There’s a lot of talk nowadays about the dysfunctions in Arizona’s
child safety system. Right now, there are over 19,000 kids in foster care in
Arizona – over 40% are under age six. Our Department
of Child Safety (DCS) is overwhelmed by the number of calls that come in
every month requiring investigation. Their professional caseloads are
catastrophically high, making it difficult for each worker to devote the time
and attention each individual case needs. This also leads to huge employee
turnover, requiring the department to hire and train new workers on a constant
basis. That’s costly.
DCS constantly needs more resources to be able to tread
water – to help the kids that are brought to their attention attain
their most basic need: safety. Begrudgingly, our government hands over that
money. Most of us agree that the primary responsibility of the government,
after all, is keeping us safe. We can’t just leave a
three-year-old kid duct-taped in a trash bag in an apartment closet (an
extreme and rare example, but you get the point).
But we can’t sustain the growing influx of kids coming into
the DCS system. We can’t keep on needing to put more and more money into
intervening when a child is unsafe. We need to invest money in preventing kids
from being in unsafe environments in the first place.
How the heck do we do that? It’s harder to think and talk
about prevention than it is about intervention. It’s easier to count the kids
that we’re saving rather than the kids that we’ll never see in in a tragic news
story because they’ll never need to be saved. The result of prevention is measured
in the intangible absence of something rather than its blaring, desperate presence.
It’s also challenging to put aside our own feelings of anger
(perhaps directed at parents), frustration (perhaps directed at the government)
and resentment (perhaps at society in general) in order to wholeheartedly commit
to help children. But if you’re ready to try to do that, and help shift the
conversation to prevention, here’s a few arrows for your quiver:
·
The definition
of child maltreatment: child maltreatment is a broad category that includes
child abuse (physical, emotional and sexual) and neglect (physical and
emotional). Some people hear “child maltreatment” and assume it is less serious
than abuse and neglect. It actually encompasses both.
·
What prevention
is: Some people think that prevention is calling the DCS hotline to
report suspected child abuse. That’s actually intervention. Prevention is about
abuse and neglect NOT happening in the first place. Preventing child
maltreatment is about applying wisdom and knowledge of what we know works. Programs that are proven to strengthen
families and give them the tools to manage the stresses of life and parenting-
like Healthy Families, a parent mentoring program- these are the things we need
to invest in now to prevent child maltreatment and reduce the huge cost to
society later on.
·
The
root causes of abuse and neglect: VERY simply put, unmanageable parent
stress = child maltreatment. When a parent or caregiver cannot handle their own
stress because of lack of access to what they need, child maltreatment is
likely to occur. When parents have access to what they need to cope with stress
(social connections, knowledge of parenting, access to basic needs when they
have a crisis, etc.), child maltreatment doesn’t happen. Many people can
understand the root causes of child maltreatment, like a lack of mental health
services, lack of resources like affordable child care, lack of health
services, etc., but people
do not usually think of bolstering these kinds of things as a means of
preventing child maltreatment. We need to highlight, italicize, and underline
the need to sustain these basic services that promote health and safety as a solution to child abuse.
Talking about prevention in the face of a crisis needing
intervention takes intelligence, courage and resolve. It’s about putting aside
our own anger and biases and wholeheartedly committing to the health and happiness
of children- not just the ones that need saving now, but all of them. We know
what works. Let’s work towards an Arizona where kids are unencumbered by trauma
– where they can be kids.
