Child welfare report stirs hope, but lacks details

Autumn Faith Mills began her brief, predictably tragic life addicted to methadone.

State child-protection workers had documented her mother’s history of substance abuse. They had described the family home as “unsanitary.” Autumn’s grandparents had been so worried about her mother’s parenting abilities that they urged her to get an abortion.

Yet the state Division of Family and Children Services let Autumn’s parents take her home from the hospital. A month later she was dead, killed by an accidental overdose of methadone.

Deaths like Autumn’s illustrate the real-world failings of Georgia’s child welfare system — though they remained in the background Friday as a special panel issued a report on protecting children who are vulnerable to abuse and neglect.

The Georgia Child Welfare Council, created by Gov. Nathan Deal, acknowledged the system’s shortcomings in passing. Its report focused instead on almost three dozen high-level — some would say vague — recommendations for improvements.

The council left the details, such as how to pay for the changes, to be worked out by others, at a later time, if at all.

Still, children’s advocates heralded the council’s report for validating concerns they have sounded for years: that the system is underfunded, poorly staffed, and hobbled by substandard technology and oppressive bureaucracy.

“Oh my goodness, this is a lot of what we’ve been asking for,” said Velma Tilley, a juvenile court judge in Bartow County. But she tempered her enthusiasm with an acknowledgement of the fate that earlier child welfare studies met.

“It needs to be implemented and not put on a shelf,” Tilley said. “We need to do this.”

Dee Simms, a former director of the state Office of the Child Advocate, said the council’s report evoked the findings of similar panels appointed by several governors.

“Under Governor (Roy) Barnes we came up with all these recommendations, but we couldn’t get the funding for a lot of them,” Simms said. “Are they going to get the funding?”

Deal appointed the 21-member council last March after articles in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed widespread failings by DFCS and others in the child welfare system. Meeting six times over six months, the council had scant opportunity to study the system in depth, and its final report, at just 20 pages, presented no overarching statements about what is broken.

Instead, its recommendations followed several broad themes:

• DFCS and other entities — such as law enforcement, schools and public health agencies — should share more information about children at risk of abuse or neglect.

• Greater public accountability is needed, possibly through periodic scorecards reporting such data as DFCS’ response time to abuse and neglect reports, average caseloads for the agency’s workers, and the use of psychotropic drugs by children in its care.

• Technology that tracks cases should be more functional — and should work more reliably.

• DFCS needs more caseworkers, as Deal has proposed, and those workers need better training and higher pay. The council also suggested new standards for how workers handle cases; it did not address what those standards should be.

The council touched lightly on other issues with sensitive political subtexts: DFCS’ internal culture, the agency’s emphasis in recent years on investigating fewer abuse and neglect cases, and proposals to turn over much of the state’s child welfare system to the private sector.

The council said DFCS should help employees feel confident about their work without having to fear retribution for “innocent mistakes.” Caseworkers have long complained that supervisors — in county offices and at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters — look for scapegoats when cases go awry. Avoiding criticism of DFCS’ management, the council did not explore the workers’ sentiment or recommend ways to address it.

The council took a similar approach in mentioning DFCS’ “family support” program. Over the past several years, the agency has chosen not to thoroughly investigate many abuse or neglect reports in which children did not seem to be in imminent danger. Instead, caseworkers referred parents to community-based services such as therapy or parenting classes.

That approach won support from political conservatives who worried that caseworkers were too inclined to remove children from their families. The program helped cut Georgia’s foster care rolls in half, but several children whose cases were lightly investigated later died of abuse or neglect. The agency says it has reduced its use of the practice. The council said only that DFCS should evaluate the program and decide whether to replace, change or retain it.

On privatizing child welfare programs, the council’s report was mostly silent.

Many Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, have favored giving private organizations a greater role in foster care and in monitoring families accused of maltreatment. Already, private groups operate more than half the state’s foster homes.

Far from endorsing the idea, the council tersely noted that the state’s system “is already partially privatized.” It recommended that DFCS “continue to examine additional methods” to involve the private sector, specifically in foster parent recruitment and retention.

On that and other matters, it is far from clear whether the council’s report will result in major changes. The document contained no mention of how much money would be needed to carry out its recommendations.

At a press conference Friday, Deal said only that the costs would be “significant.” Deal, who already initiated changes at DFCS, such as replacing the agency’s director, said he supported the council’s proposals. No legislation to enact them has been released yet.

Bobby Cagle, whom Deal chose as DFCS director last year, called the council’s report “the beginning for us – the beginning of bettering the child welfare system.”

Real change will require more state money for DFCS, said Peggy Walker, a juvenile court judge from Douglas County and a member of the child welfare council.

“For 10 to 20 years they’ve been told to do more with less,” Walker said. “You can’t do that without getting in trouble.”

Children’s advocates generally praised the council’s report.

“If the governor follows through, we’re going to see some great changes for the kids,” said Tom Rawlings, who succeeded Simms as the state child advocate. He found encouragement in the council’s suggestion that the DFCS director report directly to the governor, rather than to the state human services commissioner.

“We need to make sure the governor has his eye on this regularly,” Rawlings said. “Before, messages were getting lost between DFCS and the governor.”

Normer Adams, a former executive director of a group representing operators of children’s homes, took a dimmer view. He said DFCS already has the authority to carry out many of the council’s proposals.

The council focused too much on process, Adams said, rather than on measuring how DFCS’ work affects children.

“They’re afraid of accountability,” he said, “because it will eventually fall on the powers that be.”