A Grass-Roots Approach to Keeping the Family Whole

Peter Digre, director of Los Angeles County’s child protection agency, might have known he wouldn’t be the most popular person at Praises of Zion church in South-Central, an area where a disproportionate number of children have been placed in foster care. Still, he was surprised when the Rev. J. Benjamin Hardwick called a mother up to the pulpit, described her troubles, then pointed to Digre and announced: “And Peter wants to take her babies away.”

After the service, at which Digre was a guest, he recalled that concerned congregation members surrounded the mother with offers of help, but no one came forward to shake his hand.

“It was beautiful,” he recalls. “Why should I take her babies away when she has a support network like that? When a couple hundred people are keeping an eye on you, you’re going to do a perfect job. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

After three decades of building multibillion-dollar child protection systems that studies indicate have been unable to protect most children, agencies across the country are rethinking the way it’s supposed to be--retooling their systems to shift responsibility for the community’s most vulnerable children and families back from complex, distant institutions to neighborhoods and communities.

At least 12 states, not including California, have passed legislation that allows troubled families to receive help without the often-stigmatizing official investigations that try to fix blame. Others are experimenting with reforms to involve police rather than social workers to investigate abuse reports, freeing up social workers to do their jobs. Some reform efforts are pro-active--centralizing services in one-stop neighborhood shops and recruiting volunteers and paraprofessionals to help overwhelmed families before crisis occurs.

In Los Angeles County, a system of 28 networks was created four years ago through a collaboration between the Department of Children and Family Services and neighborhood-based agencies to help parents faced with losing their children to foster care.

While some worry about children’s safety whenever they are returned to families who have been abusive in the past, many say the worst thing about the new approach is that it hasn’t changed the old system enough. Under the traditional system, parents who have been reported to social services receive a visit from a social worker once or twice a month and lists of referrals for counseling and other programs. The family preservation networks consist of a yearlong program that involves the community in innovative support programs.

But, “The evidence is pretty compelling that it needs to be a differently conceived system,” says Frank Farrow, the children’s services director of the Washington D.C.-based Center for the Study of Social Policy. The present system, he says, “doesn’t reach people it should, and when it does, it can’t do very much.”

Farrow says national studies show as much as 50% of all child abuse and neglect goes unreported, and at least 40% of the confirmed cases have been through the system before.

In 1993, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect called for a new neighborhood-based strategy for child protection. The current system of mandatory reporting was designed in the 1960s when child abuse was thought to be rare. Since then, agencies have been buried by reports and investigations that in 1993 substantiated 2.8 million cases of child maltreatment. The vast majority are cases of neglect, usually linked directly to alcohol or drug abuse by caretakers. Most protective efforts, meanwhile, continue to focus on identifying and investigating suspected cases, rather than treating or preventing the problem.

In South-Central, the Rev. Frank Higgins of Triangle Baptist Church contends the investigatory child protection system has destroyed the community. He describes a tragic cycle that starts when children are separated from parents, damaged in unstable or uncaring foster care and, then, alienated and troubled, they return to the community. He has no statistics, but he suspects as many as half the gang members in Los Angeles may be veterans of the county’s child protection system.

Even if they are not in gangs, many graduates of the system find they aren’t able to form family or community ties, says Amaryllis Watkins, a deputy director of the Department of Children and Family Services. “If people don’t have a stake in the community, they won’t protect it,” she said.

Triangle Church is one of the “lead agencies” the county works with to help reverse that cycle and rebuild the community through the system of “family preservation networks.” Family preservation strategies are not new but have typically used individual social workers to provide intensive in-home counseling during a family’s crisis, such as drug abuse in the home, reports of child abuse or loss of a job. Under the Los Angeles system, the county contracts with private nonprofit agencies, which then subcontract for neighborhood services--in-home counseling, drug treatment and people to serve as role models--to help parents who voluntarily enter the program.

Parents cooperate in creating their own custom plan. County social workers still make recommendations to remove children if they appear to be in danger. They keep in touch with family preservation workers, who visit the families up to four times a week and are often more familiar with the community’s resources, and help link families with housing, health care, child care and other services.

The networks, started first in areas with the highest number of abuse and neglect reports and foster-care placements, now cover an estimated 80% of the county. So far, the networks have served 30,000 children in 5,000 families.

There is often no way of knowing whether families in the networks reabuse their children. Researchers said accurate scientific evaluations of such programs are nearly impossible to make because of the multiple causes of family dysfunction.

However, according to one measure from the family services department, the networks have at least decreased the rates of foster-care placement. While placement rates continued to rise from 1992 to 1996, in areas with networks in place they rose only 32%, compared with 86% in other areas. The $15-million network system saved an estimated $27 million in federal, state and county foster-care costs, according to county officials, who also estimate the networks have leveraged an additional $150 million in services.

What’s more, the networks have also helped build “community capacity,” according to USC associate professor of social work Jacquelyn McCroskey. Each network has a group of community advisors, sometimes including former clients. They have created new jobs, such as those for “teaching and demonstrating workers” who show parents in their own homes how to care for children and manage a household. Some neighborhood residents who moved out have returned to work in the programs because they want to give something back to their community.

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“I don’t believe there’s anyone who can’t change. All they have to have is the right support,” says Andrea Jackson, who grew up in South-Central. Now a graduate student in behavioral sciences and ethnic studies, she teaches parenting at Triangle Baptist Church.

Her morning class draws a dozen parents, many of whom are recovering from addictions, were themselves raised with harsh physical punishments and who say they can’t recall hugs or kind words from their parents.

Jackson kicks off an animated discussion by posing a Socratic question: Is it ever advisable to spank?

Gloria Moore, reunited with her five children, says she sometimes has to give her children “a tap on the hand” because they ignore her otherwise. “I know you’re not supposed to,” she says. “I always said, ‘I’ll never do that.’ ”

Carla Eddington, a single mother of five who is now being treated for depression, suggests parents lose influence when they tell children not to hit their friends and then punish by hitting. “You’re not setting an example,” she says. “You’re saying it’s OK to hit.”

Jackson tells them that children will avoid someone who spanks them a lot. That they can use time out or ignore them, or remember to reward children when they are well-behaved. “It’s important to understand,” she says, “the more praise you give them, the more they want.”

Many parents understand that until the new policies went into effect four years ago, they might have lost their children permanently.

A single mother, Tatia McDonald, 31, was raised in an unhappy foster home. She had her first baby at 14 and began drinking at 17. A companion once hit her so hard she lost some teeth. At 25, she turned to cocaine. When her youngest son was born with drugs in his system, the county took away all four of her boys.

Despite her troubled past, she says family preservation workers “believed in me 100%.” After the county social worker recommended family preservation, she received drug treatment, counseling three times a week in her home, a “teaching and demonstrating” worker once a week to show her basic household skills, and an adult role model for her oldest son.

Sober for two years, McDonald now works at a Marriott Hotel and has been reunited with all her children. “I see a difference in my kids’ eyes now,” she said recently, fighting back tears. “They seem happier.”

She still struggles with how to express her love for her children, but she makes the effort because she doesn’t want to let them down. “I make sure I kiss and hug my boys every day,” she says. “Even the 17-year-old.”

Social workers say even though they have volunteered, many parents initially resent the intrusion, calling them names or continuing to watch TV when they visit. Family preservation workers say they are dedicated to finding and building on parents’ strengths, rather than looking for weaknesses.

“Sometimes, I tell them it’s a strength that they let me in their house,” says Jenny Jones, program director at Drew Child Development Center in Watts, another of the county’s lead agencies.

Family workers say about two-thirds of the parents make it through the yearlong program. Even then, it’s no guarantee of long-term success.

“Even with all the supports, people will relapse,” said Arthur Sweeney, a county social worker.

At least two children died, one in 1993 and another in 1995, while their families were receiving the intensive services provided by the networks, according to Bruce Rubinstein, a former deputy director of the Department of Children and Family Services. The family of a third child, Sherrice Iverson, had also gone through a family preservation network before the 7-year-old was killed this year in a Las Vegas casino while her father was gambling. A non-family member is suspected in the death.

Sweeney says the parents with the best chances of success are those who, like Kathleen Pierce of Whittier, get help in the midst of their first crisis and are able to restructure their lives. “Basically, you’ve got to build a new society for yourself,” Sweeney says.

Although her third child was born with drugs in his system, Pierce, 33, says she was shocked when county social workers later took all of her children after tests showed she had relapsed. To regain her children, she entered residential drug treatment. Whittier is an area without a network. She received the help she needed only because there was a spot for her in the neighboring South-Central Family Preservation Network.

During drug treatment, she slowly widened her perspective. “I thought the whole world had dealt me an injustice. I realize now I was dealing an injustice to my children, and they didn’t deserve it.” Through her social workers Sweeney, her family preservation worker Richard Benavides and adult role model Betty Esparza, Pierce said she was able to negotiate the world without drugs after leaving rehab. They helped her cope with an angry teenage daughter, buy Christmas presents, find support groups and funding for a counselor. When she failed to schedule appointments, she said Benavides “would pick up the phone and dial for me.”

Now she’s working, attending support groups and trying to find new friends. Though her case is officially closed, Benavides and Sweeney have told her she can call them if she ever gets in a jam. “Now I’m on my own,” Pierce said. “But I’m not.”

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While the most violent or chronically addicted parents are screened out of the program, nearly all parents reported to the county could benefit from intensive custom services, said Eric Marts, children’s services administrator at the family services department. But the system is operating at only about half its potential due to funding caps, he said. When community networks can’t handle any more cases, parents who might have received family preservation services are handled under the old system.

Some social workers also worry that family preservation has become less of a priority in recent years as high-profile deaths of children monitored by the system have pushed the pendulum away from prevention and toward the ultimate safety policy--adoption.

Nancy Daly, a member of the Los Angeles County Commission for Children and Families, said pulling back is a natural reaction to a child’s death. “Everyone should go crazy when a child dies,” she said. “That’s just human.”

Social workers admit it’s also partly a matter of protecting their own jobs. One worker, who asked not to be identified, said workers have been pressured to “cover themselves and detain children” since 1996, when a county social worker and her supervisor were fired following the death of an 18-month-old girl. The child, who was taken from her parents at birth, was returned home under the old system of supervision and apparently was shaken to death by her mother or father.

Until then, there had been a systemwide commitment to keeping families together, said the worker. County figures show that in the ensuing months temporary out-of-home placements soared. Although they have dropped back again, she said: “It’s like that era is over. Now it’s all permanency and adoption.”

Rev. Higgins calls the reaction a “hair-trigger sensitivity to pull kids out rather than trust the family preservation system.”

Even supporters admit lifelong or multigenerational problems in a family have little chance of being fixed in a year. But Higgins and others argue family preservation networks--with their extra measures of services--should be expanded. What’s needed beyond counseling and support, they say, are more long-term programs that address whatever families need to reestablish themselves--job training, education, child care, transportation, and the bigger problems of affordable housing, crime and drugs.

Lisa Pion-Berlin, president of the state chapter of Parents Anonymous, says more nongovernmental support is needed to let parents know it’s OK to ask for help.

Without an ongoing support system, such as the 2,000 groups Parents Anonymous provides nationwide, “gradually, you’ll have the problem again.” There are fewer than 20 support groups in Los Angeles County, she says. Although other states help pay for such groups, “there’s no money in this county or state to do Parents Anonymous,” she says.

Chances of funding long-term prevention programs are remote, advocates say, not only due to this era of tight resources but also because policymakers tend to focus on crises. Also there are those who believe that parents who have hurt or endangered their children cannot be trusted to change.

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Friends and relatives readied their cameras while a trio of drummers beat out African rhythms in a small auditorium in Watts. Candles and flowers decorated the stage. A brown paper sign declared, “It takes a whole village to raise a child” and, underneath, “Congratulations, Y’all!”

A dozen parents, sweating in red, green and black caps and gowns marched in, ready to celebrate their graduation from the yearlong family preservation program at the Drew Child Development Center.

In the back row sat a couple, new and reluctant volunteers for the program, holding their baby who was exposed to drugs at birth. Standing nearby, social worker Sweeney said he had invited them specifically “so they can see where they’ll be in a year.”

They watched and heard good-natured laughter as nearly all of those who took the microphone recalled how much they detested the intensive services at first. Some then cried as they thanked God and their social workers for their new lives, new jobs, new relationships.

Officials said they believe that those who make it this far have a good chance of succeeding in the long run.

Crystal Hodges, a single mother, had her fifth child while she was in the program, and she said it felt good to have a sober baby. Now she is going to Compton College, studying computer science and planning to be an accountant, trying to stay busy and making new friends at the church on the corner. “They call it the love corner,” she said shyly.

The only problem with the family preservation program, she said, is that it came too late for her: One of her children was already adopted. What she wants for all of them is “to do better than I did.”