Child safety should take precedence over confidentiality

Editorial: Confidential doesn't mean safe
Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 3, 2006, pg. 6B

The short, abused life of foster child Marcus Fiesel has aroused renewed public scrutiny of confidentiality policies invoked by county child protection agencies.

The 3-year-old's horrific death in August may yet serve to tear down some of the barriers to oversight erected in the name of protecting kids' privacy.

No child under state protection should be subjected by public disclosure to a second round of abuse or embarrassment. But too often well-intentioned confidentiality policies themselves can leave children exposed to abuse.

Typically, county agencies do their own investigating of complaints or disastrous placements, and their findings rarely are made public. Like bad doctors, they can bury their mistakes.

Butler County Commissioner Mike Fox has fired off a battery of proposed reforms that could make child protective services more transparent without violating children's privacy rights.

One of the most promising is a truly independent inspector general or ombudsman. Butler already is one of the rare counties with ombudsmen, but theirs have been neither independent nor authorized to conduct in-depth internal investigation on their own.

Like so much other government oversight, overseers must make their judgments based mainly on the evidence that's fed to them. A title such as ombudsman or auditor is no assurance of power to do probing reviews. Fox is right in warning that confidentiality has "evolved from a common-sense useful concept into an end in itself."

The curtain of confidentiality should not be drawn at the expense of cover-up or leaving other children exposed to abuse. If the public seldom hears the outcomes, how do we know if caseworkers and other employees acted responsibly or failed the children?

Fox also called for better mechanisms to allow people to report child abuse or neglect, and new procedures to give the targets of investigation access to complete, accurate information about their cases.

Custody fights can get nasty, and truth sometimes is the first casualty.

Excessive secrecy or agency screw-ups are hardly limited to the Cincinnati area or Ohio.

In January, two youth-advocacy groups reported that in some Kentucky counties (Hardin, for one) it's a matter of pure luck whether neglected or abused kids are placed in a safe, permanent home.

The National Institute on Children, Youth & Families and Kentucky Youth Advocates called it "the other Kentucky lottery."

They also asked if some counties may be too "removal-oriented" - yanking kids from birth parents and putting them up for foster parents or for adoption. They warned that federal bonuses for high adoption rates could be distorting the system. It's called "fast-tracking."

An inspector general should be cleared to look at all agency records. It would open up the system without exposing case files to any and all eyes.

But to install an overseer with enough power and zeal to save a child like Marcus Fiesel, much will hinge on who gets to pick the "independent" IGs.