A few weeks back we reflected on the stories and trends that defined juvenile justice and child welfare in 2014.
So what might 2015 bring on the national stage? Here are a few things to watch on that front:
Differential Response Unraveling?
Years ago, differential response (DR) was heralded as a new solution, a better way to help families in crisis. At a basic level, DR splits reports of abuse or neglect that warrant further investigation into two tracks: traditional investigations and the new category of family assessments. In the family assessment track Child Protective Services offers voluntary services rather than using the threat of removing children to impose services.
In 2012, when the Department of Health and Human Services took applications for “waivers” from the spending rules of Title IV-E, the federal foster care entitlement, a handful of states made DR part of their plans.
But we may one day look back at 2014 as the year when the tide turned on DR. A federally funded evaluation found mixed results for three states that use DR: Ohio, Colorado and Illinois. The strongest indictment against the popular child protection “reform” came in the form of results out of Illinois, where families on the family assessment track were more likely to have re-reports of child abuse than families on the traditional track. The state did not even wait for the final results; it got out of the DR business just a few weeks before 2014.
Illinois is not alone. Minnesota was an early adopter of DR, and a 2004 evaluation of its program propelled the program to over half the states in the country. But the death of a child at the hands of his stepmother has sparked debate about the practice and just how hard state leadership is pushing it. Eric Dean, just four years of age, was the subject of 15 different abuse and neglect reports before he was brutally beaten to death, and received two family assessments.
[For more of this story, written by John Kelly, go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...e-big-questions/9192]
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