New Tactic for Family Counseling : Social services: Therapists are going into troubled homes, teaching proper conduct by example. They try to prevent children from being sent into foster care.

When Clete Menke knocks, families are liable to yell, “Come on in, Clete!” The kids swarm over him, telling him their news.

In one evening, Menke, a new breed of in-home counselor, will play on the floor with children of a depressed single mother so she can cook their dinner, and he will offer strategy in the living room of a middle-class couple as their children race around complaining and their runaway daughter sobs in a chair.

He has answered a beeper at 11 p.m. to go to the home of a suicidal mother about to drive off with her children. He persuaded her to seek counseling.

He does it because he believes there’s no place like home--even for children on the brink of being removed by the courts. “Even the most marginal family environment is better than the best foster home,” Menke says. “If we’re going to make progress on this front, we’ve got to fix the family, not the kids.”

In a society that has half a million children at any given time living apart from their parents, it’s a somewhat revolutionary idea. But as social-service demands rise and resources fall, it is catching fire.

Under a growing national movement known as “family preservation,” in-home counselors such as Menke are spending 15 to 40 hours a week inside troubled homes to demonstrate the most elemental aspects of parenting--cleaning, shopping, feeding, setting bedtimes, even smiling and having eye contact with babies. They also try to teach parents more sophisticated behavior, such as anger control, rational problem-solving, goal-setting and decision-making.

Known variously as “family consultants,” “family connection workers” or “teaching demonstrating homemakers,” the counselors teach by example in the trenches of family life: the kitchens and living rooms of some of the most troubled parents. They hope to improve family life enough so that children are not abused, and so society can avoid the emotional and financial costs of needlessly placing children in foster homes, group homes or institutions.

“We’re not going to turn them into Ward and June Cleaver,” says Mike Riley, site director for the Boys Town branch in Anaheim, one of the home-based service providers in Orange County. “We make them into better parents.”

Sociologists say family preservation represents a “triage” approach to a crisis in child welfare as well as a swing in philosophy, away from judging and punishing “bad parents” and toward understanding and helping them improve “bad behavior.”

It aims to fill a “glaring service gap” between the extremes of doing nothing and removing children from their homes, said Peter Forsythe, vice president and director of programs for children for the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in New York, which grants $4 million annually to family preservation programs. “We’re interested in balancing the system so judges and workers and families have a more sensible and effective array of choices,” he said. At best, he said, such programs could reach 30% of those now placed in out-of-home care.

At least 10 states are now aggressively pursuing intensive in-home services, patterned after Homebuilders, a pioneer family preservation program begun in 1974 in Tacoma, Wash., Forsythe said. Last year, he estimated, 6,000 families received Homebuilder-type services in the United States--some state-mandated with hefty budgets, others provided by private agencies. Until recently, California--which along with New York accounts for 40% of all the children removed from their families’ homes nationally--has been slow to pursue funding of intensive in-home services, he said.

Whether the programs work is a matter of ongoing research. “There is evidence you can prevent removal of kids if you intervene powerfully at the time of crisis,” said James Garbarino, president of the Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development in Chicago. Other studies have shown family preservation programs generally are much more effective in dealing with how the family functions than are traditional office counseling approaches.

The concept leaves some traditional social workers uneasy--particularly in cases of previous abuse. Family preservation programs appear to have the best chance of helping cases of neglect, said Stephen Fox, director of government relations for the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services. Sexual abuse cases are not referred, nor are many major physical abuse cases or abandonment, he said.

Family preservation programs are not considered a panacea, but rather indicate an emerging reality that there is no perfect solution for the rising number of reports of abused and neglected children.

In California particularly, the incidence of infants removed from their parents more than doubled from 1985 to 1989, and the number of children in out-of-home care rose 65% to 80,000. According to Children Now, a nonpartisan child advocacy organization, Californians are paying almost $1 billion now to care for these children, a figure that could double over the next four years.

Los Angeles County alone accounts for 32,000 children in out-of-home care. U.S. Census figures reveal that Orange County has 19,000 children living with non-relatives, in group homes or institutions.

While some blame parental drug use or the decline of family values for these numbers, others also point to California’s state-funded placement system, which has encouraged counties to order children removed, rather than pay for preventive counseling services. After Proposition 13, the state agreed to pay for out-of-home services, while counties were to fund in-home services, Forsythe said. Local decision-makers tended to favor out-of-home placement because it was cheaper, he said.

Without in-home services, more children will wind up in a succession of foster homes, which remain limited in number and quality and are increasingly viewed as being as risky as the children’s original homes. According to Forsythe, for every 1,000 children in foster care, 30 are abused.

A new bill, passed this fall, will allow California counties to redeploy foster care dollars to finance family preservation services. The bill also allowed three demonstration projects to continue in Alameda, Solano and Napa counties. Contra Costa County funds family preservation services with help from the social services, mental health and probation departments.

Los Angeles County has seven family preservation projects, jointly funded by private and public funds, some tailored by and for Spanish-speaking or black families.

Orange County’s in-home counseling programs are part of a larger “family maintenance” program and are provided by private groups: Children’s Bureau and Boys Town.

The Boys Town program, which began four months ago in Orange County, is a Homebuilders-type program with added emphasis on parent training. Clete Menke, who holds a master’s degree in counseling, is one of only two Boys Town family consultants. He is booked up through April.

At any one time, Menke will see no more than three families who are referred by county social workers. In contrast, Los Angeles County social workers reportedly carry a caseload of 60 to 90 families at a time. In Orange County, the caseloads are reportedly lower, about 30.

Most parents are under threat of losing their children unless they cooperate, and many are hostile at the beginning of the six- to eight-week intervention. At the end, Menke said some are so grateful that they have asked him to move in with them, only half-jokingly.

During the first two weeks he does whatever is needed to build a relationship with the family. He listens and offers help. If they play in the park, he plays in the park. If they use four-letter words, he uses four-letter words. “I don’t want them to think I’m an ivory tower therapist, telling them how to fix their kids.”

Then, during a visit, he might go to the kitchen and do dishes, saying, “You know, it’s a really good idea to do the dishes after each meal.” For one woman who was mending her daughter’s scrapes with toilet paper and Scotch tape, the consultant brought her peroxide and bandages.

Menke says whenever he leaves a home, he always asks himself if the children are safe. He is mandated to report abuse, and in one case, he reported a stepfather who beat his stepdaughter.

But he remains an optimist.

“Ultimately, I don’t know if this is the answer,” he said. “But it’s worth a try.”

Foster Care Increase

In California, children up to age 4 in foster care rose 165% from 1985 to 1989.

* Children placed permanently outside of their homes: Increase of 148% in the last five years.

* Rising number of children in group homes: 58% increase

* Average yearly cost of a group home placement: Increased 43.5% to $31,000

* Reasons for entering foster care: Principal reasons (70%) younger children enter foster care are parental neglect and caretaker absence/incapacity. Approximately 65% to 70% of children entering the system do so because of family drug or alcohol problems.

Source: County Welfare Directors Assn.