Child Abuse by the State

by Patrick Quinn

Child welfare work consists of one party taking over some or all of the process of rearing children when another party, usually in the nuclear family, has failed in some egregious way. Since the nuclear family is one of the most important components of any civil society, this is extremely important work.

Children whose families fail them in some catastrophic way -- either through abuse, neglect or abandonment -- eventually become adults, and often prove to be formidable social nuisances. And the ability of any society to deal with such children is all the more crucial given that such problems seem to be pretty durable over time. Concern with exceedingly poor child rearing dates at least as far back as ancient Sumeria, and probably farther.

America's approach to child welfare work has undergone a dramatic shift over the past 100 years, but the nature of the work done has remained fundamentally the same. When families are unwilling or unable to raise their children -- for whatever reason -- the rearing process must be assumed by someone else. What has changed in American child welfare work over the course of the 20th century is who that someone is. In the past, child welfare work was almost entirely private. Today, the assumption of the rearing process is handled almost entirely by government.

It is time to consider the likelihood that this transition was a tragic mistake.

Does gross ineffectiveness bother you? In 1995, a Chicago Tribune report revealed that the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), the state child welfare bureaucracy, did not know the whereabouts of more than 20,000 of its wards. Think about that for a moment: The physical location of roughly half of the children under the direct responsibility of the state was unknown to the state's bureaucrats.

Does fiscal insanity bother you more? In Illinois, DCFS has been under fire almost constantly since its creation via legislative fiat in 1964. A steady stream of exposes has uncovered blunder after blunder: children sleeping on the floors of DCFS offices, a group of children housed without supervision in a local motel with regular access to adult movies, children actually dying while in the state's care. The state finally gave in to the immense political pressure that comes with such tragic and chronic embarrassments and went on a knee-jerk spending spree, with the help of some changes in state Medicaid laws. In the early 1990s, the DCFS budget soared more than 300 percent. Today, that budget is well over $1 billion. The clearest result of all of that spending is that children in the system now have a lot more people to "care" for them.

Imagine a troubled child trying to adjust to a new group home. Now, after all that spending, that same child of limited coping abilities is expected to adjust to a new set of "parents" every 8 hours, along with numerous ancillary workers. And since all of those bloated budgets need to be justified, those who work in the system have been turned into paper jockeys. As a therapist coworker once told me, "I got into this field to try to help children, but 60-70 percent of my job is paperwork."

Or perhaps you are particularly bothered by arbitrary power. Now, imagine combining arbitrary and largely unstoppable power with the pseudo-sciences of psychiatry and social work. That mix is what exists in much of child welfare work. I have had the utterly enervating experience of witnessing this combination of forces used to dismantle children psychologically and spiritually.

One of the group homes where I worked was set in a quiet residential neighborhood on Chicago's northwest side. One of the boys, Shannon, was a model child, not just in our institution, but among all of the neighborhood children as well. Shannon was utterly reliable. We allowed him free reign in the neighborhood, gave him an allowance, let him join the local YMCA, and even sent him shopping when essentials ran out.

One day, some psychiatric social workers from the state visited the home, a "private" contractor with the state. Their putative function was to act as a kind of meta-authority within the system, looking into special cases, or performing investigations of problems, and so on. They were interested in Shannon because of his unique situation. Altogether, he had nine family members in the custody of the state, including two younger brothers who lived with him at our home, and his oldest brother, who had just been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in Arizona. Shannon didn't know his oldest brother, but the social workers thought it appropriate to probe his thoughts on the sentencing, and in the process to review his situation to see if any changes were warranted.

For reasons known only to themselves, the workers began suggesting to Shannon that they would separate him from his two younger brothers at the home by placing him elsewhere. Most likely, they were simply under pressure to change his "treatment plan," which is the name given to the state's plan for dealing with individual wards. Treatment plans represent an effort to quantify the services given to wards (e.g., length of stay in the system), as well as to specify the nature of the services rendered (e.g., foster care vs. institutional settings, medication vs. behavior modification). Since treatment plans are tied to state budgets, there is constant pressure to tinker with them, a process that often does not consider a child's best interests. From the vantage-point of those actually raising Shannon -- me and my co-worker -- there was absolutely no reason to move him.

Not surprisingly, Shannon was bothered greatly by the suggestion. As I've said, he was a sweet, good little kid. But every human has a touchy spot, and the thought of separation from his brothers, understandably, was his. Loving and watching over his two little brothers -- was a responsibility Shannon had understandably (and proudly) bestowed upon himself, given the condition of his family.

So he became combative with the workers. Not violent, mind you; just angry enough to raise his voice to the complete strangers who were proposing to shatter what was left of his life. In response, they had him summarily committed to a psychiatric hospital. Shannon, the good kid, was no more.

As justification for their move, the social workers engaged in a bit of revisionist history. As it turned out, Shannon had the swimming ability of a rock, and about a week earlier had nearly drowned at the YMCA. He was revived on the pool deck, and was fine after a short observation. The social workers decided to call this a suicide attempt. Suddenly, Shannon was a depressed youth suffering from suicidal ideation.

And of course, on the psychiatric ward, he was medicated for the first time in his life. When he began having nightmares (presumably from the drugs, as is so often the case) he was tagged as suffering from a psychotic episode. And, his (perfectly sensible) refusal to cooperate at all at the hospital was taken by the social workers as "evidence" of their having made a keen diagnosis, and as justification for their intervention.

Such is the circular, arbitrary reasoning of psychiatric social work.

Monolithic Welfare

One of the most troubling aspects of all this is that child welfare work in America is a monolith. The problems I've been describing are systemic and nationwide. Just as public education has withered the private school sector, so too has the government's role in caring for delinquent and dependent children reduced the options for such children. Sure, there are a few largely private organizations that have endured the state's takeover of child welfare work. Boys Town, one of the largest and most famous, accepts only about ten percent of its income from the state. But these institutions are the exception. The rule for children whose families don't function for them is the labyrinth of public and quasi-public homes and agencies that the government has created, including the perennially troubled juvenile court system.

Even the "private" homes like I worked at are funded and controlled by the state. One group home that I worked for called itself a private organization, but it received nearly 80% of its operating income directly from the state and was thoroughly controlled by the state, right down to the minute detail of what the children could have on the tops of their dressers. Even the option for children that is furthest removed from the state -- foster homes, private homes where children are placed by the state -- is tightly regulated by government bureaucrats.

And the results are what one might expect of government bureaucracy. Child welfare bureaucrats constantly claim that resources are too scarce. But in reality, inefficiencies and politics are squandering resources that desperately need to be utilized. In Illinois in 1991, for example, DCFS admitted that of the 14,000 foster homes it had licensed, only 6,000 were in use at any time.

Given all of this, it is more than worthwhile to

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