Legislature(1997 - 1998)
04/08/1998 09:08 AM Senate HES
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
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= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
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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