WHAT IF, BY CHANGING TWO WORDS in a federal law, you could prevent the deaths of hundreds of children each year and also prevent tens or even hundreds of thousands of abused children from being victimized again and again?
For 16 years, child welfare policies have been guided by two words: ” reasonable efforts.” One of the cornerstones of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (PL-96-272) was the mandate that states make ” reasonable efforts” to keep or reunite abused and neglected children with their biological parents. This provision was designed to reduce the number of maltreated children placed in foster care. Although reducing the cost of out- of-home placement was certainly a factor behind the reasonable-efforts provision, the major rationale for these two words was the deep-seated belief that children do best when raised by their biological parents and that parents will stop maltreating their children if they are provided with sufficient personal, social, and economic resources.
There was bipartisan support for the doctrine of reasonable efforts. Conservatives supported it because it was consistent with a family-values approach to social policy. Liberals supported it because it was in the best tradition of the safety net for children and familes in need. Child advocates enthusiastically embraced “reasonable efforts” becuase they swaw taking children from abusive parents as even more harmful then the abuse, because they felt there was subtle racism in the child welfare system that made minority children more likely to be placed in foster care, and because, ” reasonable efforts” created a new funding stream for a social service system whose funding, in the 1980’s, was being restricted or cut.
Soon after the adoption of the doctrine of reasonable efforts, family- preservation programs were developed. These provide intensive services, such as parent education, help with housekeeping, and assistance dealing with the bureaucracy, to families deemed at risk of having their children removed. Financially supported and marketed by private foundations such as the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, embraced by the Children’s Defense Fund and the Child Welfare League of America, and ultimately the recipient of $ 1 billion in federal support, intensive family-preservation programs are touted as able to both preserve families and protect children.
But reasonable efforts and intensive family preservation have been a false promise. Child-welfare-agency directors and workers believe that family preservation and child safety can be balanced. Because they believe family- preservation programs are effective, child welfare agencies and workers often make every possible effort to preserve families, even when what they are preserving could hardly be called a family and even when there is no evidence that the parents can or will change their abusive behavior. There have been nearly a dozen scientifically reputable evaluations of intensive family- preservation programs and not one has found that such programs reduce costs, reduce out-of-home placements, or improve child safety. Similarly, research finds that children need a stable, giving caretaker, not necessarily a biological caretaker.
It is a fiction to believe one can balance preservation and safety without tilting in favor of parents and placing children at risk. MOre than 1,200 children are killed by their parents or caretakers each year, and nearly half of these children are killed after they or their parents have come to the attention of child welfare agencies. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of children are re-abused eacy year after they or their parents have been identified by child welfare agencies.
It is time to replace the words “reasonable efforts” two others: “child safety. It is time to face up to the fact that some parents are not capable of being parents, cannot be changed, and should not continue to be allowed to care for children. Of course, the change will be a bit more difficult than merely substituting two words. There will be howls of protest from advocates who will claim that abolishing “reasonable efforts” means that more children will be placed in foster care, thus straining already over-taxed state child welfare budgets. Claims that children are abused or harmed by foster care will also be trotted out, typically without actual research to support such claims. Indeed, some children are harmed in foster care, but research does show that abused children placed out of the home do better in the short and long runs than children left with abusive and neglectful parents. Advocates will also argue that child welfare policy should not be based on child fatalities, because such fatalities are rare. Well, child fatalities are not rare enough. Elisa Izquierdo in New York City, Joseph Wallace in Chicago, and hundreds of other less publicized child fatalities were the direct results of unreasonable efforts to keep children with their abusive biological caretakers. A change in two words will force child welfare agencies to take steps to enhance and speed up adoptions and to consider the use of congregate care facilities (or what some have called “orphanages”) for some children who have no other safe permanent home.
The 1995 report on child fatalities by the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect was dedicated to children killed by their parents or caretakers and concluded with a recommendation that all child and family programs make child safety a “major priority.” Changing two words in welfare reform legislation now before Congress would go a long way toward achieving that goal.
Richard J. Gelles is director of the Family Violence Research Program and professor of sociology and psychology at the University of Rhode Island and the author of The Book of David: How Preserving Families Can Cost Children’s Lives.
