The Division of Family Services' policymaking board will study a lawsuit filed against Utah's child-welfare system by the the National Center for Youth Law to see if there are flaws in state policy. The lawsuit says the state violates the civil rights of children.
While the center has not said the state's written policy is inadequate, according to an open letter from Family Services and the office of the executive director of human services released to the media Friday, the board will look for deficiencies right away, rather than wait for "what may be a protracted legal process."The letter also offered "observations regarding child welfare in Utah," including a belief that the division and the child-welfare advocates who initiated and supported the investigations that led to the lawsuit both want to create a "nurturing environment for children at risk."
But creating that environment depends on factors such as state law, court efficiency, funding and effective administration of child-welfare programs, current theory and knowledge of those programs, input from advocates, special needs of children in state custody and the availability, training and support of out-of-home care providers such as foster families, residential facilities and adoptive families.
Other factors include the training, experience and work loads of case workers and the cooperation of the child's family, the letter said.
It also contained a warning that media reports of child-welfare cases seldom contain all the information needed to decide what is best for a particular child.
Both the department and child advocates have repeatedly asked for funding to develop or improve aspects of child welfare such as foster-parent training and preventive services for families at risk and treatment for victims of abuse.
State government, the letter said, is an instrument of its citizens and "the ultimate responsibility for those deficiencies and the suffering they may create in the lives of children belongs to all of us. Our votes and those of our representatives; the administrative oversight of our governor and his executive appointees, our willingness to become foster families, adoptive families or respite-care providers; and the pledge of our supportive taxes and time are the raw materials from which our child-welfare system is built."
If human costs aren't enough to make people care about the child-welfare system, it said, the financial costs must be.
If the state fails to commit and invest in nurturing children, "the potential economic productivity of our children as they grow up and join the work force can too often become an economic liability as we pay the high price for children who become socially dysfunctional adults as a result of deprivation or abuse."