DCF a good place to start reforming state gov't

John Horak

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By John Horak

In September 2015 a civil-rights lawsuit was filed against the commissioner of the Department of Children and Families and four others. The suit was brought by foster parents who were falsely accused of child sexual abuse — in a setting reminiscent of the hysteria that led to the Salem witch trials. The criminal case that followed DCF's charges resulted in a rapid acquittal of one parent and dropped charges as to the other. The presiding judge in the criminal proceedings noted (I paraphrase from the suit) that the DCF resisted court-ordered document production, refused to comply with reasonable subpoenas, withheld records containing “extraordinarily exculpatory evidence,” and that “the brigade of social workers, educators, department of family's personnel who provided intense services” never saw any signs of physical abuse.

I am discussing this case because it is one indication among many that this large agency, whose brigade of social workers possesses the intimidating power of the government (to remove children and bring charges), is not suited for the delicate clinical task of mending broken children and families. The job requires the therapeutic equivalent of a skilled surgeon with a finely honed scalpel who can work through the gut level emotional trauma of these cases. The government is too powerful and blunt an instrument to do the task well — which leads to the circumstances and results discussed in this editorial.

My argument: Major structural reforms are needed to fix the state's fiscal mess and the DCF is a good place to start. The state could reduce costs and achieve better results if the person-to-person therapeutic counseling and similar tasks were delegated to community nonprofit associations under a competitive-contracting system with programmatic flexibility and accountability. The DCF would be responsible for funding, licensure and administrative functions.

First, there were families and children in Connecticut before the DCF was created in 1969, and in that era these problems were largely addressed by nonprofit associations if not by extended family. However, the 1960s were dominated by the “Great Society” movement's good faith belief that government could, with enough money and the right agencies, ameliorate if not resolve social ills — which spawned the DCF. Several Connecticut nonprofits pre-date the DCF by decades, but since 1969 they have been assimilated into the DCF's strict command and control system. I am advocating a pendulum swing to a modified version of the previous model — in which the DCF and the nonprofits would each have a vital and complementary role.

Second, a bird's eye overview of the DCF's long-term performance demonstrates what happens when government (inevitably driven by politics) takes on tasks for which it is not suited. The DCF has 3,200 employees (it would be the state's 21st largest employer on the Hartford Business Journal's 2015 list), an operating budget of $807 million (enough to buy 2.25 Boeing 747s each year), and a case load of 36,000 children and 16,000 families ($50,000 per child). I am not trying to be glib, and offer these cost comparisons simply to make it easier to wrap our minds around the scale of the DCF's operations.

Nevertheless, despite the considerable expenditure of resources, the DCF has noted (on its website) that it has been “outmatched by the scope of child maltreatment in Connecticut.” This is troublesome because the state's population was 3 million in 1969, and is 3.6 million today. Given the relatively modest increase in population over 45 years and the DCF's expenditures during the same period, the complaint about being overmatched appears to be an admission of failure.

An ironic possibility is that the DCF is outmatched because its efforts have unwittingly created a self-perpetuating client base — manifest in multiple generations being raised under DCF supervision. The DCF's 2013 strategic plan recognized the need to “assist families with multi-generational DCF involvement.” The state's 2013 Child Fatality Review report noted that 62.5 percent of the mothers of the deceased children named in the report “had a history of DCF involvement” as children. Has the government's intervention in family matters brought us a business model in which failure brings more work in the door?

Another disquieting indicator is an apparent gap between perception and reality. The DCF's 2015 preliminary Foster Home Quality and Satisfaction survey states that overall “both foster parents and children placed in their homes demonstrated a relatively high satisfaction rate (85 percent) among foster children and (79 percent) among their caregivers … suggesting the DCF is successful in providing high-quality services.” In contrast, the 2015 civil-rights suit said one of the foster children made remarks that start as follows: “[W]hen I was a son of the state, in DCF custody, I felt like a piece of raw scrap meat that was brushed into the trash.” Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle, but I suspect that the stark contrast reflects the DCF's need to assure legislators that money is being well spent — and given DCF's enormous power I have to wonder if the responses to the DCF's survey questions are as candid as good practice requires.

In closing, the principle behind my suggestion is simple — assign tasks to the people best suited to fulfill them. Of course, those who make their living in service to the complexity of the status quo won't see it that way.

John M. Horak has practiced law at Reid and Riege P.C. in Hartford since 1980. His opinions are his own.

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