CHILDREN IN STATE CARE: ENSURING THEIR
PROTECTION AND SUPPORT
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
CHILDREN, YOUTH AND FAMILIES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES NINETY-NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND EDITION
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, SEPTEMBER 25, 1986
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STATEMENT OF DIANE WEINROTH, MEMBER, STEERING COMMIT-
TEE, CHILD ADVOCACY AND PROTECTION COMMITTEE, THE
BAR ASSOCIATION OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WASHING-
TON, DC
Ms. WEINROTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Johnson.
I am Diane Weinroth, an attorney in the District of Columbia
and I specialize in child abuse and neglect. I am a member of the
steering committee of the Child Advocacy and Protection Commit-
tee of the Bar Association of the District of Columbia.
I would like to pick up a little on a theme that Diane Shust
started to address. The committee has heard from Mark Soler, and
will probably hear all day, the kinds of tragedies that unquestion-
ably happen on a daily basis to children who are in State care. It is
atrocious, there just is no other word for it.
There is another kind of tragedy that is taking place on a daily
basis that is a little less dramatic, but it really isn't less dramatic
when you have to deal with it on a daily basis. When you have to
deal with the kids who come ring your doorbell at 8 a.m., after
having walked halfway across the city, or who are calling you from
a phone booth at 2 a.m., or who are coming to your door on a
Sunday morning because there is not enough food to eat in the
group home and the counselors won't get any, or who are calling
you for all kinds of other similar reasons.
It is no less compelling, the kind of tragedy that I am talking
about, because of the tremendous emotional cost to children and
families and the tremendous loss of human potential that is the
kind of tragedy that results simply from the total lack of services
and resources to address the needs of these children, the needs of
normal children, the needs of special needs children, and the tre-
mendous dehumanization and brutalization that results.
Children may--they may--get three square meals and roof over
their head, but they get very little else. I would just like to run
down briefly, sort of a panorama of the lack of things that are
available to kids, that ought to be available to kids. Then give you
a couple of quick examples from my own case load of the kinds of
things that I am talking about, the kinds of things that we have to
deal with on a daily basis when we are trying to help these kids.
In the District of Columbia there is a tremendous shortage of
foster homes; there is no recruitment for foster homes; there isn't
ample training of foster homes. Younger and younger children are
going into group home situations--we will get to the condition of
group homes in a second--brothers and sisters are separated, it is
just an appalling situation.
I spend so much time simply trying to get a child placed, some-
where, anywhere. They will be sitting in the child protective serv-
ices office and there won't be a placement for them.
There are no group homes--I am not sure I want to encourage
more group homes because group homes are really a problem.
There are rarely standards, adequate standards for group homes.
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The staff in group homes are uncredentialed and untrained. The
physical condition of group homes is often deplorable.
One of my favorite group homes right now is located--for ne-
glected boys--is located one block from Hanover Place, which is a
notorious drug center in the District of Columbia. There is no mon-
itoring of group homes.
As far as the social services agencies are concerned, the case-
loads are tremendous; the social workers aren't trained; they don't
monitor the placements; children are warehoused in St, Elizabeths
Hospital, who have no business being there, because there simply
aren't any other placements for them. They are warehoused in
other kinds of residential placements as well.
There are no services. As the committee has heard and will hear
again, it takes me years, literally years, sometimes to get therapy
for children and families.
There is no drug treatment. I had a client who was abusing
drugs at the age of 14 and 15, probably earlier; she finally came
around to the point where she was willing to enter some kind of
drug treatment program. I was on the phone for 2 days straight
trying to find something, anything for this child, and I couldn't do
it.
I don't know what has become of her at this point. The social
services agency requested that her neglect case be closed because
they couldn't do anything else for her, had no programs for her;
and her case was closed. I wasn't able to prevent that.
There are no adequate educational services. The children are
treated as discards.
Children in foster care--these are neglected children that the
District is supposed to be helping--get $30 a month for clothes,
period. It doesn't matter if they came into foster care as infants
and stay until age 21, that is all they get.
They get $20 to $25 a month for personal care and allowance.
That is it. That is absolutely it; nothing else.
You have to keep running into court; you have to try to get court
orders for things -- 1 have had many, many kids that I have to go to
court for just to try to get clothing on their backs.
There are no effective job training and placement programs. No
vocational education. No assistance for kids who are coming out of
foster care -- and they are getting kicked out of foster care at earli-
er and earlier ages, because the agencies don't want to service
them. There are no family oriented, preventive services to keep
children from coming into State care and no reunification services
for children who come into State care.
As my written testimony indicates, not only is this appalling in
terms of the emotional costs to the children and families, it is ridic-
ulous because the cost of keeping children in State care is enor-
mous.
The cost of providing services to children in family settings, or
with their natural families, is a fraction of the cost, generally
speaking, that it takes to keep a child in the care of the State.
Let me just give you a few other snapshots from my own case
load of the kind of problems that we encounter like this on a daily
basis. There is an institutional facility for infants and small chil-
dren, again, these are neglected infants and small children in the
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District of Columbia. Children sit there for months and years -- no
exaggeration -- because they are simply not placed anywhere else.
They either aren't any placements or the social services' people
are too lethargic to do the paperwork to get them placed. One ex-
ample that comes to mind, and it is by no means the worst case, is
a baby that was there for 8 months, and the effect on that child
was so severe, he became so withdrawn, that he was thought to be
mentally retarded, when he was not. Of course, that makes placing
that child even more difficult; it is a classic sort of vicious circle.
And that is by no means the worst case.
I represent another child who came into foster care as a neglect-
ed child at age 9. He was placed in a group home, an outrageous
thing to do at that age. As one of my clients has said, when you are
in a group home you are on your own.
He, at the age of 13, when I became his attorney, he was func-
tionally illiterate. He was being bounced from placement to place-
ment. He wasn't being given any therapy.
The strengths that he had, which were artistic and manual--
which were obviously going to give him his ticket out of the system
at some point -- nothing along those lines was being provided for
him; no classes, no courses, no nothing. Now he is at a residential
placement and very shortly he will be released from there.
There is going to be no place for that youngster in the District of
Columbia. He won't get any educational services. He will be
dumped. I don't know where he will be dumped--probably in a
group home, unless I can prevent it.
Another youngster in a similar situation had a residential place-
ment practically close down around her ears. She was literally the
last child left there, and they still couldn't come up with another
placement for her.
They wanted to dump her in a group home. It was only under
threat of contempt of court that anything else was finally achieved
for her.
To make a very long story short, through the advocacy efforts of
her attorney, she is now residing with her grandmother and she is
attending the Duke Ellington High School for the Performing Arts;
this is a child that was going to be discarded, that essentially was
discarded and was going to be discarded through the rest of her
teenage years.
A youngster that I represented who was about to be kicked out of
foster care at age 19 or 20, a graduate of high school, wanted to go
to college, but there was no help for him from the social services
system. His social worker told the judge that her discharge plan for
him was to tell him how to get on general public assistance and
Medicaid, the Medicaid being particularly important because he
was a diabetic.
The irony, of course, is that I don't think he would have been eli-
gible for either public assistance or Medicaid. But here is a bright
youngster, with a tremendous amount of potential and that is the
plan that social services has for him.
I sat him down, gave him some phone numbers, did some xerox-
ing for him, and the happy result is that with that very minimal
effort, and that very minimal support, he has been working for 2
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years at one of the most prominent law firms in the District of Co-
lumbia in a clerical capacity.
The last story I will mention just by way of example is--well, the
last two--is a client of mine who was arrested for solicitation or
prostitution, at age 12 or 18. No one knows where her mother is at
this point--no one knows where her father is--she was detained in
the local juvenile detention facility; she was pregnant at age 18. I
could not get her any counseling until I got a court order.
It took that court order; and even with the court order, it still
took a tremendous amount of struggling to get her counseling. She
made her decision with regard to pregnancy; she had an abortion.
She was returned to the detention facility. She was put in a
week's room isolation immediately after that because she had an
argument with a counselor.
That is the kind of treatment that these children are subjected to
on a daily basis and there is just no excuse for it.
I guess one of my other favorite success stories, and it happens
all the time, is one that illustrates what can happen if you do put a
little effort into things.
Two clients were in foster care who were both teenage mother.
The social services agency did everything possible to take their
children away from them. It gave them no help whatsoever when
they were coming out of foster care.
But to make a long story short, those children are now doing
well primarily because of the advocacy efforts of their attorneys;
their children are not in foster care.
Both those young mothers are employed, again, through no
thanks to the social services system, and their children are doing
fine.
So, children who are treated as discards, should not be treated as
discards; they need not be treated as discards. They can lead pro-
ductive and happy lives if the social services system will simply
provide what would inevitably be cost effective services for these
children to allow them to have a happy and successful adulthood.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Diane Weinroth follows:] [Home]