Dawn Robertson of Honk for Kids has lots of work to do in her effort to save children from DCF injustice. Her state, Indiana, has been taking children from their homes far more often than other states. Child detentions in Indiana have risen ten percent while nationwide, detentions dropped four percent since 2004.

In 2007 Indiana’s Department of Child Services (DCS) removed 7712 children from their homes. That was 369 more than in the previous year.

The Associated Press article about the odd statistics quoted Ms. Robertson as saying, “There does not seem to be, with most judges, an independent and unbiased review of all the facts of the cases. It’s very one-sided. DCS’ word is considered gospel.”

The data on Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) child welfare overzealousness was compiled by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. That’s Richard Wexler’s organization. He pointed out there’s no evidence that children are safer in Indiana and said, “When you are seeing no increase in safety but a huge increase in removals, that means your system is getting worse.”

We who are fighting child welfare insanity in whatever state we’re in should get in the habit of reviewing national child abuse and neglect statistics, as Wexler has done. You’ll never know what there is to find unless you look.

Statistical information:

National Child Abuse and Neglect Statistics
Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities: Statistics and Interventions

Sources:
Report says state removing more kids from homes by Tim Evans, published on November 8, 2008 in the Indiana Star.
Report says state removing more kids from homes, an AP article published on November 8, 2008 in the Chicago Tribune.

Children are better off when left in troubled homes, and not detained in state custody foster homes.

Joseph Doyle Jr., an economics professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management did a study on foster children compared to children living in troubled homes, funded by the National Science Foundation. He used the analytic tools of applied economics to discover that “…children on the margin of foster care placement have better employment, delinquency, and teen motherhood outcomes when they remain at home.”

PLEASE, social workers, legislators, everyone. LISTEN. Most kids are better off when left in their natural family homes. If you care about children, if you want them to have good lives and turn out to be happy, productive citizens, don’t take them away from non-abusive parents.

Doyle’s study tracked more than 15,000 children in Illinois from 1990 to 2002. He chose Illinois because they provided the statistics he needed. He screened out extreme cases of abuse and concentrated only on children whose cases could have gone either way (remaining in their family homes, or going to foster homes).

A July 3, 2007 USA Today article by Wendy Koch states, “Studies . . . show that the 500,000 children in U.S. foster care are more likely than other kids to drop out of school, commit crimes, abuse drugs and become teen parents. . . . His research has shown that this holds true even when foster kids are compared with other disadvantaged youth.”

In conclusion, Doyle wrote: “With the child welfare system affecting so many children who appear to be at high risk of poor life outcomes, it would be useful to know whether abused children benefit from being removed from their families. The analysis here uses the effective randomization of abuse investigators, who differ somewhat in their tendency to have children placed in foster care, to estimate causal effects of placement on longer-term outcomes. Children assigned to investigators with higher removal rates are more likely to be placed in foster care themselves, and they are found to have higher delinquency rates, along with some evidence of higher teen birth rates and lower earnings.”

Thank you, Joseph Doyle Jr., for doing this study.

Sources:

Joseph Doyle Jr. - click on his research link and you’ll see a link to the paper he wrote about his study.

Kids Gain More From Family Than Foster Care - from the MIT News Office

Study: Troubled homes better than foster care - by Wendy Koch, for USA Today

CPS caseworkers in Washington apparently failed to follow up on fifteen reports of child abuse, but when a neighbor told police a teenage foster child was locked in the closet, the girl was finally rescued from what appears to be a horrific foster care abuse situation. Detectives said the first fifteen complaints weren’t acted on because the foster parent moved from apartment to apartment, and they couldn’t find her, yet at the same time this woman collected foster parent benefits for housing the young girl.

My theory is different. I believe that cases of child abuse in foster homes are ignored because CPS doesn’t get any money for taking children from one foster home and putting them in another. They only get an increase in funding when they take a child from their natural families, then place them in a foster home. Therefore foster child abuse isn’t a priority for busy CPS caseworkers.

Fight CPS hopes to shed light on the problem of abuse in foster homes. Statistics have shown that child abuse of all types is about ten times more likely to happen in a foster home than in a natural family home.

The child, who is now sixteen, lived with foster parent Chornice Lewis, 33, for ten years. Acquaintances said Lewis was very polite and made a good impression on them.

Police allege that if the foster child caused any problems, Lewis put the child’s hand on a hot stove. And if she didn’t listen she had to stand next to her foster parent’s bed all night long. If she slept, a 10-lb weight was dropped on her feet. And once, when she wasn’t packing properly, an insulin needle was plunged into her eye, so the girl is now blind in one eye.

According to a KOMOTV.Com article, Cheryl Stephani, an employee of the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, DSHS, said “We missed it. . . . As a child welfare system. It’s all of us, the courts, the department, the children’s administration. We should hold each other accountable; we need to hold each other accountable.”

Holding CPS caseworkers accountable = Good Idea. When?

Source: Mother accused of abusing foster daughter for years by Bryan Johnson, for KOMOTV.Com, published June 26, 2007.