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Book review—How scandal drives child welfare policy
Children and Youth Services Review 35 (2013) 1–2
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Children and Youth Services Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth
Book review Book review—How scandal drives child welfare policy Juliet F. Gainsborough, Scandalous politics: Child welfare policy in the States, Georgetown University Press, 2010 Conventional wisdom advises that meaningful change in public child welfare agencies is largely a consequence of pressure by the public, whose attention is rapt, at least momentarily, when a scandal occurs. Governmental care and custody of children often gains rightful infamy for well-publicized tragedies but far less often achieves just recognition for protecting vulnerable children or strengthening fragile families, though the balance must surely be tipped by the latter. Media attention is garnered when a child dies at the hands of a parent previously investigated by child welfare authorities, or when a child is victimized by presumably caring foster parents to whom the child had been entrusted, or when a child drifts from one foster home to another until adulthood is reached, with no “forever family” having been established. Though the media scrutiny that results from these tragedies undoubtedly captivates its audience for a time, can it sustain public interest in a way that galvanizes essential, systematic reforms within the child welfare system? In Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States, Juliet F. Gainsborough offers a thoughtful, evidence-informed attempt to answer this question. Gainsborough is currently an associate professor of political science at Bentley University in Massachusetts and holds a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. Her interest in the politics of child welfare grew from her service as a volunteer on a Citizen Review Panel in Florida, which evaluated foster care cases in lieu of a judge. Gainsborough also authored Fenced Off: The Suburbanization of American Politics (2001), which examines how national politics have been shaped by the population's movement to the suburbs. Gainsborough begins her analysis of the politics of child welfare with an informative, historical account of modern child welfare policy in the United States, including a detailed examination of the most significant pieces of federal child welfare legislation. In particular, Gainsborough's uses her exploration of the 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (AACWA), which emphasized family preservation, and the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which accentuated child permanency, to exemplify how shifting public interests influence public policy. Though much of the focus of Gainsborough's book is on state politics, the overview of federal policy is critical for the novice reader to gain understanding of the federal incentives and requirements that significantly affect state child welfare agencies. However, Gainsborough's mastery of federal child welfare legislation also provides enough useful detail to capture the attention of both novices and child welfare experts. Next, Gainsborough analyzes the impact of child welfare scandals in three designated states: Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey. Outcomes of scandal in each of these states is examined based on the unique features of the case or cases that drew public fire, as well as on the distinctive political context within which policy was subsequently shaped or not. Finally, Gainsborough compares and contrasts the effects of scandal among the three states and draws conclusions based on her analysis.
0190-7409/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2012.09.021
Gainsborough explains that Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey were chosen for analysis because they experienced major scandals within a specified and relatively narrow time frame (1999 to 2003). Thus, each scandal occurred roughly within the same historical context in terms of enactment of national legislation, allowing Gainsborough a means to control for the influence of federal activity. At the same time, variations across states in terms of nature of the particular scandal and the state political arena at the time the scandal occurred suggest how each of these unique features may influence policy change and to what degree. Gainsborough notes evaluation of only three states is not sufficient to claim findings are definitive. However, because Gainsborough employs both quantitative and qualitative means to assess the impact of scandal, the conclusions are richer than either methodology alone could offer. In order to operationalize her outcome measures, Gainsborough defines the relationship between scandal and policy as enactment of legislation or changes in funding levels that occurred within a two year time frame after the media publicized a scandal. First, Gainsborough discusses the quantitative evaluation performed to measure the correlation between scandal and policy. Gainsborough includes data from all fifty states, using regression analysis to determine the relationship between the scandals and policy. This measurement is performed as a means to compare other states with Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey, and it allows Gainsborough to control variables other than scandal that might influence the outcomes. Next, Gainsborough describes the qualitative analysis conducted. Case studies of one or more child tragedies involving the child welfare agency in each of the three states include an evaluation of media coverage, reports from state agencies and stakeholders, and interviews with child welfare agency employees, advocates, journalists, and legislators. Gainsborough provides a factual account of each of the cases in great detail, which is important to understanding and interpreting the public's reaction to the media coverage surrounding each event. The first state-specific case study Gainsborough discusses is the tragic case of Rilya Wilson in Florida in 2002. Rilya Wilson was a five-year-old foster child who went missing for fifteen months before the state child welfare agency became aware of her disappearance. The caseworker had reported she made regular contact with the girl, during the time it was finally determined the girl had, in fact, been missing. Ultimately, the girl was never found and her disappearance was never solved, though her foster mother was suspected of murdering her. Gainsborough next examines two cases in Colorado that brought attention to the state child welfare system in 1999. One case involved Precious Hickman, a three-year-old girl who drowned in a bathtub while her mother was in the next room. Precious' mother had been investigated by the state three times previously for child neglect. Within a week of Precious' death, two-year-old Miguel Arias-Baca was killed by his foster father, who was licensed by a private child placement agency, though he had been denied by another placement agency for prior criminal behavior. The state had contracted the private child placement agency for services. The publicity surrounding these two cases brought to light another two child fatalities involving the state agency that had happened in the recent
2
Book review
past but had not received media attention. Finally, Gainsborough explores the case of two brothers, seven-year-old Raheem Williams and four-year-old Tyrone Hill, who were found locked up and starving in a basement in New Jersey in 2003. A day later, the decomposing body of Raheem's twin brother, Faheem, was found in the same basement. The mother had been investigated numerous times over the course of several years and had also lost custody of an infant daughter to the state. Nevertheless, the agency did not maintain contact with the family, though they continued to receive reports the children were neglected. In each of the cases Gainsborough describes, the state child welfare agency was implicated in the tragic consequences. Gainsborough applies a model delineated by Protess et al. (1991) to assess the impact of scandal on each state child welfare agency. This model identifies three kinds of governmental response to media attention to problems. The first is deliberative response, or formal commitments to explore the problem and possible solutions. The second is individualistic response, or the application of sanctions against particular people. The third is substantive response, or concrete changes such as the enactment of new laws or re-allocation of public dollars. Gainsborough identifies at least two responses by each state agency to the scandals. Each of the government's actions is explored in detail, and Gainsborough also provides a narrative timeline of events as well as graphics to help the reader visualize the findings. Gainsborough concludes that Florida and Colorado responded to the media attention with deliberative actions. According to Gainsborough, both states convened task forces to study the child welfare agency and make recommendations for improvements. Gainsborough describes the individualistic solutions enacted by Florida and New Jersey, where caseworkers and supervisors were immediately fired as a result of the scandals, and resignations by agency heads eventually occurred as well. All three states examined employed substantive approaches to resolving the problems according to Gainsborough's assessment. In Florida, the legislature responded to the agency's lack of knowledge that Rilya Wilson had gone missing by making falsification of records a felony. Colorado's response to Miguel Arias-Baca's death included increased oversight of private child placement agencies, but curiously, no systematic changes were made as a result of the death of Precious Hickman, who was fatally neglected by her biological mother after previously coming to the attention of the agency. New Jersey restructured the child welfare agency as a result of the Williams–Hill brothers scandal, creating both a new division focusing on child protection as well as a formal child advocacy office. Gainsborough draws logical conclusions from her careful analysis of each state's responses to the tragedies. Perhaps most incisive is Gainsborough's assessment that Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey all responded by changing policy. Ironically, however, the problem that led to scandal was not the result of lack of rules, but rather a failure of the individual and the system to follow established guidelines. Gainsborough indicates that policy changes were not typically attached to an increase in resources, which potentially might have supported effective implementation of the new protocol. Gainsborough astutely notes that that public sympathy was evoked for the child in each of these cases, but the perception that the agency is undeserving was heightened. The result in each case was enactment of more rules but no additional allocation of resources, even though the media reported on the immense burden experienced daily by public child welfare agencies, and advocates called for lower caseloads and other work improvements for frontline agency staff members. Another troubling, systemic problem emerged as a result of Gainsborough's analysis. Specifically, Gainsborough notes that state child welfare spending levels are significantly and negatively related to the racial composition of the population. States with higher numbers of African Americans spend less on child welfare programs than do states
with smaller populations of African Americans. The over-representation of African American children within the child welfare system is a substantial problem with few simple solutions (McRoy, 2002). This disproportionality is a present focus of reform efforts at national and state levels (Williams-Mbengue & Christian, 2007). Considering all of this, Gainsborough's findings may not be surprising. Yet curiously, despite the role race may have played, Gainsborough does not evaluate the racial factor in any of the qualitative case studies. In addition to disproportionality, another issue generating current discussion within the child welfare field is privatization. The theme of privatization of child welfare services recurs throughout Gainsborough's book. Privatization garnered particular attention in Colorado, where Miguel Arias-Baca was killed by his foster father, who worked for a child placement agency. In Florida, the state child welfare system was undergoing privatization at the time Rilya Wilson's disappearance was given media attention. The child welfare literature offers some evaluation of privatized services. For example, Freundlich and Gerstenzang (2003) provide an overview of the varying levels of success of privatization in terms of cost effectiveness and program quality. Gainsborough's book might have been further enriched, and contributed to the body of literature, by additional exploration of the results of privatization in these two states. Though privatization was not the topic of the book per se, the reader is left wanting more of Gainsborough's insights on privatization, particularly in light of the scandals which are explored so thoroughly. In Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States, Gainsborough sets out to determine whether or not scandal in the child welfare system leads to meaningful reforms. Gainsborough states that at least 33 states have been sued over publicized failures of their child welfare agencies since the 1970s. Certainly, Gainsborough's analysis suggests that scandals leading to public notoriety of child welfare agencies may affect change. Gainsborough shrewdly asserts, however, that the typically adversarial nature of media attention can increase the agency's defensiveness and subsequent resistance to meaningful transformation. Moreover, Gainsborough concludes that policy change is impotent if practices, along with sufficient resources, do not follow. The question remains, though—how is systematic change best enacted in an overburdened public child welfare system responsible for the protection and care of vulnerable children and their families? Gainsborough's book is an engaging, informative analysis recommended for anyone – lay and professional alike – who is interested in the process of reform. References Freundlich, M., & Gerstenzang, S. (2003). An assessment of the privatization of child welfare services: Challenges and successes. Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America Press. McRoy, R. (2002). Color of child welfare policy: Racial disparities of child welfare services. Retrieved from www.hunter.cuny.edu/socwork/nrcfcpp/downloads/mcroy-transcript.pdf Protess, D. L., Cook, F. L., Doppelt, J. C., Ettema, J. S., Gordon, M. T., Leff, D. R., et al. (1991). The journalism of outrage: Investigative reporting and agenda building in America. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Gainsborough, J. F. (1991). Scandalous politics: Child welfare policy in the states. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Williams-Mbengue, N., & Christian, S. (2007). The color of care. Retrieved from www. ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=17226
Jolynne Batchelor School of Social Work, University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work, United States 7101 Easy Wind Dr. #3314, Austin, TX 78752, United States. Tel.: +1 214 927 4127. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected].
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Children and Youth Services Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth
Book review Book review—How scandal drives child welfare policy Juliet F. Gainsborough, Scandalous politics: Child welfare policy in the States, Georgetown University Press, 2010 Conventional wisdom advises that meaningful change in public child welfare agencies is largely a consequence of pressure by the public, whose attention is rapt, at least momentarily, when a scandal occurs. Governmental care and custody of children often gains rightful infamy for well-publicized tragedies but far less often achieves just recognition for protecting vulnerable children or strengthening fragile families, though the balance must surely be tipped by the latter. Media attention is garnered when a child dies at the hands of a parent previously investigated by child welfare authorities, or when a child is victimized by presumably caring foster parents to whom the child had been entrusted, or when a child drifts from one foster home to another until adulthood is reached, with no “forever family” having been established. Though the media scrutiny that results from these tragedies undoubtedly captivates its audience for a time, can it sustain public interest in a way that galvanizes essential, systematic reforms within the child welfare system? In Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States, Juliet F. Gainsborough offers a thoughtful, evidence-informed attempt to answer this question. Gainsborough is currently an associate professor of political science at Bentley University in Massachusetts and holds a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. Her interest in the politics of child welfare grew from her service as a volunteer on a Citizen Review Panel in Florida, which evaluated foster care cases in lieu of a judge. Gainsborough also authored Fenced Off: The Suburbanization of American Politics (2001), which examines how national politics have been shaped by the population's movement to the suburbs. Gainsborough begins her analysis of the politics of child welfare with an informative, historical account of modern child welfare policy in the United States, including a detailed examination of the most significant pieces of federal child welfare legislation. In particular, Gainsborough's uses her exploration of the 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (AACWA), which emphasized family preservation, and the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which accentuated child permanency, to exemplify how shifting public interests influence public policy. Though much of the focus of Gainsborough's book is on state politics, the overview of federal policy is critical for the novice reader to gain understanding of the federal incentives and requirements that significantly affect state child welfare agencies. However, Gainsborough's mastery of federal child welfare legislation also provides enough useful detail to capture the attention of both novices and child welfare experts. Next, Gainsborough analyzes the impact of child welfare scandals in three designated states: Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey. Outcomes of scandal in each of these states is examined based on the unique features of the case or cases that drew public fire, as well as on the distinctive political context within which policy was subsequently shaped or not. Finally, Gainsborough compares and contrasts the effects of scandal among the three states and draws conclusions based on her analysis.
0190-7409/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2012.09.021
Gainsborough explains that Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey were chosen for analysis because they experienced major scandals within a specified and relatively narrow time frame (1999 to 2003). Thus, each scandal occurred roughly within the same historical context in terms of enactment of national legislation, allowing Gainsborough a means to control for the influence of federal activity. At the same time, variations across states in terms of nature of the particular scandal and the state political arena at the time the scandal occurred suggest how each of these unique features may influence policy change and to what degree. Gainsborough notes evaluation of only three states is not sufficient to claim findings are definitive. However, because Gainsborough employs both quantitative and qualitative means to assess the impact of scandal, the conclusions are richer than either methodology alone could offer. In order to operationalize her outcome measures, Gainsborough defines the relationship between scandal and policy as enactment of legislation or changes in funding levels that occurred within a two year time frame after the media publicized a scandal. First, Gainsborough discusses the quantitative evaluation performed to measure the correlation between scandal and policy. Gainsborough includes data from all fifty states, using regression analysis to determine the relationship between the scandals and policy. This measurement is performed as a means to compare other states with Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey, and it allows Gainsborough to control variables other than scandal that might influence the outcomes. Next, Gainsborough describes the qualitative analysis conducted. Case studies of one or more child tragedies involving the child welfare agency in each of the three states include an evaluation of media coverage, reports from state agencies and stakeholders, and interviews with child welfare agency employees, advocates, journalists, and legislators. Gainsborough provides a factual account of each of the cases in great detail, which is important to understanding and interpreting the public's reaction to the media coverage surrounding each event. The first state-specific case study Gainsborough discusses is the tragic case of Rilya Wilson in Florida in 2002. Rilya Wilson was a five-year-old foster child who went missing for fifteen months before the state child welfare agency became aware of her disappearance. The caseworker had reported she made regular contact with the girl, during the time it was finally determined the girl had, in fact, been missing. Ultimately, the girl was never found and her disappearance was never solved, though her foster mother was suspected of murdering her. Gainsborough next examines two cases in Colorado that brought attention to the state child welfare system in 1999. One case involved Precious Hickman, a three-year-old girl who drowned in a bathtub while her mother was in the next room. Precious' mother had been investigated by the state three times previously for child neglect. Within a week of Precious' death, two-year-old Miguel Arias-Baca was killed by his foster father, who was licensed by a private child placement agency, though he had been denied by another placement agency for prior criminal behavior. The state had contracted the private child placement agency for services. The publicity surrounding these two cases brought to light another two child fatalities involving the state agency that had happened in the recent
2
Book review
past but had not received media attention. Finally, Gainsborough explores the case of two brothers, seven-year-old Raheem Williams and four-year-old Tyrone Hill, who were found locked up and starving in a basement in New Jersey in 2003. A day later, the decomposing body of Raheem's twin brother, Faheem, was found in the same basement. The mother had been investigated numerous times over the course of several years and had also lost custody of an infant daughter to the state. Nevertheless, the agency did not maintain contact with the family, though they continued to receive reports the children were neglected. In each of the cases Gainsborough describes, the state child welfare agency was implicated in the tragic consequences. Gainsborough applies a model delineated by Protess et al. (1991) to assess the impact of scandal on each state child welfare agency. This model identifies three kinds of governmental response to media attention to problems. The first is deliberative response, or formal commitments to explore the problem and possible solutions. The second is individualistic response, or the application of sanctions against particular people. The third is substantive response, or concrete changes such as the enactment of new laws or re-allocation of public dollars. Gainsborough identifies at least two responses by each state agency to the scandals. Each of the government's actions is explored in detail, and Gainsborough also provides a narrative timeline of events as well as graphics to help the reader visualize the findings. Gainsborough concludes that Florida and Colorado responded to the media attention with deliberative actions. According to Gainsborough, both states convened task forces to study the child welfare agency and make recommendations for improvements. Gainsborough describes the individualistic solutions enacted by Florida and New Jersey, where caseworkers and supervisors were immediately fired as a result of the scandals, and resignations by agency heads eventually occurred as well. All three states examined employed substantive approaches to resolving the problems according to Gainsborough's assessment. In Florida, the legislature responded to the agency's lack of knowledge that Rilya Wilson had gone missing by making falsification of records a felony. Colorado's response to Miguel Arias-Baca's death included increased oversight of private child placement agencies, but curiously, no systematic changes were made as a result of the death of Precious Hickman, who was fatally neglected by her biological mother after previously coming to the attention of the agency. New Jersey restructured the child welfare agency as a result of the Williams–Hill brothers scandal, creating both a new division focusing on child protection as well as a formal child advocacy office. Gainsborough draws logical conclusions from her careful analysis of each state's responses to the tragedies. Perhaps most incisive is Gainsborough's assessment that Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey all responded by changing policy. Ironically, however, the problem that led to scandal was not the result of lack of rules, but rather a failure of the individual and the system to follow established guidelines. Gainsborough indicates that policy changes were not typically attached to an increase in resources, which potentially might have supported effective implementation of the new protocol. Gainsborough astutely notes that that public sympathy was evoked for the child in each of these cases, but the perception that the agency is undeserving was heightened. The result in each case was enactment of more rules but no additional allocation of resources, even though the media reported on the immense burden experienced daily by public child welfare agencies, and advocates called for lower caseloads and other work improvements for frontline agency staff members. Another troubling, systemic problem emerged as a result of Gainsborough's analysis. Specifically, Gainsborough notes that state child welfare spending levels are significantly and negatively related to the racial composition of the population. States with higher numbers of African Americans spend less on child welfare programs than do states
with smaller populations of African Americans. The over-representation of African American children within the child welfare system is a substantial problem with few simple solutions (McRoy, 2002). This disproportionality is a present focus of reform efforts at national and state levels (Williams-Mbengue & Christian, 2007). Considering all of this, Gainsborough's findings may not be surprising. Yet curiously, despite the role race may have played, Gainsborough does not evaluate the racial factor in any of the qualitative case studies. In addition to disproportionality, another issue generating current discussion within the child welfare field is privatization. The theme of privatization of child welfare services recurs throughout Gainsborough's book. Privatization garnered particular attention in Colorado, where Miguel Arias-Baca was killed by his foster father, who worked for a child placement agency. In Florida, the state child welfare system was undergoing privatization at the time Rilya Wilson's disappearance was given media attention. The child welfare literature offers some evaluation of privatized services. For example, Freundlich and Gerstenzang (2003) provide an overview of the varying levels of success of privatization in terms of cost effectiveness and program quality. Gainsborough's book might have been further enriched, and contributed to the body of literature, by additional exploration of the results of privatization in these two states. Though privatization was not the topic of the book per se, the reader is left wanting more of Gainsborough's insights on privatization, particularly in light of the scandals which are explored so thoroughly. In Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States, Gainsborough sets out to determine whether or not scandal in the child welfare system leads to meaningful reforms. Gainsborough states that at least 33 states have been sued over publicized failures of their child welfare agencies since the 1970s. Certainly, Gainsborough's analysis suggests that scandals leading to public notoriety of child welfare agencies may affect change. Gainsborough shrewdly asserts, however, that the typically adversarial nature of media attention can increase the agency's defensiveness and subsequent resistance to meaningful transformation. Moreover, Gainsborough concludes that policy change is impotent if practices, along with sufficient resources, do not follow. The question remains, though—how is systematic change best enacted in an overburdened public child welfare system responsible for the protection and care of vulnerable children and their families? Gainsborough's book is an engaging, informative analysis recommended for anyone – lay and professional alike – who is interested in the process of reform. References Freundlich, M., & Gerstenzang, S. (2003). An assessment of the privatization of child welfare services: Challenges and successes. Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America Press. McRoy, R. (2002). Color of child welfare policy: Racial disparities of child welfare services. Retrieved from www.hunter.cuny.edu/socwork/nrcfcpp/downloads/mcroy-transcript.pdf Protess, D. L., Cook, F. L., Doppelt, J. C., Ettema, J. S., Gordon, M. T., Leff, D. R., et al. (1991). The journalism of outrage: Investigative reporting and agenda building in America. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Gainsborough, J. F. (1991). Scandalous politics: Child welfare policy in the states. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Williams-Mbengue, N., & Christian, S. (2007). The color of care. Retrieved from www. ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=17226
Jolynne Batchelor School of Social Work, University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work, United States 7101 Easy Wind Dr. #3314, Austin, TX 78752, United States. Tel.: +1 214 927 4127. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected].