The Arizona Legislature has, in effect, put the Department of Child Safety on probation, allowing it to continue to function for another four years instead of the customary eight The decision is a healthy recognition that DCS, both in its current form and when it was a division of the Department of Economic Security, often does enormous harm to the children it is meant to help.
But recognition is just step one. Lawmakers need to understand what created this mess and how to fix it. The root of the problem is a fanatical drive to tear apart families that has plagued the state for decades.
Consider:
- In 2022, the most recent year for which comparative data are available, Arizona tore children from their homes at a rate 50% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in.
- Black children are taken from their parents at a rate nearly two-and-a-half times their rate in the general child population.
- Arizona uses what is, by far, the worst form of placement, group homes and institutions, at a rate nearly double the national average.
- Among America’s 10 largest cities and their surrounding counties, Maricopa County children are taken from their parents at, by far, the highest rate in the country – more than two-and-a-half times the big-city average.
- Nearly two-thirds of Black children in Maricopa County will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18 – the highest rate among America’s 20 largest counties. Nearly 3%of all children in Maricopa County and nearly 6%of Black children will lose the right to live with their own parents forever.
The culture that leads to this kind of extremism is the culture in which a SWAT team breaks down a family’s door and bursts in, guns drawn, because a child had a high fever. It’s the culture in which an entire office full of DCS workers thought it would be funny to wear t-shirts emblazoned with the words “professional kidnapper.”
The justification for all this is the Big Lie of American child welfare – that tearing apart huge numbers of families is necessary to protect children. On the contrary, Arizona’s take-the-child-and-run mentality makes all children less safe.
Typical cases are nothing like the horror stories. In Arizona, 91% of children in foster care were placed there in cases that did not involve even an allegation of sexual abuse or any form of physical abuse. More than 60% did not involve an allegation of substance abuse. Vastly more common are allegations of neglect, which often mean simply that a family is poor.
No wonder study after study finds that children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care.
The harm occurs even when the foster home is a good one. The majority are. But multiple studies have found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes. The rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is even worse – something aptly illustrated by scandals in Arizona.
But even that isn’t the worst of it. The more that workers are overwhelmed with false allegations, trivial cases and children who don’t need to be in foster care, the less time they have to find children in real danger. That’s almost always the real reason for the horror stories about children left in dangerous homes.
When it comes to solutions, so far the Legislature has only tinkered around the edges. Truly making children safe requires three first steps:
- Become laser-focused on ameliorating the worst problems of poverty. No, Arizona doesn’t need to eliminate child poverty (though that would be an excellent idea) even small amounts of additional cash make a huge difference.
- Provide families with high-quality defense counsel from the moment DCS shows up at the door – not to get “bad parents” off, but to provide alternatives to the cookie-cutter “service plans” issued by DCS.
- Don’t believe the big lie. Recognize that you can’t have child safety without family preservation.
Richard Wexler is Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, www.nccpr.org
