Thursday, November 27, 2008

When Will They Fix Foster Care?

I have been trying to point out the problems in the Milwaukee County child welfare system for a year and a half. The recent death of Christopher L. Thomas, Jr. is the most recent example of how dysfunctional the system really is. Ten children have died in the system in the last eighteen months alone. After each child that has had to suffer and even die, I quietly hope that this might be the one that finally gets the public motivated enough to demand changes before another kid dies. But as each child died, and nothing was done, I kept losing more and more of that faint hope.

Poor Christopher, and his grieving family, have been getting a lot of coverage now that he is dead. I thank and commend the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and reporter Crocker Stephenson for not letting this one go. At least not yet.

When MJS reported that there was a protest being planned regarding Christopher's murder, I became more hopeful that finally, after a decade of neglect, something positive might, just might, come out of this horrific tragedy.

But as I read more about said protest, my hopes began diminishing again. The protest will be outside of one of the branch offices of the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare, and not the main office, or even better, the State Building. The announcement of the protest reads:
"Please join me in a protest for justice, for changes to be made in the foster care and adoption system, and for holding abusers accountable and the system accountable for their actions. Too many children have been placed in harm's way too many times, and it needs to stop. We can make a difference if we stand together."
While holding the individual worker* accountable is a fine start, that won't change the problem and it won't prevent further tragedies like the one that Christopher and his sister experienced.
All that will happen is that worker will get fired, and probably his or her supervisor as well. Meanwhile, the private agency that is contracted to do the work will still continue to reap profits without providing the necessary services.

There may be an outside chance that the outside agency will even lose their contract to provide the services. All that means is that another one will step in and the cycle will start anew. I've seen it all before, and I am seeing nothing to make me believe this will be any different.

I've said it time and time again, but to fix the foster care system is going to be a big job. And to be perfectly honest, I do not think it will ever happen.

The first thing that should be done is to fire Denise Revels Robinson. She is a bureaucrat through and through. After every child's death, she would make the same statement to the effect of "We'll look into it and make the necessary corrections so that it will never happen again." That appeases the public until the next time a foster child dies. The the cycle starts all over.

The next step is for the system to be brought back to local control. Many of the social workers employed by the state or the private agencies aren't even citizens of Milwaukee County. I personally knew of one private agency manager who didn't even live in the state. These workers aren't as invested in the community, and aren't as familiar with the cultural differences from their life in the burbs and what life is like in the inner city, as someone that is from the area.

Along with bringing the system back under local control, it should also be put back in the public sector. I understand the popularity of the myth that privatization is a money saver, but the fact is that some things should not be held under sway of the bottom line and of profit margins. Taking care of these most vulnerable children is one of these things where accountability is more important than profitability.

But if any of these suggestions, or any other efforts to make a significant improvement to the system is going to happen, the only thing that can do that is if we hold the lawmakers in Madison accountable for doing their jobs and improving the system. That is why I worked so hard in trying to convince people not to re-elect Alberta Darling to the state senate. She not only had a hand in creating this monstrosity, she is on the committee that is supposed to oversee it and make any changes so that these children don't keep suffering. She hasn't done it in ten years, and now that she is freshly re-elected, I don't expect her to start doing the right thing now.

For what it's worth, I am also deeply disappointed in Governor Doyle in his failure to act in six years in correcting the system. Of all the state-level elected officials, I thought he would have done the best thing for the children by now.

Underlying all of the above issues though, is the public sentiment. Social services isn't a sexy thing, and when money is tight, and government spending has to be cut, social services is always the first thing on the chopping block. To have enough invested workers, and enough resources like therapists, transportation companies, etc., it all cost money, and lots of it. But if politicians were to dedicate sufficient funding to foster care to make it work the best it can, either taxes would have to go up, or more popular things, like building new highways and interchanges would have to be scaled back and/or cancelled. For a politician or a group of politicians to do this, they would immediately come under assault of talk radio and conservative groups like AFP or CRG.

It also doesn't help that there are people out there that would rather continue with their racist blame games rather than look at the actual issues, much less do something constructive to prevent further catastrophes.

So while I am slightly hopeful that, at long last, enough has been more than enough, and people will start demanding the needed changes, my experience in the field tells me not to get my hopes to high. This is a real shame, because it will mean that Christopher died in vain, just like all of those other boys and girls that died while in foster care.

*The way the news is playing out, I have two suspicions. One, the worker(s) responsible are employees of a private agency, else they would have been named already. Secondly, giving my more than passing familiarity with the system and the games they like to play, I would not be at all surprised to find out that the case was assigned to a vacant work zone, and the name of the worker is someone that had already left the agency, or had just been hired but wasn't really on the job yet. The BMCW and its subcontractors like to administratively fudge things like this to keep costs down and still remain in compliance with state and federal regulations.

6 comments:

  1. It's a tremendous task. Taxpayers get outraged at events like these but balk when they realize that properly funding any number of programs (law enforcement, foster care, courthouses/prosecutors, roads, bridges, etc.) will cost them more money.

    It certainly doesn't help when your local Bureau of Child Welfare is bound by the terms of a lawsuit they settled with the federal government. How bad do you have to be to be sued by the feds? Pretty damn bad.:(

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  2. The horribly ironic part was that the state and the county got sued originally because of the poor care.

    Three independent audits, one by the state, one by the county and one by the plaintiffs each showed the same results. Namely, the county child welfare system was being underfunded.

    Instead, the state took over the system, letting the county off the hook, and things have only gotten worse. On top of all that, taxpayers are actually paying about 150% of what they would've if they did the right thing in the first place.

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  3. So, you really want to put the welfare office under the supervision of Scott Walker? Wow, never thought I'd see that.
    Basically you are saying that Doyle failed and Walker might be able to fix the problem.

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  4. Dan,

    Walker was one of the idiots that helped create the problem in the 90s, and I don't have any expectations of him fixing anything. I do have the expectations of him either being recalled or losing the next election.

    He has already announced he is running for governor with a big fundraiser coming up in January. I betcha some real interesting stuff is going to come out if he even survives the primary (he didn't make it to the primary voting day last year.)

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  5. Three observations.

    1) The next step is for the system to be brought back to local control

    We agree totally. (You should advocate exactly the same remedy for the public schools, but I won't hold my breath.)

    2) Seems to me that reforming adoption should be simultaneous with reforming foster-care. The stupid "race-based" adoption rules should be dumped.

    3) We also are in at least partial agreement about "privatization." However, when/if Gummint re-acquires the office, the cost/efficacy metrics of "privatization" should be studied carefully. IOW, Gummint should not be given a blank check.

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  6. @ Dad,

    1) See, there's hope for you yet. But with the way the righties scream about MPS, are you sure you want them without any oversight?

    2) There is no race based adoption rules. I've had black kids adopted by white families, and vice versa, and Native American kids adopted by white families. The goal is to preserve cultural identity, but it is not a demand.

    3) Granted.

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