Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / April 2008

What do you think of this Ron?

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Some child welfare agencies hiding behind accreditation

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080421/OPINIONS02/804210304

The headlines out of Kentucky paint a frightening picture of an agency
in chaos. The state's largest child advocacy organization charges that
children have been torn needlessly from their families and rushed into
"quick-trigger" adoptions, so the state can collect bounties from the
federal government.

The inspector general for the child welfare agency itself found case
after case in which families were bullied, browbeaten and needlessly
destroyed.

The scandal was so serious that NBC Nightly News brought it to the
attention of the nation, including allegations that workers ignored
abuse in foster care in order to rush through adoptions.

One more thing about the child welfare agency in Kentucky: It's
"accredited."

Kentucky is not alone. Nearly a decade ago, the Dayton Daily News
exposed hideous conditions at an Ohio-based private agency.

Among the findings:

- Foster homes that were wretched.

- Homes that were worse.

- The head of the agency had a conviction for contributing to the
delinquency of a minor -- a foster child who had been in his care.

But this agency, too, was "accredited."

Accreditation is a way for agencies to get an unearned seal of
approval by keeping their paperwork in order -- and then throw it in
the face of critics, in order to prevent real change. And that's why,
when my organization issued its comprehensive report on Missouri child
welfare five years ago, we urged Missouri not to take part in this
sham.

To understand the limits of accreditation, it's important to
understand the group that is pushing it. The "Council on
Accreditation" is a creation of the agencies themselves and their
trade association, the Child Welfare League of America.

CWLA is funded in part by the dues of its member agencies and exists
to support them. It is to children as a hypothetical National Nursing
Home Association would be to the elderly. Of course there are some
very good people at CWLA and sometimes the interests of the agencies
and the children coincide. But when they don't, CWLA puts the
interests of its members first -- just as any trade association does.

This can be seen by how CWLA reacted to the Dayton Daily News expose.
As the newspaper reported:

"After reading the series, ... the league's director (at the time),
sent an e-mail to ... the group's director of public relations, saying
'These are all horrible stories. I have no desire to talk to the
reporters on this if I don't have to. Find something more positive for
me to report on.'"

Accreditation is self-policing, and the self-policeman almost always
is the weakest cop on the beat. That can be seen in the accreditation
process:

- The accreditors don't inspect foster homes.

- The accreditors don't do surprise inspections of anything. Group
homes and institutions get "no more than" a month's advance notice.

- They inspect group homes only if the agency seeking accreditation is
running them directly.

- The accreditation process does nothing to examine whether a decision
to remove a child in the first place is appropriate.

Indeed, an agency sometimes can become fully "accredited" without the
"accreditors" so much as laying eyes on one real, live foster child.

The "Council on Accreditation" doesn't really accredit agencies at
all. It accredits file cabinets.

Missouri's children would be far better off if the money the state
proposes to waste on accreditation were spent on services to keep
children out of foster care in the first place.

Local Voices

Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for
Child Protection Reform. NCCPR's report on Missouri child welfare is
available at www.nccpr.org.