Hearing to Review the Use of Child Welfare Waiver Demonstration Projects

to Promote Child Well-Being

DETROIT CENTER FOR FAMILY ADVOCACY

TESTIMONY SUBMITTED by

Donald N. Duquette and Vivek S. Sankaran

JULY 2010

Dear Ways and Means Committee:

Currently too many children enter foster care and they stay too long. The Child Welfare Waivers
are a means to provide more flexibility and creativity when it comes to protecting children
without unnecessarily removing them from the people who love them. A goal should be to
“remove the danger, not the child”. These less intrusive interventions can be better for the
children and the families, but also save the public money.

We have a very promising program being piloted in Detroit, Michigan, which provides legal and
social work assistance to protect children but divert them from the formal child welfare legal
process.

1. Project Summary

The Detroit Center for Family Advocacy (CFA) opened in July 2009 and provides legal
advocacy and social work services to low-income parents and their extended families to prevent
the unnecessary placement and prolonged stay of children in foster care. By doing so, the CFA
aims to keep children safe with their families, minimize the emotional trauma caused by

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removal, and allow the foster care system to focus its resources on children who truly need its
protection.

The CFA seeks to:

• Empower parents and extended families to care for their own children.
• Divert children from public foster care and hasten the exit of others.
• Provide a site for learning, practical application of knowledge, and community-based
research for University of Michigan students and faculty.
(Grant funds not used for this purpose.)

2. Overview of the Center

The Detroit Center for Family Advocacy (CFA) represents a new model of legal and
social work assistance for families where children are at risk. The CFA combines preventive
legal advocacy and social work assistance early on, before a family problem becomes a danger to
a child, to eliminate the need for children to enter the foster care system in the first place. The
CFA offers parents the assistance of an attorney, social worker and parent advocate who work
with the parent to formulate a plan to address safety risks while preserving the child’s placement
with the family. Each member of the team offers a distinct set of skills to address the situation.
Oftentimes legal and social work services to a family can resolve difficulties that would
otherwise cause a child to come under the jurisdiction of the court and be placed in foster care.
More information about the CFA is available on our website at
www.law.umich.edu/centersandprograms/ccl/cfa.

The Center works closely and cooperatively with the Department of Human Services
and the Wayne County Juvenile Court, which are the primary sources for case referrals. The
Center serves two groups of children: (1) those investigated by Wayne County Child Protection
Services and determined to be abused or neglected under Categories I, II or III as defined by
MCL § 722.628d, and (2) those in a foster care placement with a permanency plan other than
reunification. A description of relevant Child Protection Service categories is listed below.

Table I: Relevant CPS Categories

Category I CPS finds preponderance of evidence of child abuse and/or neglect and the Child
Protection Law or policy requires a petition for court action
Category II CPS finds a preponderance of evidence of child abuse and/or neglect and the SDM
risk level is high or intensive. CPS must open a protective services case and
provide services.
Category III CPS finds a preponderance of evidence of child abuse or neglect, and the SDM risk
level is low or moderate. CPS must assist the family in receiving community-based
services commensurate with the risk to the child.

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The CFA generally accepts two types of cases, referred to internally as Type A and Type B
cases.

A Type A case involves situations where legal and social work advocacy can prevent
the need for children to enter the foster care system. In most of these cases, the children live in
their family home with the parent or parents, who are the clients of the CFA. There are,
however, variations of living situations that can still qualify as a Type A case. For example, the
children may have moved from the family home for whatever reason after the DHS involvement,
and some of the children may be living with one parent while the remaining children live with
the other. Or, in another example, the children and one or more parents may be living with a
relative. The key factor in common in all Type A cases is that the DHS has not filed a petition
with the court and legal and social work advocacy can help prevent the need to do so.

A Type B case involves situations in which children are in foster care, the goal is not
reunification with their custodial parent but there is some legal barrier preventing them from
achieving permanency in the home of a non-custodial parent, relative or foster parent. An
example of a Type B case includes a child, who is a court ward, and is placed with a relative.
The relative, CFA’s client, may be referred to CFA for services because there is some
impediment to licensing the client/caregiver or adoption. If the impediment is not removed, the
child cannot obtain permanency and may be at risk of being removed from the caregiver's home.

Once a case is accepted, the CFA staff guide parents and family members through the
complex laws and procedures governing a child protection investigation, and also help them
address legal issues that might enhance the child’s well-being and prevent the need for foster
care. CFA lawyers may file for a restraining order, draft a power of attorney, file for a
guardianship, apply for social security and other governmental benefits or help with special
education entitlements.

The CFA social worker assesses the parent’s strengths and weaknesses and provides case
management. She works with existing community partners to help the parent or caregiver access
a network of services, such as transitional housing, counseling, and substance abuse treatment,
and works cooperatively with the DHS worker to create a mutually agreeable safety plan for the
parent to meet her child’s needs.

The parent advocate--a parent who, herself, has experienced the child welfare system --
provides clients with a unique perspective of how to navigate the system and helps parents stay
focused and motivated in the face of adversity.

In addition to representing parents, the CFA also assists kinship and other caregivers
provide permanency to children in care. Many child welfare cases are kept open, requiring court
and DHS supervision, despite the fact that the child is psychologically stable and where an
alternative private law legal arrangement could permit the family court case and DHS
supervision to be dismissed and closed. For example, legal advocacy may help a family provide
permanency for a child in a residential facility. A relative might need legal assistance to file for

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adoption or guardianship because of legal obstacles to adoption, such as a marriage, long over
except for the legalities. A divorce from a long-separated spouse could permit that relative to
adopt. Such comprehensive, proactive, and collaborative representation is unavailable in today’s
child welfare system except at the CFA

3. Early Measures of Effectiveness

In the first year CFA staff handled 62 cases – 20 Type A and 42 Type B. Two hundred
and thirty seven children were served, of which one hundred and thirty-three were
substantiated by the DHS as being abused and neglected. The CFA closed 19 cases (47%
Type A, 53% Type B) and the average length of a case was 5.4 months. CFA staff achieved
the legal objectives of the case in every case in which the client engaged in services.

The most important measure of success is that not one child in a Type A
(prevention) case entered the foster care system. This is precisely the reason why the
Center was created.

A comprehensive evaluation of the CFA’s outcomes is underway and will conclude at the
end of the three year pilot period. Professors Sue Ann Savas and Duquette are coordinating the
evaluation, which is being funded by a private donor. The three year pilot period will give the
evaluators enough time enough to gather and analyze data to determine whether the CFA
innovation will have the dramatic impact on families and the child welfare system as we
hypothesize. Generally speaking, our hypothesis is that children served by CFA sample families
will experience fewer days in foster care than those compared with a matched control group of
non-CFA families. That is, within the sample of CFA children, fewer children will enter foster
care, or, if entering foster care, will spend fewer days there. In the “expediting the exit” or Type
B cases, CFA sample children, will exit foster care much sooner. A cost analysis will
demonstrate that the reduction in foster care days will save significant public dollars,
dramatically offsetting the per-child cost of the CFA.

To do this, a process evaluation is being conducted to document the referral and

screening process, the intake process, the characteristics and needs of the population served, and
the Center services provided. The data collection tools and methods include the Referral Form,
Intake Form, Center Plan of Care, Case Notes, Client Satisfaction/Exit Survey, and interviews
with referral sources and staff.

As the number of clients served by the Center increases, a matched comparison group
outcome design will be used to compare CFA family outcomes with other similar families from
similar communities. Outcome indicators include, but will not be limited to: cases diverted from
the foster care system, shorter foster care placement, absence of new CPS allegations, absence of
new foster care placements, and family permanence. CFA Client outcome data is being collected
with Case Notes, the Client Satisfaction/Closing Form, and the three-month Client Follow-up
Phone Survey (including a Risk Safety Assessment). Incentives are being provided to facilitate
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the completion of both immediate and follow-up outcome data. Comparison group data will be
accessed through DHS Data Management Unit and pre-existing public data reports.

Compared to non-CFA children and families, at the end of CFA service and 3-months
post-program: (1) CFA children will exit the child welfare system sooner (case diverted), (2)
CFA children will reside with a permanent family outside of the child welfare system, (3) The
CFA family environment will be safe and stable as evidenced by an absence of CPS allegations
and new foster care placements, and (4) CFA Parents/caregivers will meet children’s basic needs
as evidenced by reduction in risks/needs and gains in strengths.

The following system level outcomes are expected and will be captured as cases are closed from
CFA services: (1) Fewer children will be removed from their family, (2) Children will
experience shorter foster care placements, and (3) Public will experience cost savings.

4. Early Examples of Our Work

As noted above, the CFA has provided advocacy in a range of cases and has closed 19 cases.
Listed below are some examples of our early work.

• The client discovered the CFA via the internet and sent CFA staff an email with an urgent
request to “PLEASE HELP …!” She and her husband had been diligently pursuing the
placement from foster care of a 17-year-old boy into their home after the sudden death of
the boy’s foster mother, but had become desperate and discouraged. The client and her
family had grown to know and love this boy through her friendship with the boy’s long-
time foster mother. After the foster mother’s death, the boy bounced around from
placement to placement and suffered mistreatment everywhere he went. When our client
saw what was happening to him she immediately requested custody of the child, but
despite several months of waiting and compliance with all of the stated requirements of
the private child-placing agency supervising the case, the agency refused to place the boy
in our client’s home. Instead, he languished needlessly in a residential facility, which
only agreed to accept him on a temporary basis. Mere days after the CFA accepted the
case, the residential facility issued a demand for the boy’s removal within 30 days. The
client’s and the boy’s hopes were dashed when a previously scheduled hearing in juvenile
court was abruptly rescheduled. Undeterred, a CFA attorney and social worker
aggressively advocated for the boy’s immediate placement in the client’s home. They
approached the DHS official supervising the case, the Assistant Attorney General
representing the DHS, and the Lawyer-Guardian Ad Litem. Previous to this advocacy,
the client’s voice had never been heard. The very next day, the DHS supervisor
authorized the boy’s placement with the client and her husband, where the boy will now
spend Christmas and beyond with people who love him. Later that day, the client
expressed over the telephone to the CFA attorney, through tears of joy, “I thank God for
you!”

• When an unresolved landlord-tenant dispute threatened to make a 26-year-old single

mother and her seven children homeless, she was referred to the Center for Family

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 Advocacy. At the time of the referral by the Department of Human Services, our client
was living in a relative’s cramped one-bedroom apartment with all seven of her children
and three other adults because her landlord refused to make necessary repairs to her
rented home. The DHS also had serious concerns regarding the supervision of the
children in the care of our client, who was simply overwhelmed. The referring DHS
worker wanted to keep the family together, but could not wait much longer for our
client’s situation to improve. In order to prevent the foster care placement of her children,
our client needed to quickly secure suitable housing and assure the DHS worker that she
could properly supervise all of her children. With the assistance of CFA’s staff, the client
and her family quickly relocated into a three-story, five-bedroom home located in a
beautiful neighborhood on Detroit’s west side. The CFA social worker and parent
advocate worked tirelessly to equip the client with the parenting skills she needs to
safeguard her children, while the CFA attorney pursued the client’s legal remedies
against the landlord. The CFA’s zealous legal, social work and parent advocacy on
behalf of the client resulted in the DHS closing its child protective case. None of the
children entered foster care.

• The DHS referred the client and her five children to the CFA to resolve a landlord-tenant
dispute that jeopardized the family’s housing, and placed the children at risk of entering
foster care. The DHS had also been receiving reports that the client was not properly
attending to her 11-year-old son’s mental health needs. He had been hospitalized for
severe emotional and behavioral problems approximately eight times at various local
institutions over the year and a half preceding the referral to the CFA. The CFA staff
sprang into action. A CFA attorney successfully negotiated a settlement of the landlord-
tenant dispute, which enabled the client to save the necessary money to obtain alternative
housing for the family. Intensive social work and parent advocacy equipped the client to
harness the resources to properly care for her son and other children, and all the children
remain in the client’s care. When closing the case, the DHS worker remarked, "You
saved this family!"

• A Juvenile Court Judge referred clients to the CFA for assistance in expediting the
clients’ adoption of their four-year-old granddaughter, a process that had delayed
achievement of permanency for the child for over a year. The initial referral reported that
the clients had refused to comply with repeated requests from the adoption agency for
necessary documentation. After a careful independent investigation and review, a CFA
staff attorney discovered that the clients were having difficulty obtaining old marriage
and divorce records, which included an out-of-state marriage certificate. The clients were
also having trouble paying for their own physicals because they lacked health insurance.
This clear understanding of the challenges that confronted the clients enabled the attorney
to zealously advocate on their behalf with the adoption agency, which included a request
for financial assistance to help the clients obtain the required physicals. That same day,
the agency agreed to pay for the examinations. The attorney also quickly located
resources to assist the clients to obtain the out-of-state records. The adoption is back on
track and its finalization is expected soon.

• The client came to the attention of the DHS because the client was in an abusive
relationship with the father of three of her children. The domestic violence in the home

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 put the children at risk of foster care placement. A CFA staff attorney counseled the
client about how to limit the batterer’s contact with the children. The attorney then filed a
motion in family court to modify the father’s parenting time and mandate that all visits be
supervised and that direct interaction with the client be eliminated. Both requests were
granted by the court. The CFA’s social worker and parent advocate also helped the client
strengthen her family. The client is currently pursuing a GED and has participated in
family counseling services. As a result of the CFA involvement, the client’s children
were not removed from the home and the DHS confidently closed the family’s case.

• The client was referred to the CFA when the client’s ex-husband severely physically
abused their son. The DHS indicated that the child would be placed in foster care unless
the abusive father was legally restricted from having access to the child. CFA attorneys
successfully motioned the court to suspend the father’s parenting time thereby preventing
the need for the boy to enter foster care.

Therefore, members of the committee, we think that legal services of the sort provided by the
Detroit Center for Family Advocacy can help many families resolve the issues that would
otherwise require formal child protection proceedings and possibly placement in foster care.
These services can also expedite the exit of children from foster care. All these steps will save
public dollars while encouraging safe and stable homes for children.

If the committee has questions of us or wants additional information, please contact us.

Donald N. Duquette, Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Child Advocacy Law Clinic

Vivek S. Sankaran, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Detroit Center for Family
Advocacy.