Foster care agencies hide behind veil of secrecy

Privacy, oversight poor mix
Margaret McGurk, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 1, 2006, Metro pg. 1B

Errors in foster care difficult to uncover
Hall Thompson spent a year-and-a-half and $26,000 to win sole custody of his two children and clear himself of his ex-wife's claim that he verbally abused them.

"It was a complete disruption to our life," said Thompson, who went on to join and then become chairman of the board that oversees Butler County children services - the agency he accused of withholding information and ignoring his defense when it took his children away.

"My kids ended up in foster care even though the agency was sitting on a report that said it was wrong," he said. "They hide behind silence, privacy, 'Nobody needs to know.' What you have is a completely closed system."

Thompson, a Fairfield resident, is among critics of the foster-care system who say that confidentiality - intended to serve the children's best interests - has become an all-purpose shield against public scrutiny.

The August death of foster child Marcus Fiesel, 3, sparked public fury against the child protection system and touched off new debate about how its agencies operate.

Liz and David Carroll face murder and other charges for allegedly leaving the Middletown boy bound and locked in a closet for two days, burning his body, and then trying to fake his disappearance.

Amid mounting public demand to know what happened and why, Butler County child-protection officials, who authorized Marcus' placement with the Carrolls through the private subcontractor Lifeway for Youth, refused to release his case records, despite prodding by the agency's oversight board to open them.

The records are now in the hands of prosecutors preparing to try the Carrolls.

Deaths of foster children trigger official reviews, but most decisions by child protective agencies are made with little outside oversight, aside from statistical reports to the state.

Most complaints about agency investigations are handled by the agencies themselves - and findings are rarely made public.

When agencies go to juvenile court to take custody of children, the proceedings may be - and often are - kept secret from the news media and public.

When agencies uncover abuse, they are not required to call police. Nor are they required to make a public record of the incidents.

"If Marcus had not died, 9 to 1 they would have moved him, closed down the foster home and nothing would have hit the papers," said Roz McAllister, a Cleveland advocate for parents who clash with child protection authorities.

When custody is at stake, birth parents accused of neglect or abuse are at the mercy of the agencies, she said. "The Supreme Court just said that (Guantanamo Bay) detainees can have top secret information, but parents can't have what children's services has on them."

In the hands of child protection services, confidentiality has "evolved from a common-sense, useful concept into an end in itself," said Butler County Commissioner Mike Fox, a persistent critic of the system.

He cited the 2004 death of Justin Johnson as the most tragic result of bad communication.

Justin was a 7-month-old Middletown boy who died when his mentally ill mother set fire to the trailer where they lived. He was left in her custody even though two other children had been taken away from her.

"That was a case where the agency actually had the information in its files - the history of this woman. The caseworkers would never have allowed him to stay with her if they had known," said Fox. "Meanwhile, the biological father was repeatedly calling the agency saying, 'Get the baby away.' "

Even when rules that call for information-sharing exist, agencies are not scrupulous about following them, said McAllister.

For example, she said, administrative rules dictate birth parents participate in creating plans on how a family's problems will be addressed, and in semi-annual progress reviews.

"If parents are supposed to participate, how can (the agency) show up with it all typed out?" she said.

Fox said a few key reforms could prevent mistakes - and tragedies:
-Create a better mechanism for people to report abuse or neglect of a child, or offer facts for use in court cases.
-Allow targets of investigation access to complete, accurate information on their cases. Establish an independent ombudsman or inspector general with authority to see all agency records.

Butler County is the only county in Ohio with an ombudsman for its child services agency, "but it is still not independent," Fox said, and must rely on the agency to release information.

"I work for the clerk of courts," Thompson said. "We have a completely independent person from the auditor's office who comes in and oversees what we do. They don't account to us. They can ask any question they want. They have the authority and power to dig as far as it goes. Why should a children's services agency be any different?"

Case for confidentiality
The safety and well-being of children are the over-arching goals of confidentiality, said Crystal Allen, executive director of the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, which represents child-protection offices from the state's 88 counties.

"No one needs to see that this child has endured abuse or neglect, that their parent or caregiver has done unspeakable things to them. That brings a whole face of shame, when they have to live with that common knowledge of what (they) endured," she said.

As for accused perpetrators, she said, "When we go out and find someone has been abused or not abused, that is nothing but an administrative investigation. I don't think anyone would want their records open to show that there was alleged (abuse) ... when you didn't have due process. That is a key right of privacy."

Tracy Cook is director of ProKids, which provides court-appointed special advocates (CASA) to act as fact-finders in Hamilton County Juvenile Court foster cases.

The first consideration, she said, is safety.

For instance, she said, "It is not always appropriate for a parent to know that some aspect of their life is being investigated."

Foster children face taunting from classmates if their family situations become known. "One of the things they hear is 'Your mother didn't love you, that's why she gave you away.' "

That kind of talk can seriously hurt kids who are already vulnerable, she said.

The officials who advocate for secrecy seem to believe the foster parents don't always need information.

"Foster care parents need to know behavioral issues, emotional issues," said Cook. "Medical facts - absolutely. One of the things you see is kids sometimes being vaccinated multiple times because records don't get passed along."

Foster mother Sue Gregory, 59, of Fairfield, said information comes to her on a case-by-case basis. "Anything that has to do with the kids that (the placement agency) can tell us, they are really forthcoming with those kinds of things. We hardly ever get any history on the birth family. They will tell us why the kids are removed. For the most part, we aren't privileged to have any information about the birth family."

Former Hamilton County children's caseworker Jenny Schloss, of White Oak, said maintaining confidentiality requires keen judgment.

"It's a very inexact job to know exactly what you can say and what you can't say, and the reason for that is because they're kids."

Court cases
Every case of a child being taken by a public agency is overseen by juvenile courts.

Ohio judges have discretion to open or close their courtrooms to the public, but the law requires evidence be shared with all parties, including parents accused of wrongdoing. No such law regulates what agencies do with internal investigations.

Allen said Ohio agencies investigated more than 85,000 reports of neglect or abuse last year, and only a small fraction end in foster custody, which must be authorized by juvenile courts.

Records about investigations that don't end in court are closed to public scrutiny.

Child protection officials said they let birth parents know what is happening with their court cases, but McAllister said the reporting is incomplete.

As an example, she cited the reports that caseworkers file when birth parents visit their kids in foster care.

"Try to get your visit records. You can't get them," she said. "They'll say things about the visits (in court), but you can't see the documents to dispute them. They don't let you see your own psychological evaluation. Your attorney is allowed to, but you are not. They block you from the information you need to defend yourself."

Glenda Smith, a Butler County attorney who often represents poor parents in juvenile court custody cases, said agencies sometimes deliver critical documents at the last minute, leaving little time to analyze - or challenge - the evidence.

"I complained about that recently in a case when I was given a medical document on the day of a hearing. I told the judge, 'I can't read this right now; we're in the middle of a trial'. It is common, very common."

Allen argued that the elected judges who hear custody cases make the system accountable, as do reports given to county commissioners and multi-agency review boards that keep track of children's deaths.

"We don't act unilaterally," she said. "We report back to the alleged perpetrator."

With mandated reporters such as teachers and doctors, she said, "We report back to them. We say, 'Thank you for the report, we investigated, found it to be substantiated, services are being provided.' "

A profusion of laws and rules encourages agencies to invoke confidentiality, said Hamilton County assistant prosecutor Richard Schneider.

Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, which advocates for less foster care and more in-home services to families, said results have been positive in more than a dozen states that have opened their juvenile court proceedings - and, by extension, evidence and recommendations from child-protection agencies.

"The best comment was made by the chief judge of New York state's highest court 10 years ago, that sunshine is good for children," Wexler said. "That is the bottom line here. The only thing you accomplish by secrecy is you cover up the agencies' failings."

Thompson said more openness, oversight and accountability would serve the public and endangered children.

"The vast majority (of child service professionals) are good, dedicated people who are sincerely concerned about children. But some do abuse their authority and destroy families' lives. Silence is deadly."