View Point

Friday, September 26, 1997

Protecting abused kids is
part procedure, part hope

Human services workers share
public's distress over recent abuse cases

By Susan M. Chandler

Several tragic cases of child abuse have recently mobilized media attention and renewed legislative and public concern. Every child-abuse worker, as well as the rest of the state Department of Human Services (DHS), feels these losses deeply.

I'm sure others who have formal responsibilities in the state's system of protection, such as the police, judges, doctors and psychologists, also feel devastated by these tragedies.

We are all frustrated by the inability to prevent each case of abuse. We all have the same questions: Why can't we identify danger better? Why does the system sometimes fail our children?

The dilemma

We work in a system in which our tools to predict are not perfect, and other values and laws prevent formal intervention to save children without a solid legal basis. We have to be sure before we subject Hawaii's families to state intrusion.

After abuse has occurred, it is easier to say that a social worker or doctor or judge should have made a different assessment. However, before the abuse has occurred, it's extremely difficult.

Predicting dangerousness is not an exact science. Those in the system can only make educated guesses about future conduct and hope that they are right.

Legal parameters

The purpose of the state's Child Protection Act is to "create within the jurisdiction of the Family Court a child protective act in order to safeguard, treat and provide services and permanent plans for children who have been harmed or threatened with harm." There is a clearly stated legislative preference for keeping families together, if possible.

DHS also must work within strict provisions of the law to limit disclosure of case details only to clearly defined agencies for equally well-defined purposes, usually in connection with the administration of the case or the investigation of wrong-doing.

DHS procedures

The fact that we are prevented from disclosing details about individual cases may have given the impression that DHS is stonewalling questions.

It puts us in the position -- when we cannot answer accusations -- that we are either uncaring or incompetent or, worse, both. We hope that a description of our procedure will help people understand better how we deal with child abuse cases.

Our first step in protecting children is to identify potentially dangerous situations. Child abuse or negligence reports come from many people, including hospitals, schools, relatives and neighbors. Only a quarter of them warrant further investigation and they will be investigated.

Some children assessed to be safe staying with their families for six months or longer will stay, but the family will receive various social services. This follows the principle that we must not undermine the privacy and parental responsibility of families for which there is no evidence of danger to children.

Other children, with the approval of the court, are removed to temporary foster homes. Many stay with relatives or other extended family members. Most of these children (70 percent) are safely returned to their natural parents within six months.

When reunification with the biological family is not considered safe for a child, the CPS team -- which includes social workers, counselors, doctors, psychologists and a court-appointed guardian ad litem -- will propose more serious interventions, such as longer term foster placement or the termination of parental rights and adoption.

The Family Court reviews all documents and must decide on each such proposed placement.

About 100 kids a year are identified as being in a long-term dangerous situation which may or may not change. It is cases like these that present terrible dilemmas and choices to DHS, the courts and the community.

Of course, this system is not mistake proof. Some cases of real abuse are probably not discovered. This is why DHS routinely looks back over the cases in which abuse occurs. We need to see whether people in DHS could have done a better job and try to identify lessons to make children safer.

Child abuse problems

To put the above procedure in perspective, let's look at some statistics.

In 1996, about 20,000 reports were called into DHS. Of these 20,000 reports, about 25 percent were found to warrant further investigation. In the 5,000 closely investigated cases that year, almost 2,000 (40 percent) children were found to have been neglected or abused. The identification of these cases takes thousands of staff hours.

In 1996, 1,500 (75 percent) of the children assessed safely stayed with their families for six months or longer while receiving various social services. Most frequently, these families receive services for drug or alcohol abuse.

With the approval of the court, some children are removed to temporary foster homes. Many stay with relatives or other extended family members. Most return home safely.

More public awareness

We welcome public discussion and the opportunity to help inform the public and the Legislature of the policies and procedures of Child Protective Service. It is important for the community to be familiar with the laws and social issues which we deal with every day.

We hope that a thorough public discussion will do more than simply seek to blame those who seem responsible for mistakes. We hope it will help to find better ways of making decisions and finding alternatives to support and protect our children.

The legislative roundtable, suggested by Rep. Dennis Arakaki, and other reasoned discussions may produce new ideas, methods and resources for improving the effectiveness of child protection. We look forward to participating.

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Susan M. Chandler is director of
the state Department of Human Services.