Report: Children in group homes on rise in Arizona

A brief history of Arizona's child-welfare woes

  Mary Jo Pitzl, The Republic | azcentral.com 10:31 p.m. MST May 28, 2015


More than one out of every five children removed from their family home because of abuse or neglect is sent to a group home, the highest percentage in recent history and a reflection of the growing number of Arizona children in out-of-home care.
The latest statistics from Arizona's child-welfare agency show more than 17,623 children were living outside their home at the end of 2014, according to a report released Thursday to a state panel charged with overseeing the Department of Child Safety.
Of those 17,623 children, 21.4 percent are sent directly to group homes, either because the state agency can't find relatives to take in the children or because there aren't enough foster families.
The numbers show a steady increase in the number of children in out-of-home care — 71 percent higher than five years ago.
The sobering report comes as the state fights a lawsuit, filed earlier this year in federal court, charging that Arizona's foster-care system is woefully failing children. And it follows the release last week of a national study that highlighted ways to reduce the number of kids in group-home settings, the most expensive and least stable situation for kids removed from their family homes, according to the Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Joe Jacober, a member of the Child Safety Oversight Committee, said the 21.4 percent figure is shocking, up from 16 percent five years ago. Yet, he said, the committee has never talked about what DCS needs to do to reduce the rate at which kids are sent to group homes. He asked DCS Director Greg McKay to bring the committee ideas.
The Kids Count report noted that group homes are far more costly to taxpayers than foster families. In Arizona, congregate care costs about $123 a day while foster homes cost $23 a day, according to the Children's Action Alliance.
McKay asked the panel for patience as he works to address the agency's many issues. Gov. Doug Ducey appointed him director in February, removing Charles Flanagan, who had been the new agency's director for only eight months.
Thursday's meeting found McKay on the hot seat, as panel members grilled him on everything from turnover and agency morale to the need for more timely statistics on how the new agency — a year old today — is faring.
Rep. Debbie McCune Davis, D-Phoenix, said McKay needs to provide more data sooner than the semiannual reports the agency favors. She and fellow Democrats in the House have been stymied in their attempts to get monthly data, such as how many calls come into the state's child-abuse hotline, how many children are removed from their homes each month and how many are sleeping in state offices or other emergency placements for lack of anywhere else to put them.
"It's important that we know this agency is progressing," McCune Davis said.
Panel member Bill Owsley, who runs the dependency unit in Maricopa County's Office of the Legal Advocate, said morale is at rock bottom.
"I don't think I've seen the morale any lower than it is today," said Owsley, adding he's been able to hire many of the well-qualified social workers who have left DCS in recent months.
McKay conceded morale has been an issue. The agency has seen near-weekly firings and departures, and said "it might get worse before it gets better" as he tries to change the agency's culture.
There was one bright spot for McKay: Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, praised him for going above and beyond the legal reporting requirements for child fatalities in which DCS is involved. McKay provided details on the case of Alexandra Velazco-Tercerro, a 3-year-old Surprise girl whose parents have now been charged with murder in her death.
"Less than a week following this poor little baby's tragic death, from the information released by DCS, it becomes very clear that multiple jurisdictions and agencies were involved with this family," Brophy McGee said.
That kind of transparency makes it clear DCS is not the "punching bag" for failing children, she said, adding that other agencies, from courts to local and federal law enforcement to the state Attorney General's Office likely had some degree of interaction with the child and her family.
Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8963.

 http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2015/05/29/report-kids-group-homes-rise/28135327/

Sorry kids, there's no room in the budget to protect you

Sorry kids, there's no room in the budget to protect you
   Rep. Victoria Steele, AZ I See It

Photo provided by Cronkite News

Rep. Victoria Steele, D-Tucson

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It could be said that Angel Manuel Rodriguez was one tough little kid. In his more

The news that the Arizona Department of Child Safety plans to stop assigning lower-priority cases of child abuse for investigation sent chills down my spine.

We have seen the damage created by policies like this. It was not long ago that the deaths of children prompted an investigation into the now-defunct Child Protective Services.

In November 2013, that investigation led to the shocking revelation that thousands of reports of child abuse and neglect had gone uninvestigated. The reports came in, but because the agency was understaffed, thousands of reports were labeled NI (Not-Investigated) and forgotten.

ROBB: Need for a dose of realism at Department of Child Safety

Last year, the Legislature reformed Arizona's child-safety system, shutting down CPS and forming a new Department of Child Safety with a new director and a plan to change the system so all children were protected.

Now, less than a year later, the new agency returns to the old policies, which endangered children. Although the label is slightly different, calling a case "unassigned" instead of "not-investigated" has the same potentially deadly result. Likewise, changing the name of the agency is meaningless if the agency reverts to the same dangerous practices.

Arizona has a dismal child-welfare track record. We have a backlog of more than 15,000 reports of child abuse and neglect. About 17,000 children are already in foster care, many of them living in group homes.

This year, Gov. Doug Ducey and the Republican-controlled Legislature took $11 million from the Department of Child Safety that was dedicated to dealing with the backlog. They also cut $9 million from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides support for our state's most poverty-stricken families.

The Republican leadership made other choices that a report from Children's Action Alliance says will "leave more children in danger and will drive up neglect." The new budget cuts $2 million from the Department of Economic Security, $3 million from youth treatment funds and $4 million from child care assistance for working families.

The budget did, however, include funding for a new private prison and more than $3 billion in corporate and special interest tax giveaways.

If you, too, are outraged by how our state government is treating our children, I challenge you to do more than just feel bad. Empathy is not enough. We must be actively compassionate.

You can contact your elected officials and demand that state law be followed. Demand that all reports of child abuse and neglect be assigned and investigated. Demand the restoration of preventative services to help Arizona's struggling families.

Above all, you can demand accountability from those making the decisions that will have long-term, devastating consequences.

Voting is an act of compassion. It is one of the most powerful steps anyone can take to help protect the future of our state and the well-being of our children. I implore you to shocompassion at the ballot box.

Rep. Victoria Steele is a Democrat from Tucson.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2015/04/15/point-creating-new-child-safety-agency/25845985/

Some child-abuse reports won't be probed immediately

The Arizona Department of Child Safety plans to stop assigning lower-priority cases, bringing echoes of a recent scandal.

The state's child-welfare agency, at the direction of its new chief, has stopped assigning lower-priority cases of child abuse and neglect for investigation.

The policy shift echoes a practice that threw the system into turmoil nearly 1 1/2 years ago.

The discovery of the practice by investigator Greg McKay prompted sweeping changes to the child-welfare system and catapulted McKay into the Department of Child Services' top job.

Lawmakers, state officials and law enforcement reacted with shock to McKay's findings in November 2013. Many, including McKay, noted state law requires 100 percent of such reports to be investigated.

But in an April 1 memo, McKay said a heavy workload makes it necessary to set aside some cases.

"My first priority is to stop assigning cases which we all agree cannot be served due to overwhelming demands," McKay wrote. "... This insurmountable volume and accompanying liability of unassigned reports should be owned by the Department, not the already decimated field force."

His office clarified that the cases will be assigned and investigated eventually, but the delay is needed to relieve pressure on already overburdened caseworkers.

Instead, supervisors — and, more broadly, the agency — will monitor the unassigned cases, spokesman Doug Nick said.

Nick said assignment of lower-priority cases will happen when supervisors deem it best. In the meantime, the supervisors will monitor these cases, but how that works is unclear.

Until the April 1 memo, the department's stated policy required a response on lower-priority cases within three days in some instances and seven days for others. It is unclear whether that policy is still in place, and there are no details on how unassigned cases will be monitored or accounted for.

"It's incumbent on the department to take on this role," Nick said. "We don't want to just foist this off on the caseworker."

The new policy appears similar to the practice McKay criticized in November 2013, when he blew the whistle on a Child Protective Services practice of designating low-priority cases "not investigated" to cope with a heavy workload.

"This is clearly an attempt by CPS to lessen the already overburdened investigative arm of the agency," McKay wrote to then-Gov. Jan Brewer in November 2013. "It accomplishes two goals; reduce investigator caseload and reduce the number of unassigned reports. This medicine is truly worse than the disease."

His discovery, as head of a unit that investigated criminal cases, prompted Brewer to call for an overhaul of the state's child-welfare operation, creating the Department of Child Services and making it a Cabinet-level state agency.

McKay was not available Thursday to discuss his decision. But later in the memo, he rebuffs suggestions that the new approach is similar to the maligned "not investigate" process.

"In the end, we must physically assess all children reported to the department and we will accomplish this based on the vulnerability of the children and on time," he wrote.

State law requires all reports of abuse and neglect get a "prompt and thorough investigation."

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who was closely involved in the creation of DCS, said he believes McKay wants to allow complaints involving alleged criminal conduct to be handed over to the agency's Office of Child Welfare Investigations. Their review could clear a case, making it unnecessary to assign it to a caseworker, Montgomery said.

He bases his interpretation on his conversations with McKay, as well as those with former agency director Charles Flanagan, during last year's work on establishing the new department.

McKay's approach is a logical triage in a system that is flooded with abuse and neglect reports of varying severity, Nick said. The agency received 1,045 reports a week to its child-abuse hotline, according to the most recent statistics available. They cover the six-month period ending Sept. 1, 2014.

Nick said the previous director, Flanagan, had a policy of ensuring every report was assigned by 3 p.m. on Fridays, a move that Nick said stressed out caseworkers by giving them "an impossible workload."

But Flanagan, whom Gov. Doug Ducey fired in February and replaced with McKay, said he ended the practice of leaving cases unassigned last year "because it is NI (not investigated) by another name."

The only difference, Flanagan said, is that the new practice is being done in the open, and not hidden.

Assigning all cases brings greater transparency to the admittedly heavy workload the agency faces, Flanagan said.

"It allows them to be and stay in the mix to be investigated directly, rather than hiding in the unassigned pile unaddressed," he wrote in an e-mail in response to a query from The Arizona Republic.

Flanagan also cautioned that low-priority cases that linger without an investigation can blow up into more serious problems, something he saw as he directed a complete review last year of all 6,600 "not investigated" files. In several dozen cases, children had to be removed from their homes due to dangerous situations that might have been averted if caseworkers had seen the children when earlier reports came in.

Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, said she would need a better understanding of the triage process McKay is following before commenting in detail. But she questioned how cases could be tracked if they weren't assigned, and she reiterated concerns that setting aside lower-priority cases could allow small problems to fester into a crisis.

"Knowing as we know, and as Greg McKay has pointed out, cases that are not tended to immediately tend to become higher priority," she said.

Brophy McGee co-chairs a legislative committee assigned to oversee the agency's operations. A bill to extend that committee through 2016 is now on Ducey's desk awaiting action.

Rep. Debbie McCune Davis, D-Phoenix, said the plan "sounds like NI to me."

"I don't think it's acceptable," said McCune Davis, who also sits on the oversight committee. "But I'm waiting for Greg McKay to do what he said he'd do in the oversight committee: produce a plan that will keep kids safe."

For its part, Ducey's office expressed "complete confidence" in McKay's direction.

"Given his reputation for blowing the whistle on problems within the agency over the years, no one has a better understanding than Greg McKay of what it takes to ensure cases don't slip through the cracks," Ducey's office wrote in a statement after The Republic sought comment on the move.

Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8963.

 

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2015/04/10/child-welfare-agency-falling-behind-stop-assigning-cases/25562909/

Prop. 122 being used to turn Arizona into Kooksville

Laurie Roberts & Ed Montini of AZ Prop. 122

The little girl's brown eyes reached out to voters from the mailbox and asked: "Will you help me please?"

"Voting Yes on Prop. 122," you were told, "allows voters to help CPS protect children – not bureaucrats."

The ballot measure, according to the campaign mailer, would allow us to opt out of "an unconstitutional federal law that forces Child Protective Services to hide botched investigations of abused kids."

Or not, as it turns out.

Three months after 51 percent of voters approved this proposition giving our leaders license to ignore the federal government, I haven't seen so much as a baby step toward declaring our independence from federal laws on child abuse.

Instead, Prop. 122 is being used to turn the great state of Arizona into Kooksville as our leaders work to declare our independence from federal gun laws, from the Affordable Care Act, from the Environmental Protection Agency, from the Department of Justice, from Barack Obama and from just about anything else associated with the state's most detested f-word.

Federal, that is.

While our state finances are a mess, our public schools are struggling and our national reputation is …. um, yeah, the GOP-controlled Legislature seems determined to go to war with the federal government. Indeed, our leaders delight in doing so, passing bill after bill through committees – each one daring the feds to sue us. (Again, that is.)

"People like Laurie Roberts and the Arizona Republic would call some people down here that love our constitution, that are trying to protect our constitutional rights, the press will say disparaging things about us and that doesn't matter," Rep. Bob Thorpe, R-Flagstaff and author of some of this year's kookiest bills, said during a recent meeting of the House Federalism and States Rights Committee. "That's a badge of honor for me."

A badge of honor for Thorpe and a bunch of lawsuits waiting for happen for the rest of us.

"What Prop. 122 does is gives us the authority to restrict what our state employees and state finances and resources can be used on …," Thorpe told his colleagues. "It's time we start pushing back."

And so we get House Bill 2055, declaring that henceforth the sovereign state of Arizona will not "enforce, administer or cooperate" if the Environmental Protection Agency tries to ensure that water is clean in any Arizona creek, wash or river that runs only part of the year.

And so we get House Bill 2368, declaring that henceforth the sovereign state of Arizona will not enforce any executive orders issued by the president of the United States or any policy directives from the Department of Justice unless they are affirmed by Congress and signed into law.

And we get House Bill 2643, saying we won't lift a finger to help with the Affordable Care Act.

And Senate Bill 1330, which has at least been scaled back from declaring all federal gun laws unconstitutional. Now, it simply declares that the state and local agencies are barred from enforcing any new federal gun laws in Arizona.

And so we get House Bill 2058, declaring that henceforth, the sovereign state of Arizona will not use "any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with any rule, regulation or policy directive issued by an agency, board, commission, department or other entity of the federal government unless the rule, regulation or policy directive has been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the Constitution."

All this, because a little girl with brown eyes asked voters: "Will you help me please?" Too bad she didn't say, "Hey, Arizona, just secede already."

It might have been cheaper and it certainly wouldn't be any more embarrassing.

"It's time," Rep. Thorpe said in his call to action, "we start acting like sovereigns."

So that soon, we can start acting like defendants

http://www.azcentral.com/story/laurieroberts/2015/02/24/state-sovereignty-federal-fight-arizona/23942191/