, after a neighbor found their
19-year"-0Id adopted son Bruce rummaging for food in a trashcan.
He weighed 45 pounds and stood four feet tall. The other boys were also
found to be severely malnourished and underdeveloped.
The Jackson's
four biological children, along with two adopted daughters and one
foster daughter, were found to be in good health.
According to
media reports, the Jacksons had received more than $30,000 in state
funds in 2002 to care for the four boys.
A plea agreement
in the case recommends a sentence of seven years, with Jackson eligible
for parole in 18 months. She will be sentenced Feb. 10.
The case drew
national attention to possible deficiencies in New Jersey's Division
of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), which launched major reform
efforts after settling a class action lawsuit brought by Children's
Rights, a New York nonprofit. Media reports said child welfare workers
visited the Jacksons' home at least 38 times from 1991 to 2003, but
never noted any health issues for the four boys, who ranged from 9
through 19. Civil suits' filed on behalf of the boys against DYFS were
settled in October. Under that agreement, Bruce Jackson will get $5
million and life-long, state-provided medical care. The other three
boys each will receive nearly $1.9 million from the state, along with
medical insurance until they reach 21 and up to $185,000 in special
education services. Contact: New Jersey DYFS (609) 292-3717.
•
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Child and
Family Services: Parental Rights Challenges Increase
From The
Review Journal (Las Vegas)
(Summarized by
Jennifer Moore)
Parents and some
court officials are questioning the sincerity of Clark County's
self_professed family preservation and reunification philosophy.
Here's why: The number of parental rights terminations in the Nevada
county grew from 480 in 2001 to 637 in 2004.
Parents who have
lost custody of their children and who feel unfairly treated or ignored
by child welfare agencies often find that the grievance system designed
to deal with their concerns is "broken" and
"overwhelmed,"
say attorneys who represent them. Only two attorneys in the Clark
County public defender's office are available to represent parents in
child custody and welfare cases, while the county has more than 1,500
children in substitute care. June 13, 2005. www.reviewjournal.com.
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Caseworker
Turnover Hurts Kids and Agencies
By
Jennifer Moore
Everyone
intuitively understands it – child welfare workers, their
supervisors, the courts, even the kids. A revolving cast of caseworkers
is not good for children in foster care. It's not so great for anyone
else involved, either, including taxpayers.
A new study has
taken a big step toward documenting the costs of caseworker turnover.
The report,
"Review of Turnover in Milwaukee County Private Agency Child
Welfare Ongoing Case Management Staff," found that caseworker
turnover during one 21-month period from 2003 to 2004 cost the county
more than $1.4 million and drastically reduced or even statistically
killed the chances for one out of every four children to find permanent
homes.
The study was
conducted by Jess McDonald, former director of the Illinois Department
of Child and Family Services and now director of a partnership program
at the Children and Family Research Center at the University of
Illinois, and his colleagues, Connie Flower and Michael Sumski.
In presenting the
findings to policy-makers and child welfare professionals, McDonald
says he often illustrates the consequences of turnover with a story
about a foster teen he interviewed. The youth insisted there was no
need to learn his newest case manager's name. McDonald recalls,
"When the caseworker introduced herself to the boy, he said, 'I'll
just call you 10.' "
'Just-In-Time'
Analysis
Last year,
Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) invited McDonald, Flower and Sumski to
examine staff turnover in the county-level Bureau of Milwaukee Child
Welfare (BMCW) and the three private agencies contracted by the bureau
to provide foster care and safety services. McDonald says the
researchers performed the study for free.
Doyle's request
came on the eve of a large-scale overhaul of the county's child welfare
system that will reduce the number of service sites from five to three
and place the contracts for the three remaining sites up for bid to
private agencies. That process is set to begin this month.
Some people who
deal with the bureau worry that the change could disrupt hundreds of
cases by increasing caseworker turnover due to employment insecurity
and by transferring open cases to new sites or agencies.
The researchers
set out to correlate existing data from BMCW, qualitative data from
interviews and focus groups with front-line staff and supervisors and
quantitative results from a survey administered to the focus groups.
The team gathered
all the information in less than 45 days. The write-up took just a
little longer.
"We were
asked to do a very quick turnaround that could be put to use right
away," McDonald says. He defines the study as a
"just-in-time" analysis that involves "operational
research" that's "not just about academics."
Key Findings
The team found
that turnover rates for ongoing case management staff at the three
private agencies ranged from 34 percent to 67 percent from January 2003
through September 2004. In 2003, the Annie E. Casey Foundation
estimated the annual turnover for child welfare workers nationally was
about 20 percent.
The U.S.
Department of Labor estimates that the cost of employee turnover is
one-third of the exiting worker's annual salary. What that figure fails
to reflect for child welfare agencies, according to the new report, are
financial penalties and the withholding of funds for poor performance
evaluations, morale problems and the cost of ongoing care for children
whose permanency placement is delayed by productivity losses.
"When
children stay in foster care because no one can successfully work with
them and their families to attend to permanency goals … the cost
of the system soars," McDonald says. "Stabilizing the work
force could save a lot of taxpayer dollars, and that savings could be
reinvested in the system."
Most importantly,
the researchers found that children assigned to only one case manager
during the study period were returned to their families or placed in
permanent homes in 75 percent of the 659 cases studied. That compares
with 18 percent of those who had two case managers, 0.3 percent to 5
percent among children with three to five case managers, and 0.1
percent among those who had six or seven case managers.
The findings
illustrate "the most important issue for children and their
well-being. That is that the number of case managers any child is
assigned has direct … bearing on that child's chance at a
permanent home in a reasonable period of time," says Linda Davis,
chair of the Milwaukee Child Welfare Philanthropy Group and a long-time
children's advocate. "The severe drop … is startling."
Value of
Talking With Staff
McDonald was
impressed by the amount of data readily available at the Milwaukee
county bureau, including statistics on turnover rates by agency,
compliance items (such as the amount of worker contact with kids) and
the results of electronic exit interviews with caseworkers who had left
their jobs.
But the former
caseworker understood the value of speaking directly with front-line
workers and supervisors. His team conducted focus groups with
one-quarter of the approximately 230 case managers in the county, and
with nearly two-thirds of the 45 supervisors.
"Focus
groups helped us better understand what we saw in the data," he
says. Everyone in the focus groups completed an Employee Environment
Survey, which was developed by the Gallup Organization to measure
employee engagement – a factor "highly predictive of
retention, productivity and other business outcomes," according to
the report.
The survey was
composed of 12 statements intended to measure the recurring sense of
achievement among workers. It asked workers to respond to the
statements on a six-point scale, ranging from "Disagree Very
Much" (one) to "Agree Very Much" (six).
For example, for the statement, "At work, I have the opportunity
to do what I do best every day," 75 percent of supervisors and 47
percent of case managers responded that they agreed moderately or very
much.
The researchers
correlated those responses with information from the focus group
discussions.
They attributed much of the turnover, along with most of the
frustration revealed in the surveys, to workers' concerns over low
salaries, a lack of professional regard, an oppressive organizational
culture and inadequate training. Among the specific findings:
• Starting salaries for
private agency staff are routinely less than those offered by BMCW to
its own workers performing comparable duties. The lack of a career
ladder or timely salary adjustments within the agencies caused the pay
gap to widen over time.
• Staff members feel they
are not viewed as professionals, particularly by court officials who
refer to them as "lay people." Caseworkers saw little value
in gaining social work certification, because it is not tied to salary
increases. More than eight in 10 lacked certification, although 96
percent of those interviewed were eligible.
• Supervisors described a
lack of autonomy from the bureau concerning their agencies' day-to-day
operations, salary issues and emerging needs, and a perception that
their contracts with the bureau were rigid and inflexible. Case
managers and supervisors rarely reported praise or recognition for good
work, and staff members expressed little confidence that their
co-workers were committed to doing high-quality work.
• Staff reported that
previously offered intensive court training was no longer available,
and that most of the other training being offered is too broad or
focuses on compliance issues, rather than on helping workers spot
substance abuse issues, assess family dynamics, construct service plans
or engage family members.
How to Make
Change
The
recommendations? "Hire the right staff, pay them fair wages, and
support them with intensive training and solid supervision,"
McDonald says.
Those are hardly new ideas. The problem at many youth-serving agencies
lies in implementing such concepts. Acknowledging that "the right
strategies often seem out of reach or too costly," the researchers
suggest "reasonable and affordable" strategies for
standardized, competency-based hiring interviews; training pipelines;
salary schedules; guaranteed step and merit pay systems; and
overarching quality assurance and improvement plans.
Davis, of the Milwaukee Child Welfare Philanthropy Group, says some
Milwaukee private agencies embraced the report immediately and are
seeing changes in staff morale. Others continue to struggle, but hope
to incorporate the recommended changes. The governor's office says it
will include the report's recommendations in the Request for Proposals
for the new case management contracts being bid on this month.
That
responsiveness appears to buck a national trend. "Everyone in
leadership – local, state and federal, as well as advocates
– has abandoned the work force," McDonald says. "They seem
to miss the analysis that the cost of the child welfare system in terms
of outcomes and dollars is in the hands of the work force. We abandon
them at great risk."
Jennifer Moore can be reached at jmoore@youthtoday.org.
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