Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 21, 1994 TAG: 9410210045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The recommendation came from the strike force committee that developed reform measures for the state Department of Health and Human Resources. The four-member committee cited the high number of cases investigated by Child Protective Services units across the state - 34,843 in fiscal year 1993-94. Of those, 25,143, or 72 percent, were unfounded.
Those statistics, plus concern for false allegations, frivolous complaints and heavy worker caseloads, prompted a committee recommendation for an agency review.
"It seems to be an unsatisfactory operation," said Walter E. Barbee, a committee member from Mason Neck. "Just the fact that about 75 percent of all reports were unfounded would lead almost any citizen to conclude that something must be wrong. All of this taxpayer funding is going into investigating" a high percentage of unfounded cases.
Barbee said he sensed that a "bending over backwards" to investigate any claim of child abuse had crept into the system.
"We may be constructing a system that is unrealistic in the way that it operates," he said.
But is it unrealistic?
Judy Brown - supervisor of Roanoke Department of Social Services' Child Protective Services unit - said reported complaints must be investigated, as frivolous as some may seem.
"I don't know how I can sit on the end of a telephone and listen to someone telling me children are starving," she said. "I'm going to go check.
"If someone calls and says a family has no electricity and food, that makes it a complaint. And if a worker gets out there and the kids are eating dinner and watching television, that's a waste of our time. But I don't know how you can make a determination without checking."
It is incorrect to assume that an unfounded complaint is a frivolous complaint, Brown said. Some of the families that the Child Protective Services unit receives complaints about simply need services, she said.
"Kids living in a dirty house is a real big complaint. But to be a founded complaint, it has to be unsanitary," Brown said. "We may help that family get things cleaned up, but it's not a founded complaint. Sometimes it does help situations that are not necessarily founded child abuse complaints."
Shannon Brabham, executive director of the Child Abuse Prevention Council of the Roanoke Valley, said some unfounded cases in fact may be cases in which abuse is occurring but, for various reasons - a child scared to talk, a parent's unwillingness to admit abuse, the disappearance of evidence of abuse - must be deemed unfounded by investigators.
"But I don't see those efforts as being pointless," she said. "It may make the parent aware that they need to get some help, that their child may be taken away."
And, Brown asks, how would you regulate frivolous complaints?
Barbee suggests not allowing people to lodge complaints anonymously.
"Just the fact that every report is anonymous, that alone leaves the door open for having unfounded reports," he said. "If some neighbor doesn't like a person, they can easily report.
"Reasonable discipline for children for one person is another person's child abuse. We're creating a society where everyone is quite willing to tend to everyone else's business in areas like this."
But, says Brown, whose six-investigator office handled 963 complaints in the 1993-94 fiscal year, "If you discourage people from calling, you discourage people with legitimate complaints."
Brabham says doing away with anonymity could jeopardize children's safety.
"A lot of people do not feel comfortable giving their name," she said. "People who have personal knowledge of something going on, or suspect something going on, are already scared to call, thinking that somehow parents are going to find out and get vengeance on them.
"What happens? The child continues to be abused."
Under what Barbee calls an "intolerable" Child Protective Services caseload, there may be more chance for valid child abuse cases to fall through the cracks, he said.
"It's only common sense to put quality caseworker time into those [complaints] that really merit following up," he said. "It is physically impossible to investigate all of these cases and do an adequate job."
Joan Rowe, social work supervisor for the Montgomery County Department of Social Services, said what the committee is suggesting is more akin to impossible.
"We can't do this without more staff, and they aren't giving us more staff," she said. "They want us to do more work, and they're going to reduce staff."
One of the committee's recommendations is to reduce the total Health and Human Resources employment level. The committee was charged with recommending ways to eliminate unnecessary functions and enhance the operations of functions that state government must perform.
The focus of Child Protective Services, the committee wrote in its report, should be on preventive services and seeking to reunite families wherever possible.
"Prevention is a theme that runs through all our recommendations - saving taxpayer dollars and preventing people from needing services as opposed to waiting until they need the service," Barbee said.
"It's a Catch-22. We're focusing so much on the cure, we don't have the money or staff to focus on prevention."
by CNB