Iowa child abuse reports rising in wake of adopted girls' deaths, stretching embattled case workers

Lee Rood | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption At least 11 Iowa kids have died from suspected abuse A rising number of Iowa children have been victims of homicide the past three years — from abuse, shootings and unsupervised accidents. At least 20 Iowa children died last year, including 11 from suspected abuse,

The Iowa agency blamed for failing to act on several red flags before the deaths of two adopted teens is facing a growing workload even as its staffing across the state has shrunk.

More calls are coming into Iowa's child abuse hotline, more are being accepted for investigation and more children are being found to be abused, a Reader's Watchdog probe has found.

Abuse hotline calls in the wake of the horrific, high-profile deaths of Natalie Finn of West Des Moines last October and Sabrina Ray of Perry in May have topped where they were last year, reaching 25,100 since the end of last month.

And 61 percent of calls this year are being investigated, versus 52 percent five years ago.

Add to that the fact that Iowa for years has removed children from homes at a higher rate than most other states because of abuse or neglect allegations.

The result: More Iowa birth parents have permanently lost custody of their children because of neglect, often resulting from drug abuse, as well as physical and sexual abuse.

Over the past five years, there's been a 16 percent leap in terminations of parental rights — from 1,446 in 2012 to 1,682 in 2016 — placing pressure on the state to find more suitable foster and adoptive parents.

All of this weighs on the embattled Iowa Department of Human Services, whose employees' actions have been under a microscope since the deaths of Sabrina Ray and Natalie Finn and the alleged abuse of other children adopted from state care.

"We see such horrendous abuse incidents with such specific causes, and it seems easy to address politically,” said Steve Scott, a lobbyist and former head of Prevent Child Abuse Iowa who has worked in the field for more than 20 years. “But we also need to look at long-term problems that have been building for 15 years.”

How legislators and Gov. Kim Reynolds ultimately decide to address some worsening problems in the child welfare safety net will play a huge role in whether children are really safer, Scott and others say.

But stark realities face those leaders and incoming Human Services Chief Jerry Foxhoven, chief among them a huge $100 million state budget shortfall.

MORE: Fixing social worker morale job No. 1 for new DHS chief

What they also need to reckon with: The loss of more than 1,100 Human Services workers since Gov. Terry Branstad took office again in 2010, and abuse investigators responsible for covering larger swaths of the state.

Keeping kids with families

Iowa's social workers have done a better job the past four years of finding relatives to care for kids whose homes are considered unsafe.

But coalitions of Iowans have been lobbying legislators to keep more children found in risky situations with their parents or, if that's not possible, family members.

Angela Schumaker, a 43-year-old Omaha mother who was in Iowa foster care and group homes for five years, said Iowa needs to do more to provide more help to parents because children are abused in out-of-home care more than state statistics suggest.

Schumaker says she was neglected and abused after her father lost custody for beating her when she was 9. She said she remained in state care until she was 13 because her mother, who divorced her husband, only had an efficiency apartment.

“I should have never have been in foster care,” she said.

Schumaker said not all of her foster care experience was bad. But she didn’t receive medical or health care for four of the five years she was a state ward, even though foster children receive state-backed health insurance and subsidies.

State workers do background checks, monthly home monitoring and require nationally recognized training to provide licensed foster care.

Still, many Iowans are calling for better scrutiny of foster-adoptive parents.

Sabrina Ray and Natalie Finn, both 16, and their siblings were severely abused and malnourished after concerns were raised to Human Services.

Lawmakers are conducting probes of those deaths, and a national consultant has been hired to review its practices.

Republicans in the Statehouse have yet to announce what moves they would like to make.

But Democrats have called for the immediate hiring of 25 new social workers, a review of all cases that involve home-schooled foster and adoptive children; and medical checkups for every child whose parents receive foster or adoptive subsidies.

“We’re calling for additional action today to quickly evaluate other children who may be in the same situation while continuing to review progress at DHS to ensure this never happens again,” state Rep. Abby Finkenauer of Dubuque, a ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, said recently.

Research suggests early intervention and prevention cab help keep more kids safety at home and has lowered foster care placements in states such as New York that have invested more money in prevention.

That also reduces the trauma children suffer when they are taken from parents and relatives.

Foxhoven, the former head of Drake University's legal clinic, is known to be a promoter of that kind of early intervention, said Liz Cox, the current director of Prevent Child Abuse Iowa,

The bad news is that a large slice of the money the state spends on child welfare comes from the federal government.

Some congressional leaders have been critical of the fact that nearly all of that money is available only after children have been removed.

Foxhoven says he does believe in the concept that "it's a lot easier for everybody to buy smoke alarms than fire trucks."

But, he added, "you still need fire trucks."

He said he won't necessarily be lobbying for changes in how federal money is distributed to states, but he will respond if others in Iowa decide to take action.

Frayed over time

In the meantime, short-sighted moves now by state leaders could easily make outcomes worse, Scott and Cox said.

In the years leading to a 2014 restructuring at Human Services, state leaders dramatically scaled back agency offices across the state, shaved office hours and slashed workers.

Branstad decreases Iowa's proposed 2018 fiscal budget Gov. Terry Branstad originally proposed spending $7.5 billion in fiscal year 2017-2018. His revised budget lowers that by $173.3 million. His proposed reductions would come from the following areas of the state budget.

Today, 56 counties in Iowa do not have a full-time child abuse investigator. One investigator covers five counties in northwest Iowa.

In 2014, Department of Human Services leaders decided to accept for formal investigation and oversight far fewer complaints of neglect coming into their centralized abuse hotline.

Instead, those families were assessed and offered voluntary services by private providers so experienced investigators could focus on the most serious abuse.

The number of abused children in Iowa — which had been as high as 13,445 a decade ago — dropped almost 40 percent in one year, reaching 8,892 by 2016.

But caseloads in many counties remain high: In Polk County, prosecutors say workers are juggling 50 cases at a time while struggling to find foster homes.

And county attorneys in Polk and elsewhere across the state are not always providing back up by reviewing abuse reports rejected for investigation, as is required under state law.

"We have access to them, but we do not go in on a daily basis and read rejected reports," Polk County Assistant Attorney Andrea Vitzthum told lawmakers at an oversight hearing this month.

Last year's child abuse rate of 12.25 per every 1,000 kids was still “too high for reasons that are chronic and inexcusable for a state like Iowa," Scott said.

“It’s going to take quite a bit of effort to make changes because we were already swimming upstream.”

Poverty, single parents, drugs

Iowa generally ranks as one of the best places in the country for child well-being, according to national research based on 16 different indicators.

But the state has a growing number of children living in single-parent homes and a steady but high number of kids living in poverty — about 1 in 7, according to the new 2017 Kids Count report.

Adoptions of abused foster children have risen more than 16 percent — from 2,066 to 2,405 — in five years from 2013 to 2017. The number reflects an identical leap in more parents losing legal rights to children who are state wards.

The true caseloads of child protective workers — which has been a matter of debate between legislators and Human Service leaders — are expected to increase because social workers are being required this year to formally investigate more cases of hard drug use.

Human Services administrators said they wanted the change because too many drug-affected children were being repeatedly reported for abuse.

Since the deaths of Natalie Finn and Sabrina Ray, social workers also have been told to investigate any case when they have doubts about children’s safety.

Steve Quirk, chief executive of Youth Emergency Services and Shelter in Des Moines, said the state’s move to privatize Medicaid also has resulted in less access to residential care for the most troubled kids “in a system that was already pretty tight.”

The state pays for about 80 fewer emergency shelter beds across the state than five years ago — about 160 now compared with 240 then, he said.

The shelter also loses $50 a night for every child ordered by the courts to be there because state reimbursement rates are lower.

The most troubled children needing emergency care have a mix of acute problems — past sex abuse, drugs, suicidal tendencies, behavior problems and criminal histories.

They also include plenty of children like Natalie Finn and Sabrina Ray, who were malnourished or had other dietary problems that grow from long-term neglect, Quirk said.

Some children literally have nowhere to go because no one — in their families, in foster care or in the community — will take them, Quirk said.

“We have two kids here right now who are about to celebrate one full year here,” he said.

More independent review needed

Foxhoven says he is glad the department hired a national firm to find ways to improve child-protection efforts after the deaths of Natalie Finn and Sabrina Ray.

The two teens and their siblings were being malnourished and abused in the care of adoptive parents receiving subsidies. In both cases, the parents claimed the teens were being home-schooled.

The outside agency, the Alabama-based Child Welfare Policy and Practice Group, is expected to review agency policies, training and data around the effectiveness of the system.

But lawmakers are questioning why the $39,550 contract did not include a full review of how the two girls' cases were handled.

State Sen. Matt McCoy, an oversight committee member who has been highly critical of the handling of both cases, said the agency needs to determine exactly where it failed.

"Unless they are willing to look at every single call made to the abuse hotline on behalf of these children and how that call was handled, then how in the world would they ever be able to determine that?" he asked.

Paul Vincent, who heads the firm, said in addition to assessing current performance and best practices, Human Services asked consultants to take a look at how the centralized child abuse hotline is working, signaling a possible source of problems.

Vincent also said high workloads are counterproductive to child safety, even in states with more money for child welfare.

"What you do with your resources is as important as what resources you have," he said.

Limits on fostering and adoption?

Only about nine to 17 families a year are denied adoptions out of the state system because of past criminal activity, child abuse or some other inability to meet the child’s needs, Reader's Watchdog found.

Alan Blair, a former juvenile court officer supervisor in Fort Dodge, said he raised red flags to child-protective workers years ago about one family living on an acreage that included 17 foster and adoptive 17 kids.

He said the father traveled for his job and the mother had called police wanting to file criminal charges against the children because she couldn’t control them.

“She didn’t have enough support,” said Blair, who retired not long after working on that case a decade ago. “Not even Superman and Superwoman could take care of 17 kids.”

Blair said he spent five years of his career working at Human Services and 25 in the judicial branch. In that time, he came across several families in which added income appeared to factor in the decision to take in more children.

“Some foster families actively ‘recruit’ special needs children so that they can receive larger foster care payments,” he said.

Iowa’s Human Services doesn’t place restrictions on how many children can be adopted.

Many adoptive parents say they could not meet their children's special needs without the subsidies, which account for about 65 percent of what it takes to raise a child.

But neither the state nor federal government requires checks on children whose parents receive them, even though the subsidies are the most expensive item in the child welfare budget.

MORE: Iowa can't recoup adoption payments, even if there's abuse

The Register requested how many adoptions fail each year because parents can no longer handle the children in their care. The agency said it could not release a figure, saying it would require a case-by-case review.

Blair said if workers better tracked failed adoptions, they could better ascertain what changes may need to take place in foster and adoptive recruitment and placement.

Human Services workers also are not required to look at all abuse allegations before placing a child in foster or adoptive care.

Currently, state code mandates that past founded abuse be evaluated when placing foster and adoptive children, but not allegations that could not be confirmed.

But “DHS licensing staff and Iowa KidsNet licensing staff assess a family’s ability to foster or adopt based on the foster family’s history of concerns, how those concerns were resolved, and the likelihood of those concerns resurfacing,” spokeswoman Amy McCoy said.

“If the concerns are serious and unresolved, or continue to occur, action can be taken to revoke their license or deny approval to adopt.”

Young children vulnerable

The circumstances surrounding the deaths of Natalie Finn of West Des Moines and Sabrina Ray of Perry were different than most children who died after abuse was reported to Human Services.

Most children are not school-aged or adopted.

For example, 2-year-old Mason Wyckoff of Grimes and 7-month-old Cody Seals of Indianola both died last year after child protective workers were called to investigate prior abuse.

Both babies were in the custody of birth parents when they died.

Mason died July 22 last year from an intentional drug overdose induced by his mother, who also died from an overdose. The mother had been reported two months earlier as a prescription drug addict.

Cody’s mother was reported to child protection in April 2016 for mental health, substance use and housing instability issues. The baby ultimately was placed with his birth father but was shaken and killed by girlfriend, Tori Bittner.

By the numbers