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In Search of Middle Ground.Richard Wexler

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In Search of Middle Ground.Richard Wexler IN SEARCH OF MIDDLE GROUND Toward Better Solutions to the Texas Child Welfare Crisis AN APRIL, 2008 UPDATE TO THE ENTRY-INTO-CARE DATA IN THIS REPORT CAN BE FOUND AT: www.nccpr.org/reports/statsupdate.pdf National Coalition for Child Protection Reform 53 Skyhill Road (Suite 202) Alexandria VA 22314 (703) 212-2006 [email protected] www.nccpr.org IN SEARCH OF MIDDLE GROUND/2 IN SEARCH OF MIDDLE GROUND Toward Better Solutions to the Texas Child Welfare Crisis A prevention first action agenda from the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform By Richard Wexler, NCCPR Executive Director January, 2005 CONTENTS: Overview 03 extended hostility 42 • Equal payments for kin care 60 Wrongful removal is not rare 06 Privatization: The • Family to Family 60 You’re only damned Comptroller’s blind alley 44 • Community Partnerships 61 if you don’t 08 Blind alley #2: • Drug treatment 62 Wrongful removal hurts Accreditation 46 • Wraparound programs 63 children 11 Goody-two-shoes • Raise caseworker pay 63 The myth of due process prevention is not enough… 48 for families 12 Start with the kitchen 49 Part Two: Due Process Wrongful removal is not …and the wrong kind of for families inevitable 15 “prevention” is harmful 52 • Defense counsel for The price of panic 16 A PREVENTION FIRST accused parents 63 What the data really show 18 ACTION AGENDA Leveling the playing field What Illinois can teach Texas 19 Part One: Improving Services in Washington State 64 The stakes 22 • Prevention first 54 • Don’t fund CASA 66 Angela’s story 25 • Best practices tour 54 • Tape all interviews 66 Forgotten fatality: The death • Panel of national experts 55 • Open most case records 67 of Eric Hernandez 27 • Change financial incentives 55 • Raise the standard of proof 68 Overuse of institutions 29 • No TANF for foster care 56 • Abolish legal “ransom” 69 Milwaukee vs. the • Screen calls to the hotline 56 “institutions lobby” 31 • Adopt a standard of “least • Strengthen “flexible response” 57 Drugs 33 detrimental alternative” 69 • Replace anonymous reporting The limits of adoption 36 with confidential reporting 57 Spend more – Appendix A: A short course but spend smarter 37 •No more “white glove tests” 58 in foster care statistics 71 New Jersey’s better idea 39 • Provide “hard services” 59 Endnotes 76 Extended families – • Intensive Family Preservation Services 59 ABOUT NCCPR The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform is a non-profit organization whose members have encountered the child protection system in their professional capacities and work to make it better serve America’s most vulnerable children. Board of Directors: President: Martin Gug- genheim, former Director of Clinical and Advocacy Programs, New York University Law School. Vice President: Carolyn Kubitschek , attorney specializing in child welfare law, former Co-ordinator of Family Law, Legal Services for New York City. Treasurer: Joanne C. Fray, attorney with extensive experience with litigation involving the care and protection of children and termination of parental rights, Lexington, Mass. Direc- tors: Elizabeth Vorenberg, (Founding President) former Assistant Commissioner of Public Welfare, State of Massachusetts; former Deputy Di- rector, Massachusetts Advocacy Center; former member, National Board of Directors, American Civil Liberties Union; Annette Ruth Appell , Associate Professor, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; former member of the Clinical Faculty, Children and Family Justice Center, Northwestern University Law School Legal Clinic, former Attorney and Guardian ad Litem, office of the Cook County, Ill. Public Guardian; Marty Beyer, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and consultant to numerous child welfare reform efforts; Ira Burnim, Legal Direc- tor, Judge Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Washington, DC; former Legal Director, Children’s Defense Fund; former Staff Attorney, Southern Poverty Law Center; Prof. Paul Chill, Associate Dean, University of Connecticut School of Law, Prof. Prof. Dorothy Roberts, North- western University School of Law, author Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Civitas Books: 2002). Witold “Vic” Walczak, Legal Director, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Pennsylvania. Staff: Richard Wexler , Executive Director. Author, Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims of the War Against Child Abuse . (Prometheus Books: 1990, 1995). Funding for this report, and NCCPR’s other National Advocacy Activities, comes from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Open Society Institute, part of the Soros Foundations Network. We thank them for their support, but acknowledge that the views expressed in this publication are those of NCCPR alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of our fun- ders. National Coalition for Child Protection Reform / 53 Skyhill Road (Suite 202) / Alexandria, Va. 22314 703-212-2006 / [email protected] / www.nccpr.org IN SEARCH OF MIDDLE GROUND/3 IN SEARCH OF MIDDLE GROUND Toward Better Solutions to the Texas Child Welfare Crisis A prevention first action agenda from the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform By Richard Wexler, NCCPR Executive Director January, 2005 Overview: would cost taxpayers less than foster care. No one ever accused Dallas Helms And, in fact, Dallas Helms already of beating her infant, Saundra. No one ac- had plenty of help. A group of caring cused the Corpus Christi mother of raping neighbors, who thought Dallas Helms was a the child. No one said she tortured the little wonderful mother, banded together to give girl. No one said she locked the child in a her all the help she needed. closet and starved her to death. No one said To which CPS replied: There’s no she tried to sell the child on the street for guarantee the neighbors will be there for- drugs. ever. The one and only “crime” of Dallas The fact that CPS can’t guarantee Helms was this: She had a seizure disorder. stable foster homes for the children who fall And so, it seems, does the agency victim to its “seizure disorder,” and the fact now called the Texas Department of Family that the rate of abuse in foster care is far and Protective Services (DFPS), and its higher than the rate in the general population Child Protective Services (CPS) division. apparently was irrelevant. 1 Because rather than provide Dallas ___________ Helms with the assistance she would need to care for her child, they seized the infant Rita Veitenheimer says she will when she was five months old. They held never forget the day the white van pulled up the child for at least six months, more than in front of her home in Wichita Falls – with half of her life. at least one police car right behind. Three During some of the most important police officers and two CPS workers months of her life – her first – Saundra emerged from the vehicles. They marched Helms was denied the crucial opportunity to up to Veitenheimer, who was on the front bond with her own mother. No matter how porch with her four children. A CPS worker good her substitute care may have been, that demanded that Veitenheimer give him her is emotional abuse, inflicted by the state. seven-week-old baby, Kimberly When she Child Protective Services admitted in refused, a police officer pulled her arms be- court that other loving mothers with similar hind her and the worker took the infant. The problems are allowed to keep their children. other children, Ashley, 7, Christopher 6, and They have extended family that can help Steven, 5, began crying and screaming as them care for the child. Dallas Helms did the police and CPS workers hauled them not. away, put them in the van and drove off. CPS might have added that any mid- Before the best efforts of the State of dle-class mother in Helms’ position could Texas to protect them, all three had been simply buy the help she needed, in the form “A” students who never missed a day of of home health care. But then CPS would school. have to admit that it would rather tear a After they were taken away, Steven child from a loving mother than provide that became a child who never smiled. Christo- kind of help; even though such help actually pher repeatedly beat his head against a wall, IN SEARCH OF MIDDLE GROUND/4 and ran away from his foster home. erty was not the issue, at the first court hear- But perhaps such emotional damage ing, much time was spent questioning the is a small price to pay for protecting children father about his wages and expenses. And, from a “dangerous” mother. After all, look in still another indication of the great lengths at what their mother had done: to which CPS goes to avoid confusing pov- She smoked marijuana while preg- erty with child abuse – they filed a petition nant. 2 to terminate Jenkins and Asher’s parental Veitenheimer’s children are not the rights. (Just a formality, they said, in case only ones in Texas to be punished for their reunification doesn’t work out – apparently mother’s pot smoking. something done routinely in Texas). _________ In Houston, newborn Sylvan Asher "I have no problems with and her 15-month-old brother, Bishop, were torn from their parents, Angela Jenkins and drugs, but if they want me to Aaron Asher, because the mother smoked go to drug counseling, I'll go marijuana; she said, to ease the pain of la- to drug counseling. I'm a very bor. But it wasn’t just that, CPS insists. good mother, but if they want The infant was medically fragile and the me to go to parenting classes, parents didn’t get prenatal care. (The par- I'll go to parenting classes. I ents couldn’t afford prenatal care. They had been turned down for Medicaid four times).
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