Program’s Aim Is to Be There Before Families Are Torn Apart

Kathy had her third baby by the time she was 21. She had no job, no means of support. She could not pay her rent or other bills and her electricity had been shut off.

One day, she went over the edge. She lost control. Her children were acting up and she hit them.

Responding to a neighbor’s report of screaming, the police came to investigate. They found that the children were being abused and neglected, and they removed them from their home.

Jackie Cole-Bansbach, 50, and Beth Naranjo, 42, believe that the breakup of Kathy’s family and other families like it could have been prevented if there had been help before the crisis occurred. Their conviction led the two women to create a new crisis intervention program in the San Fernando Valley called “Keeping Families Together.”

If parents had the skills to manage their anger better, the two say, their children would not be abused in the first place.

They speak from experience. Cole-Bansbach and Naranjo, who both live in Burbank, have seen their share of broken families. They have spent hundreds of hours over the last five years guiding children through the bureaucracy of the court system. As volunteers for the Child Advocates Office, operated under the auspices of the Superior Court, the two are convinced that a program such as theirs is desperately needed.

“The county spends a lot of money on foster care but little on prevention,” said Cole-Bansbach, the mother of an adopted 11-year-old son who was once a dependent of the court. A foster-care placement can cost up to $4,000 a month, she said.

Children under court protection can end up in placement after placement, said Naranjo. “One kid I interviewed at MacLaren Children Center was going to be 19, and he had been in 19 foster homes.”

Eventually, as young adults they are out on the street, she said, with no family ties of any kind. “A lot of kids say to me, ‘if I had known that I was going to go through all this, I would have preferred to go through what I did at home.’ Some went through terrible, horrendous, hideous things at home--and they even say that.”

$25,000 a Year for Care

According to Los Angeles County Superior Court records, 30,000 children are under court supervision. Another 18,000 are expected to become dependents of the court by the end of this fiscal year. It costs the county about $25,000 a child for the first year of foster care, including court-related expenses.

“Foster care is not a panacea. There are children who need to be separated from their parents, but the majority do not,” said Naranjo.

Keeping Families Together could be a first step in changing the system. It will be modeled after an intensive in-home crisis intervention program in Federal Way, Wash., called Homebuilders, which has been in existence for 12 years. Homebuilders officials report a 90% success rate in helping families deal with stress and anger that can lead to child abuse and neglect.

Naranjo and Cole-Bansbach attended a three-day training session in Washington, to observe the program. They accompanied Homebuilder’s therapists on their visits to client families.

“When we got there, the door was open and this mother was almost on the street waiting,” said Naranjo. “That’s how desperate these parents are for the therapists to come.

“The mother had just had it that day. Her children were driving her crazy. The moment she saw the therapist, there was this relief in her face as if to say, ‘Oh God, someone’s here.’ ”

Their nonprofit program will work with the County of Los Angeles Department of Children’s Services office in Panorama City on cases of abuse or neglect, not involving incest. There will be four therapists and a clinical director, all trained by the staff of Homebuilders.

The scenario for a typical case will begin with a visit by the therapist accompanied by a Department of Children’s Services worker. “If for some reason it’s just too dangerous, the therapist will pick up on it immediately,” said Cole-Bansbach.

Usually at this point, the parents are aware that they could lose their children, said Naranjo. They are in a state of crisis and are willing to work to make changes in the home.

Follow-Up Parenting Class

They will be asked to sign a contract agreeing to an eight-week, intensive intervention program. It will be followed by a six-week parenting class with follow-up as needed.

“This eight weeks of intervention with the therapist is like two years of therapy because it’s every day,” said Cole-Bansbach. “The therapist is on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day. It’s like having a family member living next door to you who you can call on the phone and say, ‘I need some help.’ ”

The therapists will help parents develop control without using abusive methods.

“Say there’s a problem with a young child before school,” said Naranjo. “The therapist will get there before the child wakes up and demonstrate how to handle the problem. The mother is learning how to parent. This builds her self-esteem and self-worth.”

Doesn’t Always Work

Naranjo wishes this program had been available for one of her Child Advocates Office cases. She had been working with a teen-age girl in foster care, whom she refers to as Susan. The girl returned home for a 60-day trial visit after showing progress in joint therapy with her father. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.

As she explained, “The therapy they received dealt with the issues of why she was removed, but it didn’t take care of the basic skills a parent needs to take care of a child. Susan had medical problems and her father’s insurance ran out. He didn’t know how to get it together to get her back to the doctor.

“All these things look very bad when they go back to court. It looks as if he doesn’t care. In reality, he doesn’t know how.”

Kathryn Doi Todd, Superior Court judge and head of the Juvenile Court, is an enthusiastic supporter of the program. “We are so much in need of services in Los Angeles County,” she said. “We’ve had an increase of 10% in (protective custody) filings over last year. It would be wonderful if their program could help families and at the same time take cases away from the court.”

Keeping Families Together will start slowly. Because of limited funding, Naranjo and Cole-Bansbach expect their staff to work with only 48 families the first year.

Long-Term Effects

“The fact that only 48 families can be assisted may be disheartening when you look at the overall picture,” said Todd. “But, when you think about the long-range effect of dealing with family problems, it’s not just these families. It’s their children and the children after them who are affected.”

The Department of Children’s Services, together with law enforcement, are responsible for receiving referrals for all abused and neglected children. Jean McIntosh, assistant director for the department, has designated a full-time Children’s Services worker in their Valley office to work with them.

She has also pledged her department’s support to help Naranjo and Cole-Bansbach fund part of their $430,000 first-year operating budget. The rest will be covered by government and private grants.

The two child advocates have not given up their volunteer work. Cole-Bansbach still works with three families whose children are dependents of the court.

“I can’t give up my families. I’m a continuing person in their lives,” she said.

Naranjo spends a few hours every month or two at MacLaren Children Center interviewing children about their placement problems. She is also a student at Glendale College in alcoholism studies. She plans to earn a master’s degree in psychology.

Naranjo is convinced that helping parents learn new ways of coping with anger will pay off in the long run.

“These children are going to be adults,” she said. “If someone doesn’t get in there and start a new way of doing things, they’re going to end up in the streets or the prisons or abusing and neglecting their children--because they really don’t know another way.”