State workers would automatically remove all children in a home whenever one is removed for abuse or neglect under a proposed law that some charge is unconstitutional.
Fueled by the beating death of 10-month-old Al-Lex Daniels in Hartford last week, the legislation passed unanimously in the state House of Representatives Wednesday and could be acted on by the Senate early next week.
Child advocates and legal experts Thursday were desperately urging legislators to rethink their idea, fearful that such automatic removals will flood already overcrowded temporary shelters and foster homes with hundreds of traumatized children who may not need to be there.
If the proposal becomes law, Connecticut could become the first state in the nation to give such sweeping power to government workers who must balance children’s safety with parental rights.
“It would be a violation of due process to do anything like that,” said Hartford attorney Wesley W. Horton, an expert on state constitutional law. “This is an overreaction to the events of the day.”
But sponsors defended the bill, saying it defies reason for Department of Children and Family caseworkers to remove one child in imminent danger in a home and leave others behind.
“To me, it was common-sense legislation,” said State Rep. Lenny Winkler, R-Groton, assistant minority leader. “If a DCF worker felt strongly enough to remove one child because of suspected abuse, what would make them think the other children wouldn’t be just as vulnerable to abuse?”
The proposed law comes just days after Gov. John G. Rowland sent a rare personal memo to all 3,400 DCF staff referencing Al-Lex’s death and urging investigators to always “err on the side of safety” in dealing with children in dangerous homes.
Gary Kleeblatt, a DCF spokesman, said agency officials support the proposed law because child safety must be the department’s first priority.
But child advocates and others say legislators need to be mindful that there is a legal process for removing children from their parents or caregivers. Although the proposed law might be well-intentioned, they say, it may wind up doing more harm then good.
“By being against the bill, we’re not saying the safety issue isn’t important, but there needs to be individual determinations made for each child,” said civil rights attorney Martha Stone. “What that would do to a 2-year-old may be different from what that might do to a 17-year-old.”
As executive director of the Center for Children’s Advocacy at the University of Connecticut School of Law, Stone has spent the better part of the past decade trying to undo the damage caused by the state’s initial “foster care” panic in 1995. Propelled by the high-profile rape and murder death of 9-month-old Emily Hernandez that year, child protection workers began removing children in record numbers, only to leave many languishing in foster care for months and sometimes years while waiting for permanent homes.
“I think it’s a dangerous creed,” said Paul Chill, a professor at the UConn School of Law who runs a legal clinic that represents parents in DCF cases. “Superficially, it sounds like the conservative and cautious thing to do, but as the experience after Baby Emily confirmed, that kind of approach leads to a whole new set of problems.”
Connecticut’s child abuse fatality rate increased after Emily’s death. Records show child deaths from abuse and neglect rose from five in 1995 to nine in 1996. There were seven deaths in 1997 and six in 1998.
Legislators pushing for the new law said they were upset that the DCF left Al-Lex in his home despite repeated complaints from relatives who were concerned that he was being neglected and a prior allegation that his 4-year-old sister was sexually abused. Lee Edwards, 23, Al-Lex’s mother’s live-in boyfriend, has been charged with capital felony and murder and is in custody, with bail set at $2.5 million.
Some media reports have said that DCF removed the older sister and left Al-Lex behind. It did not. Relatives of the family took guardianship of the girl through probate court after DCF investigators were unable to substantiate the sexual abuse following a medical exam and conflicting statements by the girl.
Because of that, the proposed legislation would not apply in Al-Lex’s case, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the Virginia-based National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.
“The road to foster care hell is always paved with good intentions,” Wexler said Thursday. “But this shows that neither the Connecticut legislature nor the governor has learned anything since the foster care panic that followed Baby Emily. The only thing that this move by the governor and the legislature does is guarantee that more children will be harmed.”
The day after Rowland’s memo went out, DCF workers filed more orders for temporary custody of children in state courts than at any time in the previous month and a half, according to records provided by the state judicial branch Thursday.
The legislation also comes at a time when DCF Safe Homes and licensed foster homes are already bursting at the seams. As of March 31, there were 124 children stuck in foster homes already over their licensed-bed capacity, and 166 others were on waiting lists for more specialized therapeutic foster care, according to state records.
Meanwhile, the average length of stay for children in DCF Safe Homes — which is where children go when they are taken from their homes for the first time — was 74 days, or nearly a month longer than the maximum 45 days allowed under department policy.
The DCF had 61 children in other emergency shelters for more than 45 days last fall, far beyond the agency’s goal of no more than 25 children.
“What’s overlooked in the debate is the trauma to the child involved in the removal,” Stone said. “Because of a scarcity of resources, children are overstaying in Safe Homes, overstaying in shelters and bouncing around from one foster home to another.”
But legislators such as state Rep. Marie Lopez Kirkley-Bey, a Hartford Democrat who is deputy majority leader, remain undaunted. Kirkley-Bey, who raised three children as a single parent and said she knows the struggles parents go through, co-sponsored the legislation.
“I don’t advocate taking away children,” Kirkley-Bey said Thursday. “But I don’t advocate children living in an unhealthy and dangerous environment either. … If the environment they are in is detrimental to the health of one, it’s potentially detrimental to all, and it’s better that we evaluate the situation and determine where they belong.”
Kirkley-Bey said children would be returned home promptly if a thorough assessment shows they are safe. In cases in which such a determination may take time, she said, the state should consider placing children with relatives temporarily to keep family bonds and siblings together.