Stanley incident prompts child welfare reforms
The removal of Hal and Michelle Stanley’s children from their Treasure Isle Road home in January 2015 was the genesis of four laws adopted during the 2017 regular session of the state Legislature that strengthen legislative oversight of the child welfare system and address foster care overcrowding.
The sponsor of the laws, state Sen. Alan Clark, R-District 13, of Lonsdale, said the Stanley incident pulled back the curtain on a child welfare system that’s fundamentally flawed. It proved to be a revelation to many, he said, including himself.
He filed 18 bills related to the incident, many of which addressed the effects of unsubstantiated allegations such as those that led to the Stanley children being placed in foster care for four months after the Garland County Sheriff’s Department’s Tactical Response Team executed a search warrant at the family’s home.
According to the complaint in the federal civil rights lawsuit the family filed in January against state and county officials, the Arkansas State Police’s Crimes Against Children Division had the children removed after the oldest minor child convinced adult neighbors to report his parents to the child-abuse hotline.
An administrative law judge ultimately ruled in 2015 that there was insufficient evidence to support the CACD’s true findings of abuse and neglect against Hal and Michelle Stanley. Last fall the CACD chose not to defend
its 12 true findings of educational neglect when the Stanleys appealed.
“(The Stanleys) were the driving force behind the bills,” said Clark, who brought the incident to the Legislature’s attention through the investigation he led as co-chair of the Joint Performance Review Committee. “It put it in the public eye and put a name and a face on it.
“We all probably know someone who’s had some type of run in with these organizations, whether good or bad, but the Stanley case gave some definiteness that the system wasn’t working.”
Clark said the JPR’s investigation was stymied by his inability to share an internal Department of Human Services email with other lawmakers.
Sent by a DHS Division of Children and Family Services supervisor to other DCFS personnel the day after the Stanley children were removed from their home, the email indicated the state’s intervention was motivated by the couple’s unconventional parenting and home schooling of their children rather than legitimate concerns about the children’s safety.
Clark called the email the “smoking gun” that proved DCFS and CACD had initiated their investigation in bad faith, but he said he was told by a Bureau of Legislative Research attorney that distributing the communication to other legislators would violate the confidentiality provision of the Child Maltreatment Act.
The Child Maltreatment Investigation Oversight Committee created by Act 713 won’t be bound by that restraint. Legislative members of the committee can disclose their findings to other lawmakers and the governor’s office.
“We’ll finally have some legislative oversight,” Clark said. “It will all be behind closed doors, but we can share what we find out with other legislators. It won’t be public, but it will be a lot more oversight than we’ve had so far.”
The committee can only review closed cases and will include a family law attorney who isn’t contracted by the state, a parent previously investigated for child maltreatment and an adult who was in foster care. Joe Churchwell, the Stanleys’ attorney, said the committee will be more representative of the people affected by DHS than if it were constituted only by professionals working in the child welfare system.
“It’s a good cross section of people that understand the system,” he said. “All of the other commissions were always completely manned by the stakeholders. By that I mean everyone that has a financial stake in finding abuse. That’s like the fox guarding the hen house.
“The new committee is a fair committee. It’s people that represent all interests. Not just those that make their living off putting children in foster care.”
Churchwell said he was part of the group that helped Clark draft three laws amending the state’s juvenile code. The collaboration included representatives from DCFS, Court Appointed Special Advocates, the administrative office of the courts, ad litem attorneys who represent children in state custody and attorneys appointed to represent indigent parents in dependent-neglect cases.
Act 1116 requires DHS to locate noncustodial parents, other relatives or fictive kin when it removes a juvenile from its home. If no safety issues are identified through a criminal-background check and check of the child maltreatment registry, DHS will be required to notify those parties that they are eligible custodians.
DHS is required to continue searching for an eligible party during the entirety of the child’s stay in state custody and be prepared to provide a report on the search effort. Eligible parties will be given preferential consideration, and trial home placements will be extended up to six months.
Act 701 grants juvenile courts the discretion to reinstate custody without parents having to complete all the elements of the case plan court staff develops for parents to follow during the reunification process.
“Sometimes it becomes clear the parents are doing a good job and the child is no longer in danger, but because of bureaucracy you have to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T’ before the child can come home” Clark said. “If there’s no longer an immediate danger, the courts are going to look at putting children back in their homes.”
Churchwell said the two laws should reduce the foster care overcrowding that a DHS-contracted consulting firm identified in a 2016 report. It found at least
300 child removals from January
2015 to March 2016 may have been unnecessary, contributing to a 30 percent increase in children entering the foster system from January 2015 to May 2016.
He said keeping children in their homes reduces the likelihood of the state placing them in dangerous environments. He cited the Clarence C. Garretson case as an example of the perils foster children confront. The Van Buren truck driver pleaded guilty last year in federal court to five counts of interstate transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.
Court filings said Garretson took the girls with him on his routes during the summer when they were out of school. At least
35 children were placed with him and his wife from May 1989 to December 2004. Multiple teenage foster children had reported to DHS that Garretson had sexually assaulted them over that time.
“What we’ve learned is the outcome for foster children is dire,” Churchwell said. “Eightysix percent of children found to be part of the sexual trafficking trade experienced abuse and neglect in the foster care system.
“It may take a couple of years to actually see the fruits, but we’re not going to have our system flooded with foster children. It will open up foster homes for the kids who need it, and the quality of foster care will increase.”
Churchwell said Act 1111 effectively ends the introduction of hearsay into the record during probable cause hearings held after a juvenile court issues an emergency order to remove a child from its home. The hearings are held 72 hours after the removal, limiting the time to prepare a defense against the allegations supporting the removal.
Churchwell said the rules of evidence are relaxed during the hearings, allowing the state to introduce evidence that would be inadmissible during an adjudication hearing that determines if the child will remain in state custody.
“At an adjudication hearing, hearsay is not admissible,” he said. “A lot of times hearsay comes directly from an anonymous call to the child-abuse hotline, especially if someone is using DHS as a weapon. At an adjudication hearing, you have time to gather witnesses and rebut allegations. You have a fair shot to defend yourself.”
Churchwell said unsupported allegations introduced during the probable cause phase become part of the case record and can be prejudicial to parents in later proceedings. Act 1111 allows parents and the state to enter into a stipulated agreement specifying the findings that support a probable cause order, requiring other evidence to be introduced during the adjudication phase where the rules of evidence are more stringent.
“If the lawyers agree to the stipulation, that’s it,” Churchwell said. “You can’t put on witnesses or introduce documents or investigative reports. It makes kiddie court more like adult court.”