Survey reveals new child welfare reform as ineffective

Survey reveals new child welfare reform as ineffective

Although cost effective, family preservation unable to keep
children from foster care

By Tiffany McElroy

After a nationwide survey of clinical studies, social welfare
Professor Duncan Lindsey has shown that a common approach to child
welfare reform has been unsuccessful in keeping families intact and
children out of foster care.

The focus of family preservation method, as it is known, is to
rescue and preserve families whose children are at imminent risk.
Rather than traditional long-term casework, its approach is crisis
oriented, responding to a family within 24 hours and providing
services for a short period of time.

"It is the same as traditional casework only a faster and
quicker approach, with the goal of keeping children out of foster
care and keeping families together," he said.

Lindsey explained in his latest book, "The Welfare of Children,"
that during the last decade, the state has shifted its focus toward
long term protection of children living in at risk homes. This has
created a continuous rise in the number of children being placed in
state supported foster care and an increase in foster care
costs.

As a result, family preservation has become popular among
legislators because it has reduced the number of children being
placed into foster care – and is therefore more cost effective than
other child welfare methods.

Lindsey argued that "family preservation is around-the-clock
casework with a great label. With a catchy name and the potentially
dramatic cost savings, politicians love it and the public loves it.
What could be better than keeping a family together?"

But national surveys found that families enrolled in family
preservation programs lost their children to foster care more
frequently than those families that did not participate.

Lindsey found that the few studies that report program success
"are either flawed in their research methodology or are regarded as
promotional studies than as objective research."

Other experts said that the flaw in family preservation is the
targeting process. Because it is difficult to discern which
children are about to go into placement, the decision is often left
to the social worker.

"The decision should be decided on a scientific basis – not
biased or prejudicial. My concern is that the decision has an
adequate scientific base,"said Peter Rossi, a sociology professor
emeritus at the University of Massachusetts and a child welfare
specialist

Yet some argued that the foster care’s sole objective is to
improve the lives of the children.

"We shouldn’t always try to keep children out of placement,"
said Peter Meezan, a social welfare professor at the University of
Southern California. "Some children are better off in placement and
some are better off being left in their homes. There are many
factors involved, the most important being the safety of the
child."

Lindsey said that continued dependence on the family
preservation approach could be disastrous for California where, in
1994, 82,000 children were in foster care at a cost of $1.7 billion
annually. In addition, more than two out of three children in the
foster care system are from families receiving Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC).

"AFDC is one of the chief targets of pending federal welfare
reform legislation," Lindsey said. "Welfare reform may cut off more
than half of the 1.7 million children receiving AFDC in California,
a move likely to increase the demand on an already overburdened
foster care system."

With these drastic cuts, the system is likely to be overwhelmed
with more families in need of immediate attention. This would make
many families candidates for family preservation services, which
many have proven as ineffective.

Yet some said the method was devised to treat the problem, not
solve it.

"Family preservation is not an inoculation to cure all problems
of a family, but to try to see if you can give children and their
families resources to stabilize them," said MaryLee Allen, director
of child welfare and health at the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) in
Washington, D.C. "At CDF, we believe that we need to hit the
problem before it starts."

Lindsey argued that the problem with California’s welfare
programs is precisely that they address the symptoms of the
problem, rather than the root causes of child abuse and neglect.
This type of approach fails because it does not address poverty,
the primary problem that brings families into the child welfare
system.

"Child poverty is so severe and widespread that it creates
problems beyond the scope of any program such as family
preservation services," he said.

A family living without the necessities that most people take
for granted such as, a drug free neighborhood, crime, unemployment
and gang violence are most likely to become dependent on the
welfare system, Lindsey said. Such obstacles cannot be relieved by
the child welfare system alone.

"No one research strategy has the answer to problems so vast,
but society needs to protect and invest in its children to ensure
the future," he said.Comments to [email protected]