Controversy greets Deal call for greater family role in fighting abuse

When Gov. Nathan Deal stepped to the podium to speak to a crowd of religious conservatives, his address took an unusual turn toward a problem that has long bedeviled him and his predecessors.

Deal lamented that “too often” the Division of Family and Children Services is blamed for the problems of children abused by their parents instead of the families that are perpetrating them. He called for the “greater family” to intervene when a relative is neglected or harmed.

“It really galls me, quite frankly, to see an able-bodied grandparent complaining about the fact that DFCS didn’t do something to protect her grandchildren,” Deal said Thursday. “And my question is, well, where were you?”

Those words sparked criticism from those who saw his comments as callous and shortsighted. And they earned support from conservatives who said his remarks echo his belief in a more limited government.

They also reflect the views of a governor who last year ordered a sweeping policy shift after he ousted the head of the troubled state agency. Her replacement was instructed to bring about a broader cultural change that could ultimately shift more children to foster care.

Friday, the governor made this clear: He wasn’t backing off what he said.

“The governor’s speech speaks for itself,” his spokeswoman, Jen Talaber, said Friday. “He began by saying that state government will do everything it possibly can to safeguard children, but noted that the decline of the family unit can make problems overwhelming for any government agency.”

‘I’m just appalled’

The remarks come following the highly publicized deaths of several children and reports in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that agency mistakes contributed to at least 25 deaths in 2012. An investigation published Sunday highlighted the challenge of DFCS' role with troubled families.

Deal has responded to the criticism of the agency with a plan to spend $27 million over the next three years to hire more than 500 additional caseworkers and supervisors.

He endorsed recommendations from a study council that encouraged state agencies to share more information with each other about troubled families. And he ordered a sweeping policy change to shift the agency’s focus away from a policy of reunification and toward one that puts a priority on ensuring a child’s welfare.

But to many critics, his comments at the Thursday event — including a question about why the mother always seems to be arrested in these cases while the father goes unpunished — underscore what they said was a narrow-minded view of the families and communities grappling with child abuse and neglect.

"I'm just appalled at what our governor has to say," said state Sen. Horacena Tate, an Atlanta Democrat. "Don't blame the grandparents. Don't blame the fathers that are supposedly missing. We have to figure out how to make sure that the government's end of the deal is done right. And his comments were just saying that it's not the government's fault."

In many cases, a parent or a grandparent has already reported suspected abuse or neglect to DFCS. And if they did intervene, noncustodial parents have limited rights to do so without support from the state agency or they could risk a charge of kidnapping or other crimes.

“You can’t always blame the families because they’re often doing the best they can do. And don’t think grandparents don’t complain. They are complaining all the time,” said Tate, a member of the Senate Education and Youth Committee. “And blaming the grandparents or anybody else is not going to solve the problem.”

The governor’s comments came at the tail end of a speech to the Georgia chapter of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group of religious conservatives founded by former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed. Many in the audience applauded his view of limited government while praising his commitment to boosting the agency.

“The state is doing more and more of what the family used to do, and we want to see that responsibility shifted,” said Virginia Galloway, an organizer for the coalition. “That responsibility should certainly be shared between families and government agencies. It shouldn’t all be about the government every time a child is hurt by a family member.”

‘Where’s the father?’

The comments were not part of his prepared remarks for a speech that largely focused on criminal justice initiatives and other changes Deal has made or sought. Near the end, though, he pivoted to the complaint that “too often people want to point the finger at state government and say it was because DFCS didn’t do this or DFCS didn’t do that.”

His next few sentences hinted at future policy decisions, though they offered no solutions or concrete action.

“Now, I’m going to step on even more toes with this one. Why is it that we always arrest the mother? And nobody ever asks the question: Where’s the father of this child? Why didn’t they step in and do something? The vast majority of the time, the answer is, well, we don’t know.

“Well, it’s about time somebody started asking the question. I just asked the question. Y’all help me. We’re going to ask that question. We’re going to find out why it is that government becomes the only answer to things that, historically, had been the responsibility of the greater family unit.”