Crisis brewing

The Fayette County office of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Protection and Permanency, is already in crisis mode and headings towards disaster. According to one source, there are only a dozen investigating workers and, due to budget constraints, none are being hired. This means a either referrals that normally would be accepted are being turned away, or these workers are stretched beyond reason. I suspect many other counties in Kentucky are faced with extremely excess case loads. And upon whom will the blame fall when the next child fatality occur? Sorry, that is rhetorical. It will be the front line worker despite not having the resources to do an adequate job.

I have also learned that other services, specifically the juvenile services team, are losing workers to retirement and better job prospects with no present means to fill those vacancies. This teams works with youth who are exhibiting behavior problems and/or moderate criminal activity to prevent further criminal involvement. I fear the consequences to our community and those youth with services being curtailed out of sheer necessity from understaffing.

We want a safe community where vulnerable people are protected and crime is minimized. It is time we become willing to pay for the services that will achieve those goals and insist our law makers find appropriate revenue sources (this means increased taxes, the end of corporate welfare, and/or monies redirected from industries that can survive without government incentives) to fund these agencies.

The Irony of No Child Left Behind (and Untested)

The Herald Leader ran this story about one ex-Principal, Peggy Petilli, allegedly (and believably) being driven to do questionable to downright crappy things to bring up her school’s test scores. The schools my own children go to focus so much on testing really high and the teaching is incredibly focused on “teaching to the test”. I have yet to hear a teacher say this is a good thing when they are in private and being more candid. Is it any surprise that kids are being MOVED BEHIND so the school can meet No Child LEFT BEHIND?

We have got to get off of this vicious circle of accountability gone awry. Let teachers teach the information and skills children need, give them the resources, and you will see them and the schools succeed. All we are teaching our children now is how to fake it and make it.

You can fight City (or State) Hall, Ms Hall:

I’ve been wanting to comment on the antics of Cabinet for Health and Family Services’ Service Region Coordinator, Grace Akers, for some time. You can find out more about the events here and here from the Herald-Leader. Basically, Jami Hall, a social services worker from Jessamine Count cooperated with an investigation into Cabinet wrongdoing. She believes she was retaliated against and so she filed a whistleblower lawsuit. While on leave, Grace Akers, the highest level administrator for Fayette and some of the surrounding counties, obtained police cooperation to go out and deliver a written reprimand to Jami and allegedly try to obtain some missing case records. She got the police to cooperate by making Jami sound like a violent person.

I have met and worked on a case with Jami Hall. She is a character, but nothing about her bespeaks violence potentiality. I know Cabinet protocol because I used to supervise a protection team. While with the Cabinet I saw some really crappy, unbusiness-like, and downright unprofessional behavior – Grace Akers’ performance in this absolutely takes the cake! She made the police think she needed protection in making a home visit – OH PLEASE! The police routinely assist social services workers on home visit to client homes who are being investigated for abuse and neglect. When risk factors make the situation appear extra dangerous or when the children are being removed, police presence is essential. Grace Akers absolutely abused this relationship by calling on them to help with a personnel matter. I find this unbelievably irresponsible and downright foolish behavior and I hope the police are offended by this misuse of their resources.

Furthermore, Grace Akers had no business taking a work issue into Jami’s home. The procedure would be to offer Jami a chance to sign the written reprimand to preserve her right to appeal the action. If she refuses that option, the reprimand can be entered unchallenged into her personnel record. There was no call to deliver the reprimand in person. This was incredibly unprofessional by Grace Akers.

Worse yet, Grace Akers attempted to coerce an illegal search of Jami Hall’s residence because of the authority of having a police escort. Frankly, I think this was an imbecilic ploy to make it appear that Grace Akers really believed Jami Hall had the records and have a witness to verify the sincerity of her belief. I have no information to bolster this next statement and I base it only on my personal opinion: the behavior of Grace Akers makes me think she was motivated by fear and guilt. If Grace Akers’ knows what became of those records, perhaps took part in their disappearance, this dramatic antic would be designed to misdirect suspicion back onto Jami Hall. In my mind, it makes Grace Akers look desperate.

Now for the reprimand. The Cabinet overlooks sins and poor performance as a routine matter. The only reason they begin issuing written reprimands is when they have already decided to fire someone. As a supervisor myself, I was trained by the personnel cabinet to begin building a paper trail and scrutinize errors I would otherwise have dealt with informally if I wanted to fire someone. ABSOLUTELY NO WORKER can do the job duties placed on them perfectly and I never saw anyone adhere to the convoluted and heavy policies to the letter. Therefore, as a supervisor, I could always find just cause to build a case for firing if I so desired. This undermines the spirit of the merit system. Jami Hall probably did commit some minor violation or omit some policy requirment, but I suspect it was an error overlooked in her co-workers.

Now, the smart thing here would be for the Cabinet and Grace Akers to back off, admit their wrongs (which I never saw out of administration folks at the Cabinet) and quit giving Jami Hall and her co-workers a hard time for bringing problems to light. Rather, I am confident they will continue to hold tight to the traditional line of the Cabinet and deny, blame, deny, blame. In the meantime, the children are the losers. I do not know Jami well enough to say she was a great worker, but I did sense she had true care and compassion for her clients. I agree with Judge Goodwine, Cabinet officials are hypocrits.

“Reasonable efforts” has real meaning

A recent decision of the Court of Appeals illustrates a an omission of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services that seems all too common. In the unpublished opinion, M.G.F. II v. CHFS, 2006-CA-002093-ME (March 21, 2008)(NOT to be published), the Court remanded an involuntary termination of parental rights case because the Cabinet failed to evidence reasonable efforts to reunite the non-removal parent, the father. I have often seen this phenomena when children are removed from one parent and the non-residential parent either lives far away, is uninvolved, or has some “issues”. The Cabinet focuses on reunification with the parent of removal instead of devoting those efforts towards both parents. I suspect this is not so much an intentional omission, but more of a systemic problem.

Such a circumstance of divided households is one case on the worker’s caseload even though there are two separate parental residences. If a worker only gets credit for one case, what incentive is there to provide services to two households. That is double the work for the credit of one family. With caseloads stretched beyond reason and the government unwilling to sufficiently fund child protective services, the pressure to focus only on the residence of removal is significant.

Further exacerbating the problem, unless it has been changed since my time, the computer system used by the Cabinet (TWISt: The Worker Information System) automatically makes the parent the child was removed from active as well as the children. A non-residential parent is not put into the referral screens because no allegation are made against them. TWISt captures data, including face to face contacts, with each active individual in the case. This information is used to generate reports to measure compliance with Federal regulations that tie payments of block grant monies to Kentucky. The reports are also used to measure an individual worker’s performance. TWISt has no idea if these face to face visits actually occur; it is an honor system that expects employees to input accurate data even if it is going to hurt their employment situation.

One way to prevent low numbers of contacts, but still be technically truthful, is to forget to add a parent who does not live in the home of removal as an active individual. This means there is no tracking of services to that person. Whether this occurred in MGF’s situation is unknown, but the point remains.

Now, the factual background provided in the MGF case do not show if the scenario I laid out above applies. All the case reveals is that the Cabinet did not put forth substantial evidence that they provided services to the father, MGF, to assist him in obtaining custody of his children. I make the inferential leap that if such evidence was able to be offered up, it would have been.

MGF is no father of the year by any stretch. He allowed a couple of years to pass with only four phone calls to his children. Even when they were moved to within 20 miles of him, he did not go visit them. Regardless, the Cabinet was under the duty to provide services to help him get up to speed as a father. No evidence of this duty being discharged was entered into the record and so the court remanded the case for further proceedings.

Improving Child Protection in Kentucky (Moment of Silence) postscript:

I followed up regarding my concerns, posted here, about Representative Stan Lee’s sweeping and innaccurate portrayal of ALL the family court judges in Fayette County being against ALL of HB 151. I have confirmed from a very knowledgeable and reliable source that ALL of the Fayette family court judges were, in actuality, in favor of HB 151 as it had been amended. This directly contradicts Mr. Lee’s assertion. I will not venture in to try and discern why his stated reason for voting against HB 151 was false except that, even if the best light, it was sloppy on his part.

Improving Child Protection in Kentucky Postscript (or – a moment of silence, please)

The title of this article from today’s Herald Leader was a bit too prophetic to be accidental: “Child protection revisions all but dead“. The impetus for this bill began back with the Office of Inspector General’s report many long months ago. Let’s parse through this article:

A bill that would have opened Kentucky’s child protection courts to the public on a limited basis was rejected Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee. And measures that would improve procedures in child protection courts and require ethics training for social workers have been procedurally buried.

Ethics training? Obviously too radical an idea.

Rep. Susan Westrom, D-Lexington, who sponsored a bill on training social workers, said that officials from the Cabinet, which oversees the system, want to kill it.

“They are trying to keep me from creating a system of checks and balances,” said Westrom.

Checks and balances placed on the government. . . hmmm – where have I heard that idea before?

But Rep. Robin Webb, an attorney, said she didn’t think the bill went far enough to protect information about children whose futures are being decided in the courts.

“The child’s interest is my No. 1 concern,” said Webb, D-Grayson. “I don’t want it in my county.”

I’m confused – does she not want the ethics in her county, the checks and balances . . . maybe she means that everyone else’s number one concern is promoting child abuse, hmmm. Nope, still confused.

And Rep. Brent Yonts said he was concerned that the legislation would allow people in the community to spread information they heard in hearings.

“How do you keep the town gossip from talking?,” said Yonts, D-Greenville.

Heaven forbid that the town gossip would wander into court and discover that the neighbor’s children were removed. The absence of the children wouldn’t have tipped him off. The police cars and social workers taking the kids to the cars wouldn’t have tipped him off. Oh, thank God we can now keep the removal of the children a secret so people won’t talk.

But Westrom said that legislation is in jeopardy because it calls for increasing the fees for court-appointed attorneys for children and parents for the first time since the 1980s. House Bill 151, drafted by the Cabinet’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Adoption, will be sent to the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee, which Westrom said could be “a graveyard for bills.”

That was a close one. If these parents started getting court appointed attorney’s that were compensated as well as those representing criminals in federal court, they might start challenging the Cabinet more. We woudn’t want them getting ideas of seeking legal protections now would we?!

Rep. Stan Lee, R-Lexington, said that Family Court Judges in Fayette County were against House Bill 151, so he voted against it.

I know this is untrue. Mr. Lee shouldn’t make such sweeping and inaccurate statements. There was a concern about the practicality of having attorney’s present and representing parents at the temporary removal hearing, but still have that hearing within the statutorily mandated timeframe. Mr. Lee, though, makes it sound like ALL the judges were against the ENTIRE bill and that is patently false. Besides, does Stan Lee ONLY represent the Family Court Judges or is he supposed to represent the community?

In regard to a third bill, Cabinet spokesperson Vikki Franklin said Wednesday that training curriculum for social workers is already sufficient. She said that a bill sponsored by Westrom would be costly and decrease the amount of time social workers could spend on services.

It never was sufficient before and from what I have seen and heard, it still is not sufficient.

However, Westrom says the additional training called for in her legislation is necessary and won’t cost the Cabinet money.

“The Cabinet would rather pay $425,000 to settle whistleblower lawsuits than train their social workers,” Westrom said, referring to a recent case in which former social workers said the Cabinet mishandled cases.

Did I mention that Susan Westrom has a Master’s degree in Social Work.

Meanwhile, Cabinet officials say they have made internal changes that address the problems involving improper removal of children.

And those measures are . . . ? Oh, that must be the information that must be kept behind closed doors to protect the children’s privacy.

Child Advocate David Richart said yesterday that the Cabinet’s resistance to change was the basic reason the reform legislation failed.

Resistant to change is such a harsh criticism. Let’s reframe that to being glad that the Cabinet is consistent and predictable.

Systemic apathy and the attorney’s charge

Apathy is the predominate risk with judicial venues where the majority of defendants are guilty of what is alleged against them, such as criminal court or dependency, neglect and abuse court. This systemic apathy leads to the few truly innocent people who come through those courts to be shuffled along as expeditiously as possible and often being presumed guilty because they are amongst the guilty. The only way to combat this apathy systemically is through proper funding so that mandates can be met and advocates are encouraged to advocate. The only way to combat this apathy individually is through personal integrity. We need both!

For lawyers, this means engaging the political system to adequately fund the systems that handle criminal law and quasi-criminal matters such as dependency, neglect and abuse. It also means practicing law with more than just compliance with ethical rules; it means practicing with personal integrity.

The Cabinet takes a stand for the “best interest of the child (umm – no) . . . Cabinet/Worker”

I try to take at least 24 hours to calm down over a topic before I write a post about it. This time I took about 96 hours. I recently had a conversation with Cabinet worker’s in Fayette County. The topic was reunification services to a parent whose child was removed by the Cabinet a few months back and where the child was placed in the temporary custody of the other parent. Even though the removing worker had been giving this parent hope of reunification, it turns out that the Cabinet’s official position is that they have nothing more to do; they have achieved “permanency” for the child by recommending custody be given to the other parent. I could tell the removing worker was struggling with what the right thing to do and I respect her for being willing to struggle with it. The other worker just summary stated, without knowing the family, circumstances or issues (and frankly without even being invited into the conversation) that should such a case be “transferred to [her], she would give it 30 days and then give permanent custody to the [other parent].” She stated quite righteously that her job would be done because she would have achieved permanency for the child.

Interestingly, the Cabinet, as an executive branch agency, has achieved something quite miraculous. They have changed the law. The standard for removal and placement given in KRS 620 is whatever is in the “best interest” of the child. The Cabinet, however, has decided the only thing that really matters is permanency. It gets even more interesting. Permanency is achieved by the Cabinet not when the child has a permanent place to live (I’ve seen enough disrupted adoptions to know this isn’t really possible), but when there is a goal in place that looks like it may lead to permanency. So, what is worker number 2’s rush to give permanent custody to the other parent really all about?

I hope you noticed that she said nothing about trying to figure out the best home for the child for the long-haul. She said nothing about why the child was originally with parent 1 to being with (which might have been an indicator that something about that parent was “best” for the child at some point – and may be again). No wrestling or struggling. That is why I was angry. This worker, with the blessing of the Cabinet, had changed “best interest of the child” to “best interest of the worker’s caseload”. You see, as soon as parent 2 gets permanent custody, the worker gets to close her involvement out. Since most teams go on a strict rotation basis for assigning new cases, she gets to have a lower caseload as a result.

You may be mentally telling me that it is obvious that if the child got hurt with parent 1, then of course it is in the best interest to be with parent 2 permanently. All I can say is that is an oversimplification. You may be right often enough to justify being simple minded about it. Certainly worker 2 felt very justified in staying simple minded. This is a life-altering decision that is multi-faceted. Parent 1 may have encountered a pure accident or something else beyond their control – a one time fluke – and otherwise be a good parent. Parent 2 may have some problems that were not discovered on the Cabinet’s very cursory home evaluation. There are many factors in both KRS 620 and KRS 403 that make it clear even the legislature knows it isn’t a simple matter. Besides, occasionally the Cabinet flat gets things wrong. How can this worker take it so lighlty?

On to rant number 2 which I touched on in a previous ponderment. Worker 1 had children (and even grandchildren). Worker 2 had none and was quite young (with the air of being used to getting what she wanted – perhaps thats why she felt okay about intruding in the conversation). I won’t now be simple minded myself and say that having children equals good worker or not having children equals bad worker. What I will say is that workers without sufficient life experiences to create a level of understanding and empathy towards their clients tend to be very hard in their approach. Having children tends to promote these experiences, but it is not the only path. Worker 1 had the experience and so she struggled. Worker 2 had not and so she had more empathy for her caseload than for a parent and child relationship that is to be forever altered.

Best interest is not exactly a fool proof or specific standard, but it is sure a sight better than “permanency”. Permanency should be left where it belongs – a factor to consider in determining best interest.

An example of resistance to change:

I encourage everyone to read this full article on an interview with Professor Robert G. Lawson in the Courier Journal. Bob Lawson is that rare individual who is willing to go against the popular tide and critical examine a position most take for granted and it was an honor to be taught by him. The popular position is that we must be tough on crime; being tough is the only way we can keep our families safe. This mantra has certainly won plenty of elections for Lexington’s Commonwealth Attorney, Ray Larson. And yet, the evidence is showing that popular notion to be flawed. For those who won’t read the entire article, I’ve included some especially pertinent excerpts quoting Professor Lawson:

“Now, here’s what I say to the public. Most of the inmates we lock up in the jail system are going to be in there for a while, and then they’re going to come out of there. They’re going to come out of there, in my opinion — because of the way we’re treating them — meaner than they were when they went in. Now whenever you look beyond the jails to the corrections system itself — I’m talking about prisons and what we’ve been doing now for almost 30 years — we’ve got so many locked up in this country — we’ve got 2.25 million people locked up. We’re releasing every year from just the federal and state prison system 500,000 people. They’ve been kept there longer than at any time in our history. They’ve been kept away from their families longer, away from their communities longer; they have been kept under the worst conditions in our recent history; they’ve had less done for them than any group in our recent history, all because of the number that we’re locking up, and we’re releasing them into a re-entry system that is incapable of helping them. Because there are so many on probation or parole — we’ve got about 5 million in the country on probation or parole.”

…

“Now, I’m down there going through these jails and I hear discussion by these jailers about a change in the standards. I’m looking and I find in virtually every jail I’m in inmates sleeping on the floor. So I come back and I get into these regulations and I discover it’s 2005 and they have lowered their standards now to 40 square feet per inmate. You know how much space there is? Stretch out your arms and circle yourself, and it’s that much space.

Why does that matter?

In our country, under our system, we have to insist on decent treatment of people we lock up.

And then, what I would say to the public is that you had better realize all of these people are going to emerge from these places and they’re going to live beside you. They’re going to live in our communities. And if we put them under conditions that make them worse than they were when they went in, then I think we pay the price. And I quite frankly think the day of reckoning for that is at hand, because we’ve been doing this now for 25 years.”

…

“Here’s another thing we do: As we’ve gotten overloaded, they used to have to have a face-to-face meeting with inmates when they are up for parole. Now you still have to have a face-to-face meeting between the parole board and the inmate if you’re in prison, but if you’re in jail they don’t see them face to face.

If I’m trying to find inmates who would be more likely to stay out of trouble if they got out of jail, and would not threaten public safety, it would be the ones in the jail and not the ones in the prison. The serious offenders are the ones in the prison system. But the rates show that more prison inmates get paroled.”

…

“Well, the public first. I think the public needs a better understanding of what is going on here. The public needs to understand what we’ve done here, and what we’re doing and whether or not it makes any sense. And it’s my belief that what we’re doing here does not make any sense, whether you’re talking about the way you treat people or whether you’re talking about crime control.

You take a bunch of people, lock them up in close confinement with a television set up on the wall, and that’s all they do — and they do that for years. And they’re in there together, a broad mixture of people, none of which are model citizens — I guarantee you there’s no discussion going on there about how to improve the school system. That’s not what they’ll be talking about.

I don’t think there is an appreciation of the fact that there will be a fallout from this sooner or later. And I believe it’s apt to be sooner rather than later.

In this state, we’re not willing to pay for things we agree with, like increased quality of education. Isn’t it a big leap to think people would support making conditions more humane for inmates of jails and prisons?”

…

“So the solution isn’t locking people up for longer periods of time. It’s what?

Distinguishing between people that we should be afraid of, that we would lock up, and people that we’re mad at.

And who should we want to lock up, and who are we just mad at?

We’re mad at drug offenders. We’re mad at people that won’t support their kids. Someone recently was quoted in the paper saying there are 1,000 people in prison for non-support of their children. You’re taking a guy that won’t support his children, and we’re locking him up in prison. The average cost here, $18,613 a year — does it make sense to take somebody who won’t support his children, lock him up and pay that kind of money to keep him?

When we wrote the penal code in 1974, I remember this argument. We couldn’t decide whether non-support should be a Class B misdemeanor, which would have 90 days in jail, or a Class A misdemeanor, which would give him up to 12 months in jail. Well, we finally settled on the high one. It could be a lower penalty, but that would be the maximum.”

I suspect that Professor Lawson is correct in that we are approaching a time when the consequences of the last 30 years becomes inescapable (sort of like what’s happening with global warming). I also suspect we will resist change for a decade or so more just to be sure we were wrong. Hopefully, though, Bob Lawson will plant seeds that will take root and grow.

The enemy, resistance

Its an obvious truth that people resist change. Systems resist change too. Resistance for the sake to resisting change is the enemy to individuals and to systems. We shut out possibilities and shut down creativity by resisting new perspectives and ideas. This leads to decreased justice. The image that comes to mind is a nearsighted rhinocerous barreling down a path and trampeling anyone and anything that got in its way just because something spooked it.

I found this list of resistance mechanisms by Ken Cloke and reprinted at Settle it Now Negotiation Blog to be very insightful:

1) Marginalization: Making ideas, people, perspectives, or insights that could threaten the system appear unimportant, irrelevant, irrational, or impossible to achieve.
2) Negative Framing: Using language that frames new ideas and critics negatively so that nothing that threatens the system can be thought or communicated successfully.
3) Exaggeration: Stereotyping or exaggerating one part of an idea in order to discredit the other parts and the whole.
4) Personalization. Reducing ideas to individual people, then discrediting or lionizing them.
5) Sentimentalization: Using sentimental occasions, ideas, emotions and language to enforce conformity and silence criticism.
6) Seduction. Describing the potential of the existing system in ways that unrealistically promise to fulfill people’s deepest dreams and desires and blame the failure to achieve them on others.
7) Alignment: Communicating that in order to exist, succeed, be happy or achieve influence, it is necessary to conform to the system regardless of its faults.
8 Legitimization. Considering only existing practices as legitimate an all others as illegitimate.
9) Simplification. Reducing disparate, complex, subtle, multi-faceted ideas to uniform, simplistic, superficial, emotionally charged beliefs.
10) False Polarization: Limiting people’s ability to choose by falsely characterizing issues as good or evil, right or wrong, either/or.
11) Selective Repression. Selecting individual critics as examples, bullying them for disagreeing or failing to conform and ostracizing them.
12) Double Binds: Creating double standards that require people to live divided lives, or make it difficult for them to act with integrity.

When individuals who lean away from creative thinking work for systems that discourage creative thinking, like the Cabinet for Health & Family Services, the resistance encountered rises exponentially. Unfortunately, non-creative thinkers, in my experience, tend to be drawn to such organizations.