80 PERCENT FALURE:
A Brief Analysis of the Casey Family Programs
Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/cfpanalysis.doc
By Richard Wexler, NCCPR Executive Director
Imagine for a moment that you went to a doctor and he told you the
following:
∑ 80 percent of my patients don’t get any better.
∑ A lot of the time, they get worse.
∑ One-third of the time, I commit malpractice.
But, the doctor continues, if you’ll just pay me even more money than I
already get and build me a fancy new hospital, I’m sure I can reduce my
failure rate to only about 60 percent. Do we have a deal?
Odds are you’d look for another doctor.
But what if all the other doctors told you the same thing? And what if
none of them let on that there were, in fact, better treatments with
fewer side effects?
Odds are you’d be furious.
Now, consider a study released on April 7, 2005 by a large, Washington
State-based foster-care provider, Casey Family Programs, and Harvard
Medical School. The study used case records and interviews to assess
the status of young adult “alumni” of foster care.
When compared to adults of the same age and ethnic background who did
not endure foster care:
∑ Only 20 percent of the alumni could be said to be “doing well.”
Thus, foster care failed for 80 percent.
∑ They have double the rate of mental illness.
∑ Their rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was double the rate for
Iraq War veterans.
∑ The former foster children were three times more likely to be living
in poverty – and fifteen times less likely to have finished college.
∑ And nearly one-third of the alumni reported that they had been abused
by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home.
The authors went on to design a complex mathematical formula to attempt
to figure out how much they could improve these outcomes if every single
problem besetting the foster care system were magically fixed. Their
answer: 22.2 percent.
Even if one argues that foster care didn’t cause all of these problems,
clearly foster care didn’t cure them. Yet the authors of the study
recommend only more of the same: Pour even more money into foster care
to “fix” it to the point that maybe the rotten outcomes could be reduced
by 22.2 percent.
At a two-and-a-half-hour briefing for advocates, there was barely a
word about keeping children out of foster care in the first place.
Why, then, do we continue to pour billions of dollars into a system
which fails 80 percent of the time and actually abuses at least
one-third of those forced into it?
We do it because, over 150 years, we’ve built up a huge, powerful
network of foster-care “providers” – “a foster-care industrial complex”
with an enormous vested interest in perpetuating the status quo. They
feed us horror stories about foster children whose birth parents really
were brutally abusive or hopelessly addicted. But such cases represent
a tiny fraction of the foster-care population.
As is documented in NCCPR’s Issue Papers, elsewhere on this site, far
more common are cases in which a family’s poverty is confused with child
“neglect.” Several studies have found, for example, that one-third of
foster children could be back home right now if their parents simply had
adequate housing. (See NCCPR Issue Paper 5.)
Other cases fall on a broad continuum between the extremes, the parents
neither all victim nor all villain. What these cases have in common is
the fact that the children would be far better off if states and
localities used safe, proven alternatives to foster care – alternatives
that don’t come with an 80 percent failure rate, and a 33 percent risk
of child abuse. (See Nine Ways to do Child Welfare Right).
Nearly as disturbing as the study’s findings is how the study authors
attempted to spin them.
The finding about the rate of abuse in foster care is not mentioned in
the press release accompanying the study. It’s not in the Executive
Summary. It’s not in any of the glossy material that accompanies the
report. One must dig it out of the report itself, on page 30. (The
full report is available here:
http://www.casey.org/NR/rdonlyres/4E1E7C77-7624-4260-A253-892C5A6CB9E1/301/nw_alumni_study_full_apr2005.pdf
During the entire briefing for advocates, I waited in vain for the study
authors to even mention the issue of abuse in foster care. When I
finally asked about it, at the very end of the briefing, one of the
researchers tried to blame birth parents, speculating, without a shred
of evidence, that maybe the foster children had been abused during visits.
But that is contradicted by the study itself, which states:
“One third (32.8%) of the sample, however, reported some form of
maltreatment by a foster parent or other adult in the foster home during
their foster care experience, as recorded in their case files” [emphasis
added].
If anything, this underestimates the true rate of abuse, since a major
problem in foster care is foster children abusing each other (see NCCPR
Issue Paper 1) and those cases apparently were not counted in the study.
Of course, some will rush to conclude that because family foster care
has failed so badly, we should go back to orphanages. There’s just one
problem with that. Over a century of research is nearly unanimous: The
outcomes for children warehoused in orphanages are even worse. (See
NCCPR Issue Paper 15.)
Though the authors try desperately to ignore the obvious, their study is
one more indication that the only way to fix foster care is to have less
of it. Until we realize that, foster care systems will continue to
churn out walking wounded – four out of five times.
CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL
SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAM....
CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.
every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...
http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf
http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com
Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS
*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*
Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5
Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.
BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...
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