Study: Danger spurs DCS

Analysis looks at neglect reports

A new report offers a breakdown of what state child-welfare workers mean when they say they have taken a child from a home because of “neglect.”

In most instances, it’s because a child has been exposed to a dangerous situation, such as witnessing domestic violence or being exposed to a risky situation, a new report by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy concludes.

The study analyzed 800 neglect reports made to the Department of Child Safety’s childabuse hotline over a twoyear period.

While DCS keeps details on the various types of neglect in its files, it lacks the ability to code them into its existing computer system, where they could be easily analyzed.

The study identified five broad categories of neglect that led state officials to place a child in foster care, a group home or with relatives.

It then broke apart those categories for a

more-detailed examination of the circumstances that merited removing the child.

The detailed breakdown of neglect could help DCS come up with more-targeted responses to the cases it investigates, lead researcher Erica Quintana wrote. For example, it could lead to more preventive strategies that would keep families together, she wrote, rather than placing the child out of the home.

It also could better inform community groups about the types of help that would keep a child from even entering DCS’ orbit, said Mike Faust, a DCS deputy director. DCS gets into the picture only after someone makes a complaint to the hotline, he said. By then, any preventive services are coming after a crisis, not before it.

There was widespread agreement on the importance of prevention in reducing neglect cases at a Wednesday meeting of the institute’s new Child Welfare Leadership Advisory Board. The members, who represent social-service agencies, government offices, the medical world and others, said the best way to prevent neglect was to act early.

“The public thinks the way to prevent abuse is to call the child-abuse hotline,” said Becky Ruffner, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Arizona, a nonprofit organization. But that’s not the answer; it has to come earlier, before small problems blow up into crises, she said.

The Morrison report was produced with a grant provided by the Arizona Community Foundation to examine more deeply Arizona’s child-welfare system. The Arizona Republic has also received foundation funding for its child-welfare reporting.

Overall, 70 percent of the reports DCS investigated during the 2013-15 study period were due to neglect. Abuse accounted for the other 30 percent. The most-recent numbers show 75 percent of hotline reports are classified as neglect.

The Morrison study noted Arizona is not alone in its broad-brush approach to neglect. Thirty-eight states, plus the District of Columbia, do separate reporting on medical neglect (Arizona is not one of them). But all other instances of neglect are lumped into one category, the study noted.

Dana Wolfe Naimark, president and CEO of the Children’s Action Alliance, said the study appeared to dispel the “urban legend” that drug abuse is the major cause of neglect cases.

She pointed to the study’s finding that in 55 percent of the cases where a child was removed from his home, the parent or caregiver was found to be abusing drugs or alcohol. That’s less than she was expecting, given the steady drumbeat that drugs are the problem, she said.

The failure of parents to keep tabs on their children was by far the dominant reason for neglect reports that resulted in removals. The study labeled this “supervisory neglect,” a broad category that primarily consisted of failure to protect children from dangerous situations, including domestic violence.

Other circumstances that led to such supervisory neglect include a parent being incarcerated, parents abandoning their child, leaving the child with an inappropriate caregiver, and not preventing the child from engaging in risky behavior.

Supervisory neglect equaled 85 percent of the removals, more than four times the next category: substance-exposed newborns, at 20 percent.

The other categories:

» Physical neglect, such as not providing adequate food, clothing or shelter, 14 percent.

» Medical neglect, 12 percent. » Emotional neglect, 5 percent. The study cautioned that only 12 percent of DCS hotline reports for the period examined resulted in a removal.