FOR RELEASE: For Further information, contact:
Thursday,
Sept. 7, 10:30 a.m. Richard
Wexler, NCCPR, 703-380-4252
Maleeka
Jihad, MJCF Coalition: 720-653-4372
NATIONAL
CHILD ADVOCACY GROUP BLASTS COLORADO “CHILD WELFARE.”
The report discussed
here is available online at www.coloradoreport.blogspot.com
Colorado also uses what experts consider the worst form of substitute care – group homes and institutions – at a rate 33% above the national average, while using the least harmful form of foster care, kinship foster care, at a rate 30% below the national average, according to the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.
NCCPR found that Colorado counties take away Hispanic children at a rate 20% above their rate in the state child population. They take Native American children at a rate 50% above their rate in the general population (a figure that can vary from year to year due to the relatively low number of Native American children in Colorado.) And they take away Black children at a rate nearly triple their rate in the state child population.
In addition to the report, NCCPR released a Colorado Rate-of-Removal Index comparing the propensity of Colorado’s largest counties to take away children.
“The name Colorado uses for its child welfare database is sadly appropriate for the system itself,” said NCCPR Executive Director Richard Wexler. “When it comes to child welfare, Colorado trails.”
Wexler was joined at the State Capitol Thursday by Maleeka (MJ) Jihad, founder of Colorado’s leading family advocacy organization, the MJCF Coalition.
“Decades of research has proven that the “child welfare” system continues to create more harm in leading to not only the death of family units by imposing the termination of parental rights, but also undermining entire communities and creating generational trauma,” Jihad said. “NCCPR’s report documents that, bad as these problems are nationwide, they often are worse in Colorado.”
Wexler said Colorado’s child welfare system has made progress in recent years. He noted that, while still well above the national average, the state and counties have reduced needless foster care. He also cited the growth of high-quality family defense and passage of laws bolstering kindship foster care and allowing for reasonable childhood independence. But, he said, there is a long way to go.
And he warned that if Colorado embraces the use of “predictive analytics” in child welfare – what he called “computerized racial profiling” – it would be a huge step backwards. “The Pittsburgh algorithm that was the model for the one used in Douglas and Larimer Counties has been shown to be racially biased, and is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice,” Wexler said.
Wexler noted that “most cases are nothing like the horror stories. More than 80% of Colorado foster children were taken away in cases where there was not even an allegation of physical or sexual abuse. Far more common are allegations of neglect, and Colorado’s broad, vague legal definitions make it easy to confuse poverty with neglect.
“The problem with all this is not that it hurts parents, though of course it does,” Wexler said. “The problem is that it hurts children.
“It hurts children by subjecting them to the enormous emotional trauma of needless investigations and foster care. It hurts children by putting them at high risk of abuse in foster care itself – where independent studies find far more abuse than states report in their official data. And it hurts children by so overloading the system that workers have even less time to find the relatively few children in real danger. That is almost always the real reason for the horror stories about child abuse deaths that rightly make headlines.”
“The idea that child safety and family preservation are opposites that need to be balanced is the Big Lie of American child welfare,” Wexler said. “Colorado’s take-the-child-and-run mentality is making all children less safe. The report we issue today is a blueprint for child safety.”
“We endorse the report’s call for real change,” Jihad said, “including ending mandatory reporting, replacing anonymous reporting with confidential reporting, phasing out residential treatment and banning the use of ‘predictive analytics’ algorithms.” All of this and more is necessary if the State of Colorado is ever to end what amounts to legal child trafficking, and the destruction of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and impoverished communities.”
A key to transforming the system is a laser focus on poverty, Wexler said. This does not require massive new programs to eradicate child poverty “though that would be a great idea,” he said. “In fact, study after study finds that startlingly small amounts of cash assistance, or basic help with housing and childcare dramatically reduces rates of what "child welfare" agencies call ‘neglect.’”
Wexler said all of Colorado’s problems are made worse by “an obsession with institutionalizing children.
“Even when residential treatment centers aren’t rife with abuse, as they so often are, the entire model of institutionalizing children is a failure. Study after study finds there is nothing an RTC can do that can’t be done far better by bringing Wraparound services right into a child’s home or a foster home.
“But Colorado’s enormously powerful residential treatment industry has successfully scared the state away from alternatives, complete with fearmongering about demon homicidal six-year-olds. At the same time, these enormously powerful institutions have scarfed up all the money that could go into better alternatives.
“Residential treatment is the tapeworm in the child welfare system; it contributes nothing, eats up all the nutrients, in this case money, and leaves the host starving. Colorado won’t make real progress until it expels the tapeworm,” Wexler said.
NCCPR’s “Blueprint for Child Safety” calls for phasing out institutionalization of children and turning “child protective services” into “child poverty services” – a model actually pioneered decades ago, then apparently abandoned, by one Colorado county. Other recommendations include:
● Make high-quality interdisciplinary family defense available to every family.
● Abolish mandatory reporting so
professionals are free to use their professional judgment when deciding when to
report a suspicion of child abuse.
● Replace anonymous reporting with confidential reporting.
● Ban the use of predictive analytics at any stage in what should properly be called the "family policing" process.
● Narrow the definition of “neglect” in Colorado law, including repeal of the provision equating use of a huge number of substances by pregnant women with child neglect. As noted family advocate Joyce McMillan says, “A drug test is not a parenting test” and equating any drug use with neglect only drives women away from medical care – and increases the chances that children will be separated from their mothers during the very days they need them the most – their first.
● From the age at which they can express a rational preference, children should get lawyers who will fight for what the child wants, not guardians ad litem who fight for what the guardian thinks is best. That’s not because children should always get what they want, but because the only way a judge can make a truly informed decision is if all sides have someone fighting passionately for their clients’ desired outcome.
● Give families under investigation by the family police the equivalent of a “Miranda warning” explaining their rights.
About NCCPR: The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform is a small, all-volunteer nonprofit child advocacy organization dedicated to trying to make the “child welfare” system better serve America’s most vulnerable children. You can read about our distinguished Board of Directors here https://nccpr.org/nccpr-board-and-staff/ and about what others in the field say about us here: https://nccpr.org/what-others-say-about-nccpr/
ABOUT
THE MJCF Coalition: The MJCF Coalition
is a Colorado grassroots, antiracist organization for & by
the people directly impacted by the family policing system (Child Welfare -
Child Protective Services) nationwide.
We strive to create a supportive, healing community for children,
parents, and kinship through our services. We are making positive developments
through education, advocacy, and policy changes to systems that negatively
impact vulnerable communities.
