Child Abuse, Foster Care, and the Failing Welfare System in North Carolina
Child abuse and neglect is an issue that is all too common in our country. Child protection agencies continue to fail in their duty to protect children that are in the foster care system and/or abused. Abuse within the child welfare system includes but is not limited to emotional abuse and physical abuse of various types. An issue plaguing the efforts to eliminate child abuse is the lack of importance given to the various kinds of abuse among specific child populations. This paper will examine child abuse in the United States before breaking down abuse by gender and sexual orientation. Further, the child welfare system on a local basis is failing due to flawed reporting systems and lack of maltreatment understanding by state officials. This paper aims to address these flaws before examining ways in which the state of North Carolina is attempting to repair them.
Child Abuse in the United States
A number of factors have been mentioned in the literature to explain why children may be placed at risk by family courts. These factors include: (a) lack of education in domestic violence and child abuse (b) gender bias and pathologizing mothers reporting abuse (c) the inappropriate use and interpretation of psychological testing and (d) the strong legal presumption in favor of joint custody and “friendly parent” provisions (Silberg, 2019). Oftentimes, the legal system fails to protect children in situations of abuse. In a longitudinal study done on child abuse, 93% of suspected abuse was reported to Child Protective Services (CPS) in situations where the child was placed with their abuser. The abuse was unfounded or ruled out by CPS in 63% of cases and founded in 22% of cases. In cases where the child was removed from the abuse and then placed back in the same home or had unsupervised visits with their abuser, 88% of children reported new incidents of abuse with 77% experiencing more than one type. For many children, the abuse had escalated and was becoming increasingly severe. 27% of the children were alleged to have experienced medical neglect and being denied access to therapy (Silberg, 2019).
Gender Influence on Child Abuse within Foster Care
Foster care exists to provide a family and their child or children with an alternative to living together in cases where the home is either unsafe or impossible (Fostering Futures, 2007). Child abuse in foster care is often impacted by the child’s gender and/or sexual orientation. As of 2018, the foster care system on a national scale was composed of 52% males and 48% females (Kids Count Data Center, 2020). Despite this almost equal gender distribution, there is a large disparity in abuse cases for girls versus boys. Girls are twice as likely as boys to be removed from their homes and placed in foster care because of sexual abuse. Additionally, girls in foster care are more vulnerable to becoming victims of sex trafficking. Sex trafficking is the sale of a person for sex or labor in exchange for something of value, such as money, protection, or shelter (Banes-Dunning & Washington, 2013). A study conducted by the FBI which recovered sex trafficking victims in over 70 cities found that over 60% of the recovered children were from foster care or group homes. Sex traffickers have been reported to recruit girls from these settings and then further coerce them to recruit others from the same situation (Post, 2015). These traffickers may offer young women a sense of family connection and/or belonging through promises to take care of the victims and giving them a false sense of security (Tillotson, 2018). This data points to the significant influence of gender on a female child’s experience within foster care. There is an alarming rate of women subjected to the trafficking system, although this does not mean that every child has experience with this. However, the significance of this abuse in young women is not something to be taken lightly.
In contrast, previous research has found that boys are typically abused by perpetrators outside of the family (Asscher et al., 2015). Boys have been found to be at a higher risk of externalizing problems during adolescence after experiencing childhood abuse (Moylan et al., 2010). Beyond these two findings across multiple publications, there is a severe lack of additional research done on child abuse in male children inside of their home or within the foster care system. Other papers investigating the topic of child abuse and how it relates to gender have proposed potential reasons for why this information is rare. First, the stigma associated with male-on-male abuse may cause a boy not to report the situation. Male survivors may wish to achieve the strong and independent stereotype and being an abuse victim would not follow this stereotype (Gagnier & Collin-Vezina, 2016). Society is to blame for the perpetuation of gender stereotypes as well as the lack of acknowledgement for abuse victims who do not identify as female. For the cases in which abuse is reported, male survivors may feel pressure to deny these situations so that they follow societal stereotypes regarding gender. Men are less likely to gain support in reporting abuse and may feel shame if their abuse was committed by someone of the same sex. Previous data indicates that the majority of cases in which a male reports abuse is severely lacking due to negative beliefs about abuse on a male, as opposed to a female (Sorsoli et al., 2018).
These gender differences are important to note when examining the reported rates of child abuse in the foster care system. The term child abuse has a broad definition that must be understood in context of individual experiences in order to begin fixing this problem on a large scale. These differences do not suggest that one type of abuse is more serious than the other but rather indicate the importance of creating targeted solutions for individual groups as opposed to approaching all child abuse as the same problem.
LGBTQ+ Youth in the Foster Care System
Although it is important to understand gender differences in abuse and gain further knowledge in this realm, gendered language completely ignores the LGBTQ+ community of children that have experienced abuse either in their own home or during their foster care. Most of the current research and publications done on child abuse completely ignores the fact that many children do not identify with one gender or sexual orientation. LGBTQ+ youth are overrepresented in foster care, meaning that the percentage of youth in foster care who identify as LGBTQ+ is a larger percentage than in the general youth population (Human Rights Campaign, 2015). There are many disparities between treatment of children in the foster care system who identify as the LGBTQ community, including a higher average number of foster care placements as well as a higher likelihood of living in a group home setting. Statistics point to a severe need of child protection serves all over the country and particularly the protection of children who do not identify as heterosexual. 100% of LGBTQ youth in group homes reported verbal harassment, 78% reported some form of abuse that caused them to be removed from their placement or that caused them to run away from a faster placement (Baams et al., 2019). This information further supports the notion that all abuse and mistreatment within the foster care system is unique to the individual. In order to protect the children that are a part of this system, agencies and officials must begin a deeper discussion regarding differences in abuse between various populations. The welfare system in itself is intended to be a protection agency for children and ensure that they are in a safe environment. If these issues continue to be pushed to the back burner or ignored abuse rates will continue to rise and children will remain unprotected.
A Broad Overview of the Foster Care System within North Carolina
It is clear that there is much work to be done in an effort to gain more data regarding child abuse at home and/or in the foster care system. It is important to understand the ways in which the child welfare program is utilized, particularly in North Carolina. The Department of Social Services (DSS) is an agency in each North Carolina county that provides child welfare services through Child Protective Services, or CPS. Each county’s CPS receives and screens reports of suspected child abuse and neglect, seeks court action to protect children when necessary, provides in-home, foster care, and adoption services as needed (NCDHHS, 2004). Despite the goal of foster care to protect children from situations of abuse or neglect, many children face new threats when placed in a different home by the court system. On a national scale, once the child was moved to a placement deemed protective, 73% of abuse was reported to CPS and 20% of the allegations were found. This percentage is alarmingly small considering the amount of testimony provided by children in which objective evidence was provided (Sillberg, 2019).
The Failing Foster Care System in North Carolina
Individual state agencies are required to report their performance regarding the protection of children. The 2015 Federal Child and Family Services Review that found North Carolina failed all 14 performance metrics (Children’s Bureau, 2015). Further, DSS utilizes safety outcomes when reviewing state performance. The data for 2019 indicates a colossal failure of North Carolina’s Child Welfare System. The first safety outcome is that children are protected from abuse and neglect through timeliness of investigations. The required performance for this is 95% and North Carolina performed at 75%. The second safety outcome is that children are safely maintained in their homes whenever possible and appropriate through services to protect child(ren) in home/prevent removal or re-entry into foster care. The required performance for this outcome is 90% and North Carolina performed at 66%. Additionally, risk and safety assessment/management has a required performance of 90% and North Carolina performed at 57% (NCDHHS, 2019).
North Carolina announced the rollout of the NC Families Accessing Services Through Technology (FAST) Child Welfare (P4) program in August of 2017, which began its pilot testing in five counties across the state. This program was designed to replace outdated operating systems, reduce paperwork, and better track operations (NCDHHS, 2017). However, in July of 2019, House Bill 320 passed which suspended development of NC families accessing services through NC FAST until May 2020. Section 1 of the bill states the reasons for this suspension as the need for continued development of case-management functionality for the child welfare component in counties that participated in the initial pilot program (Forrest, 2019)). Without an efficient data information system for the state, it is impossible for there to be sufficient oversight of county activity or improvement of child protection services (North Carolina General Assembly, 2019). There are no further updates regarding progress or future plans for statewide program implementation available to the public.
Progress in North Carolina’s Child Protection System
It is difficult to pinpoint the specific reasons behind why North Carolina seems to be performing so poorly in nearly every metric used to measure how the state protects children of abuse and/or in the foster care system. In addition to state requirements of social work, each county has different procedures for their local division of DSS which are not clearly outlined on any informational website. However, it is important to examine the ways in which state officials have acknowledged the dire need of improvement for North Carolina’s child welfare system as well as note the ways in which changes have been proposed or implemented. This is a difficult task due to the many agencies involved in child welfare. According to the state of North Carolina, these agencies include child care, education, health care, social services, and juvenile justice (North Carolina General Assembly, 2018).
In 2018, NC Governor Roy Cooper created the North Carolina Child Well-Being Transformation Council (also referred to as the Children’s Council) to be a group that coordinates, collaborates, and communicates among agencies involved in providing public services to children. The council has 25 appointed members including state officials and two full-time staff members (Porter, 2019). According to their online report, the council has achieved the following over a span of six meetings: mapped the network of child-serving agencies and organizations in the State through a program database and grant database, creating a catalogue of examples in failures of child welfare in NC, reviewed the work of similar groups to identify areas of focus, monitored changes in the social services associated with reform, identified gaps in communication between publicly funded child serving programs, and recommended changes in law/policy/practice to improve child-serving agencies (North Carolina General Assembly, 2018).
In November of 2019, the Joint Legislative Program Evaluation Oversight Committee released a program evaluation report which examined the effectiveness of the child protective screening process used among county social service departments. This is important because the cited reason for halting the NC FAST program was to better develop case-management functionality (North Carolina General Assembly, 2019). This objective must be monitored in order to assess whether the decision to stop NC FAST development has been beneficial for the youth in North Carolina’s child welfare system.
The findings of this evaluation report are extensive and involved both testing as well as analysis of procedures. County workers correctly screened 71% of child maltreatment cases, which could be due to the lack of continued training requirements for social workers and/or the absence of a routine test to determine the implementation success of state intake screening policies (North Carolina General Assembly, 2019). This means that the state of North Carolina fails to protect three out of every ten children through neglect of child abuse investigation. Only 23% of DSS workers agreed that the training necessary to improve the intake policies is offered frequently enough. However, the evaluation report suggests that individuals who did attend an additional training did not improve their accuracy scores (North Carolina General Assembly, 2019)..The report is intended to first investigate and report findings such as these before then providing recommendations. Although the data collection and analysis is well done and provides hard data, the recommendation section is broad and vague as far as ways to fix these numbers.
North Carolina published a Child and Family Services Plan for the years 2020-2024. This document cites the reasoning behind this plan as a state requirement by the US Department of Health and Human Services to develop a five-year strategic plan that sets forth the vision and goals to be accomplished to strengthen the state’s child welfare system (NCDHHS, 2020). This requirement is listed as section 1357.15 in the Code of Federal Regulations, which was passed in 2001 (Comprehensive child and family services plan requirements, 2001). Notable targeted areas for improvement were listed as: increased use of technology to integrate distance learning modalities to improve accessibility of training for child welfare social workers, expansion of skills-based instruction in the curricula, and expansion of the Train the Trainer model for county child welfare staff (NCDHHS, 2020). . In examining the reliability of this document, it is helpful to look at past reports to see how the state progressed from the last five year period. However, North Carolina does not have any previous Child and Family Services Plans dating before 2020. It is unknown if this is due to lack of reporting or lack of public access to this information.
Conclusion
Over a span of four years, children served in North Carolina foster care has increased by 11.7% and a the total number of new requests for placement of children into foster care has increased by 17.6% (NCDHHS, 2020). These numbers indicate the importance of the child welfare systems within the state and should create a sense of urgency for policy makers to further examine ways in which processes can be improved. Child abuse is an issue that will remain prevalent in our society until state and local officials gain a deeper understanding of the impact it can have on a child. In order to work towards this deeper understanding, specific situations that constitute abuse should be understood within the context of gender and sexual orientation. Further, the welfare system must improve its processes and reporting in order to gain a realistic perspective of the prevalence of abuse. Without accurate data tracking and reporting measures, the published statistics are unreliable. Through North Carolina’s five year plan, the state will work toward these goals but only if officials involved take these situations seriously. Although North Carolina has clearly failed the children which it serves to protect, there is hope that the system will improve significantly over the next five years.
Resources
Asscher, J. J., Van der Put, C. E., & Stams, G. J. J. M. (2015). Gender differences in the impact of abuse and neglect victimization on adolescent offending behavior. Journal of Family Violence, 30, 215–225.
Baams, L., Wilson, B. D. M., & Russell, S. T. (2019). LGBTQ youth in unstable housing and foster care. Pediatrics, 143(3).
Banes-Dunning, K. & Washington, K. (2013). Responding to the needs of girls in foster care. Georgetown Journal on Law and Poverty, 20:2, 321-349.
Children’s Bureau (2015). Executive summary of the final notice of statewide data indicators and national standards for child and family services reviews. (2015).
Comprehensive child and family services plan requirements., 45 C.F.R. § 1357.15 (2001).
Dowdell, E. B. , Cavanaugh, D. J. , Burgess, A. W. & Prentky, R. A. (2009). Girls in foster care. The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing, 34(3), 172–178.
Forrest, S. A. (2019). SB 212; Suspend child welfare/aging component. North Carolina Medical Society.
Fostering Futures (2007). The purpose of foster care. Retrieved from http://www.ffkids.org/purpose
Gagnier, C., & Collin-Vezina. (2016). The disclosure experiences of male child sexual abuse survivors. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 25:2, 221–241.
Human Right Campaign. (2015). LGBTQ youth in the foster care system.
Moylan, C. A., Herrenkohl, T. I., Sousa, C., Tajima, E. A., Herrenkohl, R. C., & Russo, M. J. (2010). The effects of child abuse and exposure to domestic violence on adolescent internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Journal of Family Violence, 25(1), 53–63.
Kids Count Data Center. (2020). Children in foster care by gender in the United States. National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect.
NCDHHS (2004). Child protective services. Retrieved from https://www.ncdhhs.gov/divisions/social-services/child-welfare-services/child-protective-services/about-child-abuse-and
NCDHHS (2017). North carolina families accessing services through technology. Retrieved from https://ncchildcare.ncdhhs.gov/Services/NC-FAST
NCDHHS (2019). Annual progress and services report for the north carolina child and family services plan. Division of Social Services, Child Welfare Services.
NCDHHS (2020). About child abuse and child neglect. Retrieved from https://www.ncdhhs.gov/divisions/social-services/child-welfare-services/child-protective-services/about-child-abuse-and
NCDHHS (2020). North carolina child and family services plan. Division of Social Services, Child Welfare Services.
North Carolina General Assembly (2018). Child well-being transformation council.
North Carolina General Assembly (2019). Child protective services intake screening lacks consistency. Joint Legislative Program Evaluation Oversight.
Porter, F. (2019). Governor cooper announces boards and commissions appointments. Governor Press.
Post, D. (2015). Why human traffickers prey on foster-care kids. City Limits.
Silberg, J. & Dallam, S. (2019) Abusers gaining custody in family courts: A case series of over turned decisions. Journal of Child Custody, 16:2, 140-169.
Sorsoli, L., Kia-Keating, M., & Grossman, F. K. (2008). “I keep that hush-hush”: Male survivors of sexual abuse and the challenges of disclosure. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 55(3), 333–345.
Tillotson, K. (2018). 5 reasons foster youth become human trafficking victims. AFRJ - Alliance for Freedom, Restoration, and Justice.
Yates, T. M., Dodds, M. F., Sroufe, L. A., & Egeland, B. (2003). Exposure to partner violence and child behavior problems: A prospective study controlling for child physical abuse and neglect, child cognitive ability, socioeconomic status, and life stress. Development and Psychopathology, 15(1), 199–218.