On 2006-06-30 11:25:00, Badpuppy wrote:
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How are kids hurt by regulation, inspection, and standards? Sure situations occur. But their is a greater burden to cover-up and bend a rule, than if the standards are not their at all.[ This Message was edited by: Badpuppy on 2006-06-30 11:26 ]"
Regulation would be useful if programs were required to report abuse, deaths, assaults, sexual impropriaties, etc. That data is not available and it's difficult to educate some without it.
The way that it could possibly hurt them is if their parents were complacent, assuming that the government was protecting their child. In fact, state regulatory agencies only visit every year or two, unless there have been prior violations. In many states the licensing agency supports the program and overlooks violations.
Many foster kids end up in programs. Take a look at the Fed track record with foster kids. Would they do any better with programs?
http://www.nccpr.org/index_files/page0006.htmlA friend just turned me on to the NCCPR group today, so I haven't fully researched what they're about... but I like this:
Q: Isn't foster care used only in the most severe cases of abuse?
A: No. Although some parents really are brutally abusive or hopelessly addicted, many more are not. Some accused parents are innocent of any wrongdoing. In other cases, the family is poor, and that poverty has been confused with child "neglect." In still other cases, the parent is neither all victim nor all villain, but any problems in the family could have been solved with the right kind of help, while keeping the family together safely.We believe that no child should ever be removed from the child's family for neglect alone, unless the child is suffering, or is at imminent risk of suffering, identifiable, serious harm that cannot be remediated by services.
Q: What should be done instead?
A: That depends on the case. Sometimes, the best thing child protective services can do is apologize to an innocent family, close the door and go away. In other cases, basic help to ameliorate the worst effects of poverty may be all that is needed. For example, a family living in dangerous housing may simply need enough emergency cash to pay a security deposit on a better apartment. In more serious cases, Intensive Family Preservation programs have kept together tens of thousands of families that child protective services was prepared to tear apart - and they've done it with a better safety record than foster care (See NCCPR Issue Papers 1, 10 and 11). Other states and localities have gone further, creating entire systems of care that have reduced the number of children in foster care while making children safer. Other innovations, such as the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Family to Family initiative and the Center for the Study of Social Policy?s Community Partnerships for Child Protection also show great promise as ways to keep children safely with their own parents. (The Casey Foundation also helps to fund NCCPR).
Q: But isn't using foster care a matter of "erring on the side of the child?" Doesn't it at least ensure that a child is safe?
A: No. As noted above, taking a child when there has been no abuse in the home is, in itself, an abusive act. [Programs included] A young child often will assume that he has done something terribly wrong, and now is being punished. For other children, the experience can be as traumatic as a kidnapping. And that's even if the child is placed in a good foster home. Most foster parents try to do the best they can for the children in their care (like most parents, period). But the size of the abusive minority is alarming. That minority grows when more and more children are taken into care, forcing agencies to lower standards and overcrowd foster homes. These conditions also can lead to foster children abusing each other (See NCCPR Issue Paper 1). Overall, real family preservation programs, like those we advocate, have a better track record for safety. For most children most of the time, family preservation is erring on the side of the child.
Q: Who funds NCCPR?
The Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Open Society Institute, a part of the Soros Foundations Network. We thank them for their support, but acknowledge that the views expressed on this website are those of NCCPR alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of our funders.
http://www.nccpr.org/index_files/page0002.htmlAnd this bit from the report on Texas.
Much has been said about the problem of addiction in child welfare. But the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is not the one that afflicts some birth parents, though that is serious and real. The biggest addiction problem in child welfare involves well-heeled, well-connected private child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to their per-diem payments. And sadly, these agencies are putting their addiction ahead of the children.
We know this because of what happened in Illinois, where changing financial incentives was crucial to the state?s successful reform effort.
Like many addicts, the Illinois agencies were ?in denial.? They insisted that per-diem payments had no impact on their decisions. They said they truly wished they could find permanent homes for children but, they said, the parents were so very, very dysfunctional and the children?s problems were so very, very intractable.
But finally, the state worked up the political courage to force private agencies to kick the per-diem habit. Private agencies in Illinois now are rewarded for keeping children safely in their own homes. They also are rewarded for adoptions. But they are penalized financially if they allow children to languish in foster care.
When the financial incentives changed, an amazing thing happened. Suddenly the ?intractable? became tractable the ?dysfunctional? became functional, the foster care population plummeted, and child
safety improved. Illinois succeeded where Kansas did not partly because the two states used different models of privatization.
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/texasreport2.pdf