Washington state made several changes in the last few years to prioritize keeping kids with their birth families. But a new investigation from KUOW found that over the same time period, more babies and children from families who’ve been investigated by Child Protective Services workers have died. Eilís O’Neill, a reporter for KUOW, joins us to talk about the story.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Research has found that unnecessarily taking a child from their home can cause harm and lead to poor outcomes later in life. That’s part of the reason why Washington state put policies in place over the last few years to make it harder for Child Protective Services to separate families. But now some critics say the changes went too far and that they leave children in dangerous homes.
KUOW’s Eilís O’Neill spent most of a year talking to families and investigating these policy changes. She joins us now. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Eilís O’Neill: Thanks for having me.
Miller: I should note before we start that this conversation might not be suitable for children.
You started your recent report with a woman named Mariah, you didn’t use her last name. She was forced to give up custody of her first three children. Could you tell us her story?
O’Neill: Mariah first got pregnant when she was 21 years old. At the time, she was addicted to heroin, she was living in motels. And when she gave birth at a hospital, the baby went through withdrawal and tested positive for heroin. So the hospital called CPS. CPS took the baby away from Mariah and Mariah’s aunt got custody of her baby.
She got pregnant again a couple of years later and she was determined to do things differently. She really wanted to keep her baby this time. She went into a short treatment program for pregnant women experiencing addiction. She set up a nursery area in her mother’s house. But when she gave birth, which again was at a hospital, the baby tested positive for the medication she was taking, which is a medication that helps people who are addicted to opioids reduce the withdrawal symptoms and their cravings. So the hospital called CPS again and the CPS caseworker decided to take this baby away from Mariah as well.
This is what Mariah said about that experience of her second baby being taken away from her:
Mariah [recording]: There it was again, I just left hopeless. That day, I really thought I was gonna take my son home. And so I had to go back home and look at my son’s nursery area. And he wasn’t there.
O’Neill: After that, Mariah relapsed within a month. She spiraled deeper into her addiction and she had a third baby who was also taken away by CPS. Her aunt got custody of all three babies.
Miller: What does the data show about the harms that can follow from removing a child from their birth family?
O’Neill: The way researchers have studied this has been to look at cases where social workers disagree about what the right thing to do is. We can call them “borderline cases,” where it’s not clear whether the right answer is to leave the child with their family of origin or take them away from their family of origin. Researchers have found that children do better if they’re left with their family of origin, even if their family is experiencing a lot of struggles, which could include poverty, mental health struggles, addiction.
Children who got to stay with their birth families had higher lifetime earnings, lower teen pregnancy, lower rates of incarceration. And there’s just very good research that being taken away from the family you’ve always known causes a stress response in your brain that is hard to recover from.
Miller: It’s that kind of data, along with stories like Mariah’s, that led Washington to change its child separation policies. How did those policies change in the last couple of years?
O’Neill: There were two big changes. The first has to do with hospitals. So in the hospitals, instead of automatically calling CPS when a newborn tests positive, either for an illegal drug or for a medication that helps the birth parent stay off, say, opioids, health care workers can now use a new tool that Washington’s Department of Children, Youth and Families designed to decide if a call to CPS is warranted.
There’s also a new law that requires CPS caseworkers or other caseworkers for the department to prove that a child would suffer an imminent risk of physical harm if they were left with their family of origin, before a court will sign off on taking the child away from their family. And judges also have to consider the harm of removal as well, which they did not before.
Miller: But as I mentioned in my intro, some people in Washington now say that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, that biological parents are being allowed to keep their kids even in situations where their kids will suffer grave harm. Can you tell us the story of Danette Scott and her daughter and her granddaughter?
O’Neill: Danette Scott’s daughter has struggled with addiction for years. And when she had a baby a few years ago, Danette invited both her daughter and the baby to live with her, so she could help take care of her granddaughter. But Danette’s daughter relapsed and Danette called CPS. The CPS worker came and said everything looked fine to her, because Danette was there helping take care of the baby. The house was safe. She said, “there’s nothing I can do,” and she left.
But after the CPS worker left, so did Danette’s daughter, taking the baby, Danette’s granddaughter with her. Danette didn’t hear from them for months, couldn’t find them, until she got a phone call that her granddaughter had been exposed to fentanyl and was dying in a hospital.
Danette blames what happened to her granddaughter on the state’s policy changes. She says if CPS had given her custody of her granddaughter after her daughter relapsed, her granddaughter would still be alive today.
Miller: It’s obviously a heart-wrenching story. What does the data show more broadly about what has happened in Washington in the last three years?
O’Neill: There has been an increase in how many babies and children have died after their families were investigated by CPS. And critics say that’s because of the policy changes.
Miller: Can you say definitively that more kids are dying in Washington because of these changes in policy and law?
O’Neill: No, the relationship between taking fewer children away from their birth families and more children dying isn’t clear. The year the most children whose families had been investigated by CPS died was actually 2012, which was way before any of these policy changes. And it was at a time when Washington took about twice the number of kids away from their birth families as they do today. So it’s not clear that increasing what child welfare workers call child removals, taking a child away from their birth family, increases child safety or decreases child death.
Miller: What did you hear from Child Protective Services workers about the current situation?
O’Neill: CPS workers say these policy changes are not working. They say just because they can’t prove imminent physical harm doesn’t mean the child is safe. And they say they actually don’t have enough caseworkers to fully investigate all the families and come up with all the proof that the courts now require. I spoke to a CPS supervisor named Jeanette Obelcz about this.
Jeanette Obelcz [recording]: There is no, technically, imminent risk of physical harm. But we know from research that a child raised in that kind of very neglectful environment, there are long-term brain development consequences. There are long-term emotional harm consequences.
Miller: I learned from your reporting that Jeanette and others actually spoke out against this change in law before it happened. Why?
O’Neill: They said that, to safely implement the law, they needed more caseworkers. And the law, as it was initially envisioned, was supposed to fund more caseworkers and was supposed to fund more treatment for pregnant and parenting women, and for whole families to live together, so that you don’t have to leave your partner in order to go into drug treatment, for example. But that funding ultimately didn’t get passed. So Jeanette Obelcz and others said that the law was not passed safely as written.
Miller: What suggestions did you hear about what Washington should do next when, as you’ve been talking about, there can be perils from both keeping or removing a child from their birth family?
O’Neill: There is disagreement about what should happen next. Some people want to go back to the situation before the policy changes and relax the standard of removal, so more kids can be taken away from their parents. Other people say it’s more important to invest in families’ material needs: housing, food, childcare, mental health treatment, drug treatment; that if we took care of all of the family’s physical needs, that is the best way to keep children safe.
Miller: I want to end where we started, with the mother you talked to named Mariah, who had had three babies taken away by the state. How is she doing now?
O’Neill: She’s doing well. [After] a couple of years, she got pregnant with her fourth child. She went into a short treatment program, then from there she went to a six-month residential program. She got on a medication to reduce her cravings and her symptoms of withdrawal. Her partner of 10 years, who’s the father of all four kids, got clean around the same time. And the two of them set up a household together.
When her fourth baby was born, she was able to keep him. The hospital never called CPS. And that’s largely because of the changes in Washington state’s policies. Their little one is about 1½ [years old] now, and [they’re] living together in Renton, Washington.
Miller: Eilís, thanks very much.
O’Neill: Thank you.
Miller: Eilís O’Neill is a reporter at KUOW. She spent about a year investigating the changes to Washington state’s policies in terms of family separation when there are questions about safety for kids.
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