WEXLER: Keeping kids with families is best

Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, www.nccpr.org.

Child exploitation takes many forms. But one of the worst is exploiting a tragedy to divert scarce resources into failed programs.

That's exactly what the man in charge of raising money for one such program, a residential treatment center, did in his recent Speakout column in the Rocky Mountain News.

Of the five so-called "fixes" offered up by Dennis Kennedy, director of development for the Mount St. Vincent Home ("5 ways to help better protect our kids," Aug. 15) three of them boil down to "give my programs more money." None of those fixes will reduce the chances of another tragedy like the death of Chandler Grafner; in fact, they make another such a tragedy more likely.

Kennedy urges us all to be on the lookout for even hints of child abuse, on the theory that any case could be the next Chandler Grafner. But that only further overwhelms the system with false reports, trivial cases and needless removal of children - and Colorado already takes away children at one of the highest rates in the nation.

Far more common than sadistic brutes are parents whose poverty has been confused with neglect. Other cases fall between the extremes - and a major national study of 15,000 such cases found that in most of these typical cases, children left in their own homes fare better than children consigned to foster care or institutions.

Most important, when workers are overloaded with children needlessly taken from everyone they know and love, they are even more likely to overlook children in real danger. That's the real reason for most of the horror-story cases that, rightly, make headlines.

What Kennedy's advice does do, however, is ensure a steady supply of children for foster-care programs and institutions - like the one Kennedy works for.

Kennedy says we should give foster parents a giant pay raise. But the study he cites to justify this raise calls for reimbursing foster parents not just for the basics, but also for every movie ticket, toy and teddy bear they buy for foster children. Would we really want to place children with anyone so greedy?

Worst of all is Kennedy's recommendation that even more children be shoveled into residential treatment centers - like the one Kennedy works for.

These are essentially orphanages by another name.

Two comprehensive reviews of the scholarly literature have found that residential treatment is largely worthless. Even the former head of their own trade association, the Child Welfare League of America, admitted that "we find it hard to demonstrate success."

Yes, I know. The institutions look pretty and the people working there mean well. They can always produce a couple of carefully selected anecdotes to counter the mountain of research. But pretty grounds don't matter to children trapped in institutions when they could be with families. That's why a few such places have had crises of conscience, closed most of their residential beds and poured their resources into better options, such as Wraparound programs (child and adolescent mental health services used to reduce or replace problem behavior with positive, socially appropriate behavior).

And contrary to the claims of another Speakout columnist - Henry Puncec, who last was in an orphanage in 1950 ("Maybe it's time to bring back orphanages," Sept. 7) - in the 21st century, such places are far more harmful to children even than other forms of substitute care.

There is nothing a residential treatment center or any other institution does that can't be done better by bringing the help directly into a child's own home or a foster home. The reason children "blow out" of such placements - to use Kennedy's charming phrase - is that there is not enough money to provide such intensive help. But that's only because institutions, like the one Kennedy works for, are scarfing up all that money.

There are good, real solutions that will reduce child abuse fatalities, but they all begin in one place: Keeping the children who don't need to be in substitute care in their own homes.


Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, www.nccpr.org.

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