By Richard Wexler

The earliest report I know of that attempted to compare the rate at which states take children from their parents and the rate at which those children are held in foster care dates back to 1985. At that time, the rate of removal in Oregon was 35 percent above the national average. Further, the rate at which children were trapped in foster care was 70 percent above the national average.

The most recent data are from 2016. That year, Oregon took away children at a rate 30 percent above the national average and held children in foster care at a rate 63 percent above the national average -- even when rates of child poverty are factored in.

A Feb. 11 editorial in The Oregonian declared that the gap between Oregon and the national average is actually even worse, nearly double, but added that "no one is sure why, or whether that helps children or not." The lead author of the recent scathing audit of Oregon's child welfare system said much the same on Oregon Public Broadcasting. That raises two obvious questions: Why doesn't Oregon know? And, after 33 years, isn't it time to find out?

How might Oregon lawmakers, auditors and journalists find out?

They could ask if Oregon children are 63 percent safer from child abuse than the national average. Nothing in the recent audit, or the studies that preceded it, suggest that.

They could ask if all those children in foster care really were brutally beaten or tortured or left to play in meth labs. Then they'd find out that far more common are cases in which family poverty is confused with neglect, and many more cases fall on a continuum between the extremes.

They could ask if foster care for the child is really better than drug rehab when the problem is really parental drug abuse. That would mean considering research such as the landmark study from the last drug plague, crack cocaine, that found the actual physical development of infants born with cocaine in their systems was better when they were left with parents able to care for them instead of being placed in foster care.

They could ask if any states are doing better at keeping children safe. That would require, for example, looking at Alabama, which takes away children at a rate below the national average and far lower than Oregon, but where independent court-appointed monitors found that reforms emphasizing family preservation made children safer.

They could ask if Oregon children have a great experience in foster care. Not likely. For starters, there are all those scandals about abuse in Oregon foster care. Even without the scandals, study after study, including two from Oregon and Washington State, have found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes. The rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is worse.

Even when there is no abuse per se, one of those Oregon studies found that only one in five foster care "alumni" does well in later life. In other words, the system is churning out walking wounded four times out of five. Two other massive studies found that in typical cases -- not the horror stories that make headlines -- children left in their own homes fare better than comparably-mistreated children living in foster care.

Or maybe we really do know the answer: Oregon's obscene rate of child removal -- a rate of removal that predates the latest drug plague and every other excuse the system can think of -- does not help children. On the contrary, it does terrible harm to the children needlessly taken and it overloads the system, leaving workers less time to find children in real danger. Oregon's 30-plus year embrace of a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare has made all of the state's vulnerable children less safe.

But maybe a lot of people don't want to face up to what we really know because it means the problem won't be solved by hiring hundreds more caseworkers or anything else suggested by the latest audit. It will only begin to change when Oregon faces up to the fact that wrongful removal drives everything else and the only way to fix foster care is to have less of it.

Richard Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, www.nccpr.org.

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