North Pole lawmaker seeks investigation into state Office of Children’s Services

Rep. Tammie Wilson addresses the Alaska House of Representatives, March 12, 2014. (Photo by Skip Gray/Gavel Alaska)
Rep. Tammie Wilson addresses the Alaska House of Representatives, March 12, 2014. (Photo by Skip Gray/Gavel Alaska)

Statewide there are more than 2,500 children living with relatives or in foster homes. More than 40 percent are in Anchorage and about of quarter of them live in Southcentral. It seems clear to Rep. Tammie Wilson, R-North Pole, that the policies governing the Office of Children’s Services need a second look. Wilson is a member of the House Health and Social Services Finance Subcommittee.

“We’re investigating many cases that have come to my office showing a pattern of abusive discretion of their department,” says Wilson.

Wilson says her office is still collecting evidence to justify an investigation. She claims she’s heard hundreds of problematic stories, many with common elements: caseworkers removing children without evidence of a threat to safety, not giving biological families priority when placing children in a new home, and constantly changing criteria for families to regain custody of their children.

Wilson says when she began investigating these stories she expected that finding evidence to support removing a child from a home would be the easiest part.

“They take the children from just an allegation and we can’t even figure out how they’re substantiating it. We do know that once an allegation is made, it becomes the parents’ obligation to prove that it didn’t happen,” says Wilson.

Amanda Metivier is the director of Facing Foster Care in Alaska, an advocacy group for foster kids. Metivier is a former foster child and now a foster parent. She says in Alaska a case worker’s opinion is all it takes to remove children from a home, but she also says reasons for removal are usually legitimate.

“The reason why children come into the child welfare system is because of issues of safety at home,” says Metivier.

Those issues include neglect, abuse and substance abuse.

“The caseworkers that come to work for OCS are not in it because they hate families. They’re in it because they care and they want to do the right thing. It’s really hard to keep up when you have 20-30 cases,” says Metivier.

She says on average caseworkers at OCS last about 18 months. She adds that nearly half of children who enter the system do go back home. State employees are tasked with helping families solve their problems so their kids can return, but federal standards only leave them one to two years to reach that point.

“So if children are in foster care for … 15 of the most recent 22 months (as determined by federal law), then the state has to move towards termination of parental rights, and then move toward adoption to ensure that children are moving into permanent families,” says Metivier. “Every case is unique but I feel like the goal is always for a child to go home; but there are lots of reasons why a child might linger in the system.”

Wilson says this is where it seems the state is falling short.

“Making sure that the classes are available to the parents; making sure it’s clear exactly what it’s going to take to (go from) supervised visits, to unsupervised visits, to finally getting them back in the home,” says Wilson. “Just as we seem to have gotten everything done that is requested, all of the sudden there’s a whole other list that we need to do.”

Metivier says parents do see inconsistencies for a number of reasons. Alaska is young and the child welfare policies are underdeveloped compared to in other states, caseworker turnover is extremely high and there’s a shortage in people trained to be social workers. But these problems are not secrets.

“Every couple of years the federal government does what is called the Child and Family Services review and they measure based on federal standards: safety, permanency and well being,” says Metivier.

The review compares Alaska to a national standard, and then a plan is generated to show how the state can improve. In 2014, the state adopted a plan built on results from a 2008 last federal review. Metivier thinks a grand jury investigation would mirror many of the conclusions drawn during that 2008 review. Wilson is convinced an investigation is necessary but it’s going to take several weeks for her to collect enough evidence to justify assembling a grand jury. The Office of Children’s Services was contacted for this story but did not return a request for comment.

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