What the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel won't tell you about child welfare

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is running a three-part series on child welfare that is going to hurt a lot of children.

            This rebuttal appears after two of those parts have been published, because the damage this poor journalism can do to vulnerable children is too great to sit and wait for the final installment.  It will be updated as needed.

            This series of stories is a throwback to the worst child welfare reporting of the 1990s, resurrecting a series of false premises and distortions that were common at the time. Those distortions contributed to the near collapse of many of America’s child welfare systems (most of which never were very good to begin with).  Those distortions are a major reason that in 1999, more than 550,000 children were trapped in foster care on any given day.  They are a major reason why the number of children torn from their families over the course of a year escalated year after year, peaking at over 307,000 in 2005 – all during a time when actual child abuse was declining.

Much of the journalism of child welfare has matured since then.  That’s part of the reason there finally have been significant declines in the number of children in foster care, and some reduction in the number of children taken away from their families  each year.

But there has been no such maturity at the Journal-Sentinel.  A succession of reporters going back at least to 1993 has used the paper’s news pages to crusade for taking away children and censor dissent.  The only exception during this time also was the brief period when the reporter on the child welfare beat was Black.

This kind of immature reporting is enormously harmful to children. 

Based on 34 years of experience, first as a reporter myself, as the author of a book on child welfare, and now as a child advocate, based on NCCPR’s archive of more than 50,000 child welfare news stories, and based on seeing the impact of journalism like this in community after community, I can offer some very sad predictions:

● Because of this shoddy journalism, it is almost certain that in Milwaukee, which already takes away children at one of the highest rates of any large metropolitan area, a rate four times that of metropolitan Chicago, even more children will be torn needlessly from everyone they know and love.

● Because of this shoddy journalism, children will languish in foster care longer and be moved more often from foster home to foster home.

● And because of this shoddy journalism, more children almost certainly will be abused – some in foster care, where the actual rate of abuse is vastly higher than the Journal Sentinel stories let on (see details below), and others in their own homes – because overwhelmed workers will have even less time to find them.

            The reporter, Croker Stephenson, went in with a set of preconceived notions; beliefs he has held since taking over the beat two years ago.  He did exactly what the late St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor William Woo, warned reporters against: He became trapped in what Woo called a “master narrative” and systematically omitted – censored – any information that might allow readers to draw conclusions other than his own.

  So NCCPR has created this website to provide the information the Journal Sentinel left out.  Our full report is available here.

Piling on the "poonges"

When I started reading this series, I had no idea if the children in these two families ever should have been taken from their parents, or if they should have been reunified.  Now that the whole series is over, I still don’t know.

My best guess is that in one case, removal might have been necessary, in the other it would not have been had the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare provided the right kinds of help.  My guess is that reunification could have succeeded in the case where it failed, again had BMCW done its job, and it can succeed in the second case if BMCW does its job.

But I’m not sure.  Not even close.  Crocker Stephenson has failed to give me the information I need to make a truly informed decision either way.

Worse, however, he has placed these cases in a grossly-distorted context, in which any effort to keep families together is seen as a triumph of “parents rights” over “children’s rights.”  This is discussed in the extended critique of parts one and two.

There are more examples of this false framing of the issue in part three.  But in this discussion, I focus on some of the other failings in the reporting:

            It’s been 34 years since I was in Journalism School, but one of the lessons I remember concerns not misusing your power as a journalist to belittle people. 

            You can’t cover up for them, and the pursuit of truth may require exposing not only their human frailty but also their misdeeds – or worse.  But you don’t go out of your way to rub salt in the wounds just to make the story more colorful.

            In particular, if someone is uneducated, you don’t go out of your way to expose their poor grammar, spelling or speech.  You don’t clean up the quotes – and in a profile about  a particular individual there may be no way around using them exactly as spoken.  But under other circumstances, you may simply be able to paraphrase, and not use a direct quote at all.

            Apparently, things have changed more than I thought.

THE “TROUBLE” WITH VERGIL

            The photo essays accompanying the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s three-part series include captions suggesting that the villain of one case is the mother’s boyfriend, Vergil.  The photo captions suggested he might now be the big obstacle to returning two-year-old Denice  to her mother Danettea – and to the infant son the couple was allowed to keep. Even the judge expresses concerns about Vergil. 

So one waited for the big revelation in today’s installment.  Would it turn out that Vergil was a child molester?  Was he beating up the children’s mother?  Was he running a drug ring out of the house?

            No.  Vergil did serve three years for “a drug conviction.”  But that’s not it.  Apparently there are two huge problems with Vergil:

            ● He doesn’t trust the child welfare system

            ● He expresses himself forcefully – and with terrible grammar.

            Actually, it’s reporter Crocker Stephenson who thinks the grammar is a big deal.  So he decides to take the normally wise adage that journalists should “show, not tell” to extremes – making a point of quoting an example of Vergil’s poor writing.

            I’ve spent so much time on this because of something else I learned in J-School: the value of “the little picture,” the example which may be small in itself, but illustrates the larger story.

            In this case, seemingly adding a little color to the narrative while actually going out of his way to belittle Vergil illustrates the contempt for the poor Black families  Crocker Stephenson writes about; contempt that lies just beneath a veneer of civility and empathy.

LITTLE DIGS

            The story is replete with such examples – little digs, what my wife’s family would call “poonges.”

            Like this:  After a court hearing, an aunt, who was present but otherwise is entirely irrelevant to the story, is mentioned just so Stephenson can note that she “wore a T-shirt that said, ‘All stressed out and nobody to choke.’”

            Or how about two poonges for the price of one:  When Denice is visiting, coming to a home filled with other children, Stephenson writes, “A 50-inch flat screen television - purchased with the insurance proceeds of a fire at their previous apartment - remains on the whole time.”

            How dare a poor person spend on a luxury item!  And keeping it on all the time?  That’s just not done in the homes of people like us.          Doesn’t Danettea know that the proper way to handle these things is to “eat on the back deck under a blue sky” – the way the foster parents do it?

            In contrast things that are relevant are overlooked or devoid of context.

            There’s the judge who refuses to allow more visits between Denice and her Danettea because, he claims, that would be cruel if he subsequently terminates parental rights.  How so?  If the foster parents are as wonderful as Stephenson makes them out to be, there is no reason to think they won’t keep Denice’s mother in her life after termination.  And I am aware of nothing in the scholarly literature about visitation which says that giving a child more joyous memories of the family she ultimately loses would be cruel.  (Not to be morbid, but if you were suddenly diagnosed with a terminal illness would you want less or more time with your loved ones?)

 Meanwhile, limiting visits reduces the chances for reunification, both because Denice can’t prove herself, and because it makes it easier for the county child welfare agency to play the “bonding card” – as in “Well, yes, your honor, maybe we never should have taken this child at birth, maybe there were better alternatives, and maybe we could have reunified sooner, but the foster parents are The Only Parents She’s Ever Known.”  (Of course, if “bonding” trumps everything else that means, if I kidnap your child at birth, flee to Mexico, take really good care of her, and return two years later, presumably I should be allowed to keep her.)

BEHIND BRANDY'S RELAPSE

            In the second case, reunification fails and the mother, Brandy, relapses.  And no wonder.  Children who have been traumatized by their removal by bouncing from home to home and from two failed reunifications suddenly are returned home.  Brandy doesn’t know how to cope.  She’s overprotective – yes, overprotective – of one child and that increases the tension.  And it sounds like she’s very disappointed that the children are wary and sometimes hostile and it wasn’t the happily-ever-after she’d expected.  So it all goes terribly wrong.

            But where was the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare in all this?  Always hovering during visits, not to help but to observe – they appear to have offered little or nothing after reunification to help the family adjust.  What would have happened had there been, for example, an Intensive Family Preservation Services intervention when the children were reunified? Quite possibly, a very different ending.

            Indeed, throughout this case, many items on the list of “services” Brandy went through sound more like a set of hoops she had to jump through to prove herself than actual help.  Nothing on the list involved concrete help to ameliorate the worst problems of poverty.

            But most revealing, had Stephenson chosen to pursue it, was the system’s response to Vergil.  In making that point, I have to reprint what he wrote, and that means doing exactly what I criticize Stephenson for doing.  But I don’t see a way around that, and I assume that almost everyone coming to this Blog already has read it.

Here’s that section of the story:

Vergil is trying to help get the children back. He used his time in prison to teach himself law. On Danettea's behalf, he filed a federal lawsuit, replete with spelling and grammar errors, alleging the removal of her children by the bureau was unconstitutional and demanding their immediate return.

Vergil's mistrust of the child welfare system is profound.

"I would like to inform you that I will not speak with you or any oneelse in regards to (Danettea's) CaseI will not and canttrust your organization who's job is to destroy functional families as we all ready no)," he writes in a letter to Denice's caseworker, Laura Reitz.
"I have no trust in you or anyone else in your organization, you have twisted facts and the truth."

Vergil's legal efforts have thus far gone nowhere, other than to raise the question to Denice's caseworker and supervisor of whether Danettea is acting in her children's behalf or in thrall to her boyfriend. [Emphasis added].

Vergil's influence on Danettea was a factor in why her court-appointed lawyer quit in March.

In a motion to withdraw, Jon LaMendola listed among his reasons "requests by the client's significant other, (Vergil), to file motions that Attorney LaMendola believes are frivolous."

Presiding Children's Court Judge Marshall Murray raised this concern - Danettea's dependence on Vergil - during a hearing in which he appointed a new attorney, John Miller.
"You need to start listening to yourself," Murray warned.
"I am listening to myself," Danettea replied.

            In other words, Vergil flunked what has been aptly called “the attitude test.”  He failed to grovel before the caseworkers and others in authority.  That makes it harder for even a mother to get her child back.  And if the parent is a big Black man…

            The attitude test cuts both ways.  There have been several cases around the country in which children have been returned to extremely dangerous homes, and died there, because parents knew how to play the system – they knew how to act humble and grateful and give thanks for the “counseling” and “parent education” bestowed upon them.

            (By the way, the vignette in which the lawyer quits is the only time a lawyer for a birth parent makes an appearance in this entire series – their views, which might contradict Stephenson’s “master narrative” are otherwise excluded.)

            But instead of questioning why Vergil’s views of the system – or his grammar – are remotely relevant to whether Danice will be safe in the home, Stephenson piles on.

ONE STEP UP FROM VOODOO

            So Stephenson writes skeptically about how reuniting families is based on things like “…the belief, in the case of Denice, that a mother who thinks it is not her but rather the system that is dysfunctional, can change.”

            And that’s after two paragraphs piling on one negative assessment after another, lifted  from what appears to be a psychological evaluation, though the exact source is unclear.

            But you’ll never know from Stephenson’s work, that “psych evals” are one step up from voodoo.  You can, however, find out how they really work in the story on Page 13 of this issue of the New York City publication Child Welfare Watch  and in the Michigan Race Equity Review, which documents cut-and-paste "psych evals," in which evaluators take boilerplate they wrote about one case and apply it to another.

            So the idea that the system may, in fact, be at least partly at fault is belittled.  The implication is clear: Perhaps because of the machinations of that Svengali-with-poor-grammar, Vergil, Danettea is, to use that favorite child welfare phrase, “in denial.”

            And then there is this one telling observation from Danettea, which suggests a lot more insight than the psych eval gives her credit for:

"I don't know how it is that I am fit to have my infant - who is the most defenseless - but can't have my other kids," Danettea says.

"I don't think they have any intention of giving my children back."

            One can argue that the mistake is letting her keep the infant, or the mistake is keeping the two-year-old out of the house.  But she’s right: It makes no sense to leave the infant in the home and the two-year-old in foster care.

           

            Unless of course, the answer is that the two-year-old is in the home of those nice middle-class foster parents whom “we” like so much better – and wouldn’t she be “better off” if we just left her there?

            Ultimately, Crocker Stephenson’s story sounds like a report written by some Child Protective Services caseworkers – and not the good ones.  He’s ever-censorious, always ready with a wagging finger, always waiting for what one former foster parent calls “the gotcha moment.”  Fortunately, there is less of this kind of casework than there used to be.  And less of this kind of journalism, too.

            There’s one other thing I learned in journalism school, that is relevant.  It involves something I mentioned briefly in the detailed critique of these stories, but deserves more attention: When you write a news story, you’re not supposed to make stuff up.

            I’ll return to that tomorrow.

Back to basics: You’re not supposed to make stuff up

            At least two people taking part on an online “chat” with Journal-Sentinel reporter Crocker Stephenson asked him how it felt to be present when Brandy, one of the mothers he was profiling, relapsed and started smoking crack.

            But Stephenson wasn’t present.  Rather he used an interview with Brandy, in which she even re-enacted what happened, to write what would become the lead for this story.

            Similarly, a scene in the hospital when Denice, a child of the other mother profiled, was born also is based on interviews and records.

            Whether this now-common technique belongs in journalism at all is an interesting question, but not for this Blog.  Stephenson prominently disclosed how he wrote these scenes in a sidebar for the series.  With hindsight, it seems, it wasn’t prominent enough, but I don’t think the reporter can be blamed for that.

            A much more serious problem is a third recreated scene.  This time, Stephenson offers no explanation for how he “knows” what happened.  The scene appears to be pure speculation in the service of Stephenson’s “master narrative” – the erroneous claim that an overwhelming desire to reunify families in the name of “parents rights” blinds the system to the “best interests” of children.

            That thesis appears throughout the series but it is most prominent in a sidebar to part one.  The headline sums up Stephenson’s master narrative, declaring as fact that “Parents rights trump children’s rights.”

            The part that appears to be pure speculation involves a case Stephenson already reported on in detail months before.  This was a case in which the family had been reunified and, after several months caseworkers were unaware of any problems.  The question was whether to continue monitoring the family.

            Everyone except the parents’ lawyers said the monitoring should continue – and that everyone included the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare.

            But the parents lawyers argued that the parents had done everything asked of them, no one had any evidence of ongoing abuse and therefore supervision should end.  The judge agreed.

            Two weeks later, one of the twins, referred to in court records as E.G., suffered a severe injury caused by shaken baby syndrome.   Only then was it discovered that the child also had suffered many, many other very serious injuries, some of them almost certainly while the family was under supervision.

            In his first story about this case, several months ago, Stephenson’s “master narrative” emerges when we writes:

            A Journal Sentinel investigation of [the parents’] history, chronicled in the parents' criminal files and in the victim's children court files, raises questions of whether a strong social and legal bias toward reuniting children with their parents blinded those who, on Jan. 6, might have rescued E.G. from his suffering and protected him from the dangers to come. [Emphasis added].

(“Raises questions” is the standard euphemism for “this is what I, the reporter, think, but I’m not allowed to say it.)

The story also includes this:

“The mother lifted one of the boys from their stroller and hugged him in front of the judge. She did not pick up the other.”

Stephenson then reveals that it was the twin who was not picked up who had suffered all those injuries.

In this story, Stephenson does not suggest that anyone should have been suspicious at that very moment, without benefit of hindsight.

But in the sidebar that ran on Sunday, Stephenson told the story differently.  He told it in a way that got around the key problem he had in using the case to bolster his master narrative – the fact that BMCW wanted to continue supervision.

This time he embellishes the scene, concluding his story with this paragraph:

It is not clear how many of the injuries the 16-month-old had already endured as he sat tucked in a stroller in [Judge] Yamahiro's courtroom, surrounded by child welfare experts who, as they debated his parents' rights, did not notice the agony E.G. was suffering.  [Emphasis added].

            Although I’m sure the twins were in the courtroom that day, there is nothing to indicate that Croker Stephenson was.   His earlier, much more extensive story on the case makes no mention of his being in attendance (and if he was it would mean he didn’t notice the agony either – since it is nowhere mentioned in that first story).

  The idea that the child’s agony was readily apparent, if not for everyone being distracted by their fanatical devotion to “parents’ rights,” is pure speculation. Indeed, it would mean that not only the judge the parents lawyers and BMCW were oblivious to the suffering, but also the prosecutor and the child’s own guardian ad litem – who came from the same office that gave Stephenson the “parents rights trump children’s rights” quote that became the headline on the story.

In fact, it appears that the twins’ parents were manipulative as well as brutal.  Odds are, were the suffering truly apparent, they would have come up with some excuse to leave that child home.

Of course I’m just speculating.  But I’m an advocate. I’m allowed to do that, and I’m disclosing that fact.

Reporters are not supposed to speculate in news stories.  And they’re certainly not supposed to pass their speculation off as fact.

But Stephenson wasn’t going for facts – he was going for visceral response – closing the story that lays out his parents rights vs. children’s rights thesis with an image of professionals so fanatical about “parents rights” that they were willfully blind to obvious pain. 

That comes perilously close to something far worse than recreating a scene.  It comes awfully close to making stuff up.

Oh, wait.  Let me put that another way: The stories raise questions about whether the reporter made stuff up.

Actual date of post: Sept. 22, 2010

Does the Goldilocks Defense work both ways?

            It’s the first line of defense journalists typically use when they’re accused of writing a biased story: The Goldilocks Defense.  It works this way:

            Suppose Joe Journalist has just written a story about the new health care law.  Dan Democrat sends him an e-mail complaining that the story was biased against the law, supposedly placing far too much emphasis on what critics say and not enough about the benefits touted by proponents.

            Odds are overwhelming that, if Joe responds at all, his response will be: “Ah, but you know what?  I also received this e-mail from Ron Republican, and he says I went too easy on the bill and underplayed the criticism. So if you think my story was too hard, and he thinks my story was too soft, then the story must be juuuuuuuuust right.”

            I’ve always thought the Goldilocks Defense was pretty dumb.  If both sides are criticizing a story for opposite reasons that alone doesn’t make either side’s criticism more or less valid.  It may simply mean that the story was biased, and the critics from one side are even more biased.

            The Goldilocks Defense also tacitly confirms the great unacknowledged bias of some journalism – what liberal media critic Jeff Cohen calls “the bias of the center;” the assumption that the truth always lies “somewhere in between.”

            But since the Goldilocks Defense is so prevalent, let’s see how it might apply to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s recent child welfare stories:

            There were a number of comments arguing that the series was too hard on family preservation.  But I did not see even one that said the series was too soft on family preservation – too favorable to the idea of working to keep families together.

And while I saw lots and lots of comments from adoptive and foster parents praising the series to the skies – and then going on to complain about how outrageous it was that the particular child confiscated from a poor person and placed with them hadn’t been taken from her or his parents forever soon enough; or worse, was returned to those parents, I saw no praise for the series from advocates of family preservation.

So, if the fact that opposite sides of an argument both objet to a story supposedly proves the story was fair, what does it prove if only one side is upset, and the other side is thrilled?

(Actual date of post: September 23, 2010)

Things they didn’t teach me in J-School (and other lessons from the “Chats”)

            There are some interesting lessons from the three on-line chats conducted by Crocker Stephenson and, maybe the photographer on the project Kirstyna Wents-Graff (All responses are labeled as coming from them both, but it sure sounds like Stephenson’s “voice.”)

            I’m not going to comment on the deluge of birth parent bashing posts, from readers clearly encouraged by the tone and slant of the series (See the previous post).  But a few others merit special attention:

            ●The untold story of Vergil.  He’s the boyfriend of Danettea, one of the mothers profiled.  As noted in a previous post, though he’s portrayed as a key villain in all this, his only actual failings are daring to speak up loudly about what he sees as the unfairness of the system – and poor grammar.

            But “Seven” from St. Louis posted a comment claiming that there was a lot that was positive in Vergil’s past, and he listed several items.  I have no idea if any of the claims is true, but, apparently, neither does Stephenson, who blew off these claims by writing “Seven, This was not a story about Vergil.”

          So it’s o.k. to paint an entirely distorted, one-sided picture of someone who is an important figure in a news story, so long as the story isn’t about that person.  Now there’s a lesson I missed in J-School.

          ● Confusing poverty with neglect.  Several times Stephenson was asked how he chose the particular families he profiled – and each time he ducked the question.  The first time the question came from Patricia McManus of Milwaukee, who wrote:

Why did you only choose families in which there is drug abuse or physical physical abuse. Those are real, but there are other cases in which the bureau delays or stops reunification because families are poor. …  Are there cases in which reunification is not possible? Absolutely, but … I know of several mothers who contacted the bureau, not because of abuse, but for not have resources to care for their children and the bureau has fought to take their children from them. …

A: Crocker Stephenson and Kristyna Wentz-Graff - I hear your frustration, Patricia. Poverty is not abuse or neglect. Children are not supposed to be yanked from their families just because their families are poor. But yes, it happens. I think you hit a key point: we need to keep kids out of the system to begin with. The bureau is moving this way. If it can be done safety, keep kids in their homes and provide support services. I hope this is the right direction.

Stephenson never answers the question about how these cases were chosen; then he regurgitates agency boilerplate – adding the claim that “The bureau [of Milwaukee Child Welfare] is moving that way.  But the data on entries into care for Milwaukee County show nothing of the kind.

● Another question Stephenson ducks came from “BothellMom, Bothell WA”:

Why is this story being told from the perspective lenses of white people? Are there African American photojournalists or writers that are participating in the process. I'm from Milwaukee and know that there are two very distinctly different Milwaukee experiences from day to day and minute to minute. I believe that this child SHOULD have the chance to be with her biological mother. … at parenting their children? ABSOLUTELY. THAT is the best interests of the child.

A: Crocker Stephenson and Kristyna Wentz-Graff - Thank you for your comment, BothellMom.

Here’s the answer Stephenson wouldn’t give you, BothellMom: Odds are no African American photojournalists or writers took part in the process.  Indeed, the one time since the early 1990s, when the regular reporter on this beat was African American also was the one and only time all sides of child welfare stories were included on the news pages of the Journal Sentinel.

● Reporters who don’t do their homework: Connie Mills of Memphis, Tenn. posed this question:

I work at Youth Villages: www.youthvillages.org. Our counselors restore and reunify families in 10 states and DC. After reading the series, wondered whether any intensive help was provided to the moms during the reunification process? …  Our counselors come into the home at least 3 times a week when children are being reunified and work in the neighborhood, school and in peer groups. They are on call 24/7 in case there is a crisis. Services last 4 to 6 months and give families who have been separated through the child welfare system, their best chance. Were those types of intensive services ever provided to these families?

A: Crocker Stephenson and Kristyna Wentz-Graff - Connie, Brandy was receiving safety services through the bureau and through the boys' on-going case manager. I do not know how these stack up to what your agency does.

For cryin’ out loud Crocker, you write that you followed these cases for eight months.  In the end, in Brandy’s case, reunification failed.  One of the most important single issues is what the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare did, or failed to do to make that reunification work – and you don’t know

          What Youth Villages does is exactly what was needed here – indeed, I suggested something similar in the overview of the stories’ failings posted at the very start of this Blog.  (And, by the way, Youth Villages is an excellent organization that revamped its entire program when it realized that family preservation was a far better option for most of the children in its care.)  I tried to make these points during the chat itself, but Stephenson did not post them.

         

He does, however, go on to take a cheap shot at Brandy:

Brandy told me, at one point, that she did not feel she was getting the support she needed. At another, she complained that they were always in her home. Clearly, reunification is a time of profound change and families need all the support -- from the bureau and from the community -- they can get.

But there is no inherent contradiction in Brandy’s comments.  It is entirely possible that BMCW was always there with a wagging finger and rarely if ever with a helping hand.  I don’t know that, of course, but neither does Crocker Stephenson.  And he should have found out before the stories were published.

● Here’s a scary one, from “Foster Parent, Milwaukee”:

Q: Foster Parent, Milwaukee - Are you able to cite any of the research that "proves" children are better off with their biological parents? We are told this over and over, yet no one is able to find the actual research that supposedly supports this. I would love to find the information, and be able to read it for myself. We are foster parents and I am a former Bureau Worker, so I feel I have an advantage coming from two different perspectives. My opinion, however, remains unchanged. Parents should have a chance, once chance, to meet the requirements set by the court and prove their capability to provide a safe home for their child.

Stephenson did question the one chance idea.  But he allowed this person to wallow in his/her ignorance about the research – ignorance that is particularly frightening coming from “a former Bureau worker.”  He could have told her about these studies, or this one, for example.  He knows about both.  But he didn’t.

● Supporting one of the worst options. Stephenson reveals his bias again when someone suggests that a great way to help is to become a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA).  Stephenson declares:

A: Crocker Stephenson and Kristyna Wentz-Graff  Yes! It is a great program. If you want to make a difference in the life of needy child, consider becoming a Court Appointed Special Advocate.

In this case he may simply not know about the study, commissioned by the National CASA Association itself which found that the program’s only “accomplishment” is to prolong foster care and reduce the chances of placement with a relative instead of a stranger.  Details, and a link to the study are available here. 

● A smarter comment from someone claiming to work inside the system came from someone calling himself, what else, “Insider, Milwaukee”:

Q: Insider, Milwaukee WI - Crocker - Both you and the nccpr get it wrong. The real story here is an incomprehensible and inconsistent approach to child protection in Milwaukee county. You want to make this big political statement about parents rights vs. children's rights, and try and paint the Bureau one way. As someone working on this inside you miss the real big problems at the BMCW - consistency. Social workers at the bureau do things the way they want to do them. If they want to cut corners and "partner" with parents and avoid the extra work of detaining kids, then so be it. The culture at the bureau allows it. If you gave the exact same case to 5 workers at BMCW, you would invariably get 5 different responses.  …  This is an unfortunate development for Milwaukee's kids, and you contribute through promotion of your own agenda. You are missing what is really going on here.

A: Crocker Stephenson and Kristyna Wentz-Graff - Insider, thanks for your comments.

I sent this response, which Stephenson didn’t post: Insider raises a good point.  Child welfare systems are indeed arbitrary, capricious and cruel, making mistakes in all directions - and what happens to a child often depends on which caseworker shows up at the door and what mood she’s in.  But it also depends, a lot, on what was on the front page of the local newspaper that day.  And given what’s been on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, you can bet there will be more removals, fewer reunifications and prolonged foster care.  Sometimes, those will, in fact be the right decisions.  More often they won’t. 

● I also tried to respond to “Cal Gunn, Milwaukee” who asked this reasonable question:

Q: Cal Gunn, Milwaukee - What is an acceptable level of detention? You detractors at nccpr seem to say that Milwaukee detains too many kids. It seems to me the number of detentions should be based on the number of kids being abused. I happen to believe that Milwaukee has a very high rate of DV and child abuse, meaning there SHOULD be more detentions. You seem to advocate here for more detention leading to foster care …  

In a response Stephenson did not post, I explained that Milwaukee tears apart families at a rate far higher than most metropolitan areas, double the rate of Miami for example and quadruple the rate of metropolitan Chicago.  In those two communities independent evaluations show that as they reformed to take fewer children, child safety improved.

So while it certainly is possible that Milwaukee Wisconsin is a cesspool of depravity with double the rate of child abuse of Miami and quadruple the rate of child abuse of Chicago, the more likely explanation is that Milwaukee is taking away a lot of children needlessly.

It also is notable that someone who strongly supports taking away more children got the impression that Stephenson’s stories were advocating for just that, one more indication that he can’t support this journalism with the Goldilocks Defense.

In what may be the final post to this Blog on Monday, I’ll preview the big project Crocker Stephenson may turn to next.

(Actual date of post: September 24, 2010).

Will the next project be the "National Model Worker" story?

            In the first of his mystery novels set in Shanghai, Chinese émigré writer Qiu Xiaolong writes about how, in the days of Mao Zedong, The People’s Daily would run stories about “National Model Workers” to inspire the masses.

            There is an equivalent in the journalism of child welfare – and a comment Crocker  Stephenson made during one of the online “chats” he conducted in connection with his recent stories makes me wonder if it may be his next project at the Journal Sentinel:

After bashing a child welfare agency for leaving children in dangerous homes, reporters decide that finally it’s time to tell the other side of the story.  No, not children wrongfully removed – that would run counter to the master narrative that drove the original stories. 

            Instead, the typical version of “the other side of the story” isn’t really the other side at all.  On the contrary, it reinforces the master narrative, rather than challenging it.  For this story, or series, the reporter follows around a caseworker for an agency like the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare for a day or a week or, in rare cases, longer.  Of course, we’re not talking about the typical caseworker, who almost always is well-meaning, but new to the job and sometimes pretty clueless.  No, we’re talking about a worker almost always chosen by the child welfare agency itself – someone handpicked for her inspiring passion and dedication.  In other words, a National Model Worker.

            Just how ridiculous this kind of thing can get is illustrated by what happened a few years ago in Seattle, when it still was a two-newspaper town:

Baby M was 2 days old when Mary Marrs, a veteran CPS investigator, showed up. "Do you know why I am here?" she asked Liz and Mike.

                                  --Seattle Times, December 8, 2005

 "Why do you think I'm here?" [Mary] Marrs asked the young mother, beginning the same way she always does. 

                                    --Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 28, 2005

            So, what does the reporter usually learn from the National Model Worker? He learns that caseworkers are “damned if we do and damned if we don’t” and that life and death decisions for children come down to a “gut feeling” or “gut instinct.”

YOU’RE ONLY DAMNED IF YOU DON’T

In fact, in more than 30 years of following child welfare, first as a reporter and now as an advocate, I've never heard of a caseworker being fired, demoted, suspended, or even slapped on the wrist for taking away too many children. All of those things have happened to workers if a child died or was seriously hurt in her or his own home. The same is true of judges and agency chiefs.

You can take away huge numbers of children needlessly, subject perhaps one-third of them to abuse in foster care itself, (a fact Crocker Stephenson goes out of his way to leave out of his recent series) destroy the psyches of many of the rest, and have them emerge years later, unable to love or trust anyone, and while the children will suffer terribly, the worker or the judge or the agency chief will endure no penalty. They might even be praised for it, gaining a laudatory nickname like "The Terminator" or "Cap'n Hook."

When it comes to taking away children, caseworkers are not “damned if they do and damned if they don’t” they’re only damned if they don't.

As for gut feelings, it never seems to occur to reporters, when they hear this comment, to ask whether we’re supposed to be a nation of laws, not digestive tracts. And, it seems, no reporter, certainly not Crocker Stephenson, would find a truly passionate, committed parental defense attorney (if there are any in Milwaukee) and follow her or him around for awhile and learn how their work actually helps children.  Indeed, it seems, he wouldn’t even bother to speak to one, the way, say, the Brooklyn Eagle did recently.

And you can bet that any National Model Worker Crocker Stephenson follows will offer up the usual boilerplate about, really, truly hating to remove children and only doing it as a last resort (ever hear anyone say they use foster care as a first resort)? But, after all “children’s rights” have to come before parent’s rights and we can’t “wait around” forever for the parents to “clean up their acts.”

Whenever I hear that latter phrase, and one hears it often from people who share Stephenson’s view of child welfare, I think of a man I wrote about 20 years ago in my book, Wounded Innocents. His name was James Norman.

Norman was a steelworker in suburban Chicago,

He had to give up full-time work to care for his wife when she became ill.

After she died he developed a heart condition. Eventually he fell behind on the bills and the electricity to his apartment was cut off. Then, the helping hand of child protective services struck.

A caseworker found a messy home with food spoiling in the refrigerator because there was no electricity. So she took the children the spot – and charged James Norman with “financial neglect.”

The foster home was ten miles and three bus rides away. Norman walked a mile at each end of the trip to visit his children.

The people at the child welfare agency could have provided James Norman with homemaking help, but they did not. They could have provided emergency cash so he could get the power turned back on, but they did not. They could have helped him find a job, but they did not. At least they could have provided transportation to help him visit his children. But they wouldn’t do that either.

In effect, the agency told James Norman to drop dead. And 12 days before a hearing at which he might have gotten his children back, he obliged child protective services and did just that.

James Norman died at the age of 38. He’d always had a weak heart, but it took child protective services to break it – and to make orphans of the Norman children.

James Norman left a noble legacy. He was the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that led to a ruling that Illinois routinely broke up families because they were poor. A settlement requires providing a series of services to families on the verge of losing children to foster care because of poverty, including emergency cash, called “Norman money.”

Even now, that’s not always done, of course.  But it’s one of the reasons a child in metropolitan Chicago is only one-quarter as likely to be taken from her or his parents as a child from Milwaukee.

But whenever I read about the supposed need for parents to “clean up their acts” I wonder: What was it, exactly, about James Norman’s “act” that needed to be cleansed?

All of which leads me to this comment from one of the online chats conducted by Crocker Stephenson in connection with his series, and Stephenson’s response:

Q: CM, WI - When are you going to do an article on the day to day tasks of a Buearu worker? The workers get bashed for not caring, not doing their jobs, not looking out for parents and children, yet from the articles I have read the past several years, no one has outlined a workers daily job. …

A: Crocker Stephenson and Kristyna Wentz-Graff - CM, Good caseworkers should get to wear super-hero costumes. They are amazing. A story of what they do is long over-due.

I can’t wait.

(Actual date of post: September 27, 2010)