Legislature(1997 - 1998)
04/08/1998 09:08 AM Senate HES
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SB 272 - CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN/FOSTER CARE
REPRESENTATIVE FRED DYSON joined the committee to testify on SB
272, and introduced his assistant, Lisa Torkelson. Representative
Dyson noted they have been working on this issue as part of the
Governor's Task Force since last August. A portion of HB 375
responds to changed federal legislation, another portion contains
recommendations to problems identified by the task force and
tragedies that occurred during the past year. His office and the
Administration have spent at least 50 hours thrashing through this
bill since the legislative session began. The House HESS committee
passed out CSHB 375(HES) which represents the agreement between his
office and the Administration. Some of the criminal provisions as
well as some of the Child Support Enforcement Division provisions
were removed from the committee substitute to more narrowly focus
the bill. He urged committee members to consider the House HESS
Committee version of HB 375. He informed the committee he plans to
meet with Administration staff to hash out a few more details
before the bill is heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Number 552
CHAIRMAN WILKEN stated the effort behind the development of this
bill has included staff from each floor of the Capitol Building.
He asked those who would be presenting the bill on behalf of the
Administration to follow Representative Dyson's lead and discuss
the current status of the legislation so that the committee can
begin to tie up loose ends.
BRANT MCGEE, Director of the Office of Public Advocacy, DEL SMITH,
Deputy Director of the Department of Public Safety, SUSAN WIBKER,
Assistant Attorney General with the Department of Law, RUSS WEBB,
Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Health and Social
Services, and DEAN GUANELI, Chief Assistant Attorney General of the
Criminal Division of the Department of Law, joined committee
members at the table to present SB 272 on the part of the
Administration.
MR. MCGEE presented the following brief history of this issue. The
Office of Public Advocacy was the agency that brought to the
public's attention last fall five cases that dramatized the
ineffectiveness of the child protection system in those cases, as
well as hundreds of others. The Office of Public Advocacy had
court permission to release the facts of those cases which shed
light on what had previously been a very secretive system, and
secretive by law. The fact is, the system utterly failed those
children. As the result of rising public concern, a Child
Protection Task Force was formed. It included a lot of people who
worked at an intensive series of meetings throughout the fall. All
of the state agencies in the system were represented, as well as
social work non-profit organizations, judges, guardians ad litem,
Representative Dyson and other legislators. The task force
discussed policy and resource questions; those issues are well
presented in the child protection report. The task force then
developed legislative recommendations based on real life, practical
experience. SB 272 is the collective best thinking of dozens of
experts in the field of child protection.
MR. MCGEE discussed two of the basic themes contained in SB 272:
time and accountability. SB 272 establishes time lines based more
on a child's sense of time rather than an adult's. Two weeks, or
six months can seem like a very long time to a young child. The
time lines give a clear directive to all participants in the child
protection system: the Division of Family and Youth Services
(DFYS); parents; and the courts. The directive requires those
participants to take action more quickly either to ensure that the
child returns to a safe home or is permanently placed with a
relative or other safe alternative. Changes in federal law require
initiation of certain types of proceedings; SB 272 closes in the
end points of that. The child protection system would have to deal
with a case at the adjudication level within 120 days. Currently,
those cases, because they are in the court system and involve
multiple parties, take a very long time. It is not unusual for
cases to last four to six years, and sometimes over ten years.
Under SB 272, that will no longer happen. This bill has been
nicknamed the "no-excuses bill." It establishes specific time
lines and holds everyone involved accountable. DFYS will have to
provide direct and timely services to the family to keep the family
together and promote reunification. If those services are not
successful, DFYS must make documented efforts to find a permanent
safe home for the child. The bill preserves all legal safeguards
in current law for parents, but parents will only have one year to
get treatment and make the necessary behavioral or lifestyle
changes that will allow them to safely parent their children.
Parents can no longer wait for years to get treatment and they can
no longer stop the legal process, or a termination trial, merely to
start another treatment series. SB 272 requires the courts to
conduct adjudication hearings within 120 days, and permanency
hearings within one year, and decisions must be made at the trial
and appellate court levels in a timely manner. Judges will no
longer be able to treat children's cases as just another case. It
prioritizes children's cases in court. Under federal law, DFYS
will have to initiate termination proceedings if the child has been
out of the home for 15 of the last 22 months. DFYS will have six
months to initiate the termination trial itself. The judge has 90
days to issue a decision after the trial and the appellate court
has 90 days to reach a decision after the case has been briefed.
These requirements will dramatically shorten the lifespan of a case
and will dramatically shorten the period of uncertainty and anguish
that many children experience. Most importantly, this bill says to
children that their interests are paramount. Children will no
longer have to wait for years and years in foster care while their
parents are given chance after chance to make changes in their
lives. Mr. McGee urged the committee's swift and serious
consideration of SB 272.
Number 463
DEL SMITH stated his entire career, since the age of 18, has been
in law enforcement, and he assumed when he began his career that
the solution was always to build more jails to lock up criminals.
His opinions have evolved since then. Ninety percent of chiefs of
police surveyed believe that investing in children is a good crime
prevention technique and he agrees. He stated it is common sense
that victims of child abuse will have anger issues as they get
older. In a recent case in Anchorage, an individual received a
sentence of 115 years. The public record indicates that this
individual was the victim of sexual abuse and other very unpleasant
experiences during his childhood. That is not an excuse, but
everything that can possibly be done to prevent crime should be,
with an eye out for 15 years from now, or our society will be in
substantially worse shape than it is now. The state cannot build
enough jails or hire enough police to meet those needs. He
strongly urged the Legislature to enact the provisions in SB 272.
The law enforcement community views this bill as a crime prevention
tool. He repeated it is time to get serious about what will happen
in 15 or 20 years if abuse prevention measures are not implemented
now.
Number 435
SUSAN WIBKER informed committee members she is an assistant
attorney general in the Anchorage office and does the human
services cases, which are the child abuse and neglect cases. Both
the Departments of Law and Health and Social Services asked her to
work on this project, because, for one reason, she spent five years
working in the Anchorage District Attorney's Office where she
specialized in prosecuting child abuse cases. What she attempted
to do in pulling this bill together was to use the recommendations
of the team that both Brant McGee and Del Smith served on. In
addition, several Supreme Court opinions came down that strongly
recommended that Alaska's laws be changed because those laws were
resulting in decisions that left children unprotected. Also,
Congress just passed a law changing the way child protective
service workers will practice with their cases. Some of those
changes are drastic for social workers, one being the
implementation of time lines. Cases will no longer be able to sit
in the system for five or ten years anymore. For every case
sitting in the system, there is a child languishing in a foster
home or somewhere outside of their own home. SB 272 makes the
child's health and safety the paramount concern, which is what will
drive the system. If a child can go home, then DFYS will need to
get the services in place to get that child home within one year to
15 months. If the level of violence in the family is so great that
the child cannot return home, DFYS will have to find a permanent
safe home for the child in the same amount of time. The time lines
are important to the development of children. Children need to
attach and bond in a place that they can call home where they know
they will grow up. When that does not happen, children grow up
with no attachments, no conscience, no ability to have empathy, and
these are the homicidal children who commit violent crimes at very
young ages. Research studies are showing that the way children are
cared for at very young ages is directly related to how violent our
streets are going to be later.
MS. WIBKER explained one of the changes recommended by the federal
law is that the system should not operate solely with the goal of
preserving and reunifying the family which has been DFYS' mandate.
At least half of the children who have died from abuse were
reported to the child protection system but were left in, or
returned too quickly to, dangerous homes. SB 272 prohibits leaving
children in situations that involve a high level of violence. In
other situations, the state is able to get involved early enough so
that family preservation and reunification is the right goal, and
it is the right goal for most of the children in the system. Those
are the cases in which the treatment dollars spent are worthwhile.
She repeated that the guiding force of the system will be the
safety of the child. She asked committee members to please
seriously consider the bill.
Number 380
SENATOR LEMAN referred to Ms. Wibker's statement that in many
cases, if the state intervenes early enough to change behavior,
successful reunification can occur. He asked if SB 272 contains
any provisions that allows groups, such as churches or other
support structures other than the state, to help keep people
accountable. He stated he has found that whether the problem is
alcohol, substance abuse, or sexual misconduct, when people are
accountable to others it helps reduce recidivism. He questioned
whether SB 272 recognizes and/or encourages the use of churches or
other groups instead of, or in addition to, state involvement.
MS. WIBKER replied one of the items in the bill is the creation of
a multidisciplinary team. One of the task force's recommendations
was that information be shared more openly and that people from
more disciplines be involved in the team that makes the decisions
about a child. DFYS has been involved in forming those teams
around the state. By working with child care providers, Alaska
State Troopers, VPSOs, social workers, pediatricians, nurses, and
others when there is a call of child abuse, teams can make
decisions. That approach solves two problems: information is
shared so that all involved know what the others are doing; and the
expertise from people in many different disciplines will be used to
help make the decisions rather than leaving the decision to one
worker who is often isolated.
SENATOR LEMAN questioned whether some team members can be people
who are not part of the formal state system, but maybe ancillary to
the state system, such as members of Big Brothers and Big Sisters.
He stated he favors anything that can be done to enhance those
relationships.
Number 334
MR. MCGEE commented the task force spent a good deal of time
talking about that possibility. He did not think there was
anything in the bill that specifically addresses that concern. He
stated SB 272 deals with the relatively small number of cases,
eight percent, in which an investigation results in the filing of
a petition. In the other 92 percent of cases, some of the
allegations are determined to be unfounded, but it is obvious that
the system falls down in the cases where evidence of family
problems exists but not enough to warrant the filing of a petition.
DFYS will form a family support unit to work with those kinds of
families. The Office of Public Advocacy is supposed to help DFYS
create a volunteer program to plug folks into a network, whether it
be a church, school, or other community groups. Many of these
folks do not have those attachments. Churches could help to
arrange visitation with parents whose children are in custody. A
lot of thought was given to the use of community resources on a
policy level and a practical level, but the issue is not addressed
in SB 272 because it primarily deals with the smaller fraction of
cases.
CHAIRMAN WILKEN noted he passed out, for the benefit of the
committee, a document showing which legislators have worked on
this whole issue and which legislators have picked up the ball in
specific areas that need to be addressed. He also noted an audit
of DFYS is in the committee packet.
Number 301
DEAN GUANELI stated the primary thrust of SB 272 is civil child
protection proceedings, to ensure that the child's best interests
are paramount and that the timelines are shortened. Because abuse
and neglect of children often spills over into criminal law, SB 272
contains criminal law provisions in those areas that the task force
felt needed to be tightened. The bill makes a number of changes to
the homicide law. Senator Halford introduced a bill that came to
similar conclusions, adopted from many of the Governor's ideas.
Senator Halford's bill recently passed the Senate so the changes to
the homicide laws in SB 272 have already been addressed by the
Senate. SB 272 also contains provisions to deal with neglect by
parents that seriously jeopardizes children. Neglect will be an
infraction so parents will not go to jail, but the provision will
be a way to identify people who are passed out drunk time and
again, or people with infants who have drugs in their homes. The
provision will allow police officers to issue an infraction, notify
DFYS, and provide the court the opportunity to order the person to
treatment. It also holds a person criminally responsible if he/she
leaves a child with a person who has previously abused the child
and does so again. There are many situations in which one spouse
is aware that the other spouse is abusing the child. Prosecutors
find it very frustrating that they cannot take some action against
the person who could have stopped the situation before a child died
or was severely injured. He emphasized the criminal aspect of SB
272 is a small part of the bill; its main thrust is civil.
Number 256
CHAIRMAN WILKEN commented it is obvious how important this issue is
by the number of people working on it. He agreed with Mr. Smith's
remark that we can build all of the jails we want, but the problem
will not stop until it is addressed from the other end. He
commended everyone who has taken up this effort.
RUSS WEBB discussed the magnitude of the problem today. DFYS
receives about 16,000 reports of child abuse or neglect each year.
DFYS currently has about 1700 children in its custody in out-of-
home care. DFYS will not be able to deal with the long term impact
of this situation because children who are abused and neglected are
67 times more likely to become victimizers when they become
juveniles or adults. Early intervention procedures must be
established and SB 272 provides the tools to create those
procedures. One of the key elements of today's discussion is that
child protection is not any single agency's responsibility. It
takes a team effort, involving not only government agencies but
communities as well. This bill provides opportunities to use that
teamwork more effectively, sharing information and working with
communities.
SENATOR ELLIS asked if the committee is in the process of
formulating the committee's work plan on the child protection bill.
CHAIRMAN WILKEN said a lot of people have already picked this issue
up. He thought it was important to advise the committee of all of
the different efforts taking place. Whether the Senate HESS
committee does anything has yet to be determined.
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