Trinity Mount Ministries

Showing posts with label foster care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foster care. Show all posts

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Opinion: What the Data Says About Child Welfare in New York City

David Hansell was appointed commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) in 2017.

By David Hansell

When I became Commissioner of New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) two years ago, I vowed to ensure that we’re protecting children and supporting families and I committed to use data to measure whether we’re reaching the right outcomes.

New data from 2018 shows that we’re moving in the right direction – and that we must continue investing in work that is helping our city’s most vulnerable children and families.

In 2018, the number of children in foster care in New York City fell another 6 percent, while nationally the number of young people in foster care has steadily increased over the last few years. Today, there are fewer than 8,500 children in foster care in New York City – down from nearly 50,000 in the 1990s and more than 16,000 just a decade ago.

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ACS investigates about 60,000 reports of suspected child abuse or neglect every year. We don’t choose which cases to investigate; we’re required to investigate every report that’s forwarded to us by the State hotline, which fields calls from teachers, doctors, neighbors, and members of the public.

When we start an investigation into alleged abuse or neglect, our first priority is making sure that the child is safe. More children are now able to stay safely at home with their families, thanks in part to evidence-based prevention services we’ve expanded in New York City. On any given day, families with 25,000 children are receiving these services, which include a wide range of services such as intensive family therapy, drug treatment, domestic violence advocacy, assistance with housing, benefits and child care, and coaching for parents. These services are helping parents provide the safe, healthy, happy homes that children need in order to thrive.

However, if we find a child in imminent danger of serious harm, and there is no alternative that will keep that child safe, we must remove the child for his or her own safety. In 2018, removals happened in 2,060 investigations. We carefully balance the need to ensure the child’s safety with the parent’s rights to due process.

In the vast majority of cases, children remain at home while parents take part in prevention services. Most often, parents participate in these services voluntarily. Sometimes, we need to obtain a court order to ensure that they participate, or that an abusive parent or relative is excluded from the home in a domestic violence situation, because that’s how we are able to ensure that a child remains safe. We aim to use court orders only when necessary, and in 2018 the number of children in cases in which ACS filed for and received court-ordered supervision decreased by 20 percent from 2017. Every removal must be reviewed in family court before a child is remanded to foster care. In some cases, we remove a child on an emergency basis and then seek a court order the next business day.

For example, our caseworkers might conduct an emergency removal if a child has serious bruises and cuts that were caused by a parent at home, but the report was received at night or during the weekend when the family court is closed. We will not send that child back into a dangerous home for the night and wait to go to court the next morning. Instead, we will remove the child on an emergency basis, and file with the court first thing the next morning.

In short, we conduct emergency removals only when there’s an imminent risk of harm and it’s impossible to get a court order first. And in 2018, the number of emergency removals declined 14 percent from 2017.

We will always need to seek court-ordered supervision in some cases, and we will always need to conduct some emergency removals. That’s the unfortunate reality of the extremely difficult and important work that ACS’ frontline staff does 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But we have strengthened our decision-making in these cases – making sure that we’re taking action when children’s safety is at stake, and that we’re supporting families appropriately – through a range of reforms we’ve put in place over the last two years, including enhanced training on safety and risk, expanded technology to give caseworkers fuller and faster access to information, and increased oversight and consultation from managers, law enforcement experts, and medical professionals.

Ultimately, the most important data we monitor is whether children are safer as the result of our protective and preventive work. In 2018, fewer than 1.5 percent of families that completed prevention services had a child who was later removed and placed in foster care. We also know that nearly 10 percent of families with an “indicated” case (an investigation that uncovered evidence of abuse or neglect) that were referred but didn’t take part in prevention programs ended up having a repeat indicated investigation of abuse or neglect within six months. That’s why we continue to seek court orders when participation in prevention services is needed.

We are continuing to examine our work critically, identify areas for improvement, and make reforms. The most recent data shows us that we’re on the track – and that we need to keep moving forward.

David A. Hansell is commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services.



Thursday, December 13, 2018

Studies Show Children are Worse Off in Foster Care

The Child Trafficking Business



 by Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News Editor

Children taken away from troubled families and put into foster care do not do as well as children left in troubled homes. This fact is not even in dispute. So why does the current system still exist, when it is clearly destroying the lives of so many children?

Studies Show Children are Worse Off in Foster Care

There have been numerous reports published over the past several years that clearly show the current foster care system is an abysmal failure. Children who stay with parents who are accused (but not arrested or convicted) of “abuse” or “neglect” clearly do better than most of the children being put into foster care.
In 2007 Joseph Doyle, an economics professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, published a study which tracked at least 15,000 kids from 1990 to 2002. It was the largest study of its kind at that time.

USA Today ran a story on the report – Study: Troubled homes better than foster care. Here are some excerpts:

Children whose families are investigated for abuse or neglect are likely to do better in life if they stay with their families than if they go into foster care, according to a pioneering study. Kids who stayed with their families were less likely to become juvenile delinquents or teen mothers and more likely to hold jobs as young adults.
Doyle’s study…. provides “the first viable, empirical evidence” of the benefits of keeping kids with their families, says Gary Stangler, executive director of the Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative, a foundation for foster teens. Stangler says it looked at kids over a longer period of time than had other studies. “It confirms what experience and observation tell us: Kids who can remain in their homes do better than in foster care,” says Stangler.

Joseph Doyle did another study, one year later in 2008, comparing children left in troubled homes with foster care children to see which group was more likely to be arrested as adults. The study looked at 23,000 children, and it found that “children placed in foster care have arrest, conviction, and imprisonment rates as adults that are three times higher than those of children who remained at home.”  
Why Is This Failed System Allowed to Continue?

In his 2007 study, Joseph Doyle gives clear evidence as to why the foster care system is still in existence, even with such abysmal results:

Although foster care is meant to be a temporary arrangement, children stay in care for an average of two years, and there are currently over 500,000 children in care (US  Department of Health and Human Services 2005). Roughly 60 percent of foster children return home; 15 percent are adopted; and the remainder “age out” of foster care (Fred C. Wulczyn, Kristen Brunner Hislop, and Robert M. Goerge 2000). Three quarters of these children live with substitute families, one-third of which are headed by relatives of the children. These families are paid a subsidy of approximately $400 per month per child (Child Welfare League of America 1999), and states spend over $20 billion each year to administer these child protective services (Roseana Bess et al. 2002).



The foster care system is a $20 billion taxpayer funded business, employing tens of thousands of people in the United States. Do we really expect government employees, which include not only social service workers but juvenile and family court judges and employees, to advocate putting themselves out of a job?

What is the Solution?

There is only one solution, since the system is so corrupt and beyond reform: Abolish it.

All federal funding for foster care and adoption should immediately be abolished. Let local law enforcement arrest and prosecute criminal parents the same as any other suspected criminal, rather than incarcerating the alleged victims by kidnapping them. Criminal parents are the ones who should be removed from homes, not innocent children.

Without the more than $20 billion in federal funding used for trafficking children, far fewer children will be taken from their homes. In cases where parents are removed with due process of law, the incentives in local communities would be to place the children with relatives, rather than the State. For the very few remaining children who have had their parents incarcerated and have no relatives, local communities can develop their own programs without federal funding, which would include adoption to parents who can afford to take care of children without the aid of federal funds.

It is time the American tax payer stops funding the U.S. child trafficking business, which is nothing more than a modern-day form of slavery.

For those just being introduced to the topic of medical kidnapping and child trafficking via foster care for the first time, and having doubts that this is real, or thinking that we are exaggerating the problem, please review these previous articles where former CPS whistleblowers explain how this is in fact happening.

Original Article


Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Abuse Numbers Rise For Sacramento Foster Kids

Abuse numbers rise for Sacramento foster kids. County can’t say why:

Sacramento County foster kids are being mistreated at a rate not seen since the recession a decade ago, the latest state data show, but the county has no immediate answers about what’s causing the increase in confirmed cases of abuse of children in its care.

County officials substantiated 85 reports of maltreatment in Sacramento County foster homes between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017. That's an increase of 30 cases, or 55 percent, from the same period the prior year, according to state Department of Social Services data maintained by the University of California, Berkeley.

Only five other California counties had a higher rate of substantiated child maltreatment cases per 100,000 days in foster care: San Bernardino, Del Norte, Madera, Siskiyou and Stanislaus.

“We are aware of it,” said Sacramento County Child Protective Services Deputy Director Michelle Callejas. “We are actually digging deeper into that data.”

In a review of substantiated complaints against Sacramento foster placements, The Sacramento Bee found a variety of violations, including physical and sexual abuse in residential foster homes, group settings and other placements.

In one instance, a county social worker investigating a January 2017 claim that a “foster mother starved foster child,” found that there was a lack of food in the house.

A June complaint alleged “unknown males allowed to enter facility and have sex” with foster kids. An investigation subsequently confirmed that men were able to come into the housing at night, and ordered the facility to improve supervision.

In another placement, investigators found that a staff member called “his friends to the group home to fight” in June 2016. The men attacked a foster youth, leaving him with a concussion. That same facility, though using a different name, was subsequently found not to have adequate food for its six foster youths twice during 2017 inspections. Most recently, it was cited by the county for failing to properly report that a resident with a history of arson set a fire in the facility in September.

Callejas said she convened a team in recent weeks to look at the rising numbers, but does not have answers yet. Callejas said the county would need to “do the hard file pull” to review records and examine each case to better understand the circumstances.

“I don’t want to speculate,” said Callejas. “I want to hear from my team.”

Callejas said there was no timeline for how long that review might take.

Sacramento has not seen such high numbers of substantiated child maltreatment in foster care in more than a decade. During 2006, 193 foster care maltreatment allegations were substantiated, but roughly double the number of children were in foster care at the time. In each of the last five years, the number of substantiated complaints generally fell between 40 and 60, state figures show.

State officials said they were also aware of the increase and were working “collaboratively” with Sacramento County to review the rise.

“It’s very typical when you are dealing in child welfare services that understanding what is going on is extremely important vs. doing something very quickly without being informed,” said Mike Weston, Deputy Director of Public Affairs and Outreach with the California Department of Social Services. “Obviously any abuse in care needs to be addressed immediately, but understanding some of the causes of that are important as well, and that’s really where things are right now.”

Trinity Mount Ministries

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Former Foster Carer jailed For 12 Years For Sexually Abusing Children

by David Clarkson

Rex Lawrence Wilson, 64, has been jailed for sexually abusing children.

"I hate you and I hope you burn in hell," a sex abuse victim told former Child, Youth and Family Services (CYF) caregiver Rex Lawrence Wilson before he was jailed for 12 years.

The 64-year-old's two victims – he was found guilty at an eight-day Christchurch District Court jury trial in January – both read emotional victim impact reports at his sentencing in the same court on Wednesday.

Judge Paul Kellar said the two women, now aged in their 20s, had been done "incalculable harm" over six years of his offending.

"I was singularly impressed with both of them during the course of the trial, and even more so today."

He said the offending was "about as serious as it gets".

A jury had found Wilson guilty of 15 charges: two charges of rape, 12 of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection and indecent assault on a child aged under 12.

One complainant said she refused to be a cowering "rape victim" and asked how Wilson felt now that he was a "victim" himself of the criminal justice system. She said she saw no remorse or shame from him.

After his offending, which ended when she was aged 13, she had turned to drugs, alcohol and self-harm and she had tried to kill herself more than once. She was now a mother.

The other complainant, also now a mother, told of turning to drugs and alcohol to try block out what he had done.

"You ruined my life," she told him, but now said she had an amazing partner and beautiful children.

She said she hoped that what she had done in reporting Wilson to police would inspire other victims to speak up and be heard.

"I have no idea when the nightmares will stop and the depression will go away," she said.

At the end of her statement, she abused Wilson across the court room, telling him: "I hate you and hope you burn in hell."

Defence counsel Andrew McKenzie said Wilson faced a long jail term at an advanced age and would not be released until he no longer posed a risk.

"He will have to move a long way from his stance now, for that to be no longer the case."

He told the court Wilson planned to appeal the convictions.

Judge Kellar made an allowance for Wilson having no other relevant convictions, and for his age, which reduced his sentence by four years, to 12 years. He imposed no non-parole term, but said the likelihood was that Wilson would not be eligible for parole unless he showed some significant remorse.

CYF is now known as Oranga Tamariki, Ministry for Children. Its Canterbury regional manager, Blair McKenzie, said he was "appalled by this situation".

"I want to acknowledge the bravery of [Wilson's] victims, who have taken great steps to ensure this offender has been held accountable for his crimes."

An allegation was made against Wilson in 2007 and the child was removed from his care as soon as CYF was made of aware it from police. No further children were placed in Wilson's care.

Before the allegation, about 15 children had been in the care of Wilson and his wife.

CYF worked with police to assess whether there was further need for criminal investigations, and no charges were laid at the time.

McKenzie said Oranga Tamariki's caregivers underwent an extensive vetting process, which included assessment by trained social workers, personal and professional character references, and the usual police checks.

"I don't believe someone like Mr Wilson would pass the Oranga Tamariki assessment process."

Trinity Mount Ministries