Concerns may end unique foster-care program

It started off as a promising concept: a program that would help African-American families involved in the child-welfare system. But the seven-year experiment known as the Office of African-American Children's Services (OAACS) was abruptly stripped of much of its power last month because of growing worries about the safety of children it serves.

The state stopped referring new child-abuse complaints there in mid-February, citing "grave concerns" about safety and serious flaws in investigations. In coming months, administrators will decide whether to keep the office — the only one of its kind in the country — open at all.

Meanwhile, the program is facing scrutiny of another kind, as the federal government reviews its compliance with civil-rights laws that say race cannot govern foster-care decisions.

Some say it was on shaky ground from the start. An arm of the state Children's Administration, OAACS (pronounced "oasis") opened in 1999 to cover South Seattle and in 2003 grew to cover all of King County.

The idea behind OAACS rests in troubling statistics: Studies have shown that more African-American kids tend to wind up in foster care — and languish there longer — than other kids. African-American kids make up 7 percent of King County's population but are more than 30 percent of kids in long-term foster care, according to a 2004 study. It also takes about twice as long for them to be adopted as it does for white kids.

Under the recent changes, the office still will handle its caseload of families already involved in the child-welfare system. However, it will no longer handle new investigations except for selected pending cases.

The changes came after a review revealed serious lapses in the way the office handled child-abuse complaints, said Jackie Buchanan, the state child-welfare administrator in charge of King County.

According to a letter summarizing the problems, workers repeatedly failed to do proper investigations before deciding where children should be placed. They completed safety assessments before interviewing the children. They failed to check the backgrounds of some caregivers. And they sometimes placed kids with relatives who had their own history of involvement with Child Protective Services.

Phone calls to OAACS managers were not returned.

An African-American woman herself, Buchanan had been a supporter of the program. However, she said she heard enough complaints from people involved in child welfare — from the courts to doctors to law enforcement — that she became increasingly alarmed. It looked like a pattern, she said, rather than a series of isolated problems.

"I've been in social work long enough to know when you start feeling yourself on the verge of a disaster," she said. "I wanted to stop [sending OAACS new cases] before we did have some tragedy happen."

Although some investigations were handled properly, according to Carol Felton, the special assistant in the Children's Administration assigned to the OAACS issue, there were enough concerns that the state decided it had to act immediately.

Referrals to the office were stopped and an emergency meeting was called on Feb. 16 to explain the changes to African-American community leaders.

At that meeting, most people who spoke did not support the decision, Felton said. Numerous advocates, like James Kelly, president of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, say the state never gave OAACS the financial support it needed.

Felton and Buchanan concede that the office has had significant staff turnover and repeated unfilled vacancies, which means remaining staff members have higher-than-average caseloads. Kelly and others believe these sorts of problems should have been better addressed by higher-ups at the state level.

"The Department [of Social and Health Services] has to take a lot of responsibility for that," Kelly said. "You just can't blame the unit."

Goals weren't met

This isn't the first time OAACS has been under fire. A review in early 2005 found problems and statistics indicating the office was doing worse than the state average on nearly every performance measure. A more recent review did not show the needed improvement, Buchanan said.

This is particularly troubling, some child-welfare workers say, considering OAACS was set up to give African-American families specialized attention from top-notch social workers. The idea was that fewer African-American kids would wind up in foster care and those who did would find permanent homes more quickly.

Buchanan said racial-disproportionality statistics have not improved. And the program has become the opposite of what was envisioned, according to the government reports and several people involved in child welfare.

"The quality of care these children are getting is in general below average rather than superior," said Linda Katz, manager of the King County Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) program, a one-time supporter and advisory board member of OAACS.

(CASA volunteers advocate for the interests of children who are abused or neglected; volunteers are considered the "eyes and ears" of dependency-court judges.)

King County Superior Court Judge James Doerty, lead county dependency-court judge, was similarly disillusioned by the program.

Racial disproportionality is a "huge problem" that needs to be addressed, he said, but "I don't think OAACS has been a success."

Emphasis on race

Katz and Doerty also think the office puts too much emphasis on race at the expense of other considerations.

Doerty tells of a recent case involving a white mother and black father who were unable to care for their baby. The state gives relatives priority when placing children outside the home, and the mother's sister and her family, who lived out of state, were happy to take custody of the child.

They had a stable home life, Doerty said, but they were white. The OAACS worker pushed to have the child raised by an unrelated, mixed-race family here, Doerty said, and tried to keep the local family's problems hidden.

"Cultural sensitivity is not a substitute for good social work," Doerty said, adding that the OAACS decision was reviewed up the chain and ultimately overturned.

This is a problem on several levels, say people like Katz, of CASA, because focusing so intently on race might mean ignoring warning signs.

Buchanan, however, doesn't think OAACS workers focused exclusively on race.

At a forum Thursday discussing racial disproportionality, several African Americans involved in child welfare said they've seen the opposite: Preference is often given to whites.

The question of race-based preferences is one that the federal investigation will focus on. Under federal law, race cannot govern foster care or adoption decisions.

Federal investigation

On Feb. 9, the local Office for Civil Rights, part of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, notified the state that it was beginning a review of the practices at OAACS. The review will take several months.

In the meantime, African-American community leaders will be invited to a series of meetings to help the state figure out what to do next about OAACS — or more broadly, the issue of racial disproportionality in the child-welfare system.

"If it could have worked, we would have been the hit of the country," Buchanan said.

"I was really gung-ho to make this work."

Maureen O'Hagan: 206-464-2562 or mohagan@seattletimes.com