Members of a federal commission heard state and national-level testimony in Portland Thursday on how to better meet the needs of children at risk for being abused or neglected, with the ultimate goal of providing policy recommendations for the president's fiscal 2016 budget.
The Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, an agency established in 2012 to develop a national strategy around the issue, is meeting in Oregon in part because the state is working to address the topic within a broad public health frame, rather than as an isolated problem, said Commissioner Susan Dreyfus, president and CEO of the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities and former secretary of Washington's Department of Social and Health Services.
Dreyfus said in an interview that Oregon and Washington are "two bellwether states looked to nationally" for their multi-agency approaches to improving the welfare of children. "Simply thinking that we're going to (reduce deaths) through Child Protective Services alone would be silliness," she said, adding that at least half of the children who die from abuse or neglect are not in the child welfare system.
"It is a larger public health issue," Dreyfus said.
Jennifer Devlin, a media specialist for the commission, said it also chose to meet in Oregon because of its ties to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, the lead Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which shares oversight of the commission. In a commentary published Thursday on GoLocalPDX, Wyden also touted Oregon's multidisciplinary approach to the problem.
According to the Oregon Department of Human Services, 10 Oregon children died from abuse or neglect in 2013, the most recent year for which data are available. That's the lowest number of child abuse and neglect deaths in Oregon in the past five years. DHS recorded 13 child abuse and neglect deaths in 2009, 22 in 2010, 19 in 2011 and 17 in 2012.
Here are seven takeaways from parts of Thursday's session.
1. Twenty years after the publication of a 300-page federal report titled "A Nation's Shame: Fatal Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States," some of its findings "remain challenges," said JooYuen Chang, associate commissioner of the Children's Bureau within the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Most notably, federal and state agencies still don't have a clear picture of the scope and nature of fatalities caused by child abuse and neglect, she said.
2. The child welfare field is divided on how best to assess and direct workers' productivity and efficiency. That has direct consequences for children who are abused or neglected. "So often when we hear about child deaths we hear about workload," said Cassie Statuto Bevan, a child welfare researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who sits on the federal commission. "Is there more that's needed to get underneath this issue? Because it comes up again and again (after a child's death), that workers have too high a caseload."
3. Oregon has been successfully reducing its child welfare caseloads, according to Ryan Vogt, assistant administrator at DHS. After multiple surveys of child welfare case workers, the department added more positions to address inefficiency and burnout, among other issues. "Turnover has gone down as we have increased our staffing - people are starting to feel this job is more doable," Vogt told the commission.
4. Child welfare workers often aren't sufficiently equipped for their jobs. Joan Levy Zlotnik, director of the Social Work Policy Institute, testified that despite a public perception that child welfare workers receive specialized training, fewer than 40 percent hold bachelor's or master's degrees in social work. She said many workers also lack training to deal with substance abuse, maternal depression and other situations that put children at risk for abuse or neglect. "If we want to keep children safe, we want to make sure we're keeping the child welfare workers supported as well," she said.
5. There isn't enough research or data on child abuse and neglect deaths or on related issues, such as the child welfare profession. This was a common theme among those who testified Thursday. Myles Edwards, an independent consultant, remarked at one point, "What we've got is accidental circumstances where numbers come together."
6. Accountability and collaboration are key to reducing child abuse and neglect deaths. Bevan said that when a child dies, he or she doesn't fall through the cracks of the system but "through someone's fingers." Zlotnik said that investigating individual deaths in detail will shed light on where overall practices need to change. "We have to look at it from the broader system model ... how agencies work together," she said.
7. A child abuse prevention effort in Oregon is among four multi-agency projects under the umbrella of the Quality Improvement Center on Early Childhood, itself a partnership of three national children's organizations. The "Fostering Hope" project in Salem and McMinnville is led by Catholic Community Services in collaboration with nine other agencies. Its goal is to reduce child maltreatment and the number of children living in foster care by 20 percent in three high-poverty neighborhoods.
-- Amy Wang
awang@oregonian.com
503-294-5914
@ORAmyW