U of Ideas of General Interest -- November 1999
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Mark Reutter, Business & Law Editor (217) 333-0568; [email protected]
CHILD ABUSE
Legislation should help stem tide of chronic child abuse, scholar says
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- After years of heading in the wrong direction, government policy finally seems ready to put the safety of children first when dealing with dangerous homes.
Changes mandated by Congress for foster care and adoption, which are now filtering through state legislatures and welfare agencies, should help curb the chronic cycle of child abuse in some homes by placing children out of reach of violent parents, a legal scholar writes in the University of Illinois Law Review.
Cristine H. Kim, an editor at the journal, notes that parents are the perpetrators in 80 percent of child-abuse and neglect cases, while other relatives contribute another 10 percent. "Sadly, abuse and neglect is the number one killer of children age 4 and under," she wrote. Nearly half of the deaths are known as "reunification murders" because welfare agencies or judges had earlier removed the child from parents because of their abusive behavior.
Kim cited the case of 3-year-old Joseph Wallace whose mother put him on a stool and wrapped an electrical cord hanging from the ceiling around his neck. "She waved good-bye and kicked the stool out. Just months before, a Chicago judge had torn Joseph from a loving foster home and sent him back to his troubled mother, despite extensive documentation of her psychotic behavior."
When such horror stories make the news, politicians and the public blame local authorities for placing a child back into the hands of violent parents. But a key factor at work, according to Kim, was a garbled 1980 federal law that called on welfare agencies to make "reasonable efforts" to reunify families rather than move abused children to foster care and adoption.
Because Congress and the Supreme Court never clarified what constituted "reasonable efforts," welfare agencies were not able to terminate parental rights and free up children for adoption until the courts were satisfied that the agencies had met the reasonable efforts requirements. Confusion over the issue often resulted in long foster-care stays for children as welfare workers made repeated attempts to reunite troubled families.
"Termination was not easily accomplished and it still takes years in many states, even in obvious cases of severe neglect and abuse," Kim wrote.
The 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act has placed greater emphasis on moving eligible children toward adoption. Every foster child, for example, is entitled to a permanency hearing 12 months after entering foster care to determine a permanency plan for the child.
While it is too early to say how the courts will interpret the new law, Kim expressed guarded optimism that "common sense" will prevail to protect young children from unfit parents demanding that the state give them back their property.
-mr-
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