DEE WILSON CONSULTING
The Unravelling of Child Protection in Washington State
(Originally published August 2024)
The recently released 2024 Office of the Family and Children’s Ombuds (OFCO) “Report on Child Maltreatment Fatalities and Near Fatalities in Washington State” provides further indication of the unravelling of Washington’s child protection system. This process has accelerated since 2018 when DCYF became administratively responsible for child welfare, and after passage of the Keeping Families Together Act (KFTA) in 2021 and the law’s implementation on July 1, 2023. However, the unravelling of the state’s child protection system began years before DCYF was created and KFTA became law.
KFTA reflects progressive ideological influences that have included a child welfare abolition movement and persistent attacks on foster care by a wide range of scholars, advocates and foster youth alumni. In addition, the idea that Family First legislation authorizing the use of IV-E funding for evidence-based family support programs would transform states’ service delivery systems has not panned out. Instead, what has occurred since 2019 is a large decrease in foster care, both in Washington and nationally, but without a corresponding large increase in substance abuse and mental health treatment and in family support / safety-oriented services. Both nationally and in Washington, child welfare systems have been reshaped by a sea change in social values regarding child protection and foster care, despite (or because of) an increasingly inexperienced workforce, and absent (for the most part) an increase in innovative family support services.
Workforce recruitment and retention challenges have had a major impact on child
protection in Washington, as in most other states. These challenges have taken many years to develop, and cannot be reversed simply by salary increases, as essential as these are in workforce development initiatives.
OFCO Report on Child Maltreatment (CM) Fatalities and Near-Fatalities
The OFCO Report on child maltreatment fatalities and near-fatalities tracks CM fatalities and near fatalities on open cases and cases open within 12 months of a child death, and on “information only” CPS reports during the same time period. The report makes a distinction between child fatalities directly caused by child maltreatment, often with an accompanying substantiation, and fatalities in which child maltreatment and risk factors for child maltreatment “contributed to” a child’s death. The OFCO Report provides trend data on two categories of CM fatalities: 1) child fatalities caused by, or contributed to, by CM and, 2) fatalities that received an executive review, i.e., mostly fatalities substantiated for child maltreatment.
In 2023, the OFCO Report indicates that there were 49 CM fatalities and 18 fatalities that received an executive review vs. 39 CM fatalities and 17 fatalities in 2022. In 2019, there were 29 CM fatalities and 14 fatalities that received an executive review. From 2014-21, OFCO data indicates there were about 35 CM fatalities annually; in 2022 there were 39 CM fatalities, and 49 CM fatalities in 2023. Some critics may view OFCO’s criteria for categorizing a child fatality as CM related as too broad but, in my view, it is a reasonable standard. Substantiation of a child fatality due to child maltreatment often requires the finding of a medical examiner or coroner, who rarely classify any child fatality as neglect related. In my experience, child fatalities resulting from unsafe sleep practices (more than half of CM deaths in OFCO 2023 data) are rarely substantiated.
Several findings stand out in the OFCO report:
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Two-thirds of child victims were infants vs. approximately 45% during most years.
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Most infants died due to suffocation while sleeping with a caregiver, sometimes due to inadequate cramped housing, or no housing. One child died while sleeping in a car with the mother. Severe poverty, as well as substance abuse, was a factor in several of these fatalities.
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One-fifth of fatalities were due to accidental ingestion of drugs or drug overdoses.
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Five child fatalities were classified as homicide.
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Substance abuse, mental health challenges and/or domestic violence (DV) were present in a large percentage of families with a CM fatality.
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Three CM fatalities occurred in foster care, and one child died in a child care center operated by a relative.
A one-year increase of CM fatalities of 25% and a two-thirds increase from 2019-23 should be a wake-up call for everyone concerned with child welfare. Nevertheless, the increase in CM fatalities pales beside the more than tripling of near fatalities since 2019 and the 50% increase from 2022. Three-quarters of near fatalities in 2023 were due to accidental ingestion of drugs and drug overdoses, mostly of fentanyl. More than half of near fatalities involved children, 1-3 years of age; 25% involved infants. Given the limited mobility of infants, it is questionable whether all of the infants who died or almost died from opioids accidentally ingested these drugs.
KFTA, Plans of Safe Care, and the reduction in infant placements
KFTA narrowed the grounds for involuntary placement of a child to risk of imminent harm, and set rigorous standards for showing that risk of imminent harm warrants out-of-home placement. KFTA passed in 2021 during a steadily worsening opioid epidemic without an increase in substance abuse treatment services or an increase in 24-hour residential treatment facilities for substance misusing mothers and their infants, or a large increase in other safety-oriented services/resources for high-risk young children who remained in the home. KFTA became law on July 1, 2023. However, the OFCO Director, Patrick Dowd, informed me in 2022 that, according to DCYF staff, KFTA had already influenced judicial thinking about child safety in a number of counties. It appears that KFTA reflected, rather than caused, a widespread change in judicial views of child safety, views influenced by persistent attacks on foster care, including an American Bar Association (ABA) summary of advocacy research disseminated by influential parent advocates.
In addition, during the summer of 2023, DCYF announced a change in policy regarding the agency’s response to reports from hospitals of prenatal substance exposure (PSE), a policy change that led to increased use of community-based Plans of Safe Care (absent CPS involvement) for prenatal exposure to prescription drugs, when hospital staff had no child safety concerns.
KFTA implementation and DCYF policy changes re PSE had a large immediate effect on infant placements – a 26% decline in infant placements from July 1, 2023 - March 31, 2024 and a 19% reduction in entries-into-care as a whole. These reductions in foster care occurred after a steady reduction in Washington’s foster care population between 2019-23. Currently, there are more than 4,000 fewer children in foster care on any one day than in 2019 (4971 vs. 9050).
Viewed from the perspective of KFTA developers and supporters, and of DCYF leadership, the law has achieved its main goal, i.e., to limit involuntary entries-into-care to children assessed as endangered, i.e., at risk of imminent harm, and, by doing so, to greatly reduce the state’s foster care population. However, the harmful effects on child safety are evident in OFCO CM fatality and near fatality data, and in the DCYF unit’s periodic updates re KFTA implementation. Again, KFTA is only part of the story regarding worsening child safety indicators. According to the most recent DCYF report on KFTA implementation, “Since 2020, DCYF has seen an increasing percentage of moderately high to high-risk cases being rereferred to CPS intake and screened in (within 90 days of completion of the risk assessment).” Translation: for several years, CPS caseworkers have been closing an increasing percentage of cases which they rated as “moderately high risk” or “high risk” at case closure, only to have many of these cases rereferred and screened in within a few months.
Why has this happened? In part, because risk assessment is no longer a factor in decision making in DCYF. Risk assessment is widely viewed as either a thing of the past (best case), or as an excuse for unwanted and unnecessary intrusion in the lives of low-income families among abolitionists and like-minded advocates. CPS caseworkers continue to be required to complete a risk assessment tool at case closure, but risk assessment appears to have little, if any, effect on decision making in DCYF.
DCYF 2023 Annual Progress and Services Report (APSR)
Since 2020, DCYF has issued at least two lengthy and candid “Annual Progress and Services Reports,” that summarize the results of internal audits, and the views of DCYF auditors and external stakeholders regarding the quality of CPS casework.
The 2023 report, which discusses findings for fiscal year 2021, indicates that in almost one-third of cases reviewed there was not adequate ongoing assessment of child safety, and in more than 40% of cases with safety concerns there was inadequate development and monitoring of safety plans. According to both internal reviewers and stakeholders, CPS staff were often unable to consistently apply the agency’s safety framework, which is difficult for inexperienced caseworkers to learn and apply.
The report discusses the challenge of child protection for an increasingly inexperienced workforce, often under the guidance of supervisors with limited experience in units with vacancies, i.e. unfilled positions. The report states: “In some regions, it is estimated that approximately 50% of the workforce has under one year of experience.” In addition, the report makes clear that DCYF is not staffed to a workload standard that allows much greater investment of time in implementing in-home safety plans. It seems KFTA was passed and became law without these staffing limitations in mind.
Washington State has once again become the “canary in the coal mine” for progressive child welfare legislation designed to reduce placement of children in foster care, but without increased funding for substance abuse treatment and family support services, and without creating an infrastructure to support in-home safety planning, arguably the weakest part of child protection practice nationally. Protecting a much larger population of high-risk children with in-home safety plans would be a difficult challenge for an experienced, well-resourced child protection system. It is an impossible challenge for an inexperienced, understaffed workforce that struggles to apply the agency’s safety framework, and without a wide range of safety- oriented services at its disposal.
According to the 2023 DCYF Annual Progress and Services Report, CPS and Family Assessment Response (FAR) greatly increased the use of voluntary service plans as the foster care population declined from 2019-2021. Nevertheless, the 2023 APSR report found that “The agency made concerted efforts to provide or arrange for appropriate services … to protect the children and prevent their entry or re-entry into foster care in 35% (26 of 74) cases.”
The most recent DCYF KFTA implementation report found that about 500 fewer children entered foster care between July 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024, compared to the prior year, but the increase in family voluntary service cases during this same time period was about one-third of this number. It is possible that CPS and FAR caseworkers have increased the number of families provided voluntary services in the past year, but I hear a different perspective from knowledgeable observers, i.e., that in defending closing out high-risk cases without services CPS caseworkers will sometimes state: “at least we didn’t place the child in foster care.” If, indeed, some CPS staff are applying the KFTA endangerment standard for involuntary child placement to decisions re which families to open for services, this cannot be blamed on KFTA. Rather, in the current child welfare milieu, inaction (even in high-risk cases) may be deemed a virtue, and the reduction in foster care pursued as an end in itself.
Opportunities and positive developments
A reduction in the foster care population of more than 4000 children since 2019 has created an opportunity to transform the state’s child welfare system, both to support the goal of safe foster care reduction and to strengthen the foster care system for the thousands of children in foster care currently and in the future. State budget analysts should be asked to estimate cost savings generated by the almost 50% reduction in foster care since 2019. Every dollar of foster care savings should be reinvested in substance abuse and mental health treatment, including residential treatment programs for mother and infants, with some dedicated slots for fathers and infants; and in other family support / safety- oriented services such as crisis nurseries, respite care, therapeutic child care and housing, and in creating an infrastructure to support in-home safety plans.
During the recent legislative session, the legislature funded three pilot programs to test in-home collaborative safety plans. However, pilot programs usually require years to bring to scale, if indeed this ever happens. The large increase in CM fatalities and near-fatalities should be responded to as a child welfare emergency. It is untrue that “the jury is still out” regarding the initial effects of KFTA on child safety; the effects are already glaringly apparent, which the legislature implicitly acknowledged by amending KFTA to require courts to give added weight to a caregiver’s use of fentanyl in making placement decisions. It is
uncertain whether this change in statutory language will change outcomes.
It is of the utmost importance to strengthen the child welfare workforce. Policymakers have taken an important step in raising salaries by a significant amount, but more is needed:
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Staff child welfare units and offices to reasonable workload standards that include quarterly lids on case assignment.
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Fund certification programs to increase caseworkers’ expertise in substance abuse, mental health, DV, child development, etc.; reward the completion of certification programs with a salary increase.
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Develop infant/toddler units staffed by the agency’s most experienced caseworkers in large urban offices.
No ambitious, challenging child welfare initiative can be effective with an inexperienced workforce that lacks knowledge and expertise in the main factors that lead to child maltreatment. KFTA has presented DCYF with a difficult challenge. Line units and local offices must be supported in meeting it.
Summary
The unravelling of child protection is viewed as a long overdue reshaping of the state’s child welfare system by many parent and child advocates, practitioners, and by some scholars. The dramatic change in child protection practice has come with a big cost to child safety, as indicated by OFCO CM fatality and near fatality data, likely only the tip of the iceberg of an increased willingness within public agencies and among many advocates to ignore, minimize or misrepresent the harms of child maltreatment. In the long run, the narrowing of child protection concerns to child endangerment, along with a willingness to ignore or tolerate
chronic maltreatment that does not cause serious physical harm, may prove to be most significant development of recent years.
Nevertheless, child protection systems necessarily reflect widespread social values, which in Washington and nationally have fundamentally altered in recent years. It may be possible to achieve the goal of safe family preservation even in high-risk cases involving young children, but not without large investments in substance abuse and mental health treatment, and in safety-oriented family support services. No child welfare reform initiative of any type is likely to be effective without strengthening and better supporting the child welfare workforce.
References
Keeping Families Together Act, Quarterly Data Update, April 2024, Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families, Olympia, Washington; available online.
2023 Annual Progress and Services Report, Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families, Olympia, Washington; available online.
Report on Child Fatalities and Near Fatalities in Washington State (2024), Washington State Office of family and Children’s Ombuds, Tukwila, Washington.
See past Sounding Board commentaries
©Dee Wilson