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I would hate to see DSS unilaterally releasing kids from residential facilities. Hopefully, their approach will be on a case by case basis.
DSS plans a shift in children's placement
Critics fear move away from residential schools
By Stephanie Ebbert, Globe Staff | February 21, 2006
The state Department of Social Services plans this summer to overhaul its approach to caring for children in its custody by beginning to move hundreds of children out of residential schools and back to families and public schools in their old communities.
At a time when the agency is facing heavy scrutiny after the death of one child in foster care and the alleged beating of another, some child psychologists and administrators of the residential schools say communities are ill-prepared to care for the troubled and traumatized children who will be returning, including children who have set fires or sexually abused other children.
''They suffer from abuse and neglect. In some cases, they're aggressive. They're violent. Sometimes they behave in ways that are less than charming," said Charles Conroy, who is both a foster father and executive director of the Doctor Franklin Perkins School, a residential school in Lancaster that treats children with behavioral problems. ''There is not, at the moment, a cadre of well-trained foster parents to deal with these kids."
DSS's new Family Networks system, planned for more than two years, calls for a web of services to treat abused and neglected children in their home communities. The program reflects a changing national philosophy that children can be traumatized even further when they are bounced between foster homes, and that they fare better in stable, familiar surroundings -- with their biological families, other relatives, or foster families in their original communities.
''There has been a learning in the child-welfare world that residential [treatment] is a very huge problem because it holds the kid, but the kid becomes a lost soul," DSS Commissioner Harry Spence said in an interview. ''Those kids end up in homeless shelters, often offend, and, at 18, it hasn't taught the kids to live in the world they're going to live in."
At any given time, DSS oversees about 23,000 families and has custody of 11,000 other children, including about 1,250 in residential schools -- campuses that teach a range of special-education students, where children can receive therapy and treatment for behavioral and psychological issues.
Though Family Networks is set to launch in July, residential school administrators began to suspect last spring that DSS got an earlier start on its ambitious plan and was already reducing the number of children sent to their schools. Last month, DSS officials confirmed that about 150 fewer children were in residential treatment by September than the year before.
Spence said the rate of decline has varied regionally. The largest drop occurred in Boston, where an array of local agencies was ready to start helping the children in their neighborhoods, he said. He also said that many children were held in residential facilities too long; administrators agree that some were ready to leave.Continued...
But some school administrators fear that case managers, sensing the changing philosophy, are rushing to judgment and transferring children out of institutions and into foster homes prematurely. Under Family Networks, as soon as a child enters residential treatment, a target date will be set for the child's departure.
''What we think has happened is that the case workers in the area offices have begun to make service decisions for kids based on ideology and not the needs of the kids," said James V. Major, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of 766 Approved Private Schools, which includes 36 residential schools that educate and treat children involved with DSS.
At the Perkins school that Conroy heads, the director of day treatment pointed to two children who already ended up in psychiatric hospitals after she said they were rushed out of residential treatment. One of them, a 16-year-old girl, was discharged just before the holidays to a foster mother she had known for just two hours, without therapy being scheduled, she said. The girl was soon hospitalized for a week and a half because she wasn't sleeping and had thoughts of hurting herself. She had started to scratch the words ''kill me" into her hand, said the director, Sharon Lowry.
''The consistent thread with the kids that have left has been an absence of after-care services in place for them," Lowry said. ''What we've run into is that DSS will say they're all set for therapy and psychiatry, but they're not."
But Spence said the department is not letting ideology dominate its thinking. He noted that in the recent tragic case of Haleigh Poutre, DSS officials were trying to place her into residential treatment but facing resistance from a local team of medical specialists who believed her injuries were self-inflicted and thought she should remain with her family. The 11-year-old girl was later allegedly beaten into a coma by her adoptive mother and stepfather. Last month, DSS won an order to end her life support, only to announce that the decision would wait because the girl was showing signs of improvement.
''Haleigh Poutre is evidence that the department is able to make clear distinctions when there's a need," Spence said. ''We're continuing to place kids in residential in every area office of the state."
DSS has also been trying to recruit more foster families and improve its foster care system, in part to prepare to handle more children with deep emotional problems and in part to respond to another tragedy. Last year, a foster mother was charged in the death of 4-year-old Dontel Jeffers.
After criticism of its oversight of foster care, DSS has trained workers to make quicker decisions on placing children with relatives, and is trying to speed the process of getting criminal background checks on potential foster parents, state officials say.
But many of the changes will only begin with the start of the next fiscal year -- including new training in ''enhanced" foster care for parents who will take in the most troubled children.
Even critics of the pace of the Family Networks program agree with the concept of keeping children closer to their original homes. But they fear that DSS is ''demonizing" residential treatment, which they believe will still be necessary to provide intensive treatment for some children with more serious emotional problems.
''For some children who have been terribly traumatized within a family setting, family placement is not the placement of choice because families have become toxic for these children," said Dr. Diane Greene, a child psychologist who assesses children's needs for residential facilities. ''It's not warm and fuzzy to them. It's terrifying."
The state Department of Social Services plans this summer to overhaul its approach to caring for children in its custody by beginning to move hundreds of children out of residential schools and back to families and public schools in their old communities.
At a time when the agency is facing heavy scrutiny after the death of one child in foster care and the alleged beating of another, some child psychologists and administrators of the residential schools say communities are ill-prepared to care for the troubled and traumatized children who will be returning, including children who have set fires or sexually abused other children.
''They suffer from abuse and neglect. In some cases, they're aggressive. They're violent. Sometimes they behave in ways that are less than charming," said Charles Conroy, who is both a foster father and executive director of the Doctor Franklin Perkins School, a residential school in Lancaster that treats children with behavioral problems. ''There is not, at the moment, a cadre of well-trained foster parents to deal with these kids."
DSS's new Family Networks system, planned for more than two years, calls for a web of services to treat abused and neglected children in their home communities. The program reflects a changing national philosophy that children can be traumatized even further when they are bounced between foster homes, and that they fare better in stable, familiar surroundings -- with their biological families, other relatives, or foster families in their original communities.
''There has been a learning in the child-welfare world that residential [treatment] is a very huge problem because it holds the kid, but the kid becomes a lost soul," DSS Commissioner Harry Spence said in an interview. ''Those kids end up in homeless shelters, often offend, and, at 18, it hasn't taught the kids to live in the world they're going to live in."
At any given time, DSS oversees about 23,000 families and has custody of 11,000 other children, including about 1,250 in residential schools -- campuses that teach a range of special-education students, where children can receive therapy and treatment for behavioral and psychological issues.
Though Family Networks is set to launch in July, residential school administrators began to suspect last spring that DSS got an earlier start on its ambitious plan and was already reducing the number of children sent to their schools. Last month, DSS officials confirmed that about 150 fewer children were in residential treatment by September than the year before.
Spence said the rate of decline has varied regionally. The largest drop occurred in Boston, where an array of local agencies was ready to start helping the children in their neighborhoods, he said. He also said that many children were held in residential facilities too long; administrators agree that some were ready to leave.
But some school administrators fear that case managers, sensing the changing philosophy, are rushing to judgment and transferring children out of institutions and into foster homes prematurely. Under Family Networks, as soon as a child enters residential treatment, a target date will be set for the child's departure.
''What we think has happened is that the case workers in the area offices have begun to make service decisions for kids based on ideology and not the needs of the kids," said James V. Major, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of 766 Approved Private Schools, which includes 36 residential schools that educate and treat children involved with DSS.
At the Perkins school that Conroy heads, the director of day treatment pointed to two children who already ended up in psychiatric hospitals after she said they were rushed out of residential treatment. One of them, a 16-year-old girl, was discharged just before the holidays to a foster mother she had known for just two hours, without therapy being scheduled, she said. The girl was soon hospitalized for a week and a half because she wasn't sleeping and had thoughts of hurting herself. She had started to scratch the words ''kill me" into her hand, said the director, Sharon Lowry.
''The consistent thread with the kids that have left has been an absence of after-care services in place for them," Lowry said. ''What we've run into is that DSS will say they're all set for therapy and psychiatry, but they're not."
But Spence said the department is not letting ideology dominate its thinking. He noted that in the recent tragic case of Haleigh Poutre, DSS officials were trying to place her into residential treatment but facing resistance from a local team of medical specialists who believed her injuries were self-inflicted and thought she should remain with her family. The 11-year-old girl was later allegedly beaten into a coma by her adoptive mother and stepfather. Last month, DSS won an order to end her life support, only to announce that the decision would wait because the girl was showing signs of improvement.
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''Haleigh Poutre is evidence that the department is able to make clear distinctions when there's a need," Spence said. ''We're continuing to place kids in residential in every area office of the state."
DSS has also been trying to recruit more foster families and improve its foster care system, in part to prepare to handle more children with deep emotional problems and in part to respond to another tragedy. Last year, a foster mother was charged in the death of 4-year-old Dontel Jeffers.
After criticism of its oversight of foster care, DSS has trained workers to make quicker decisions on placing children with relatives, and is trying to speed the process of getting criminal background checks on potential foster parents, state officials say.
But many of the changes will only begin with the start of the next fiscal year -- including new training in ''enhanced" foster care for parents who will take in the most troubled children.
Even critics of the pace of the Family Networks program agree with the concept of keeping children closer to their original homes. But they fear that DSS is ''demonizing" residential treatment, which they believe will still be necessary to provide intensive treatment for some children with more serious emotional problems.
''For some children who have been terribly traumatized within a family setting, family placement is not the placement of choice because families have become toxic for these children," said Dr. Diane Greene, a child psychologist who assesses children's needs for residential facilities. ''It's not warm and fuzzy to them. It's terrifying."
Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
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