[Pages S5710-S5715]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

FOSTER CHILDREN

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about an American
tragedy. First, Mr. President, too many children in this country are
spending the most important formative years in a legal limbo, a legal
limbo that denies them their chance to be adopted, that denies them
what all children should have: the chance to be loved and cared for by
parents.
Second, we are sending many children in this country back to
dangerous and abusive homes. We send them back to live with parents who
are parents in name only, and to homes that are homes in name only. We
send these children back to the custody of people who have already
abused and tortured them. We send these children back to be abused,
beaten, and, many times, killed.
Mr. President, we are all too familiar with the statistics that
demonstrate the tragedy that befalls these children. Every day in
America--every day--three children actually die because of abuse and
negligent at the hands of their parents or caregivers, over 1,200
children per year.
Mr. President, almost half of these children, almost half of them,
are killed after their tragic circumstances have already come to the
attention of the local authorities. Tonight, Mr. President, almost
421,000 children will sleep in foster homes. Over a year's time,
659,000 will be in a foster home for at least part of the year.
Shockingly, roughly 43 percent of the children in the foster care
system at any one time will languish in foster care longer than 2
years. Mr. President, 10 percent will be in foster care longer than 5
years.
Mr. President, the number of these foster children is rising. From
1986 to 1990, it rose almost 50 percent.
In summary, Mr. President, too many of our children are not finding
permanent homes. Too many of them are being hurt, and too many of them
are dying.
Mr. President, most Americans have probably heard of the tragedy that
befell Elisa Izquierdo in New York City. Her mother used crack when she
was pregnant with Elisa. A month before she was born, her half brother,
Ruben, and her half sister, Cassie, had been removed from her mother's
custody and placed into foster care. They had been neglected,
unsupervised, and unfed for long periods of time. In other words, Mr.
President, this woman left her children alone and simply did not feed
them.
But then, Mr. President, amazingly, the children were sent back to
the same woman, and then Elisa was born. When Elisa was born, she
tested positive for crack. She was taken from her mother and
transferred to her father's custody. Tragically, in 1994, Elisa's
father died. Elisa was then 5 years old. The director of Elisa's
preschool warned officials about the mother's history of child abuse
and drug abuse. Without any further investigation and without ordering
any further monitoring of Elisa's home situation, a family court judge
transferred Elisa back to her mother.
In March 1995, when Elisa was 6 years old, she was admitted to the
hospital with a shoulder fracture--a shoulder fracture, Mr. President.
This is a little girl from a household with a history of child abuse,
and she shows up at the hospital with a shoulder fracture. What did the
hospital do? The hospital sent her back to her mother.
Eight months later, in November 1995, she was battered to death by
that same mother. You see, Elisa's mother was convinced that Elisa was
possessed by the devil. She wanted to drive out the evil, so she forced
Elisa to eat her own feces, mopped the floor with her head, and finally
bashed her head against a concrete wall. On November 2, 1995, Elisa was
found dead.
Mr. President, this story then was on the front page of the New York
Times, and for days after that the story was covered. Millions of
Americans were, understandably, shocked. But you know, Mr. President,
what shocked me when I read the story, when I heard about it, was that
anyone would be shocked at all, because the horrible truth is that
while this horrible tragedy captured the attention of the country, the
sad fact is that atrocities such as this are happening against children
every single day in this country. Children are being reunited with
brutal abusers. They are abused again and again, and, yes, sometimes
they are killed.
Here is another story. A Chicago woman had a lengthy history of
mental illness. She ate batteries, she ate coat hangers, and she drank
Drano. She stuck pop cans and light bulbs into herself. Twice she had
to have surgery to have foreign objects removed from her body. Then
when she was pregnant, she denied that the baby was hers. While
pregnant, she set herself on fire. That is her idea of what being a
parent is all about. On three occasions, her children were taken away
from her by the department of children and family services, known as
DCFS.
One of her children was named Joseph. Joseph's second foster mother--
keep in mind that this was a child that was being pushed back and forth
between foster homes, back and forth with his mother. Joseph's second
foster mother reported to the DCFS officials that every time Joseph
came back from visiting his mother, he had bruises. Yet, in 1993, all
the children were returned to this mother--one last time.
A month later, in April 1993, this mother hanged Joseph; she hanged
her little boy. She hanged her 3-year-old son. Her comment to the
police was, ``I just killed my child. I hung him.'' She stood him up on
a chair and said, ``bye.'' He said, ``bye.'' Then he waved. And she
pushed the chair away. She hanged this little boy.
Mr. President, what kind of a person does something like that to a
child? She told a policeman, ``DCFS was'' blankety-blank ``with me.''
Mr. President, why on Earth would anyone think we should keep trying
to reunite that family?
Another example. Last year in Brooklyn, NY, there were allegations
that baby Cecia Williams and her three older siblings had been
abandoned by their mother. As a result, they were temporarily removed
from their mother's custody. It turned out they had not been abandoned
by the mother. She had actually placed them in the care of an uncle,
and he had abandoned the children.
Later, Cecia and the other children were sent back home. Last month,
after they were sent back home in New York, Cecia Williams died after
being battered, bruised, and, possibly, sexually abused. Her mother and
her boyfriend have been charged with the crime.

Cecia was 9 months old. Cecia is dead today--a victim of blunt blows
to her torso, and lacerations to her liver and small intestinal area.
Another example. A young boy in New Jersey named Quintin McKenzie was
admitted to a Newark hospital after a severe beating, for which his
father was arrested. Quintin was placed in foster care. But when the
charges were dropped, he was sent back to that family. In 1988, Quintin
was 3\1/2\ years old when his mother killed him. She plunged him into
scalding water because he had soiled his diapers.
In Franklin County, OH, the local children services agency, in
another case, was trying to help Kim Chandler deal with her children--
7-year-old Quiana, 4-year-old Quincy, and 1-month-old Erica. In July
1992, they closed the case on her. On September 24, 1992, all three
children were shot dead, and Kim Chandler was charged with the crime.
In Rushville, OH, in March 1989, 4-year-old Christopher Engle died
when his father dumped scalding water on him.
Mr. President, we could go on and on and on. Tragically, there is not
a Member of the Senate who could not cite examples from his or her own
State of these tragedies. I could multiply example after example of
households like these--households that look like families but are not,
Mr. President; people who look like parents, but who are not; people
who never, never should be allowed to be alone with any child. I do
intend, in the months ahead, to discuss many of these stories on this
floor, Mr. President.

Why are atrocities like this happening? There are many factors
contributing to this problem. In many cases, the abuse is caused by
parents who were themselves abused as children. In other cases, the
parent is deeply disturbed or

[[Page S5711]]

mentally ill. Often, the parent is a teenager, who is emotionally
unprepared for the responsibility of raising a child.
All of these factors were present in earlier generations. What is
different today is that too many of the young parents have no role
models of good parenting. They did not have good parents themselves, so
they have no idea how to be parents for their own children.
Another major problem, Mr. President, is the decline of the extended
family, the support system that used to do so much to make sure
children were taken care of. In many cases, it just does not exist
today.
Add to all of this the relatively new phenomenon of crack. Since the
late 1980's, we have seen an explosion of this new form of cocaine that
is readily available, is cheap, and explosively addictive. Crack is so
addictive that mothers have sold their children so they can get more of
it. Someone said, when talking about crack, that crack is the only
thing that has ever been invented by man that will cause a mother to
behave not like a mother and abandon all the natural instincts that she
might have--to leave that child, sell that child, to abuse that child.
Mr. President, put all these factors together and we have a major
social problem on our hands. Now, we ask social workers to try to patch
up the wounded. But the social workers are underpaid and overworked.
When I was an assistant county prosecutor over 20 years ago, and then
when I was the county prosecutor in Greene County, OH, I worked closely
with these dedicated, hard-working social welfare professionals. I have
great respect and admiration for them. They are literally at the front
line of our efforts to save children. We expect the impossible from
them and, frankly, do not give them all the tools and resources they
need to do their jobs. Often, the only options they have, and the only
choices they have for these children, are all bad--no good options, no
good choices.
Many times, our social welfare agencies are simply overwhelmed. Some
experts say that the social worker handling children ought to handle no
more than 15 or 20 cases at a time. But the truth is that we have
social workers today handling 50, 60, 70 cases. They do not have enough
time or enough resources to solve the problems these kids have.
In summary, Mr. President, there are many causes for the tragedies I
have discussed. Further, there are many things that must change, many
things that we can do to help these children.
There are many things we can do, Mr. President, to lessen the time it
takes for children to be adopted, and to lessen the time these poor
kids have to spend in the legal limbo of the system. Further, there are
many things we can do to lessen the odds of tragedies like the cases of
Elisa Izquierdo and Joseph Wallace.
Mr. President, I intend to keep working to find solutions to these
problems, recognizing that their causes are multiple--and that to solve
them, we must do many things.
But today, I would like to focus on one of the causes of these
tragedies, one that most people have not heard about. It is the
unintended consequence of a small part of a law passed by the U.S.
Congress.
In 1980, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare
Act--known as CWA. The Child Welfare Act has done a great deal of good.
It increased the resources available to struggling families. It
increased the supervision of children in the foster care system. And it
gave financial support to people to encourage them to adopt children
with special needs.
But while the law has done a great deal of good, many experts are
coming to believe that this law has actually had some bad unintended
consequences.
Under the CWA, for a State to be eligible for Federal matching funds
for foster care expenditures, the State must have a plan for the
provision of child welfare services approved by the Secretary of HHS.
The State plan must provide:

. . . that, in each case, reasonable efforts will be made
(A) prior to the placement of a child in foster care, to
prevent or eliminate the need for removal of the child from
his home, and (B) to make it possible for the child to return
to his home.

In other words, Mr. President, no matter what the particular
circumstances of a household may be--the State must make reasonable
efforts to keep it together, and to put it back together if it falls
apart.
What constitutes ``reasonable efforts''? Here is where maybe we have
part of the problem.
This has not been defined by Congress. Nor has it been defined by
HHS.
This failure to define what constitutes ``reasonable efforts'' has
had a very important--and very damaging--practical result. There is
strong evidence to suggest that in the absence of a definition,
reasonable efforts have become--in some cases--extraordinary efforts.
Efforts to keep families together at all costs.
Mr. President, much of the national attention on the case of Elisa
Izquierdo has focused on the many ways the social welfare agencies
dropped the ball. It has been said that there were numerous points in
the story when some agency could have and should have intervened to
remove Elisa and her siblings from her mother's custody.
I am not going to revisit that ground. Rather, my point is a broader
one: Should our Federal law really push the envelope, so that
extraordinary efforts are made to keep that family together--efforts
that any of us in this Chamber or anyone listening would not consider
reasonable?

Throughout human history, the family has been recognized as the
bedrock of civilization. The family is where values are transmitted. It
is where children learn behavior--develop their character--and form
their personality.
Over the last couple of years, a remarkable convergence has occurred
in American social thought. Liberals and conservatives are now in near-
total agreement on the need to strengthen the family as an institution.
Without stronger families, it will be impossible to avoid a social
explosion in which troubled children turn into dysfunctional adults on
a massive scale.
But what we are confronting in the terrible stories I have just
recounted are not families. They are households that look like
families--but are not.
If you look inside one of these households, you see some children.
And you see some people who--superficially, at least--resemble parents.
But this is not what you and I and most Americans mean when we talk
about families.
In this type of family when we have heard the horror stories, the
children are beaten and abused and neglected. Mr. President, what do
we, as a society, do about these households--these households that are
not families?
By 1980, the child welfare system in this country had come under some
pretty strong criticism. That is why we have the bill. After many
hearings, Congress concluded that abused and neglected children too
often were unnecessarily removed from their parents--and very
significantly that insufficient resources were devoted to the
commendable task of preserving and reuniting families--and that
children not able to return to their parents often drifted in foster
care without ever finding a permanent home.
That is how the CWA came to be enacted. The phenomenon known as
foster care drift--children who get lost in a child welfare system that
cannot or will not find them a permanent home--simply had to be faced
and reversed.
Let me interject at this point, Mr. President, that I had substantial
experience on this issue before the passage of the CWA legislation in
1980. As long ago as 1973, I was serving as an assistant county
prosecutor in Greene County, OH, and one of my duties was to represent
the Greene County Children Services in cases where children were going
to be removed from their parents' custody.
I saw first hand that too many of these cases dragged on forever. The
children end up getting trapped in temporary foster care placements,
which often entail multiple moves from foster home to foster home to
foster home, for years and years and years.
Congress enacted the CWA to try to solve this very real problem.
There were good reasons for the CWA, and the CWA has done a lot of
good. There are some families that need a little help if they are going
to stay together, and it is right for us to help them. Not only is it
right--it is also clearly in the best interests of the child to reunite
families when we can.

[[Page S5712]]

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 5 additional minutes, and
I apologize to my colleague.
Mr. EXON. Reserving the right to object, I would like to see what the
parliamentary procedure is and ask the Chair to make a ruling. I have
15 minutes that was assigned to me under the original schedule, and
also Senator Leahy. The time is about up. I would not object to the
request from the Senator so he can finish his remarks so long as the
same procedure would be afforded to this Senator after he has finished
his presentation.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is their objection to the Senator's request?
Hearing none, it is so ordered.
Mr. DeWINE. I thank my colleague. Again I apologize for taking his
time and the Senate's time. But I would like to complete. It should not
take any more than just a few more moments.
We should not be in the position of taking children away just because
the parents are too poor--or just because there is a problem in the
family. If the problem can be fixed, we must try to keep the family
together for the children's benefit. It is just that at some point,
when it comes to cases of child abuse and child neglect, we have to
step in and say: ``Enough is enough. The child comes first.''
And that is where we are now, in a lot of cases. Fifteen years after
the passage of the CWA, I think we need to revisit this issue, and see
how the system is working in practice.
I believe we need to reemphasize what all of us agree on--the fact
that the child ought to come first. We have to make the best interests
of the child our top national priority.
In many of the cases we have looked at, it looks like the CWA has
been not been correctly interpreted. At least that is the way it
appears. Try to imagine what the authors of the CWA--the people who
stood on this Senate floor and the House floor in 1979 and 1980--what
would they have said if they had been asked: ``Should Joseph Wallace be
sent back to his mother? Should this little Joseph, this little boy, be
sent back?''

I cannot believe that anyone would say he should have been sent back.
And I cannot believe that it was the authors' intent that it would take
place. I cannot believe that they would say, ``In that case, and in
every case, the child must be reunited with the adult at all costs.''
No, I don't think so.
Reasonable people agree, Mr. President, on one point: Nothing--
nothing--should take precedence over the best interests of the child.
It is common sense. And I think we need to make sure the CWA is
interpreted consistently--and correctly--to reflect that common sense.
It is my hope that an important new book will spark the national
debate that America need to have on this issue. The book is called
``The Book of David: How Preserving Families Can Cost Children's
Lives,'' by Richard J. Gelles.
Dr. Gelles is the director of the Family Violence Research Program at
the University of Rhode Island. For years, Dr. Gelles thought children
should be permanently removed from their homes only as a last resort,
even if it meant that the children may spend years moving back and
forth between birth homes and foster homes. He now says--and I quote:

It is a fiction to believe one can balance preservation and
safety without tilting in favor of parents and placing
children at risk.

He believes that the system is weighted too far toward giving the
mother and father chance after chance after chance to put their life in
order--putting the adults first, rather than putting the children
first.
Even some social-work professionals will tell you how true this is.
Krista Grevious, a Kentucky social worker with 21 years of experience,
says:

I think it's probably one of the most dangerous things we
have ever done for children.

Patrick Murphy is the court-appointed lawyer for abused children in
Cook County, Il. He says:

Increasingly, people in this business do not look at things
from the point of view of the child. But the child is the
defenseless party here. We've forgotten that.

In 1993, Murphy published an article in the New York Times that put
the problem in historical context. I quote from his article:

The family preservation system is a continuation of sloppy
thinking of the 1960's and 1970's that holds, as an
unquestionable truth, that society should never blame a
victim. Of course, the children are not considered the
victims here. Rather the abusive parents are considered
victims of poverty and addiction. This attitude is not only
patronizing, it endangers children.

Marcia Robinson Lowry, head of the Children's Rights Project at the
American Civil Liberties Union, sums it up. She says:

We've oversold the fact that all families can be saved. All
families can't be saved.

Mr. President, let me make this absolutely clear. I think there is
nothing wrong with giving parents another chance. But we have to make
sure the child comes first. Is that child going to get a second chance
at growing up? A second chance to be 4 years old--the age when a
personality is already fundamentally shaped?
Jann Heffner, the director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for
Adoption, has a useful way of looking at this problem--the concept of
``kid days.'' When you are 3 years old, 1 month of experience does a
lot to the formation of your personality. It is not a month that can be
taken for granted, or treated as routine.

One helpful way of looking at it is this: If you are 50 years old, 1
year is 2 percent of your life. If you are 3 years old, 1 year is one-
third of your life.
There is some important psychological activity going on with these
children. And every day--every hour--really counts. Lynne Gallagher,
director of the Arizona Governor's Office for Children, says:

It's as though these people think we can put the kids in
the deep freeze for awhile * * * and then pull them out when
the parents are ready to parent.

We all know how crucial those formative years can be.
Let me return to the work of Dr. Gelles. He says:

It is time to face up to the fact that some parents are not
capable of being parents, cannot be changed, and should not
continue to be allowed to care for children.

He advocates changes in Federal laws to protect children. He also
thinks that child-protection officials should move to terminate
parental rights sooner, thus freeing children for adoption.
I think the time is ripe for these changes. In New York City, Mayor
Giuliani has pledged to shift the city's priorities away from family
preservation--and toward protecting children from harm.
But we need to examine how much of the problem we face is a
consequence of Federal law--the lack of precision of the CWA
legislation back in 1980. And this is truly a national problem that
needs a national response. According to the National Committee to
Prevent Child Abuse, child abuse fatalities have increased by 40
percent between 1985 and 1995.
I think there is something the U.S. Congress should do about that. I
think we should make it absolutely clear that the best interests of the
child are the primary concern of social policy.
We need to examine, Mr. President, whether in fact the 1980 Child
Welfare Act has been misinterpreted--and whether we need to clarify it
so there can be no misunderstanding of Congress' intent. While family
reunification is a laudable goal, and should usually be attempted, the
best interests of the child should always come first. This, Mr.
President, was the intention of the drafters of the 1980 law. Congress
should reaffirm this--by making whatever clarification is necessary in
the law.

To the extent that the 1980 law has been imprecise, ambiguous, and
unclear, or just misinterpreted, it has contributed to the syndrome in
which children move from child abuse to foster home to child abuse. It
is time for us to break this cycle--to help children escape their
abusers and find a permanent home before they have suffered absolutely
irreparable physical and emotional damage.
If we make explicit our commitment to putting the best interests of
the child first, in almost all cases that will mean family
reunification. The best interests of the child are almost always served
by reuniting and preserving families. But in the cases where family
reunification is not in the best interest of the child, in those cases
we must protect the child. Federal law must be clearly on the side of
the child.
I intend to introduce--in the near future--legislation that will
clarify once

[[Page S5713]]

and for all the intent of Congress on this issue. Congress should stand
with the highest values of the American people. And the mind and heart
of America are crystal clear on this issue: The children come first.
When they do not, we, as a society, as Americans, have every right to
become outraged, to get mad--and demand change.
I simply conclude by saying we need to look at the best interests of
the child. We need to reexamine this law. We need to look at how it is
actually working.
I understand that this may be an uphill battle, that there is a
reluctance to revisit this. But I think we should revisit it. I think
we should look at it, keeping in mind only one thing, what really is in
the best interests of children.
I ask unanimous consent that four articles on this subject be printed
in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Baltimore Sun, Dec. 4, 1995]

Tiny Coffins

(By Mona Charen)

Washington.--The death of 6-year-old Elisa Izquierdo,
allegedly at the hands of her mother, has touched New York as
few such cases do. Her funeral was attended by the city's
mayor, the state's lieutenant governor and hundreds of
mourners who didn't even know her.
It mystifies me that some cases of child abuse receive
extravagant attention and evoke the tears and guilty
questions they ought to arouse. Thousands of others are
ignored, their funerals sparsely attended, their files
closed, and we never ask how this is possible in a country
that calls itself civilized. According to Richard Gelles of
the University of Rhode Island, between 1,200 and 1,400
children are killed by their parents or caretakers every year
in America. At least half are known to social-service
agencies before they die.
Elisa Izquierdo had been tormented for a very long time.
When she died from a severe beating, her body bore old scars
of scores of other injuries. Neighbors recalled hearing her
scream in pain and beg her mother not to hurt her. Her
cousin, who had sued for custody, revealed that the mother
had, among other tortures, forced the child to eat her own
feces.
The number of New Yorkers who knew of Elisa's suffering but
did nothing is astounding. She was being seen regularly by
social-service workers at her kindergarten. She was known to
the city's Child Welfare Administration and to a private
agency that intervenes in troubled families.
Social service agencies nationwide complain that they are
impossibly overburdened. ``There are people who have 40
cases,'' complained a caseworker to the New York Times.
``They don't have time to go back and make second visits.''
Budget cuts have made it even harder to do their jobs.
Who else can intervene?
Though I am generally opposed to bureaucracy, preventing
child abuse is an exception. Who else but the government can
intervene to protect these children? The number of children
in foster care is increasing dramatically, from 434,000 in
1982 to more than 600,000 today. According to the American
Public Welfare Association, 70 percent of those kids enter
the system because of abuse, neglect or ``parental
conditions'' including drug abuse. In the District of
Columbia, social workers don't have enough cars or fax
machines to keep abreast of their caseloads. If child
protective agencies need more money, they should have it.
But the heart of the problem is not money; it is
philosophy. Most social-service agencies pursue the goal of
``family preservation.'' Federal money is tied to state
efforts to keep biological families together. Children, once
removed from abusive homes, are returned again and again.
Social workers see their jobs as the provision of
``services'' to parents who abuse their children. In one case
the parents of 10 children were hurting some of them. The
Child Welfare Administration assigned them a full-time
housekeeper, lamenting only that budget cuts forced them to
withdraw her after a year or so.
Unless social-service agencies nationwide can stiffen their
spines, stop thinking of the abusing parents as the victims
and focus on terminating parental rights in cases of abuse
and neglect, this plague of tiny coffins will continue. There
are thousands of would-be adoptive couples ready to provide
loving homes for kids who have been abused. Yet the system
frustrates them at every turn.
____

[From the Tampa Tribune, Apr. 21, 1996]

Take Children Out of Harm's Way

(By Joan Beck)

Every day at least three children in America die--killed by
their parents or caretakers. Often they are also the victims
of efforts by child protection agencies to keep families
together, whatever the risks.
Such a child was David Edwards, dead at the age of 15
months, whose mother, Darlene, 23, called 911 one morning to
say her son wasn't breathing. Paramedics arrived quickly and
immediately began CPR, inserting a breathing tube into his
throat and rhythmically compressing his chest in hopes of
keeping blood flowing to his brain.
Continuing CPR, the paramedics rushed David to a Rhode
Island hospital, where further efforts at resuscitation were
futile. An autopsy showed signs of repeated child abuse and
suffocation. Investigators found that after David's father,
Donald, had left for work, Darlene, who had been working as a
prostitute out of their apartment, had entertained a
``trick.'' To keep David quiet, she forcibly held him down
and suffocated him.
What's chilling is that David was known to be at deadly
risk. His parents had earlier lost custody of David's older
sister, Marie, because of severe abuse. The state child
protective agency had been called twice about David. His
father had raged at the caseworker when she tried to check on
the child. But the casework plan had been to keep the family
together.
Questioned after David's funeral, attended only by his
grandparents and a state investigator, Darlene was charged
with murder. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was
sentenced to four years in prison, followed by a long
probation.
There's nothing new about David's story. Similar tragedies
are old stuff in big-city newspapers and on TV stations. Only
the names of the children are different.
But David shouldn't have died, insists Richard J. Gelles,
director of the family violence research program at the
University of Rhode Island. Contributing to David's death, he
says, are the laws, casework philosophy and public sentiments
that keep emphasizing the rights of biological parents and
the goal of family preservation.
Like David, more than half of the annual toll of 1,200
children killed by parents or caretakers were already known
by state or local child protection agencies to be in danger.
Their deaths are heartbreaking evidence that current policies
and services are failing and must be changed.
But the answers don't come easy. The problems are
overwhelming the system and getting worse, as dysfunctional
families and single-parent homes increase, drug abuse grows
and state agencies are dangerously pinched for resources. In
his new book, ``The Book of David'' (subtitled ``How
Preserving Families Can Cost children's Lives''), Gelles
points out the worrisome realities. State and local child
protection agencies get almost 3 million reports of abuse and
neglect every year; about 38 percent are substantiated. Many
charges are dismissed--in part because some child abuse and
neglect can be difficult to detect.
The caseworkers who must make the life-and-death decisions
about which children are actually in danger and how to help
them, Gelles says, are typically in their 20s--liberal-arts
majors with about 20 hours of training. Part of that training
is how to fill out paperwork, and some of it emphasizes
keeping families together.
But family preservation, however appealing its philosophy
and goals, has been dangerously oversold as an answer to
child abuse and neglect, Gelles insists--and as cost savings
for taxpayers.
He urges that the rights of abusing parents be terminated
much faster--after no more than a year, for example, for
those with drug or alcohol problems who are not making good
progress in rehabilitation. He would also end parental rights
quickly in cases like David's in which abusing parents have
already lost custody of another youngster.
Gelles concedes that the foster-care system is overwhelmed
with the needs of all the children who should be placed out
of their homes for their own safety. But his other solutions
only nibble away at the problem.
Making endangered children available for adoption at the
youngest ages possible gives them the best shot they can have
at a safe and benign childhood, Gelles points out. Adoptive
parents are easiest to find for babies and toddlers, before a
youngster has been permanently damaged emotionally or
physically by abuse.
Even David's sister was eventually adopted, although she
was permanently disabled by her parents' abuse. New parents
could easily have been found for David had the rights of his
biological parents been terminated, Gelles points out.
Gelles also recommends setting up more small residential
group homes. He says this setting gives a child the chance to
make the long-term attachment to a caring adult that is
psychologically essential, although he does not recommend
such homes for youngsters under age 3.
Most important, every kind of help for abused children must
put their safety first, Gelles insists, even at the expense
of the rights of biological parents or the benign-sounding
goals of family preservation.
Better solutions to problems of poverty, unemployment,
dangerous neighborhoods, drugs, teen pregnancy, crime and
poor schools would also help, Gelles agrees, in hopes of
reducing abuse and neglect. Better welfare policies could
help families ``where the overriding problems are those of
poverty rather than inflicted injury or sexual abuse.''
Gelles knows there is no single answer to problems of child
abuse. He acknowledges that family preservation efforts do
help in some instances, that foster care sometimes fails,
that money and public patience run out. But he has done a
public service with his insistence that we make the well-
being of children the center of our welfare and protection
policies--in ways that we don't now.
____

[[Page S5714]]

[From the Washington Post, May 12, 1996]

Adopt a Sense of Outrage

(By Mary McGrory)

After Sister Josephine finished her wrathful remarks about
abused children at the spring adoption seminar in a
Washington law office, the chairman, former Pennsylvania
governor Robert P. Casey, spoke in praise of outrage.
``If you don't have a sense of outrage as a politician, you
are not worth a damn. If you have lost it, get out of
politics.''
He is quite right. Sister Josephine Murphy of the Daughters
of Charity told of the grossly abused babies who pass through
her hands at St. Ann's Infant and Maternity Home in
Hyattsville, where she is the administrator. I add, in the
interests of full disclosure, that I am a friend and fan of
hers and awestruck at her competence. I believe she could run
the Defense Department. I am familiar with her views on what
she regards as the uneven contest between women and
children--she notes with asperity the hullabaloo over rape in
contrast to the relatively mild sentences for infanticide.
She described graphically the sufferings of the abused,
abandoned and neglected; infants who have been burned at an
open fire; children raped and assaulted--and sent back to
their abusive homes by judges who don't care to know what is
happening. She told of a 7-year-old boy who reproached her
for sending him home. He warned her that when he grew up he
was going to ``go out and kill my mother's boyfriend.'' She
had a warning too. ``The money we don't spend protecting
children we will have to spend on jails.''
The Family Reunification and Preservation Act is the cause
of these grotesque practices. The body count of children
abused to death in 1995 was 1,271, according to the National
Committee to Prevent Child Abuse. Yet in the much-praised
adoption reform bills being pushed through Congress in time
for Mother's Day, no mention is made of this.
The law's folly--requiring social workers to make
``reasonable efforts'' to send a child back to abusive
parents--was remarked upon at the seminar by William Pierce,
president of the National Council for Adoption. Imagine, he
said, if a wife-batterer were brought into court and the
judge ordered the wife to return to him while he tried to
straighten out.
The pendulum has begun to swing the other way, Casey says.
Some states have passed laws requiring delinquent parents to
improve within a year--or forego their parental rights.
Why don't politicians seize on this deadly danger to
children? Well, it could be dangerous to them. Douglas
Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute, a leading
authority on child welfare, points out the political
trickiness of revising the statute. ``Don't forget,'' he
says, ``that six years ago David Dinkins ran for mayor of New
York against [Ed] Koch on a charge that he was taking too
many black kids away from their families.''
Maybe that is why today's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, one of the
most astute politicians in the country, is avoiding the issue
in the most notorious (and still reverberating) child-abuse
horror: the murder of 6-year old Elisa Izquierdo by her
mother. Giuliani has created a new child welfare agency and a
review panel that issued a voluminous report and suspended
two employees involved in the case. But he never came to
grips with the crime in the courtroom.
Elisa had been in the care of her adoring father. When he
died, his sister, Elisa's aunt, applied for custody. But
under the Family Reunification Act, the judge gave Elisa into
the care of her mad mother. Given that the numerous social
workers involved should have been more watchful and more
demanding, the mayor should have realized that the tragedy
began with the custody award.
Beshasrov, who served on the mayor's commission, says the
terrible irony is that the judge who made the decision had
had Elisa's mother before her when the first custody choice
was made. She apparently forgot all about it--and had no
lawyer or clerk to remind her, thereby sentencing Elisa to
beatings and tortures and eventual death.
Too bad Giuliani didn't read ``The Book of David,'' also a
true-life tale, by Richard Gelles of the Family Violence
Research Program of the University of Rhode Island. Gelles,
author of 20 books about child welfare, is currently in
Washington, working for Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn) on
adoption laws. David, 15 months old, died at the hands of his
mother, a part-time prostitute. It was avoidable. His mother
had also abused David's older sister, almost to death. Gelles
shows the tension in social workers who must work under
warring mandates: investigating abusive parents while drawing
up plans to reunite them with their endangered children.
The policy, Gelles says, comes of ``a persistent
unwillingness to put children first.'' It is also the
unwillingness of public men to break shibboleths. We as a
nation, profess to believe that all mothers are like
Whistler's and that a ``family'' can consist of one female, a
drug addict and a ``home,'' a drug den. As Casey says,
outrage is needed.
____

[From the Weekly Standard, May 27, 1996]

Two Words That Kill

(By Richard J. Gelles)

What if, by changing two words in a federal law, you could
prevent the deaths of hundreds of children each year and also
prevent tens or even hundreds of thousands of abused children
from being victimized again and again?
For 16 years, child welfare policies have been guided by
two words: ``reasonable efforts.'' One of the cornerstones of
the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (PL 96-
272) was the mandate that states make ``reasonable efforts''
to keep or reunite abused and neglected children with their
biological parents. This provision was designed to reduce the
number of maltreated children placed in foster care. Although
reducing the cost of out-of-home placement was certainly a
factor behind the reasonable-efforts provision, the major
rationale for these two words was the deep-seated belief that
children do best when raised by their biological parents and
that parents will stop maltreating their children if they are
provided with sufficient personal, social and economic
resources.
There was bipartisan support for the doctrine of reasonable
efforts. Conservatives supported it because it was consistent
with a family-values approach to social policy. Liberals
supported it because it was in the best tradition of the
safety net for children and families in need. Child advocates
enthusiastically embraced ``reasonable efforts'' because they
saw taking children from abusive parents as even more harmful
than the abuse, because they felt there was subtle racism in
the child welfare system that made minority children more
likely to be placed in foster care, and because ``reasonable
efforts'' created a new funding stream for a social service
system whose funding, in the 1980s, was being restricted or
cut.
Soon after the adoption of the doctrine of reasonable
efforts, family-preservation programs were developed. These
provide intensive services, such as parent education, help
with housekeeping, and assistance dealing with the
bureaucracy, to families deemed at risk of having their
children removed. Financially supported and marketed by
private foundations such as the Edna McConnell Clark
Foundation, embraced by the Children's Defense Fund and the
Child Welfare League of America, and ultimately the recipient
of $1 billion of federal support, intensive family-
preservation programs are touted as able to both preserve
families and protect children.
But reasonable efforts and intensive family preservation
have been a false promise. Child-welfare-agency directors and
workers believe that family preservation and child safety can
be balanced. Because they believe family-preservation
programs are effective, child welfare agencies and workers
often make every possible effort to preserve families, even
when what they are preserving could hardly be called a family
and even when there is no evidence that the parents can or
will change their abusive behavior. There have been nearly a
dozen scientifically reputable evaluations of intensive
family-preservation programs and not one has found that such
programs reduce costs, reduce out-of-home placements, or
improve child safety. Similarly, research finds that children
need a stable, giving caretaker, not necessary a biological
caretaker.
It is a fiction to believe one can balance preservation and
safety without tilting in favor of parents and placing
children at risk. More than 1,200 children are killed by
their parents or caretakers such year, and nearly half of
these children are killed after they or their parents have
come to the attention of child welfare agencies. Tens of
thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of children are re-
abused each year after they or their parents have been
identified by child welfare agencies.
It is time to replace the words ``reasonable efforts'' with
two others: ``child safety.'' It is time to fact up to the
fact that some parents are not capable of being parents,
cannot be changed, and should not continue to be allowed to
care for children. Of course, the change will be a bit
difficult than merely substituting two words. There will be
howls of protest from advocates who will claim that
abolishing ``reasonable efforts'' means that more children
will be placed in foster care, thus straining already over-
taxed state child welfare budgets. Claims that children are
abused or harmed by foster care will also be trotted out,
typically without actual research to support such claims.
Indeed, some children are harmed in foster care, but research
does show that abused children placed out of the home do
better in the short and long runs than children left with
abusive and neglectful parents. Advocates will also argue
that child welfare policy should not be based on child
fatalities, because such fatalities are rare. Well, child
fatalities are not rare enough. Elisa Izquierdo in New York
City, Joseph Wallace in Chicago, and hundreds of other less
publicized child fatalities were the direct results of
unreasonable efforts to keep children with their abusive
biological caretakers. A change in two words will force child
welfare agencies to take steps to enhance and speed up
adoptions and to consider the use of congregate care
facilities (or what some have called ``orphanages'') for some
children who have no other safe permanent home.
The 1995 report on child fatalities by the U.S. Advisory
Board on Child Abuse and Neglect was dedicated to children
killed by parents or caretakers and concluded with a
recommendation that all child and family programs make child
safety a ``major priority.'' Changing two words in welfare
reform legislation now before Congress would go a long way
toward achieving that goal.

[[Page S5715]]

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that whatever time
beyond the hour of 10:30 is taken in morning business be added on to
the period of time for debate so that, on the Missile Defense Act,
there is still a total of 2 hours equally divided between the two
sides.
Mr. EXON. May I ask a question? Will the Senator yield for a
question?
Mr. KYL. Certainly.
Mr. EXON. Would the Senator also add on 3 minutes for the Senator
from Massachusetts?
Mr. KYL. Certainly. I will add that to the unanimous-consent request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the unanimous consent, the Senator from
Nebraska has 15 minutes, the Senator from Massachusetts has 3 minutes,
which will be added on to make 2 hours for missile defense.
The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. EXON. Mr. President, if I have the floor, I yield 3 minutes to
the Senator from Massachusetts at this time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

____________________