This week, the Rhode Island Office of the Child Advocate released a report outlining several problems with the state’s child protection system, ranging from staffing shortages to a lack of proper screening that, in some cases, led to the deaths of children. Included in the report are 76 recommendations intended to address the ongoing challenges.
Ocean State Media morning host Luis Hernandez spoke with Rhode Island Child Advocate Katelyn Medeiros about the report and its goal of reforming the Department of Children, Youth, and Families.
Interview highlights
On the report’s findings
Katelyn Medeiros: We came together to review a total of 30 fatalities and 11 near fatalities. This is pursuant to our statutory mandate, which requires us to review any fatality or near fatality where the child is involved with DCYF or there was prior involvement with DCYF. And really what we identified were persistent issues, systemic issues within Child Protective Services, as well as the way that we are addressing and providing prevention services and support to children and families in need of assistance. We saw themes around co-sleeping and unsafe sleep, as well as themes of cannabis use and how that may have impacted safe decision-making and parenting, and how we are addressing that as a risk factor among families.
On concerns about DCYF screening practices
Medeiros: So we did find that not only were there inconsistencies in screening practices (in) applying the laws, policies, regulations in place for Child Protective Services, (but) there were inconsistent outcomes. There were cases that should have been screened in for investigation based on the standards in place that were not. They were screened out. But even one step further, there were cases that were screened out where families were seeking and looking for help, where they could have been diverted on a prevention track.
Obviously our goal is not to over-investigate and over-involve families in the child welfare system. Some of these families that were calling were really just in need of support and services, but we found that the services that they required, they were unable to engage in those either because they did not take the right path or get aligned with the right people at the department. So it was both an issue with inconsistent screening for child protective services investigations, as well as inconsistent responses in getting people aligned with prevention services where we could potentially intervene sooner and prevent child welfare involvement.
On the persistent problems at DCYF
Medeiros: I'm hesitant to say this is simply a dollars issue. I think we outlined in the report that this goes far beyond a problem that you can simply just throw money at. There is a need to align policy, law, the regulations, evidence-based systems that they have put in place; none of these right now align, which is really making the job challenging for the workers that are there. But I also think there is a need for additional support internally, additional oversight in how these decisions are being made, administrative oversight on the functions and efficiency of these units within DCYF.
However, staffing definitely was highlighted as a concern. We saw Child Protective Service investigators with caseloads well above the national best practice recommended caseloads. We saw that the support and response unit was genuinely unable to respond timely to families because they were inundated with cases and could not respond in the timeline that is outlined in their own policies. And so I do think staffing certainly plays a piece of it, but staffing alone is not going to solve that.
On the report’s recommendations
Medeiros: I think we would argue as a panel that they are all important recommendations, but as you will see if you review the report, we broke these down to address different areas of the system. I think there are some of those recommendations that aim at longer-term, systemic change or education of the community around certain issues. And then we have our recommendations that were more specific to Child Protective Service(s) practices, the Support and Response Unit, which is providing those prevention supports, and really calls out the need for immediate change to ensure that families are not left at risk.
There are recommendations in here that do require resources or potentially larger-scale change that may be challenging for the department to implement. We want to know about that to help us try to find ways that we can advocate and support those changes in other spaces. I think we have watched how the current operations have impacted children and families, and we are at a time where we know we can do better. We can do better, and now is the time to do that.
