D.C. Social Workers Remove More Kids

Anecdotally, several child advocates say they have seen a remarkable uptick in cases that were quickly thrown out by judges this year, suggesting that the children should not have been removed. Some advocates say children are harmed by days or weeks away from their families when they are placed in the homes of strangers.

The basic tenet underpinning foster care is "if you remove a child from the home, the child will be safe. If you leave a child at home, the child is at risk," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. "In fact, there is risk in either direction, but real family preservation programs have a better record for safety than foster care."

Removing a child can make the situation worse, some family law experts said. "Even if maltreatment is occurring, separating children from their caretakers often imposes an unnecessary additional trauma," said Matthew Fraidin, associate professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia. "What's much more effective and cheaper is not removing the kids and providing intensive services in the home."

In the District, advocates worry that placing too many children in foster care also endangers the small percentage of children who are in imminent danger.

"If this tragedy and the subsequent actions taken by the administration result in chasing good workers and good foster and adoptive parents away -- or causes them to act solely out of fear of risk -- we will then have made our city's most fragile children even less safe than before, and the District will have failed them again," said Margie Chalofsky, director of the Foster and Adoptive Parent Advocacy Center, in her testimony before the D.C. Council's Committee on Human Services last month.

On Jan. 15, six days after Jacks was found in her home with her dead daughters, Chalofsky warned city officials in a public hearing that they must "protect against a backlash from this tragedy that may cause workers to be afraid to keep children in their birth homes and thus would put many children who could safely be maintained in their families into the foster care system."

Her prediction mirrors what happened in New York in 1995, after the death of Elisa Izquierdo, a 6-year-old girl known to the child welfare system who was killed by her mother. Less than two months after Elisa died, the city created a special unit to focus on vulnerable children and issued a statement to social workers that was reiterated by Mayor Rudolph W. Guiliani in his 1997 State of the City address: "Any ambiguity regarding the safety of the child will be resolved in favor of removing the child from harm's way."

The New York agency struggled for years with a surge in reports, a rise in foster care placements and the need to enact reforms. It took four years to begin, in earnest, swinging the foster care pendulum the other way, supporting "family preservation" as the preferred course of action.

It's not just those children brought into foster care during a surge who could suffer.

The increase in child removals might also have a devastating effect on the agency as a whole, warned Judith Meltzer, the court monitor appointed by federal courts to watch over the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency.

"A 'ripple effect' is likely if the number of children in foster care continues to increase significantly; performance may decline on other LaShawn requirements related to in-home services and foster care caseloads, visitation, appropriate placement and service provision, for example," she wrote in a March progress report tracking the state of the agency since a 1989 court case, LaShawn A. v. Barry,sent the agency into federal receivership for eight years.

The drop in services to foster children within the system is evident. In December, 38 percent of the children in foster care who were on the road to reunification with their parents got to visit with them weekly. In January, as the agency began receiving a flood of calls following the Jacks case, that number dropped to 33 percent, then to 27 percent in February, according to the monthly performance scorecards issued by the agency.