Protecting our children

MAT-SU -- The success stories are inspiring. They are what keep the child protection workers in Mat-Su going when every call seems to be yet another plea for help to save a child in danger.

The system of family and child protective services and law enforcement that helped a young mother named Jamie put her family back together is in some respects unique to the Mat-Su Valley. The safety net is woven from the individual strands of government organizations, community-based organizations, schools, law enforcement and the judicial system, private and non-profit service providers, foster parents and volunteers.

According to statistics cited in literature by the Children's Place, Mat-Su children's advocacy center, Alaska has the highest rate of substantiated cases of child abuse in the nation. Mat-Su Department of Family and Youth Services caseworkers are among the busiest in the state, handling an average of 29 cases apiece instead of the 21 handled by other areas of Alaska, and the national recommended standard of 12.

The level of dedication and professionalism that these people bring to their jobs is immediately evident when they begin to talk about what they do.

Child Abuse Investigations Unit, Alaska State Troopers

"I can't think of any other police work I'd rather do," Alaska State Trooper Investigator Marie Escobar said of her job as half of the Alaska State Trooper's Child Abuse Investigations Unit. Escobar and her Wasilla Police Department colleague, Ruth Josten, have comprised the joint AST/WPD unit since its inception in February 2002.

According to Escobar and Josten, the unit is the first of its kind in the state, a pilot project funded in part by a federal grant.

Responding within 72 hours to reports of physical or sexual abuse of children, the unit's role in the overall child protection system is to determine if a crime has been committed, and to make sure that the responsible person is held accountable. Although reports of child abuse surface from a variety of sources, once a report is made the lines of responsibility between DFYS and the Child Abuse Investigation unit are clear.

"The role of DFYS is to insure that children are protected either within their home or from an outside abuser," explained Escobar. "DFYS court cases are usually civil, while ours are most often criminal since child abuse is a felony."

Not surprisingly, the unit's caseload is big -- 90 cases between them.

Escobar and Josten work closely with DFYS and the Children's Place to make sure that children are not re-traumatized during the interview, which is a necessary part of their investigation to find out what actually occurred in the reported incident. They have special training and personal skills that make them exceptionally well qualified to conduct the interviews.

In addition, they conduct the interviews not at the police department, but at the Children's Place in a special, child-friendly room. The interview is videotaped, and watched in process over closed-circuit television by DFYS and Children's Place personnel. Before closing out the interview, the CAI unit investigator steps outside the interview room and asks if the other members of the team have additional questions. This process enables the team to get all the information they need in one interview instead of subjecting the child to repeated questions about the incident.

When asked if the unit could identify a pattern or rhythm to reports of child abuse in Mat-Su, Josten replied promptly "Constant!"

They normally receive five or more reports of child abuse per week. It is not uncommon for an individual investigation to remain open for from three to five months, although children in immediate danger get priority attention, especially if the suspected abuser is still in contact. After the unit investigates the allegations, they refer to the district attorney for prosecution in cases determined to be criminal. Along the way, they find that they sometimes hear from the victims and their parents.

"They call and let us know how they are doing," smiled Josten.

Both Escobar and Josten find their work rewarding.

Escobar was assigned to the AST Investigations Unit in Palmer, already handling many child abuse cases, when AST began planning to use federal grant money to establish the Child Abuse Investigations Unit.

"I always assumed I was going to be part of the unit," said Escobar.

Josten was a trooper, assigned to the major crimes unit in

Anchorage, when she got a call from WPD Chief Don Savage.

"He told me about the new program and asked me if I would come to Wasilla to work with it," she recalled. "I resigned from the troopers and joined the Wasilla Police Department immediately, and found a case waiting on my desk on my first day."

"There's no special talent that you have to have for this job," Escobar said, "but you really have to want to do the work."

Josten agreed. "I feel driven to do the work," she said. "That's the best way to describe it. I feel driven."

"We work together well as a team," Josten added. "It's important to have someone to talk to who understands this work and can deal with it, and most people just don't have that understanding. If we didn't have each other, the job would be much more frustrating."

Josten and Escobar both said that one of the most common characteristics shared by child abuse cases is that the abuser is known to the family.

"The stranger/sex abuser is really a rarity," Josten said.

"People have misconceptions about perpetrators," added Escobar. "That they should look or act a certain way, but they do not."

According to Escobar, abusers watch children so they can pick times and places when a child is vulnerable and when there is no one to see. They gain the child's silence through threats or coercion, sometimes referring to the abuse as "our secret."

"It is so frustrating that time and time again children tell someone about abuse and nothing is done," Escobar said. "When a child tells someone that they are being abused, they need to be believed and the abuse needs to be reported. We have cases in which kids go to several people in the community and no one acts. In our experience, kids rarely lie about this."

According to Escobar and Josten, their unit meets regularly with other members of the multi-disciplinary team of Mat-Su child protection services, another example of the close cooperation that helps each component of the system serve their clients more effectively.

The Children's Place

Marg Volz, director of The Children's Place, said the center is a non-profit, private agency modeled after children's advocacy centers around the country. According to their informational flyer, their purpose is to provide a child-friendly, neutral facility where professionals from various agencies involved in the evaluation, investigation and treatment of child abuse meet to coordinate and bring their services to the child and their family.

On a day-to-day basis, Volz and her staff at The Children's Place provide as soft a landing as possible for abused children.

In addition to providing an interview facility, The Children's Place is the first line of medical evaluation for allegations of abuse. Volz, a certified pediatric nurse practitioner, conducts day-to-day examinations, while a volunteer medical doctor comes to the center once a week to help with the medical evaluations.

Volz said parents are permitted to remain in the examination room with their children during the non-invasive medical exams, but are not allowed to observe the interview.

"We tell the children that their parents are not watching," said Volz. "That helps them to feel comfortable talking." Volz went on to say that other staff members remain with the parents during the interview, and then they receive a summary of the interview itself once it is complete.

Volz demonstrated the system which enables children to watch their own medical examinations, and displayed the colorful bookcase of stuffed animals and the folded handmade quilts which are donations from Valley quilters.

The quilts are used as drapes during the examination, Volz said, and children are allowed to take them home to keep.

"We have an exciting new addition, a second program called Dual Track," Volz said.

According to Volz, prior to 1999 Mat-Su had the state's highest rate of uninvestigated reports of harm. Because of the rapid population growth, services could not keep up with the increased caseload.

The grant-funded Dual Track program was proposed by DFYS as a pilot project to handle cases in which the apparent risk of child abuse was less imminent and to prevent cases from getting to the criminal stage whenever possible.

Participation in the Dual Track program is voluntary, according to Volz. Social workers in the Children's Place contact the families, schedule appointments with social, medical and mental health service agencies, meet with the families in their homes, conduct assessments and work with the families during a three- to six-month period.

Volz said that the University of Alaska looked at outcomes in the Dual Track program after two years of operation. In addition to a substantial reduction in the number of repeat reports in families involved in Dual Track, the UA study found that feedback from clients showed the program was well received by most families.

Volz said that, in addition to money, The Children's Center accepts donations of new or nearly new, clean children's clothes and toiletries, such as small bottles of shampoo and toothbrushes that they can give to the children.

Division of Family

and Youth Services

Greg Van Kirk radiates energy. It's a good thing, too, since he is currently acting as the service manager for the Southcentral region of DFYS, with 13 field offices distributed from Homer to Bethel and Glennallen to Unalaska.

According to Van Kirk, Mat-Su has the highest ongoing case load in the state, reflecting the area's increase in population.

"If we had more realistic caseloads, we would be better able to serve families," Van Kirk said Thursday.

Even so, Van Kirk said the Mat-Su office is in as good a shape as any in the state. They do an effective job of recruiting good foster parents and then take care of them.

And Mat-Su has a wealth of community services to draw upon in serving families. Day care in Mat-Su, for example, is as good or better than any place in the state.

"Nowhere have I seen a group of social and health services providers that cooperate and assist each other better than Mat-Su Community," Van Kirk said.

"With the type of education and experience we require as prerequisites, there isn't anyone who works for us that couldn't find an easier or better paying job somewhere else. The reason they come to work here is that they think it's valuable work."

"If they didn't," he added, "we wouldn't be able to recruit and hire the quality of people that we have here."

According to Van Kirk, the Mat-Su office is unique in that they are able to select from a whole group of qualified candidates when they recruit.

"Mat-Su is a great place to live, and the social and health community is an ideal place to practice professionally.

"It's a tough job,'' Van Kirk said, but he added that staff morale is high and supervision is excellent in spite of the heavy caseloads.

Funding will always be a challenge, according to Van Kirk. "We do appreciate that legislators have a very difficult job in understanding our system and the resources we need to meet our statutory obligations, and then balancing that against the budgetary realities that they have to deal with," he said.

Van Kirk sees substance abuse as having the highest likelihood of being a factor in clients' lives. Especially destructive is a combination of risk factors that include the parents having been raised in an abusive home, the parents being very young, involvement of a domestic-violence relationship either formerly or presently, and substance abuse.

"We see this combination all the time," Van Kirk said. "It's common all across the state."

A difficult job

Cathy Gray is a child abuse investigator who works in the Mat-Su DFYS office. One of three field investigators, Gray spends her days going to schools, homes and other locations all over the Mat-Su Borough to look into reports of child physical and sexual abuse and neglect.

Gray's quick smile flashes occasionally as she speaks, but her eyes are serious as she describes what it is like to drive up to a home guarded by "no trespassing" signs or loose dogs to tell strangers that she may have to take their children into custody. Although it isn't always possible, the investigators try to visit in pairs. If they have reason to believe they are going into a threatening situation, they may be accompanied by law enforcement.

"I drive around and hope that I don't have to take a child. It's not something that I am comfortable with, ever," she said. "But if I have to remove a child because of the circumstances, then that's what I do."

Whenever possible the investigator tries to place the child temporarily with other relatives, but often the child is placed under the care of a foster parent.

According to Gray, her job is based on the reports that DFYS receives, reports that are sometimes unreliable.

"Reports come in for all sorts of reasons," she explained, "and they are not always true."

Gray said that she and her colleagues look into reports of harm to children within the home. Calls are received in DFYS by a screener who writes up the reports. If the call is a serious one involving a young child considered to be at risk, the investigators respond the same day the call is received. For other calls, the team meets each morning in a structured decision-making group to review new calls and plan their investigations.

There is an upside to Gray's job.

"I do enjoy meeting all the people and talking to the parents," she said. "There are a lot of interesting people out there."

Gray believes that, no matter what a family's problems may be, every parent loves their child.

"They just show it in different ways," she said.

Once a child is taken into custody, the case becomes the responsibility of one of the four ongoing social workers in the local DFYS office who help the family develop a plan that will result in reunification with their children.

Nancy Kirchoff is one of those ongoing workers.

According to Kirchoff, her first job is to try to engage the family in an assessment of the problems to identify the issues that brought their children into custody, and then to develop a case plan to address those issues.

"Other issues may surface as we work with the family," Kirchoff said. "The case plan is fluid and it changes as the needs change."

Kirchoff employs a variety of tools and community services to help families resolve their problems. Paramount among these are programs to address the substance abuse problems of drugs and alcohol, and mental health issues.

Kirchoff said that substance-abuse programs are normally available through Mat-Su Recovery Center and Starting Point. The client must undergo a substance-abuse assessment and sign a release that permits the treatment facility to provide their records to DFYS. The client must follow the recommended treatment and agree to be monitored to assure that the substance abuse does not recur.

Mental health services come through multiple providers, including those in private practice. Often, however, a client has both substance abuse and mental health issues that must be addressed.

"A big challenge is finding a dual diagnosis program," Kirchoff said.

Since there is currently no dual diagnosis program in the Valley, Kirchoff said the workers must be creative in finding ways to help those clients.

Dr. Randy Moss, who directs the grant-funded Co-Occurring Disorders Institute in Wasilla, confirmed Kirchoff's concern that Mat-Su has no comprehensive, formal program fully capable of working with co-occurring disorders. He emphasized that there exist good cooperation and collaboration among and between the substance abuse and mental health service providers in the Valley, but it would be better if the services were provided on a more integrated basis.

"Research has demonstrated that it is better both therapeutically and fiscally to deal holistically and simultaneously with the challenges that individuals face in their lives," Moss said on Friday.

Such integrated services are not generally available in Alaska, Moss said. A group of drug and alcohol and mental health professionals and other stakeholders comprise a state-level commission that has worked for several years to develop policies, screening tools and training suggestions that will help state agencies provide more comprehensive services in this critical area.

Another major problem for many of Kirchoff's clients is finding transportation to treatment, classes and visits with their children. Clients must find a way to get to Palmer and Wasilla since there are no treatment programs in the borough's smaller communities.

Taking care of the child's needs is also a large part of the plan.

"We look at the whole child," Kirchoff said, adding that the ongoing workers keep up with the child's physical condition, mental health and educational needs.

Although Kirchoff said the Valley has many good mental health services, finding easily accessible mental health treatment for children is not easy. School-based programs are ideal but not currently available.

Follow-up with families and children is an important part of Kirchoff's job, one that is made more challenging by the caseload. She currently handles 29 ongoing cases, almost twice the national standard caseload for this kind of work. Along with distance, inclement weather and the often hazardous road conditions in Mat-Su, this load stretches the workers to meet their standard of at least one visit per month to check on the children.

Kirchoff said each client's case plan is different, but in every case reunification of the family is a primary goal. When that goal is not realistic because the family has left the area or is resistant to working the plan, the goal becomes finding an alternative safe and permanent placement for the child, either with other family members or with adoptive parents. Sometimes the goals are concurrent, but within 15 out of 22 months, by federal statute, DFYS must file to terminate the parent's rights.

That is the most painful part of her job.

"Having to go into a termination trial is devastating for the parents and the kids even when it's the best thing for the child."

The reward, said Kirchoff, is putting families back together.

"I like the kids -- working with the kids," she said. "And when you get to reunify kids with their parents, that's the best part."