Our View

Our View

Assessing, addressing the needs of Arkansas children

In just a year, foster care placements across the state have increased an alarming 30 percent, and experts studying the serious problem are placing the blame on poor decisions, whether by the state Department of Human Services or by the courts.

Meanwhile, the Division of Children and Family Services, an agency of DHS, have told a legislative Joint Performance Review Committee that one of the solutions is to add 102 more state employees to help troubled families keep their children.

Paying for this DHS workforce expansion will come from Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s promise to increase funding for the foster care system by $26.7 million.

And then, we’re told, the division is working on about 50 projects to improve the foster care system.

This all comes on the heels of an alarming report that there are currently 5,200 children in the state’s foster care system, a situation that experts claim has gotten totally out of control.

While bureaucrats within the DHS system are scrambling for answers to the problem, a New York based consulting firm, Hornby Zeller Associates, is telling the legislative committee one of the problems lies in decisions the judges throughout the state make in child welfare cases.

So seems Dennis Zeller, co-founder of this consulting firm, says Arkansas has judges all over the state who have very different criteria, and says that decisions to seek removal of children from home sometimes are made for the wrong reasons.

Then we hear from DCFS Director Mischa Martin who says it is not just about removal decisions but rather on the question of whether families are receiving the services they need and are caseworkers, because of caseloads, able to work the cases the way they need to.

Also throwing his two-cents in on the situation was Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch, who questioned whether the years of experience on the part of the judges has helped and added, “Those years of experience have led to a crisis in this state.”

Martin told lawmakers that judges simply did not trust plans by caseworkers to keep children in their homes by addressing parental behavior because those plans could not be enforced.

She said went on to say, “Frankly, we lost some trust of the judges because we implemented protection plans that violated our law and didn’t keep kids safe.”

Martin admitted that better training is needed so caseworkers write enforceable, specific plans.

The blame game, excuses and reasons seem to be all over the board with the only action being taken is the hiring of 102 more employees who, we’re told, will include family service workers, program assistants and those assigned to clerical duties.

With all that has been said and admitted, hiring these 102 more employees won’t solve the problem, particularly if they aren’t committed to the task at hand, properly trained, qualified and given the proper supervision.

Also, it will be critical to any achievements that lawmakers, DHS officials and the state’s judges work in unison on better ways and methods in addressing the needs of these children. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope that adding all these new employees and spending $26.7 million is not a waste of our tax dollars.