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A scene outside Child Haven, a shelter for abused and neglected children. Family Services denies it is moving children out of the facility too quickly.
Friday, Aug. 13, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.
Related document
Sun archives
- Clark County reviewing 82 cases of potential child harm (7-25-2010)
- Federal class action suit filed against county child welfare system (4-14-2010)
- County family services director: Cuts would cause chaos, cost jobs (2-10-2010)
- Woman sentenced to 50 years in death of foster son (2-4-2010)
- Budget cuts could thin the ranks of foster parents (10-30-2009)
- Gains in child protection threatened (5-7-2009)
- County Commission chairman rejecting child welfare cuts (11-19-2008)
A former Clark County child welfare administrator charges she was ordered to lie about the number of children at Child Haven to make it appear the county’s Family Services Department was doing a better job of placing children into foster care.
Teresa Medina said she quit her $65,000-a-year job because “I was asked to falsify documents relating to the time children arrived to the center and when they were pushed out into foster care,” she wrote in an e-mail to County Manager Virginia Valentine after she resigned.
“I was afraid of what I’d be asked to do next, what I’d be asked to lie about next,” she added, blaming Family Services Director Tom Morton for creating an “illusion that things are better for Clark County children.”
Medina, who supervised the reception center at Child Haven and who now works in Texas, reiterated her allegations in an interview with the Sun.
Valentine said she never saw the e-mail, and Morton denied that his employees were asked to lie or that children are imperiled by being placed in foster homes too soon.
“The argument that our policies and practices have made children less safe aren’t borne out by the numbers, otherwise we’d have an increase in child deaths,” he said.
Medina’s claims and the rebuttal are the latest development in the long-running controversy over how well Family Services cares for children.
The district attorney’s office in June produced 82 cases from over about five years that it said demonstrated Family Services was returning children to dangerous homes or not removing them quickly enough from the homes. Metro Police said it had offered free investigatory training, but Family Services never responded.
Valentine said a few weeks ago the county is reviewing the cases, and she has ordered Metro, the district attorney’s office and Family Services to work more closely together.
Medina said that while the department was supposed to count a child as a resident of Child Haven if he or she had been there for 24 hours, she and others were told not to count them unless they had been there for 30 hours. The result, she said, was that fewer children appeared to be staying at Child Haven than was the case.
The number of children at Child Haven has become a barometer in gauging the success of Family Services, especially after the department was threatened with lawsuits when the number reached 230 and one child died.
Once overflowing with children, the center sees about 330 a month, but they are moved quickly into foster homes or with relatives. Only two children resided there about noon Thursday.
Morton says Family Services has doubled its number of foster homes in the past four years, and that the rate that children have monthly contact with a county case worker has increased from 50 percent to 97 percent.
Medina said Family Services’ push to lower the occupancy at Child Haven risks rushing children into homes that might not be adequately investigated or might be a bad match for the children and the foster families.
She said she remembers one case involving a teenage girl sexually abused by her grandfather. Her supervisor, Medina said, wanted the teen out of Child Haven within 24 hours and found a foster home. But when the foster parents came to get her, the girl broke down — they were an elderly couple.
Medina said her request that more time be taken to find a better match was rejected.
Clark County’s experience with children taken into custody is a real-world testing ground for an academic debate that seems to have no decisive winner: Is it better to place neglected children in a family setting or foster home, or house them in congregate care such as a residential facility or a place like Child Haven?
Morton, who founded the Atlanta-based Child Welfare Institute, was hired in 2006 to oversee Family Services. Morton sped up background checks to place children with relatives, foster homes or into neighborhood-based foster homes within 24 hours of their arrival at Child Haven.
Even so, the National Center for Youth Law filed a lawsuit in federal court this year on behalf of 13 children, claiming investigations of abuse and neglect are substandard, as are medical and mental health treatment.
One child care expert thinks Clark County is moving in the right direction in child placements.
Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va., said research has demonstrated that it’s far better for a child’s well-being to leave an institution such as Child Haven and enter a home.
“Most of the objective scholarship says that where you can have good foster homes, you can’t have good institutions,” Wexler said. “Not that you can’t have nice people with good intentions (operating institutions), but institutionalization is inherently not a good system.”
Still, Wexler thinks Clark County has a problem because it removes too many children too quickly from their families. “They need to stop taking children from homes needlessly.”
The more that children are removed from their families, the more pressure there is on case workers to quickly find them new homes, at the risk of insufficient background investigation, Wexler said.
“They’re not going to do the extra check, make the extra phone call,” he said. “Not because they don’t care, but because they don’t have the time. Wrongful taking (of children) leads to much worse.”
Medina works at Boys and Girls Country of Houston, a privately funded residential facility run by Lou Palma, the former manager of Child Haven who was fired nearly a year ago for reasons the county did not disclose.
Medina said she doesn’t think Child Haven should serve as a long-term residence for children. “I just want to know what the harm is in keeping a kid for a week and getting them settled, making them comfortable about where they’re going instead of giving them a meal, a psych assessment, new clothes and pushing them out the door.”
"Child Haven".
A misnomer if ever there was one.
Child Haven . . . that says it all doesn't it? If this entity needs additional training or money this is NOT an organization that should be short changed in any way no matter the economy.
I have vague memories of Child Haven having spent a couple months there as a child. Most of these memories are not so much pleasant as simply comforting, as I know I was well taken care of. I can remember a couple of kids coming into my, dorm I guess you would call it, who had been badly beaten in whatever home they had been taken from. While I can only vaguely remember the buildings and none of the people, even as a child, I can still clearly see those two kids. The scars visible on their bodies have ever been etched into my memory.
I guess I am saying if shortfalls are being found or these people just need better funding / training, give it to them. It's all about the kids. So many kids. Just a suggestion for the staff if any read this and it may not even be this way anymore so if it's not then disregard. I was very young, like 6 or 7 yrs old and was separated from my older brother who was 8 or 9 yrs old. This would be a good 30 years ago now. We both stayed at the same place just in separate buildings. That was especially hard and I hope you have developed resources to keep siblings together.
Part one of two:
Unfortunately, Mr. Schoenmann erred badly in using a quote of mine about one issue we discussed and transplanting it into a discussion of another. While I don't believe he did it on purpose it nevertheless totally distorted part of what I had to say.
Although I do indeed believe that Clark County takes away far too many children needlessly, I never said anything about this pressuring workers to do insufficient background investigations for new homes.
Rather, I said what I have said to reporters scores of times, often in writing, including in my very first letter introducing myself to Schoenmann, on July 26, where I wrote:
"The more any child welfare system is inundated with false reports, trivial cases and children needlessly torn from their homes, the less time workers have to find children in real danger. And that's why the foster-care panic the D.A. is fomenting right now to preserve his power base will make all children less safe."
It was in *that* context, explaining the kinds of cases on the District Attorney's list of children allegedly left in danger, that I said:
"They're not going to do the extra check, make the extra phone call," he said. "Not because they don't care, but because they don't have the time. "
Mr. Schoenmann misused by quote to support the thesis of defenders of Child Haven, when in fact I reject that thesis and consider Child Haven to be a blight on the child welfare landscape.
In addition:
--The notion that homes vs. institutions is an academic debate with no clear winner is like saying the jury still is out on whether smoking causes cancer. It is almost impossible to find any independent defense of institutionalization. Almost always it comes from people who run such places or work at them. A summary of the objective scholarship, from those with no vested interest, is on our website here: http://www.nccpr.org/reports/residential... In addition, I sent Mr. Schoenmann a three-page single spaced list of citations for additional research on the harm of institutionalization.
--Ms. Medina would have her answer concerning the harm of using a shelter for even a short time, had Mr. Schoenmann included my answer when he asked me that very question. Fortunately, that part of our discussion was done by e-mail, so those who read the Sun on the web can see for themselves in part two of this comment.
Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
http://www.nccpr.org
Part two of two:
As noted in my previous comment, Ms. Medina would have her answer concerning the harm of using a shelter for even a short time, had Mr. Schoenmann included my answer when he asked me that very question. Fortunately, that part of our discussion was done by e-mail, so those who read the Sun on the web can see for themselves:
From: "Richard Wexler" <rwexler@nccpr.org>
To: "Joe Schoenmann" <joe.schoenmann@lasvegassun.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 6:04 PM
Subject: Re: Two more very brief items
Again, a straw man. Please take a look at that Blog post on shelters. [A reference to this post, mentioned in an earlier e-mail: http://nccpr.blogspot.com/2010/04/when-r... It describes exactly that kind of rationalization and why it doesn't wash. See especially what the Connecticut study found - which is that even when they're small, state of the art and work exactly as they're supposed to, shelters STILL are a lousy option . The Connecticut shelters accomplished none of what proponents claimed they would - and actually left children worse off than if they'd gone straight into foster homes. (And Connecticut is NOT a model system; it, too takes away too many children, though not as many as Nevada, and it's been operating under a consent decree for more than 20 years).
The post also describes how other states that have reformed their systems to avoid any kind of Hobson's choice. Because they don't take away so many children in the first place they don't have to choose between marginal foster homes and stashing kids in shelters. It's called "first placement, best placement" See especially the update toward the end of the post about what New Jersey has accomplished.
Also, this rationalization fails to consider a child's sense of time. For a newborn 24 hours may be half his life. For an infant, a week can feel like several months. They should never be institutionalized and passed among shift staff for that long.
And, of course, once again the proponents of warehousing children in shelters are arguing with horror stories - because that's all they've got.
Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
http://www.nccpr.org
Child Protective Services should be renamed Child Endangerment Services!!! The Social Workers do NOT care about the children, they care about themselves & how much money they can make or skim! Children are commodities, to do with as they can in an effort to make themselves look good to get raises of pay. They will lie through their arses & even the upper level CPS & judicial employees are in on it. They are all in cahoots!!! We need an unbiased investigation to clean things up & save the children!
Seems Ms. Medina made $65k/year for what amounts to being a receptionist and secretary? It's about the $$, People, not the kids.
"Child Protective Services should be renamed Child Endangerment Services!!!"
tyschmutz -- call it what it really is, the Family Gestapo.
"Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends... ...when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object." -- Isabel Paterson 1943 "The God of the Machine"
I am a foster parent of three years. I know many, many other foster parents and their ongoing situations. There are so many good things that also happen as a result of foster care. I of course believe that the bad should be brought to light and made better, especially as the consequences are children's lives. However, I do wish that someone would print a positive story on the subject. As foster parents, we feel largely misunderstood by the general public because all that people know of us and the entire system are the negative aspects.
I don't deny that the system may endanger children from bad judgment calls. However, every situation that brings children into care has already endangered them hugely and there is no possible way to 'make everything perfect' again. The county takes very dysfunctional situations and their is no simple and often no really good fix. However, I have seen time after time children plucked from horrific situations and put in care. I have been thankful time and again that there was someone to intervene. There would be many more child deaths in our city if DFS did not intervene.
< Valentine said she never saw the e-mail,>
There is no excuse for anyone to say they "never saw the email". Microsoft Office Outlook, which 99.9% companies/organizations have as their email, has two features which would alleviate people using the "never saw the email" excuse. (1) Go into options and check "Notification of email received"; (2) check notify when email is read. I used these two features all the time at my job at the LV law firm and was asked many times "why" and I would explain - when you are sending sensitive information via email - you want to make sure the person or persons that the email was intended for RECEIVES the email and that they have read it. Two very simple solutions that may take a few seconds longer every day to delete those notifications (if you choose to do so or put into their own "folder"), but worth their weight in gold when necessary.
Part 3 of 5 (Wexler, are you serious?) Anyway. The "horror" stories, sadly are a reality. Let's see, a five year-old who died in February 2009 from morphine and cocaine intoxication in a home that the county had visited four times from 2005 to 2008 on neglect complaints that were ruled unsubstantiated. A 3-year old boy in May suffocated from placing a plastic bag over his head while in a foster home; the foster parent was not prosecuted. An autistic 5-year-old accidentally shot himself in July 2009 after finding a gun in his dad's car; the father was arrested on a neglect charge. That family had also been investigated two years earlier for neglect. These are all children whose lives might have been preserved had they been removed. There is no simple answer to all of this, each case is unique. This article, in my opinion just emphasizes the need for accountability and change to our system for the protection of Clark County's kids. Saying that a place like Child Haven needs to be closed is like saying we need to close the ER at the hospital. Thank God for places like Child Haven that takes care of our most vulnerable citizens in their time of crisis and need.
I am a very busy person who, unlike gilletegrove.com, have no time to pretend to be an authority on situations involving other families, strangers to them, problems and tragedies. I certainly wish that people like this would have some respect for what people have to survive.
I am the grandmother of the beloved "autistic 5 year old" and not only was there never a prior investigation regarding my family, but I might suggest that, if one wants to sprout an opinion, it be an educated one. Did you talk to my grandson's teachers, therapists, swimming coach, neighbors and family friends? If you had, you would have known just how treasured and adored this boy was and how crazy your statements about his family are. Since you are so much an authority on my family, then, you obviously know my grandson's name and you are, of course, very active and supportive of the Foundation which exists in his name.
My family lost my husband of 40 years only 18 months before we lost our only grandson and my son's incredibly loved only child, so the last thing I need to read is some person, who obviously has no soul, making themself an authority on our unfathomable loss.
Why not do something about the 2 children who have been in 23 foster homes in one year and badly abused and neglected in more than 4 of those homes because CPS and DFS obviously gets paid more to adopt out cute caucasian little kids than to return them to an excellent mother who is fighting to keep her children from an inept and corrupt system.
Please gilettegrove, if you ever need to talk stupid again, please don't involve my family, we are in enough pain without your help.