Crying needs

The people and programs saving our at-risk children

Editor's note: This is the first week of a new Sunday analysis page aiming to clarify issues and institutions in White County and empower citizens to be part of the progress

BY STEPHEN ZEIGLER
Editor    28 September 2003

"Eric" (not his real name) is grinning broadly as he gently jokes with his former foster mother, Becky Robbins of Higginson, and the children who might as well be his brothers and sisters.
He is comfortable with them and with himself, well-mannered and thoughtful, happy to be alive and hoping to do well this year on the track team at school.
Eric "is the most well-adjusted child to come into foster care at age 9 I've ever seen," Rogers said.
But Eric had a rough start. He wound up with Robbins after being abandoned by his mother, and the grief over his lost mother grew in his mind for years.
"He loved me, but I wasn't his mother," Robbins said.
When he was nearly 12, Eric was reunited with biological relatives, but felt more at home in White County. At 13, he was formally adopted by a local family.
"My husband got especially close to him when he was in foster care, and so did I," said his adoptive mother. "We sat down and talked because we were a little young to adopt
Eric now has a younger sister who adores him.
"She can be a little annoying sometimes but, mostly, she's cool," he said, once again with that teasing grin.
Eric, 16, is at home in the world now, a model of how loving people and systems in place can rescue a lost child and help him grow into the person he was meant to be.
"I feel a whole lot better," he said. "I still have a few memories of before but I try to forget them. I actually have a family now and someone I can call mom and dad."

Opportunities for older children
"The opportunity to be a child and have a family means so much to a child who is older and has known what it is to be hurt and rejected," said Tracy Davis, director of CASA http://www.whitecountyar.org/wccasa.htm (Court Appointed Special Advocates) of White County, an organization of volunteers helping gather information for the court system on children at risk.
CASA is one thread in a web of services locating and aiding children in need, funneling information to the Court where difficult decisions have to be made.
Judge Robert Edwards knows how difficult the decisions can be. As circuit judge of the 17th District, covering White and Prairie Counties, he presides over juvenile as well as criminal cases. White County had 56 cases involving dependent/neglected children in 2002, with one case alone involving the welfare of six children.
Some cases deal with horrific abuse, some with simple neglect, but almost always they involve dysfunctional families. Very often, there are children traumatized by their environments.
"It can very emotional and draining to a judge," Edwards said. "I'm glad I don't have to do this every day. But when I'm able to return a child to parents safely or sign an adoption order placing a child in a new and safe environment, well, a judge gets tremendous satisfaction from that."
The process may begin with a call to the Child Abuse Hotline in Little Rock (1-800-482-5964) from a concerned relative, neighbor or teacher. Some reports are required by law: Hospitals and physicians are mandated reporters of child abuse, and Arkansas recently added clergy to the list.
If evidence warrants, investigation is begun by a Department of Human Services case worker, usually someone with the DHS Division of Children and Family Services. Sometimes the case worker may find the situation so urgent the child needs to be immediately removed from the home and placed in foster care.
When the child is removed from the home, a hearing follows to determine what judicial ruling is required next, followed by several more hearings. DHS may offer parental classes to parents or refer them to counseling or both.
The judge can order immediate changes in parental behavior, as well. The desirable result is always the safe return of the child to parents.
But too often the parents are unwilling or unable to change.

Not Wal-Mart
"I've had parents up here, they're only concerned with the parents, to heck with the kids," Edwards said. "We tell them this isn't Wal-Mart, where they can try out merchandise and return it if they don't like it."
The neglect/abuse problem is far greater than many people realize. Dr. David Covey, president of the United Way of White County, reported in a 2001 letter seeking a funding grant for CASA that the Hotline substantiated 18,000 reports of physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children in Arkansas for the previous year.
Of those, 1,300 involved children in White County.
With 75 counties in Arkansas, that figure represents 7 percent, with more than 100 cases substantiated each month, according to Covey's letter.
And the number is growing.
"The reasons are two-fold," said Edwards. "There are more abusive and neglectful parents being discovered, though that doesn't necessarily mean there's more abuse, just better efforts by law enforcement, DHS and the general public to discover and report these things.
"When the general public is educated to what is going on, they respond."

Meth problems
The dramatic growth of methamphetamine use has contributed to the problem, experts agree. Davis said there has been a spurt of parental abuse combined with substance abuse in the last year.
"The proliferation of methamphetamine brings more cases," Edwards agreed, "not because the parents want to abuse their children, but when they are found in a raid on a meth lab the children have to be placed."
"Anytime you have heightened drug abuse in parents, all types of abuse tend to go up," said Dr. Tammy Alexander, a clinical psychologist who lives in Beebe and supervises outpatient behavior clinics throughout north-central Arkansas. She treats 25-50 cases a month of abuse or neglect, usually on referrals from the court system, family, school or DHS.
Mary Green of Searcy is widely credited with helping start CASA in White County in 2000. She served as chairperson for three years and is now a board member.
"Parents on drugs can just forget they have children," Green said. "They can go out and not come back to look after the kids for days."
The urgency of the cases is always stark. There have been cases of children beaten nearly to death. Davis tells of cigarette burns and infants testing positive for methamphetamines, and Green describes rat-infested homes with garbage piled to the ceilings.

Traumatized kids
Green also says there are many cases of children so traumatized they have to be hospitalized in mental health acute care.
"The saddest thing I see is a consistent disregard for children," Davis said. "If parents are not willing to step up to the plate for their children, we do what we can to provide the judge with evidence that they won't and force the children to be put up for adoption."
Davis said CASA works with DHS and the Division of Children and Family Welfare in the massive effort to gather information for the court system.
"We talk to anybody and everybody who might know about the child," Davis said. "Teachers, doctors, neighbors. We support the Court but in the act of that we help DHS. There's no way a case worker could contribute the time a volunteer can. There aren't enough man-hours."
That was the problem Judge David Soukup faced in Seattle in the late 1970s when we conceived the idea of using trained community volunteers to speak for the best interests of the children in court. His program was so successful judges across the nation began using volunteer advocates.
Today, there are nearly 1,000 CASA branches. Green moved to Searcy in 1993, where she started the program with local support and grant money, though the first organizational meeting was not until 2000.
Today, the CASA office is on the third floor of the White County Courthouse and there are about 30 volunteers, usually each working one case at a time. The training is intense and takes place two or three times a year.
Davis says more volunteers are desperately needed.
CASA can offer more tools to the system for discovering not only the best place for a child for the child's needs.
"We had a child who lost his glasses the first day of school and couldn't see the blackboard," said Davis. "Medicare would only pay for one pair every six months, so CASA hunted down a civic organization, the Lions Club, that helps get children glasses."
"I'm happy we have the volunteers," Edwards said. "I use the information they give me on a daily basis. They provide an extra set of eyes for the Court and I wouldn't be able to do my job as effectively without them."

Every set of eyes is urgent.
"A child's sense of time is 'now,'" Davis said. "It can take years to overcome what happens to a child. The legal system alone takes a year to consider a permanency plan for a child."

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