Editor’s note: This commentary is by Kate Piper, who represented children in child protection proceedings in Vermont for 20 years and is currently a doctoral candidate in Social Policy at the Heller School at Brandeis University, and Mark Redmond, the executive director of Spectrum Youth & Family Services.
An open letter to the Legislative Committee on Child Protection
We know that you will soon be concluding the months of work you have been doing taking testimony and receiving feedback regarding the child protection system in Vermont. We respectfully offer these recommendations regarding the problems that need to be addressed within not only the Department for Children and Families but the child protection system as a whole, based on our combined 53 years of experience in the field of child protection and youth services.
First, it is important to recognize and understand that individual caseworkers are not the problem. The issues of concern are systemic. Vermont’s DCF workers are a very dedicated, hardworking group of public servants, faced with making difficult decisions with limited time and resources.
Second, Vermont rates second-lowest in the country in the percentage of reports of abuse and neglect that are accepted for some type of DCF response — either an investigation or an assessment. We need to understand why DCF is failing to respond appropriately to a large percentage of reports of abuse and neglect. This concern is borne out by data in the 2012 evaluation which found that only 78 percent of decisions on non-accepted reports were rated as accurate. And the “we count differently from other states” response has never been an adequate response by DCF; it is imperative that they start investigating far more of the calls that citizens make when they suspect a child is being abused or neglected.
Third, for those cases in which a child is taken into foster care, too many are being placed back with their parents before those parents are ready to safely resume parenting. We know this because Vermont has the sixth-worst record in the nation in the percent of children who were reunified with their parents and then reentered foster care within 12 months.
Why is Vermont’s record on safe reunifications so dismal? It is important to look at how our judicial system works. Only a judge can order that custody of a child be returned to a parent in child protection proceedings. That order must be based on findings that there has been a substantial change in circumstances and it is in the child’s best interests to be reunified with his or her parents — most importantly, the parents are able to safely resume their parental duties. However, the court’s findings are only as good as the information placed before the judge. The responsibility for conducting a thorough investigation and presenting evidence to the court lies not just with DCF but with the attorneys for the state, parents and child. If the attorneys do not take an active role in advocating for the safety of the child in these proceedings, the results can be disastrous. We would recommend that the Defender General’s office, in conjunction with the guardians ad litem, and the state’s attorneys, in conjunction with DCF, develop better training materials for their attorneys regarding investigation, discovery, ethics and risk assessment.
If we are going to ask relatives to step up and help with abused and neglected children, we have to provide them with much better support.
Fourth, while the preference for transferring custody of children to relatives rather than to DCF is commendable, kin custodians often end up receiving far less assistance from DCF than do foster parents, including the monitoring of parents’ compliance with conditions for parent/child contact and treatment requirements in court-ordered case plans. If we are going to ask relatives to step up and help with abused and neglected children, we have to provide them with much better support.
Fifth, we need to rethink the entire concept of Differential Response. Even DCF’s own workers recently addressed your committee and, as reported in VTDigger, said “the DCF system known as Differential Response, adopted in 2009, isn’t working. The theory behind the system is a good one but it’s based on prevention and there are not enough employees to make it work correctly … They said there are not enough community services to which they can refer families …”
Those courageous workers are right. Differential Response is based on the concept that fewer children will be removed from their homes because community supports will be provided to the family earlier, before family functioning deteriorates to the point where the child is no longer safe at home. But the state is not adequately funding those supports, and the number of calls alleging abuse and neglect has gone from 14,496 in 2010 to almost 18,000 this year, a 24 percent increase, while the number of children in custody has decreased from about 1,400 on any given day to 1,000. So calls are going up, fewer children are being removed from homes, and the community supports aren’t there.
Differential response (DR) is a dual track system for responding to reports of child abuse and neglect. Nationwide, DR systems are based on the premise that only low to moderate risk cases should be placed on the less authoritative assessment track and that high risk cases will be subject to the traditional investigation.
Proponents of DR claim that children whose cases are placed on the assessment track are kept just as safe as those on the investigation track. But the data does not support this claim in Vermont. In 2012 a higher percent (15 percent) of families on the assessment track were re-reported to DCF within 12 months compared to 11 percent of families on the investigation track.
We strongly recommend that DCF re-evaluate the safety outcomes of DR and reconsider the criteria used for the assignment of cases to the assessment track.
We hope that these recommendations are of help to you in your planning and decision-making process in the coming months. Our children and families are counting on you to come through for them with a child protection system that preserves and strengthens families while also ensuring safety.
Correction: An earlier version of this commentary referred to outdated data from other states.
