Mississippi Family Values

by hilzoy

Bob Herbert had a horrifying editorial about children's services in Mississippi in today's NYT. It's behind the firewall, alas. Excerpts below the fold.

First, Herbert provides some history:

"Way back in 1992 the Child Welfare League of America issued a blistering report about the backward state of affairs in Mississippi. The league warned that vulnerable children would suffer irreparable harm if steps weren't taken to reduce caseloads, increase staffing and locate additional foster care and adoptive homes.

In 2001, Sue Perry, the state's director of family and children's services, warned top state officials that "the crisis needs to be addressed by whomever has the power to rectify the situation — before a tragedy occurs."

She quit the following year, saying in a letter to then-Governor Ronnie Musgrove that the system was starved for resources and had deteriorated so badly that protecting the children had become "an impossible task." At the time she wrote the letter, Ms. Perry was being directed to abolish 88 additional full-time positions.

She told the governor that Mississippi's children had been placed at such great risk that some would die. "I am sorry to inform you," she said, "that this has already happened in DeSoto County. A 19-month-old child was brutally beaten by his stepfather in a case known to this agency." (...)

Two years after Ms. Perry resigned, Gov. Haley Barbour acknowledged that the state's Department of Human Services had "collapsed for lack of management and a lack of leadership." Collapsed. That was the governor's word. Was he serious? Was he planning to do something about it? You must be joking. He made the comment as he was announcing additional budget cuts for the agency."

Luckily, an advocacy group has filed a lawsuit:

"Enter Children's Rights, an advocacy organization based in New York. Over the years, it has filed lawsuits in a number of states that have led to the overhaul of failing child welfare systems, and it is currently pressing a class-action suit on behalf of abused and neglected children in Mississippi.

The situation in Mississippi has become so bad, said Marcia Robinson Lowry, the executive director of Children's Rights, that the state deliberately (and unlawfully) diverts children from the child welfare system by failing to investigate reports of abuse and neglect.

"Mississippi has one of the worst child welfare systems we have ever seen," Ms. Lowry said.

Mississippi doesn't even try to fully staff its Division of Family and Children Services. Caseloads for child protective workers are absurdly high. Where national standards call for a maximum of 12 to 17 cases per worker (depending on the types of cases involved), there are counties in Mississippi where the average caseload for workers is 100 and beyond. According to the lawsuit, the average caseload in Lamar County is 130.

In that kind of system, kids suffer and may even die without ever coming close to the attention of the authorities."

But here's the truly horrifying ending:

"How bad is Mississippi? In the papers compiled by Children's Rights for its lawsuit is a reference to testimony by a key official of the Department of Human Services, who said the state would "not necessarily investigate" whether sexual abuse had occurred if a "little girl" contracted a sexually transmitted disease.

If you don't understand that a "little girl" with a sexually transmitted disease is a raging signal to take immediate steps to protect the child and to launch a criminal investigation, then you should not be allowed anywhere near vulnerable children.

This is the sort of thing Children's Rights is trying to correct with its lawsuit. It seeks nothing less than to compel the governor and other officials to meet their obligation to protect and care for the most vulnerable children in their state. And that can only be done by transforming a system that at the moment can best be described as grotesque."

***

I am not, in general, a wild spendthrift when it comes to government, but I make an exception for children's services. Every time one of those appalling cases in which the people in charge of foster care just somehow "lose" a child, or a kid turns up dead because her caseworker, with fifty kids to keep track of, has never visited her, I think: why on earth don't we just decide to do what it takes to do children's services right? Don't just add a few case workers; add enough that they can actually do their jobs in something resembling a responsible manner. Pay them what they're worth. Put really effective managers over them, and make sure that they are running a tight ship. Give them whatever training, support, and resources they need. Just do it right. And if my taxes have to go up, fine.

Because, after all, we're talking about children. They are not responsible for whatever has brought them to the attention of the state. They did not ask to be abused, neglected, or abandoned. Some of their lives, and all of their futures, are at risk. And we as a society should protect them.

Even if you don't agree with the more drastic aspects of my views here, though, surely we owe it to children to investigate when a little girl gets a sexually transmitted disease. I have known three children under the age of five who have been treated for STDs. Needless to say, all of them were raped by someone who should have been caring for them. One was a boy who had the sort of slick smooth exterior normally found in con men over the age of thirty. He was four. One was a girl with truly alarming powers of empathy that gave way periodically to this terrifying thousand-yard stare. And one was a two-year-old girl whose daddy had told her that if she ever said anything about what he had done, he would take her out into the desert and chop her into pieces and leave her for the vultures. At least, that's what her mother said. Not surprisingly, she herself didn't say anything at all.

Think about the people who say that the state would "not necessarily investigate" cases like these: that whatever threshold of seriousness a case has to reach in order to be worthy of an investigation, it's not clear that these cases meet it. And think about the people who vote them into office. They should be ashamed.

Comments

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

I worked for the Child Advocacy Institute here in California (regarded to be one of the better states in the above regard) and I could still tell you horrific stories.

"One was a boy who had the sort of slick smooth exterior normally found in con men over the age of thirty."

That phrase reminds me of the best bit of advice I can explicitly remember from my mother: "Beware someone is very charming. That is a skill they developed for a reason."

[Anderson]

Yet my beloved home state has enough money to pass, & presumably defend in court, an anti-abortion statute that plainly violates Roe, as a bet on Alito/Roberts futures.

The problem, as usual, is that no Dem has the guts to campaign on TV commercials about dying kids, even though that is EXACTLY what we're talking about here. See also our terrible Medicaid cuts.

Race issues aside, Mississippi continues to be the poster child for a strong federal government.

[Debbie(aussie)]

How terribly sad.
We have/had a similar problem here in the state of Queensland (australia). About 2years ago, heaps of kids were falling through the safety net. It came about because children that were at risk or abused by their parents were now either at risk or abused by their foster carers. Something very similar about a little girl with an std started things.
Some say it has been fixed others say it hasn't.

[stickler]

Some say it has been fixed others say it hasn't.

Regarding foster care, I can only say this. My research included a bit of study of child welfare efforts in 19th century Europe. Lots of foster families. Lots of scandals. Some that still give me the willies, and the cases were from the 1860s.

The problem, though, isn't some old 19th century thing. It's still with us. How much money is the commune/city/state willing to spend to take care of kids without stable families? What resources other than money is it willing to allocate? How is the oversight going to be carried out?

It's never "fixed" for very long. It's a constant struggle. It's a problem of human society.

[liberaljaponicus]

I seem to remember a Faulkner story where a boy is kept under the porch chained to a log (though now that I think about it, it may have been a true story in Laurel Mississippi that was noted as being Faulkneresque). This, coupled with the kind of notion that one's home is one's castle (As seen in Faulkner's A Rose for Emily) has always made me suspicious of libertarian argumentation.

And FTR, Mississippi is my home state as well. Yet almost everyone I went to University with has moved away, which points to one possible aspect of the problem. I'm not claiming I was a member of the best and brightest, but the out migration is pretty substantial.

[rilkefan]

Somewhere between heartbreaking and inspiring - recent New Yorker on the Nurse-Family Partnership in Louisiana.

[Phil]

lj, as the token self-identifying libertarian, I'll just point out that in my view -- and that of many libertarians -- cases of child abuse and foster care nightmares are absolutely within the realm of state power to intervene. In fact, it's incumbent upon the state to do so, because children, while having all the human rights that adults do, do not have all the legal rights nor can they often act on their own behalf. Please, don't try to tar libertarians with some bullcrap "What I do to my kid in my house is my bidness" argument, because it won't wash.

Julian Sanchez at Reason does a lot of writing on foster care, the state's responsibilites towards minors, how it fails at them and what to do about it. Much of it is directed at the elephant in the room here, which is the number of red states (which I'll bet $5 includes Mississippi) that won't let gays foster or adopt children.

[Jesurgislac]

Phil, Florida remains the only state in the US which legally bans same-sex couples from adoption (though not from long-term fostering).

[Anderson]

FWIW, Jes & Phil, Dahlia Lithwick wrote the other day:

Only Florida categorically prohibits gay parents from adopting, although Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah, and North Dakota do so as a matter of practice.

Not sure what this means, but I'll trust her on it.

[liberaljaponicus]

Point taken, Phil, I didn't mean to tar you, it's just that if the bond between parent and child can't be something that you can place trust in, then the whole notion that you can trust people when left to their own devices is a bit shaky. More about my own reason for not being a libertarian rather than a judgement.

[Phil]

if the bond between parent and child can't be something that you can place trust in, then the whole notion that you can trust people when left to their own devices is a bit shaky.

Eh, down that road lies authoritarianism, lj. At least as far down it as I can possibly see. What things, specifically, do you think people should not be left to their own devices to do in life?

Jes, true as far as it goes, but what happens is you run into sub rosa stuff like this, in which religious groups -- who insinuate themselves heavily into providing adoption and foster placement services -- get to exempt gays from the process as a matter of policy rather than as a matter of law.

I also have little doubt that, in addition to what Lithwick notes in the article linked by Anderson, many states somehow find themselves without a lot of gay adopters on the short list.

[liberaljaponicus]

What things, specifically, do you think people should not be left to their own devices to do in life?

The snarky reply is beat and starve their children, but that's certainly not fair. However, I do think that the libertarian philosophy has been co-opted by those who want to remove government scrutiny for purposes not related to personal freedom. Along with this, you see the notion that somehow, the people who suffer from the absence of government regulation somehow had it coming, a la the Protestant concept of the elect. I don't have a scorecard, I don't want to accuse people of being libertarian without some firm proof, but when I see things like 'New Orleans was a failed city', there is the whiff of post hoc justification.

To me, authoritarianism starts when we try to limit what people think rather than intervening in shaping the choices they have (and any system of government is a way of shaping choices of the electorate). I admit that any system of punishment creates a presumption that those who commit those acts are wrong, thus telling us how we should treat such offenses, so there's no clear line here. But I do believe that libertarian principles are often used as a stalking horse for an anti-government agenda, and not being a libertarian myself, I tend to toss out that baby to get rid of that bathwater, at least in my own reckoning of things. Weighing in on that as well is the fact that I live in a nation that probably tolerates a higher degree of intrusiveness than anything that could be imagined in the States.

Also, I think that change has to be managed, and information technology coupled with the power of the business world automatically skewed playing field in terms of access to information. I think we have to come to grips that more and more of what we thought were our private lives are going to be public, and in this sense, libertarianism is a reactive stance rather than a forward looking one. This is one reason why libertarians have found a home with the 'conservative' side of the spectrum.

Again, this is my own attempt to come to grips with it, so please don't take this as a personal attack.