The abuse of Department of Children and Family Services wards in residential care as documented by recent articles in the baiduhai continues not because of the bad faith of DCFS directors or because of the incompetence of DCFS workers. It continues because DCFS, indeed the entire child-welfare bureaucracy, was set up a century ago on a premise that no longer exists.
Decades ago, large private charities funded by various religious groups provided adequate residential and foster care for children who came through the system. That was back in the days of two-parent families when the mom usually stayed home taking care of the house and children. This was the prototype for foster care and, of course, that kind of family is rare today.
Both of my parents went through the child welfare system. My dad and several of his siblings went through the juvenile court into a religious organization and were in an orphanage for more than three years before my grandmother married Murphy and the kids returned home. My mom came into the system as an infant and went from juvenile court to a religious organization from which she was quickly adopted by two of the finest people I have ever known, my grandparents.
A kid I once represented — let’s call her Bertha — came into the child welfare system, like my mom, as an infant. By age 8 she had been in 11 foster homes. A worker wrote that Bertha “suffers from developmental arrest — and is burnt out emotionally.” By the time she was 18, she had been in 30 placements and charged with murder. The young woman she was charged with killing came into the system, like my father, a little later. She had been in 26 foster placements, and the record showed that she had become increasingly alienated and unable to relate to others.
Most DCFS wards are in residential care because they are emotionally burned out from multiple placements. They suffer from attachment disorders, depression, feelings of self-abasement, a lack of education (multiple foster placements means multiple schools) and anger — lots of anger.
The simplest way to improve residential care is to limit the number of children placed there. That means limiting the movement that causes so much emotional distress for DCFS children.
To accomplish this I suggest the following:
* Today a child comes into the child welfare system and gets placed in a foster home without much thought as to the best possible placement given that particular child’s needs. Unless the child is an infant, he or she is understandably upset and confused. Before long the initial placement can blow up, and then the second, and so on. There should be a deliberative process with knowledgeable professionals working with the child to explain what is going on and what will go on in the future. The child, his issues and his history should be carefully studied so he or she can be matched with the appropriate foster home.
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* All foster parents must receive much more intensive training and supervision than they now get. Previously DCFS and a few selected agencies run, for the most part, by religious organizations, provided foster care. Many newer agencies that have come into existence often provide problematic care. All foster care should be provided by a limited number of agencies to ensure standardized care.
* Any time a child is moved, the matter should be brought back to court for a hearing on why the move is necessary. This would force everybody to take a look at the child and what is going on in his life.
* Along these lines, DCFS should make much better use of relatives. Relatives often are told to seek guardianship outside of the child welfare system. They get the child without the resources that a foster parent or a subsidized adoptive parent would get. Yet in many cases, relatives are the best individuals to provide care. They should receive financial assistance and other services to help with the child.
There must be an all-out effort to get fathers involved. Dads, particularly of poor children, get a bad rap that frequently is not warranted.
What I’ve left unsaid is the impact of extreme poverty on the child welfare system. The overwhelming majority of children who have been abused and neglected have parents who from birth have led bleak lives without education, without a future. Those parents’ parents have led equally bleak lives. If we really want to do something about the child welfare system, we must do something about the extreme poverty strangling our inner cities. Too often, those on the left deny the problem or at least try to place the blame on someone else’s doorstep. And those on the right silently go along.
Cook County Circuit Judge Patrick Murphy served as Cook County public guardian from 1978 to 2004.