Child Welfare Update: February 2024

Greetings to my faithful readers! I’m trying out a different format for Child Welfare Monitor–a monthly newsletter format that highlights events and information that catch my eye. I’m not ruling out a single-issue piece now and then, particularly when there is a major new report or data source to discuss and analyze. Please let me know what you think of the new format. If you can think of a more exciting title than “Child Welfare Update,” let me know. And if you do find this to be a useful resource, please share it with your colleagues.

Adam Montgomery convicted of Harmony Montgomery’s death

In December 2021, Manchester, New Hampshire Police announced the disappearance of Harmony Montgomery, who would have been six years old if she were alive. We learned that Harmony’s noncustodial mother, Crystal Sorey, had called the police a month earlier to say that she had not seen or heard from her daughter since April 2019, two-and-a-half years earlier. The country was rapidly transfixed by the search for Harmony. We soon learned that the little girl, who was blind in one eye, had first been removed from Sorey at the age of two months by the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) due to Sorey’s substance abuse. Harmony’s father, Adam Montgomery, was in jail at the time. Harmony was returned to her mother at seven months, and removed again at ten months. At almost three years old, and after two straight years in foster care with the same family that fostered her from the start and wanted to adopt her, Harmony was returned to her mother for the second time. At age three-and-a-half, Harmony was removed from her mother for the third time. Since Harmony was first removed, Adam Montgomery had been released from prison and begun visiting her. In February, 2018, a judge awarded Montgomery immediate custody of Harmony, without waiting for an assessment of his wife or a study of his living situation in New Hampshire.

A shattering report by the Massachusetts Child Advocate revealed the many missteps by all the professionals tasked with keeping Harmony safe. The OCA concluded that “Harmony’s individual needs, wellbeing, and safety were not prioritized or considered on an equal footing with the assertion of her parents’ rights to care for her in any aspect of the decision making by any state entity.” 

Two years after the search for Harmony began, Adam Montgomery has been convicted of her death, thanks to the testimony of his wife. She told prosecutors that after Harmony soiled her bed at night he beat her viciously on the head in the morning of December 9, 2019 and again that afternoon in the car when she soiled herself once more. He then injected opioids and ate fast food as Harmony died of her injuries in the back of the car. He concealed Harmony’s body for months until renting a U-Haul and dumping her remains somewhere outside Boston. Her body has never been found. Montgomery is already serving 32 1/2 years in prison for another case and I hope he will never see the light of day, but what about all the professionals who failed to prioritize Harmony’s needs? And what has Massachusetts done to ensure that there will be no more Harmonies? The adoptive parents of Harmony’s brother have been speaking out; I assume Harmony’s foster parents are too devastated to do so, but their hearts must be broken.

Race trumps child welfare I: Black children don’t get attached?

Harmony Montgomery’s case illustrates, among other things, what happens when the importance of attachment for young children is disregarded. Attachment theory, which is widely accepted and taught in classes on psychology, social work and human development, posits that a strong attachment is central to the development of infants and affects their brain development and their ability to form relationships throughout life. The critical role of attachment in human development, which has been confirmed in mammals as well as humans, is the reason that the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) set a timeline requiring states to file for termination of parental rights after a child had spent 15 of the last 22 months in foster care. That is the deadline that Harmony’s team disregarded when they returned her to her mother after two years in foster care and continued to work with both parents after her return to foster care at the age of three-and-a-half. The continued disruptions were so devastating for Harmony that her foster parents, according to the OCA, could no longer meet her needs when she was placed with them for the third time, and asked that she be transferred to a specialized therapeutic home.

But some lawyers that counsel parents in child protection cases are being told that attachment theory does not apply to Black children. In Race Trumps Child Welfare, Naomi Schaefer Riley calls attention to a paper called “The Weaponization of Whiteness in Child Welfare,” originally published by the National Association of Counsel for Children. The paper calls attachment theory a “tool to justify the separation of families” and a manifestation of “racism in psychology.” The authors take aim at professionals who utilize attachment theory to argue for the adoption of Black children by White foster families who have raised them from infancy rather than returning them to their parents or placing them with kin. They argue that a Black child who has lived with a White foster family for the entire two-and-a-half years of his life should be placed with a relative who has never even seen the child. Black families, they say, belong to a collective culture, which emphasizes the needs of the group as a whole over the needs of an individual. Thus, any suffering to an individual child, they imply, is justified by the gain to the group–though it is hard to understand how Black people as a whole gain from the traumatization of young Black children.

Race Trumps Child Welfare II: ABA “addressing bias in medical mandated reporting” in Michigan

The American Bar Association (ABA) has announced that its Center for Children and the Law is piloting a new initiative in Michigan “to address overreporting by medical professionals of Black, Indigenous and Latino/a children to the child welfare system.”  Without a footnote, the ABA reports that “injuries in Black children are 9 times more likely than those in White children to be reported as abuse despite evidence that child abuse and neglect occur at equal rates across races.” (Italics are mine.) Equal across races? I wonder what data they are using. While I am the first to acknowledge that maltreatment substantiation rates may not reflect actual incidence of abuse or neglect, evidence suggests that the two-to-one Blsck-White difference in child maltreatment substantiation rates is likely an understatement, not an overstatement. Moreover, Latino children nationwide are not reported to CPS disproportionately to their share of the population.

The pilots, funded by the Children’s Bureau, will use a “multisystem approach developed by the ABA’s Stop Overreporting Our People (STOP) project” to “address each decision made from the time a medical provider has a concern about maltreatment through child welfare hotline report and investigation to the decision of the judicial officer to remove the child from the home.” In Michigan, according to Child Maltreatment 2022, of the 174,000 referrals to the hotline in Federal Fiscal Year 2022, about 68,000 were screened in, about 139,000 children received an investigation or alternative response (down 12 percent from the previous year), and 23,500 were substantiated as victims of abuse or neglect–a whopping 37.7 percent drop over the previous year. Of those “victims,” a total of 2,760 or 11 percent were placed in foster care–along with an additional 956 children who were not substantiated as victims but may have been siblings who were deemed to be equally endangered. Despite the precipitous drops in investigations and substantiations and the very low proportion of children substantiated as victims that were placed in foster care, the ABA isn’t satisfied…or doesn’t bother to look at data. The Michigan pilots will also focus on how doctors are trained to report maltreatment, according to the ABA. Discouraging doctors from reporting the signs that they are uniquely trained to spot may not strike all readers as a good idea.

Where was CPS?

Utah: Abuse in plain sight: Ruby Franke, a parenting influencer who achieved fame by promoting her strict parenting style, was sentenced to up to thirty years after pleading guilty to aggravated child abuse of two of her children. Franke rose to prominence with a youtube channel called 8 Passengers (now taken down) that documented her life with her husband and six children and was criticized for promoting abusive discipline methods. She eventually formed a business partnership with another woman named Jodi Hildebrandt, who encouraged and participated in the abuse of Franke’s children. Both women were arrested in August 2023, after one of Franke’s children escaped the home and ran to a neighbor’s house asking for food and water. The neighbor noticed the child’s open wounds, duct tape around his ankles and wrists and emaciation and called the police. After the arrest, the oldest daughter posted on social media that: “We’ve been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this, and so glad they finally decided to step up.” “Several of us tried to help,” one neighbor told the Salt Lake Tribune. “I know people left food on doorsteps knowing the kids might not be eating; I know people were making phone calls to DCFS, to the police — people really did try and care. No one was looking the other way.”

New Mexico: $5.5 million settlement reached in eight-year-old girl’s brutal death: The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that the New Mexico Children Youth and Families Department (CFYD) has agreed to pay $5.5 million to the brother and half-siblings of Samantha Rubino, acknowledging that it placed Samantha and her brother in the care of a man (Juan Lerma) with a history of child abuse and domestic violence, who had been investigated once before for abusing her and had not seen either Samantha or her brother for two years. Samantha died of blunt force trauma to the head, and Lerma placed her body in the trash. This is the latest in a series of big-money settlements by CYFD, funded by the taxpayers. New Mexico’s system is in crisis, with a backlog of 2,000 investigations of abuse and neglect. Is it too much to hope that the legislature will decide it is better to spend money up front to keep children safe than to pay massive settlements to their survivors?

The march continues to remove protections for homeschooled children

The powerful homeschool lobby continues its crusade to eliminate the few regulations that still exist to protect homeschooled children. In Nebraska, LB 1027 would eliminate two of the three minimal documents required for homeschool enrollments. It would bar school districts and Health and Human Services from investigating educational neglect in a homeschool setting. And it would give one parent the power to make homeschooling decisions without input from the other parent. The unicameral legislature’s Education Committee heard testimony from the Nebraska Christian Home Educators Association, the president of a Christian homeschoolers’ co-op, and another homeschooling parent. There was no testimony against the bill. The Education Committee has recommended the bill, and it is headed for a floor vote.

In West Virginia, legislators have tried to bar abusive parents from homeschooling ever since an eight-year-old girl named Raylee Browning died of sepsis, possibly caused by drinking toilet water, in 2018. Teachers had called CPS multiple times because Raylee was constantly hungry and covered in bruises. To avoid further problems, her guardians removed her from school for the ostensible purpose of homeschooling, thus enabling them to torture ber to death without interference. Every year since 2019, legislators have introduced Raylee’s Law, which would prohibit homeschooling if the parent or home educator had a pending investigation for child abuse or neglect or had been convicted of abuse, neglect or domestic violence. This very modest bill, which probably wouldn’t even have saved Raylee because her guardians did not have a pending investigation when they withdrew her from school, nor were they convicted of abuse, has never gotten through the legislature. This year it was voted down in the Education Committee by 15-5 after several legislators outlined their concerns–such as the fear that it would force children to enter public school before an investigation could be completed!

This year, the sponsors of Raylee’s Law managed to get a version of the legislation included in a bill that removes certain testing requirements for homeschooled children, and it passed by a voice vote. Unfortunately the amendment that passed was watered down further from the original bill, which itself was very weak The amendment that passed requires that a parent cannot withdraw a child for homeschooling if there is a pending child abuse or neglect investigation. But if the complaint is not substantiated within 14 days, the superintendent must authorize homeschooling. And the bill to which it was attached (HB 5180) reduces protection of homeschooled children by removing the requirement that parents submit academic assessments for homeschooled children in certain grades, as well as the requirement that the parent or home educator submit evidence that they have a high school or post-secondary degree.

Readers who care about the protection of homeschooled children and the drastic disproportion of power between homeschooling parents and advocates for their children should give to one of my favorite organizations, the Coalition for Responsible Home Education. They are doing their best on a shoestring budget, but they can’t afford to go to every state where protective legislation is threatened.

From the “Are you kidding me?” department

“Safe Haven laws” are a way for new parents who are not ready to raise a child to surrender their newborns safely without any questions or legal consequences. The laws exist in all 50 states. The Committee to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities has endorsed these laws as a way to protect vulnerable infants and recommended that they be amended to extend the age of protected infants to age 1 and to expand the types of safe havens allowed. And it turns out that this option has existed in Europe since Pope Innocent III required churches to install “Foundling Wheels” in 1198!

In New Mexico, mothers are told they can anonymously surrender their infants through “safe haven baby boxes” located around the state. But recent media coverage from local stations KRQE and KOB4 has revealed the state’s Children Youth and Families Department (CYFD) has been investigating these surrenders–because they are required to do so by the state’s safe haven law. CYFD Secretary Teresa Casados told KRQE that “state law requires CYFD to investigate to ensure the mother was not forced to give up her baby, to make sure she is safe, and to inform the father of the child as well.” (She was apparently not asked what would happen if the father had raped or abused the mother.) She also explained that the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) requires CYFD to look into each case and notify “all the tribes and pueblos” to ensure they are following the Act’s requirement that placement with a Native family be preferred. It is not clear that any other state has interpreted ICWA this way. New Mexico legislators rushed to draft legislation to retain the right of mothers to surrender their infants safely and anonymously, but the short session ended before a bill could be passed.

Never underestimate a persistent child advocate

John Hill, the Investigative Editor at Civil Beat, a nonprofit news outlet in Honolulu, Hawaii, has never given up on his quest to find out how a six-year-old girl named Ariel Sellers was placed with Lehua and Isaac Kalua, the adoptive parents who tortured her, culminating in her murder two-and-a-half years ago. The Kaluas have been charged with murder and abuse of both Ariel and her then 12-year-old sister, among other charges. The prosecution alleges that Ariel was kept in a dog cage and denied food, and that Lehua Kalua caused her death by duct-taping her mouth and nose. For more than two years, according to Hill, the Hawaii Department of Human Services has stonewalled in accounting for its actions in the adoption of Ariel, who was renamed “Isabella Kalua” by her adoptive parents. But Hawaii’s Public First Law Center, motivated by a series of columns written by Hill, has filed a motion to receive the foster and adoption records for Ariel and her siblings. Now Hill is asking uncomfortable questions about the January 2024 death of 10-year-old Geanna Bradley, who was also allegedly tortured and starved to death by her adoptive parents.

In a bizarre twist, the Honolulu Star Advertiser has reported that the Kaluas have retained custody over Isabella’s three sisters, who were removed from the home in September 2021. But apparently the state of Hawaii hasn’t moved to terminate the parental rights of the Kaluas. A special master appointed to oversee the interests of Ariel’s sisters is concerned that the failure to terminate the rights of the Kaluas will interfere with efforts to find permanent families and educational opportunities for the girls. (And already has, I would think!)

The guaranteed income craze continues

At its February oversight hearing, the Director of the District of Columbia Child and Family Services Agency announced a forthcoming grant from the Doris Duke Foundation to a guaranteed income for some low-income families. The announcement was greeted with congratulations from the Council Chair who referenced the great results from the recent Strong Families, Strong Futures pilot, which provided 132 new and expecting mothers with $10,800 in the course of a year. I don’t know where she got her information. An article in the Washington Post reported on interviews with three of the mothers participating in the pilot. One of the mothers took the money as a lump sum. Setting aside about $5,000 for essential expenses, she used the remaining money on a $6,000 trip to Miami preceded by the purchase of new clothes, shoes, gadgets and toys for all of her three children and a $180 hair and nails treatment for herself. Another mother decided to spend $525 on a birthday party for her one-year-old, who clearly couldn’t appreciate it. Program coordinators said that the mothers reported spending most of their funds on needs such as housing, food and transportation. But I’m not sure how I feel as a DC taxpayer to see my money spent in ways that I personally find wasteful, nor am I sure that allowing such spending provides appropriate training in how to budget scarce resources. Such no-strings-attached money giveaways might not be the best use of taxpayer money, even if foundations choose to support it.

And the prize for cynical use of data goes to….

Kentucky! The State’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) is crowing about Kentucky’s drop from the highest rate of child maltreatment “victimization” to number 13 among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. In a statement reported by Spectrum News1, CHFS said this improvement “demonstrates the efforts made by the Department for Community Based Services and its many partners to increase the provision of child welfare prevention services and reduce child abuse and neglect within the Commonwealth.” But child advocates and family court judges are not convinced, citing a longstanding problem with hotline workers screening out cases that should be investigated–exacerbated by the adoption of an actuarial screening tool at the hotline in April 2022. The report quotes two family court judges and a CASA program director who linked child deaths to the failure to investigate prior reports involving the same families. According to one judge, “The alarm has to be sounded because I’m not joking when I say children are perishing in the state of Kentucky because of this ‘Structured Decision Making’ tool….'” The judges are right. One has only to look at Kentucky’s commentary in the Children’s Bureau’s report, Child Maltreatment 2022.

An overall decrease for child victims was observed between FFY 2021 and FFY 2022.
Kentucky has worked diligently over the past several years to implement a safety model
which includes the implementation of SDM® Intake Assessment Tool and a thorough review and modification of the state’s acceptance criteria to ensure a focus upon children and families with true safety threats versus risk factors. This shift in the approach to the work may have contributed to the decrease in child victims this year.

Children’s Bureau, Child Maltreatment 2022, p. 13

In other words, they changed the screening criteria to screen out more cases and voilà! Fewer child victims! Amazing! The percentage of referrals that was screened in decreased from 45.5 percent in 2021 to 39.9 percent in 2022, and the maltreatment substantiation rate decreased from 14.9 to 12.3 per thousand children during the same period. But both of these rates have been decreasing since FFY 2018, so more factors than the new screening tool are likely responsible. It’s unlikely that a decrease in actual maltreatment is among them.

The placement and workforce crises continue

Every month brings another crop of articles on the intertwined placement and workforce shortages plaguing child welfare. February’s news on the placement crisis included a story from Texas Public Radio reporting on the release of hundreds of incident reports about “Children Without Placements” in the state from 2021 to 2023. They include stories of children squaring off to fight each other in the hallway of a Houston hotel that resulted in the hospitalization of one youth. These incidents, occurring at a rate of about two a day, often involved injured staff, injured youth, and calls to police.

In a state that requires some social workers to supervise youths in hotels and other unlicensed placements, its not surprising that about one in four caseworkers left the job in January, according to the head of the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). And even workers who don’t have to supervise unruly youths are dealing with untenable caseloads and terrible working conditions. Some states are taking action to attract and retain workers. The Governor of Maine announced a series of three one-time lump-sum payments of $1,000 to recruit and retain child welfare workers. Let us hope it is enough to reduce the state’s high caseloads.

And now for some good news: efforts to keep siblings together

It’s always nice to read about people who see a need and create a program to meet it. February brought news of two new “foster care villages” to house larger sibling groups, an idea I have promoted in the past. In California, the actor Christian Bale achieved a dream he has nurtured for 16 years–breaking ground on Together California, a new foster home community in Palmdale, Los Angeles County. The project will include a dozen foster homes built to accommodate up to six siblings and staffed by full time, professional foster parents. A 7,000-square foot community center will offer academic, therapeutic, social, and recreational activities for young people in the foster homes and the surrounding community, which is very short on such resources.

In South Carolina, a new foster care “village” called Thornwell is transforming old houses built about 100 years ago to house foster families and large sibling groups. Two homes are in use, a third is under renovation and more homes await renovation provided the funds and parents can be found. Foster parents will pay one dollar of rent per month and receive free utilities. Children will be eligible for Thornwell’s early learning center, charter school, and recreational facilities. Here’s hoping for more programs like Together California and Thornwell!