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House Interim Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect
Thursday, January 29, 2004
By Paula A. Wolf
Rep. Jennifer Weiss chaired and explained the agenda for today: Presentation on Multiple Response System (MRS). We're also, going to be hearing from some DSS Directors in counties where they have implemented MRS. In addition, we will hear about the Guardian ad Litem Program. We will learn some more about it and get some recommendations. Then, we'll go over the list of needs and recommendations to date to bring us back to our task.
Joann Lamm (DSS) MRS She gave them a copy of her PowerPoint presentation on MRS. What is MRS? There are 7 strategies. We want you to hear from counties: Caldwell and Nash, 2 of the 10 pilots. It's a total child welfare system reform effort. It starts at accepting a report and it goes through child placement. No other state has undertaken all seven strategies. Why did we feel that it was needed in NC? 87% of cases are neglect. These are families with different needs. In 2001, NC was the 2 nd state to experience the Federal Child and Family Services Review. Now, it's been done in all 50 states. The Review focuses on the safety, permanence and well-being of children.
Reasons to go to MRS:
Seven strategies
• Structured-based in-take process implemented June 2003 by all 100 counties. Focuses on family strengths. What can you tell us good about this family? The goal is to help us gain greater consistency.
• Family Assessment Approach to get at neglect and dependency (gets almost all the attention and most states are only doing this one)
• Establish closer relationships with law enforcement and DAs goal to reduce # of interview for children to experience and increase prosecutions for criminal behavior
• Redesign of in-home services part of Fed review after you make a finding that families are in need of services. Looking at needs/strengths of families and individualize services
• Child and Family Teams another Fed recommendation soc worker and families coming together to make joint decision services or how to ensure safety. Mother, minister, best friend to give support. Can prevent foster care and increase safety of children
• Shared Parenting Meetings - Greater collaboration between parents and child welfare meeting of birth parents and foster parents sleeping patterns, favorite foods
• Shared systems of Work First and Child Welfare workers talking to each other and shared plans. Maximize services is a goal too.
In developing these strategies, we've kept following in mind:
• Safety of children is paramount
• Parents are our partners in ensuring safety of their children
• Family-centered approach Always asking ourselves, How would you want it to feel if it was happening to you?'
• Less adversarial relationship
• Respectful of knowledge you have as a parent
Sammy Haithcock, DSS Director, Caldwell County Introduces staff who will present
Holly McNeil-A family services team supervisor. I've been there 4 years. Before that 14 years of experience in child welfare investigation. These things were ground into our heads: You always need to talk to the child separate from the parents, go to the home unannounced. When I first heard about MRS, I kept saying these things. But, other staff, especially the younger ones, opened my mind.
Structured Intake The first priority in both tracks is safety; neglect vs. forensic. There is a place for both kinds. We hear, If you call them first, they're going to clean the house.' But, that's what we want. If the house is constantly dirty, you'll see that. We're talking to family members all together, in most cases. Family members like this for the most part. If we feel like we need more information because of safety, we ask the parent permission to speak to the children by themselves. In a forensic investigation, we always talk to the children separately. Outcomes are different. Forensic it's whether to substantiate or unsubstantiate it, and to name a perpetrator. In family assessment it's in need of services' in this case, we are going to provide services-family has no choice; services recommended'; no services needed'-in these cases, no perpetrator named.
Law-enforcement is always involved in forensic, and in some cases extreme neglect. We have a pretty good relationship with our law enforcement. In family-assessment, we seldom have law enforcement involvement. If we do, it's because the family has asked for it, e.g., someone outside family has abused the child.
Tools we use during assessment for more consistency across state: (these are also relatively new to NC 2 years):
• Safety assessment four-page paper we go over with the family. If there are any yeses', we address these issues.
• Risk assessment we also go over this with the family. Otherwise, we could miss the underlying issues. We can address those, e.g., job loss, other stress.
• Strength and Needs assessment again, we go over with the family
Ginger Cason, child assessment worker in Caldwell County
She sees MRS as having significant benefits to families:
• Easier to establish rapport with families
• Families feel less threatened
• Able to link to services more quickly
• Able to end cases more quickly
• Families appear more empowered
• Families given the opportunity to have their say throughout process
• Thorough assessments provide better information
This is a more effective way to work with families. It is family-friendly. Social workers are seen less as dictators and more of support to guide families to do the right thing for their children.
Sharon Johnson supervisor of Work First Family Assistance Program
We are not about fixing families; we are about putting families in a position to fix their own problems. We assess the family.
What we do differently:
• Complete assessment on whole family
• Share reports together with child welfare
• Mandatory collateral together verify who is in the home and where they live
• Share information about work
• Thereafter, we meet w/client weekly
• Home visits on child-only cases
• Kinship care assessment
• We help with child care, clothing, job searching, summer camp, extra curricular activities, and we help the caretaker if they need minor car repair to get back to work
• Joint monthly meetings bring in community partners
• 3-hour economic literacy class (budgeting)
• Parenting classes mandatory for child-only and Work First caretakers
It used to be there was no way to give services unless report was substantiated now we can give services.
Rep. Earle - I wish someone can convince me that interviewing children in the presence of the parent is the right way to go. I truly feel that children are intimidated by parents, and rightly so. You can't get the truth, especially in the initial investigation. I know of personal experiences where there's been abuse and neglect and it was never been substantiated. I wish I could be as comfortable as you all. And, hearing that the substantiated rate has dropped makes me feel even more uncomfortable.
Ms. McNeil I understand where you're coming from on that. It took a really long time for me to get to that point. But, it's been borne out by kids that talk to us. In cases of more serious abuse and neglect, we are doing separate interviews. We have not found, after 1-1/2 years, cases where we think we've missed something. There is no perfect system. Some family systems are experts at hiding things. That was there when we did forensic tracks.
Rep. Ross 75% are also Work First cases
Ms. Johnson 75% have seen the food stamp, Medicaid or Work First worker first, before the child welfare worker.
Ross After you have gotten someone a job, what is done to make sure there is enough child care/supervision so there is no neglect situation?
Ms. Johnson The child care assistance and Medicaid continues. If you get full-time employment, we disregard earned income for 3 months. We continue to meet weekly. Then, we provide retention services. We can give a gap voucher. We have a van to take them to and from work. Most of the time food stamps continue. There is a transition period.
Ross We've seen some recent press reports that there's a risk we're going to lose child care assistance. How would that interact with these services?
Ms. Johnson That is always a big concern for us, the choice between keeping a job or staying at home and keeping children safe. Child care is extremely important. Sometimes, there are mental health issues and mom can't keep a child 12 hours/day.
Ross Should we be providing more funding for daycare from the state of NC?
All of them Yes! We have waiting list in Caldwell County .
Rep. Clary I would like staff to explain how this has been addressed in Governmental Operations.
Legislative Staff According to the Department (HHS), they have allocated some one-time funds from TANF and other sources for this fiscal year for critical needs. The Department of Child Development has also identified funds from reallocation from counties that have not used all their funds. Disclaimer this is one-time money. In the new fiscal year in July, we are facing the same issue again. Part of the problem is that there was $15 million, in the budget bill before this last one that was also one-time funding, so it is not included in this current budget. That, plus the economic problems counties are having.
Rep. Weiss This is a one-time fix. We might be able to help people already signed up, but there is a waiting list.
Rep. Moore How significant a problem at your agency is false reports in child custody cases? These ties up your resources. Secondly, what would be your thoughts, as workers, for better tools that might allow you to filter through that and measures to prevent it from happening again? I hear that a lot from folks.
Ms. McNeil As a worker, yes, there are a lot of malicious reports. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to pick them out when you get them. MRS is beneficial in this when we have family meetings. We get mom and dad together. We explain what we're there for to make sure children are safenot to determine custody.
Moore Three or 4 years ago, the approach was more adversarial; the whole tone was adversarial. Under MRS, what I've seen anecdotally is that we weed this out quicker. We can ferret out nothing early on. What other measures would you recommend?
Ms. McNeil This is a huge problem. It is very frustrating for our workers. You're right; it's the same families over and over. We have some luck when we can bring everyone together and tell them how stressful this behavior is on the children. When I moved here from Illinois , I was very impressed with system here. One thing Illinois did that was helpful was that if the worker could document it was a malicious report, we had a code on the form to Central Registry that flagged it. If the same reporter made another report, we warned them it was a felony to make false report.
Moore Do we have a law for making false report? I don't think we do.
Rep. Rayfield What is the motivating factors to talk to a child without the parents present?
Ms. McNeil In the forensic track, where there is sexual or physical abuse, or abandonment (neglect that is serious). When the case is serious enough there may well be law enforcement involvement. Children have a hard time talking in front of parents.
Rayfield Do you have a minimum age group for talking to children outside parental consent?
Ms. McNeil - We don't. That is what MRS is trying to address. We go out to day cares to talk to children or schools.
Rayfield Without parental consent, how many times do you discover this information was false?
Ms. McNeil - I don't have statistics on that. With teenagers, very often it's manipulation. Younger kids, sometimes they don't have skills to express themselves. It does happen, but we talk to collaterals and parents, we can find out.
Rayfield Are there adults present [at schools]?
Ms. McNeil - Sometimes. Counselors, some schools always sit in with us.
Weiss There are far fewer cases now that you are interviewing children alone. I'm hearing opposite concerns.
Rayfield I do have concerns with that.
Weiss Keep in mind that the goal is to have children be safe.
Rep. Dickson I'm concerned about the coordination of state/federal resources. What happens if Work First works with the parent over a long period of time and the parent is still is not employed? How long do they have?
Ms. Johnson For a child-only case, a child can receive payments until 18. We can help with a job search. With a parent in the home, there is a 5-year time clock, 12 months if a child is under one year. We start working with them the day of the application. We help with job application, resume writing, we have a job search van 7 places a day. Their job is finding a job. Work First is a voluntary program. There are sanctions or terminations. They don't have to, but there's a consequence if they don't. Two years on, three years off, then they can come back. In a majority of cases, they are on less than 6 months.
Rep. Parmon What about child care vouchers? Do they still have to pay towards day care?
Ms. Johnson On Work First, no. Off, under transitional Medicaid, they pay percentage of income.
Parmon My county is not an MRS county. Two weeks ago, I got a call from my pastor. One of our church members was told they had 30 days to apply for housing. They could not get public housing because she owed them money. Those children need to have a place to stay.
Ms. McNeil Right. We try to find them a place to stay. We take them. We're also a IV-E waiver county. Sometimes, we can help with a deposit. If a child is homeless, they're not safe and we can take them into care.
Parmon I have not seen many males, Blacks or Hispanics in this process. Do you have problems with recruitment?
Ms. Johnson Racially, we do have several workers; no African-American assessment workers. Traditionally, we've had a lot of women. We've recently hired several men. We're happy to have them. We need their point of view. We are able to partner a little bit better with males in families.
Parmon This is just not Caldwell County . It's everyone that's been here and presented.
Rep. Hunter This waiting list for child care really annoys me. I can't explain really why. You'd have to know me before you understand my reasoning. Day care opens at 7; closes at 4-5. One-third of people I know work shift work. There is no such thing as night care. How are those children taken care of?
Ms. McNeil In Caldwell County, we do have some 2 nd shift daycare, and one 3 rd shift. We have a lot of these jobs available, but then parents don't have child care.
Hunter There is a lot of shift work. Everybody doesn't work from 8-5 everyday. That's got to pose a problem for you all. That's got to pose a problem for us who look at these reports. A lot of these kids are families of shift workers. They are left at home late at night heck, they've gone to work. 90% can't work because of that problem. I don't think it's fair.
Ms. McNeil Some daycares close at 6. Most close at 5 or 5:30 . It's a problem with our own workers.
[I lost my audio feed here for awhile]
Rep. Hunter I want staff to give me information; county-by-county, a listing of where there's not enough daycare available and I want to know why. As well as availability of night care.
Rep. Carney to Joann Lamm In 2001, the Federal review group came in. How did you get the first 10 counties?
Lamm Some of this was because of the Federal review, but not completely. We ourselves knew we had to improve our work with families. We sent out an RFP and asked who was interested. These counties had already been doing this work. Now we have a Special Provision to go up to 33. As of Oct 1, 2003 , there are 52 counties now participating.
Carney There are 48 more counties to go. Resources, I assume, is the problem for not having all 100 counties participating.
Lamm We didn't want to go statewide until we can say this works. This is a demonstration project. All of counties that have expressed an interested are in it as of October 1, 2003 .
Carney Of the 10, do you have a report/statistics about the lower substantiation, etc.?
Lamm Do not let that equate with that we are finding children with safety issues. Only the finding is different. In need of service is an option. We can provide those numbers from the 10 counties.
Laura O'Neal DSS Director, Nash County brought 4 experts. They'll be talking about child & family teams, care parenting, in-home redesign.
Kay Radford social work program manager. I have 35 years with the agency. I was the first CPS social worker in 1971 when we first got a law. I've been in child welfare since then. Changes: we have 2 on-call workers, 24/7. We brought them onto our staff of assessors. We changed staffing to 3 per week. We make decisions about substantiations in need of services. There is a case manager on the decision-making team. We've also done Work First coordination. We needed facilitators for family meetings. We asked our foster care and adoption social workers to stretch a little bit, they took training, and they now function as facilitators.
Lynn Wilson been in CPS since 1980. I love it. I'm real excited to see that we're looking at what we're doing. We're making a change. I like change that makes us work more efficiently, more effectively and gets good results. I was with CPS investigation, some case management and treatment. I became a supervisor 9 years ago of case management. We used to do the exact same thing with families. In-home redesign has 2 parts: CPS management part we find families/children in need of services. It is non-voluntary. There is intensive, moderate, low-risk (not CPS). The other part is family support services. This is voluntary. We have 5 case managers. They go to each staff meeting. I learned from my training that when families make choices, do they say, this is the worst choice'? No. None of us do that. They make choices because they believe it's the best choice.
Georgia Robbins child and family team meetings. The purpose is to plan and make decisions. We bring everybody together and they talk about their needs. We set up a case plan for next 3 months. We provide counseling, day care or other services. The plan is based on strengths and risks. The team consists of the family, children (depending on ages), extended family, and community resources. Some families are real private, but we encourage them to include other people. The facilitator is there, social worker, service providers. Some service providers say that want to help, but we have a lot of meetings after 5:30 p.m. Teachers, mental health therapists can't attend. If y'all can come up with ways to get schools and other service providers in the meeting, that would help.
Stephanie Grisho 12 years as a supervisor of the foster care section. Shared parenting. We bring the birth parents, foster parents, and the social workers together. It keeps the child's family of origin involved, uses teamwork, and the birth family uses the foster parent as a model for parenting. Almost always reduces anxiety of birth families. This has been successful.
Jane Volland, Guardian ad Litem (GAL) Administrator. GAL was established by the General Assembly 20 years ago to provide legal representation in court. The team is an attorney advocate and a community volunteer. A GAL, by statute, is appointed to represent the child when a petition is filed. We are there to see to the best interest of the child. The goal is to move a child out of the court system as fast as possible. As a last resort, we opt for a termination of parental rights (TPR), which makes the child free for adoption. A child has a very different sense of time than an adult. Days seem like weeks, weeks seem like months, months seem like years. Time is critical. To promote a more timely resolution, our courts adhere to federal Adoption and Safe Families Act.
[She pulled a typical file from one of her attorneys and presented the facts of the case.].
In Durham in fiscal year 2002-03, there were 352 children, 204 family groups, from 1 attorney advocate. There were 97 new petitions filed, 1033 court hearings. They also spent a good deal of time in out-of-court meetings. There were 43 new volunteers trained and 34 resigned. There was supervision and monitoring of volunteers. In fiscal year 2002-2003, we had a record number of volunteers 3,824, 101 attorney advocates, 15,705 children represented in over 26,000 court hearings. These are also record numbers.
There are increasing numbers of children in the court system. We've never had so many court hearings. They are more complex and more demanding of court time; children are more at-risk. The burdens on our program are growing. At the same time, there have been budget cut backs. We have lost staff, there has been no increase in pay, and we've had reductions in staff. Attorney pay is absolutely critical. This is what our program is all about. Attorney advocates are grossly underpaid. They earn ½ of what the court-appointed attorneys for parents earn. We have lost attorneys and they write poignant letters about how they want to continue. They are highly trained and dedicated, but dedication doesn't pay mortgages or pay health insurance. They are training on immigrant law and the Indian Training Act. They're experienced, but we need to pay them better. They make $36/hour.
In 1998, they did a study of the hours. The hearings are increasing. We need to pay what parent attorneys are being paid. We've been short-changing our children. They need representation.
She has a page of recommendations.
I am hearing different responses from counties in terms of statistics of MRS. We need to know the number of reports called in to DSS and track the screened outs. We know the number of investigations and the number of substantiations.
Rep. Weiss asked Ms. Volland to address the issue of appeals, as brought up by Ms. Barringer. They are increasing 85 this year, 14 the year before that, and 5 the year before that. When an appeal is made, a child can linger in the appellate system. I know of a 2-year, Ms. Barringer knows of 3-year appeal. Our state is one that does not have an expedited appeal process. I co-chair an AOC committee right now that is looking at this. Judge Martha Geer anticipates double the 85 this year. I would ask this Committee to acknowledge the problem and support the need for expedited appeal process in your recommendations.
Ms. Barringer Can you speculate for the Committee the reasons for the increase?
Volland The timelines of the Adoption and Safe Families Act. They tightened the time for a family. Parents are more aware of their fundamental rights as parents. We don't want to take those away, but we need to speed up the process.
Barringer Sometimes, the parent isn't even present.
Volland True. We could require that parents sign off on appeal, that would require a change in the statute. We could say that a parents' attorney cannot take action without the parent's approval. This would require an ethics code revision for attorneys.
Barringer Aren't attorneys worried about a violation of Rule 11, which is filing a capricious appeal with the court? There is a concern of malpractice so that attorneys check off to appeal so it looks like they've done everything for their client, even if they're not present. There are emotional costs to children and to the system and daily costs to taxpayers to keep children in foster care.
Volland You're absolutely right. Children are so frustrated that they act out in foster homes. We spend money on training schools and prisons. We need to look at prevention.
Moore Are these appeals coming out of any particular judicial districts?
Volland I wish I could answer that better. We are trying to track where they're coming from.
Moore I would support something that says that an attorney should not file a claim without permission, but also that they don't have a duty to appeal.
Volland This is the proposed ethics rule. I'll get a copy of this to the Committee.
Moore This is frustrating. I've actually done this. You have to go through the system with no one sitting by your side. It's a waste of time and money.
Clary There are attorneys with GAL. Is the GAL attorney the only attorney in the courtroom for child?
Volland Yes.
Clary Isn't the DSS attorney there for the child?
Volland No. DSS has an attorney. But that's an agency attorney. By statute, we're appointed to represent the child.
Clary Are all counties working the same way? I've had DSS attorney and the GAL attorney both making decisions on the child's behalf.
Volland There are some cases where they have the same perspective and make the same recommendations to the court. Sometimes, our recommendations are different from the Department's. Our focus is just on the child.
Clary It's been my experience, one experience in one county, there were 2 attorneys representing the child through DSS and GAL. That would be a staff question for me.
Rep. Farmer-Butterfield You've done a good job on the cost of attorneys. What about the program assistants?
Volland Some need another program supervisor. I'll get that to you.
Farmer-Butterfield As well as the districts where needed. What about the database?
Volland We have it and we're using it. Everyone's been trained on it.
Farmer-Butterfield Are there any figures to compare the cost of prison vs. prevention and intervention thru GAL?
Volland No. One savings, though, is our volunteers. Our volunteers have saved the State of NC over $11 million. GAL is a cost-efficient, cost-saving program. One meant to advocate for the child.
Ross It's clear that GAL needs more funds for attorneys. We need to consider that there may be other things we'd like GAL to do. Like in domestic violence cases, someone needs to protect the child. We might consider broadening these wonderful services.
Volland In delinquency cases, sometimes judges try to appoint us to them. We don't have the resources. I wish we did. I used to be a defense attorney. I rarely represented a child as a defense attorney where a child wasn't being abused or neglected.
Weiss Regarding the Court Improvement Project Committee with Judge McCoy, what is the timing?
Volland We've had one meeting and broken into committees. I hope to meet again in a month.
Weiss We want to hear back on that.
Volland I wish this Committee could make time to hear from a child in foster care.
Weiss Goes over the list of needs and recommendations. She asks Members to send any more ideas to Diana Jessup, with a copy to the co-chairs.
The List so far:
• Informationsharing
• State criminal background checks
• Lack of awareness among sister agencies
• Federal criminal background checks
• Training, Staffing, recruitment, pay, ratios, retention, turn-over
• MRS
• Prevention
• Restoring funding to Child Fatality Task Force
• Parenting education
• Home visitation
• SafeChild
• Lack of MH/SAS services
• Housing
• Child care subsidies
• Evening child care
• Foster care and misc. issues
• GAL attorneys fees
• Additional funding for GAL program in general
• Expedited appeals
• Additional funding for children in foster care
• Funding for youth aging out of foster care
Next meeting- February 19 in the afternoon and February 20 in the morning. Meeting adjourned.
