Columnist Sandy Thompson: Now’s the time to do the right thing

Sandy Thompson

Friday, March 30, 2001 | 3:30 a.m.

Sandy Thompson is vice president/associate editor of the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at 259-4025 or e-mail at thompson@lasvegassun.com.

AFTER TALKING to William Epstein, you don't know whether to cry, punch a hole in the wall, march on Washington or go home and crawl under the bed covers.

Epstein is a professor in the School of Social Work at UNLV and the author of "Children Who Could Have Been," a scathing indictment of the child welfare system in America. He makes Charles Dickens look like Pollyanna.

Epstein is frustrated with and angry at a system that historically has been inadequate because society doesn't care enough about children. The marketplace rules, he says. We value profits over people.

"A miserable, underfunded program is Americans' preference," he says.

Despite unprecedented economic good times, today's society is uncaring and cruel, he adds. Because of that, "the American people refuse to do anything with these throwaway children."

"The decision to neglect blameless and dependent children is profoundly political," Epstein writes in his book. "... The austerity of the child welfare system is not the result of any national emergency or even the cunning victory of conservatism. Rather, contemporary American social welfare policy is the result of an esurient, pernicious liberalism that has led to the national capitulation to public irresponsibility."

That's a mighty fancy way of saying we don't want to invest in our children. What we do for them is superficial at best and largely inadequate. Reforms, if any, are ineffective. Epstein calls it a public policy of neglect.

One of his most disturbing points is that society essentially views children in the child welfare system as "bad seeds" who have something inherently wrong with them. Also disturbing are the cases of children taken from abusive homes only to be placed in more abusive foster homes or environments.

Despite Epstein's dire pronouncements and extreme views, all is not bleak. Children have survived the system and become productive, successful adults. There are many nurturing foster parents and caring caseworkers not only in Nevada but across the country. Protective of the caseworkers, Epstein says they are not the problem. He places the burden on the public.

Although the notion of child welfare is nearly as old as America herself, there is a serious lack of research about child welfare systems, Epstein says. The system relies on secrecy and shuns scrutiny.

Credible research on the quality of child welfare services also is lacking. If you don't know what does and doesn't work, how can you bring about effective change?

The quality of services must be defined and measured. Epstein says quality is measured by the capacity of the system to handle children's needs, the outcome of services and the degree to which care conforms with commonly accepted cultural values, starting with safety.

Those dimensions, though, defy easy measurement, he says.

"The quality of child welfare services must be measured against equality and decency -- the question of whether placements are homelike -- and a sense of what the United States owes its children."

The bottom line is that we need to take better care of our children, research what works best for them and then properly fund those services.

While few can disagree that we are our children's keepers, some draw a line when it comes to reaching into their pocketbooks. That fiscal shortsightedness may rear its ugly head in Carson City as the Legislature considers bills to improve the child welfare and foster care system. The major one, Assembly Bill 343, is expected to be sent to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee this week. But as legislators face a $50 million budget shortfall, there is concern that the needs of children will be sacrificed (again).

Nevada has a prime opportunity to do right by children now. We have the opportunity to design -- and properly fund -- a new system that meets the needs of our most vulnerable citizens and breaks what Epstein's book portrays as a national legacy of abuse.

We can't rewrite history but we can choose not to repeat it.