[ OUR OPINION ]
Threat of fines
won’t prevent
child abuse, neglect
A federal review of Hawaii's child welfare system has found deficiencies, which is about par for the course. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has found similar problems in each of the 38 state child welfare systems it has reviewed, which confirms that the difficulty in preventing child abuse and neglect is national in scope. The department is threatening fines against cash-strapped states if improvement is not made after two years -- threats that, if carried out, would only aggravate the problem.
THE ISSUE
A federal review of Hawaii's child welfare system has found a shortage of resources and high caseloads that are taxing the system.Hawaii's Child Protective Services already is overworked because of the state's budget crunch. Linda Mitchell, team leader of the federal agency's review, said her team interviewed one Hawaii social worker who was investigating 50 cases of child abuse and neglect, was responsible for monitoring the treatment of 20 additional children and was just assigned 15 new cases.
"It's impossible to do anything with that kind of caseload," Mitchell told the Star-Bulletin's Rick Daysog. "Workers can't go out to see families and kids when they are carrying that kind of caseload."
The Bush administration is proposing to allocate five-year modified block grants to states' child welfare systems. Under the plan, states would be given the flexibility to use some money now designated solely for foster care for abuse prevention. At the same time, it is threatening to assess fines of tens of millions of dollars to states for their deficiencies. About 30 percent of the funding for Hawaii's child welfare system is federal.
One of the Hawaii deficiencies cited in the federal review is the failure to provide enough resources to train foster parents. The state agency sometimes places children with foster families that have not yet received training, according to the review.
About 4,800 of the 13,000 children monitored by Child Protective Services are in temporary foster care. Nationally, more than 580,000 children are in foster care -- 20,000 more than last year and twice as many as in 1987. There are an estimated 144,000 foster families, and the shortage of such families could become more severe if state agencies are encouraged to shift money from foster families to child abuse and neglect.
State Rep. Dennis Arakaki, chairman of the House Health Committee, says he hopes the federal review will prompt the Lingle administration to commit more resources to the child welfare system. Reform of the system is a goal of Governor Lingle, including a breaking down of barriers between the Human Services and Health departments to improve the working conditions of the state's social workers. Committing substantially more state funds to Child Protective Services may be impossible, and imposition of a federal fine would create a crisis.
