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2016-08-11 / Front Page
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Program aims to keep children, families together
By Tory Jones Bonenfant
toryb@eagletimes.com
The Vermont Department of Children and Families Family Services Division office on Mineral Street in Springfield. DCF and Healthcare and Rehabilitation Services have joined to launch a new initiative to combat the rising trend of children being separated from their families due to abuse and neglect. — TORY JONES BONENFANT
The Vermont Department of Children and Families Family Services Division office on Mineral Street in Springfield. DCF and Healthcare and Rehabilitation Services have joined to launch a new initiative to combat the rising trend of children being separated from their families due to abuse and neglect. — TORY JONES BONENFANT
SPRINGFIELD — An initiative by Healthcare and Rehabilitation Services of Southeastern Vermont (HCRS), funded through a state grant, aims to help reverse a rising trend of children separated from their families due to abuse and neglect in Springfield and throughout the state of Vermont.
“We’re kind of the last chance to make it work. We’re very practical. We ask, ‘What do you need?’” said Will Shakespeare, HCRS Director of Children, Youth, and Family Services.
The answer from families may be rent subsidy, removing trash from a home, getting a car repaired, or behavioral issues such as help with getting children prepared for school or using an alarm clock — all short term and focused solutions, he said.
A pair of autistic twins whose behavior, school attendance, and hygiene problems “nearly exhausted” efforts by educators and their own parents; a boy whose constant school absence and untreated ringworm were symptoms of his mother’s hoarding and health issues; and a quiet 14-year-old girl who suffered physical and mental abuse from her alcoholic mother are three cases of southern Vermont families in crisis that might have concluded with the youths removed from their homes and placed into state custody.
Instead, all three cases — and hundreds like them in Brattleboro and Springfield — have ended “far happier” due to the efforts of HCRS, funding from the Vermont Department of Children and Families (DCF), and a program called Intensive Family Based Services (IFBS), according to an Aug. 11 press release from HCRS.
With the help of the DCF grant, HCRS is extending its IFBS model to Brattleboro and Springfield, keeping children in their homes and helping avoid state custody, according to the press release.
The IFBS is a national model for child protection, used in Vermont and New England, Shakespeare said. It uses 13- to 18-week, intensive, in-the-home family support services with a clinical focus to help keep children safe in their homes while also preventing unnecessary separations from their families. IFBS clinicians are trained to work with families victimized by rapidly increasing addiction and substance abuse challenges.
“It’s short term, and very practical,” Shakespeare said on Thursday. “It’s basically saying, ‘You’ve got three months to turn this around … If you agree to this, then let’s get to it.”
Shakespeare said that statewide, the number of children taken into state custody due to child abuse and neglect filings has risen about 62 percent in Vermont in the last five years, from 2010 to 2015.
He also said that two or three years ago, the number of cases in Brattleboro was “in the 80s” and that it has almost doubled to about 130 cases right now.
“These are families that are at real risk,” he said. “It’s a significant increase. It is an uphill trend at this point, and there does not seem to be an abatement.”
The IFBS model “recognizes evidence-based practices for keeping kids at home,” he said.
HCRS is the second-largest of Vermont’s 11 designated agencies and serves communities across Windham and Windsor counties.
DCF first awarded HCRS funding to support IFBS in Springfield in 1989. Last March, DCF also selected HCRS to provide IFBS in Brattleboro.
The services begin with an assessment of each family’s needs, capacities and willingness to engage in the process, and current levels of risk to children. Based on the assessment, HCRS constructs a plan of care, which includes setting measurable goals for improving parenting skills, helping parents to manage their children’s behavior, promoting safe and effective family meetings, and providing referrals to other community resources. All families are provided HCRS’ round-the-clock crisis intervention and behavioral support services.
“DCF is excited to partner with HCRS to provide these services to families in Windham County,” said Susan O’Brien, District Director of DCF’s Brattleboro Family Services Office, in the same press release.
Founded in 1967, HCRS is a nonprofit, community mental health agency serving Vermont residents in Windham and Windsor counties. HCRS serves more than 4,000 individuals every year through its mental health, substance abuse, and developmental disabilities programs. The agency provides holistic care for clients, supporting them with employment, housing, transportation, and other social service needs, according to the press release.
HCRS has a field office in Springfield at the State Office building. HCRS also has First Stop Accessing Services offices, which allow callers to talk with a Children, Youth and Families staff person who can offer phone support, information, and referral, or set up an appointment to talk with a clinician, or meet at a convenient place in the community or at a home.
To reach a First Stop office in the Springfield area, call (855) 220-9429. To reach HCRS, call (802) 886-4500 or visit www.hcrs.org for more information.
This sounds like a sincere, well-intended, very bad idea. DCS in Springfield is currently overwhelmed and understaffed, programs like this do not help the situation and they do not work. When we expend the funds and resources on trying to patch up families which are this dysfunctional, we lose a precious window of time to actually positively affect the child. When we do not rescue the child from the families of this type, we actually continue the intergenerational chain of dependency which is creating an unsustainable welfare budget, and impeding improvement in towns like Springfield. This is where I part company with many of my political fellow travelers. Use of tax money in this matter isn't just non-effective, it can actually impede the ability to fix problems.
ReplyDelete"Three generations of imbeciles are enough" Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr...in this case, only two, Mr. McNaughton? Climb down out of your ivory tower.
DeleteOliver Wendell Holmes happened to be wrong. That was his opinion in the Carrie Buck case, about a woman who was sterilized because eugenics was in style at the time. She was not mentally incompetent.
DeleteHad the notion of "family values" been understood in the Bronze Age culture of the Middle East, we would not have a Bible that refers to the Devil "prowling about the world in search of souls to devour." Instead, we'd have the Old Testament prophets inveighing against the evil they learn in their dysfunctional families. 7:02, you have no idea how thoroughly children learn (starting as early as 4 months old) that crisis and abuse are normal states. Thirty years ago, reactionaries across America, funded by the famously dissolute billionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife, started pushing "family values" in order to gain political control, and part of the fallout was legislatures mandating that children removed from families be returned as soon as possible. A very bad idea. If you have a few hours, I can provide a few examples.
DeleteYes, let's put them all in work houses and away from their families....you and McNaughton are correct, a low cost intervention before an expensive removal is pointless...perhaps Jonathan Swifts' solution would suit your palates better?
DeleteNot sure what was Ivory Tower about my comment. I am just saying that our funding of these programs aimed at patching up grossly dysfunctional families is actually impeding rescuing the children and failing to cut the chain of dependencies. I am certainly not advocating eugenics. The simple truth is there are more and more studies showing that if you design wrap around school affiliated educational programs which leave little or no time for these children to interact with their families you can actually perform miracles. But if you waste money and resources trying to make the family functional you are likely to fail with the family and lose the child. It's time that we shed the delusion that families are always positive entities, some are in fact the problem.
DeleteWho said anything about work houses? Let's get this straight, we are talking about seriously dysfunctional families. Spending a lot of small monetary grants for band aid attempts to cure dysfunctional families is simply not working in Springfield. Migosh just open your eyes. These kids can be saved, but these programs are not working, they are sold as acts of governmental compassion, but it's not compassionate to leave a child in a situation that condemns them to a life of under achievement and dependency. They need a wholesome, structured, environment where their aptitudes are nurtured and enhanced...they are getting the opposite at home. Not everyone who has children actually is a parent.
ReplyDeleteI have a relative who by age 14 was so sociopathic that his doting grandparents and custodial parent agreed with his therapist that he had to be removed from the home environment for a sufficiently long time that the triggers that activated his behavior (peer pressure, leisure time activities, school social network, parental interaction) in order to not be in jail by the time he reached adulthood.
ReplyDeleteThis meant three years of special school 3,000 miles away. It also cost him the college tuition they had set aside for him, since it cost thousands per month to keep him there. Had he been returned "as soon as possible," he would have been unable to keep on the straight and narrow.
Just because the family is the basic unit of society, it doesn't mean it's going to be an intrinsically sound unit of society. It's just the place where kids figure out what they need to do to survive in the reality that they live in, and sometimes that reality is really, really bad.
This may be the most convoluted discussion on this blog yet. A Democrat who wants to legalize drugs calling for the removal of children from drug addicted families? Yikes! A Republican calling for increased government involvement in family affairs? Double yikes! You guys should listen to yourselves! In my opinion, you're both responsible; the R's for your lack of ethics, the D's for your lack or morality! Funny how you both end up in the same place; a wholesale abdication of responsibility for your failed social and economic policies!
ReplyDeleteKurn Hattin for Children in Westminster, Vt.
ReplyDeleteYes, Kurn Hattin is an example of a program that has merit, except it does not have a high school program to feed into. I believe that a wrap around like Kurn Hattin which utilized the public schools, but augmented the programs would be worth investigating as their is a shortage of good foster parents.
DeleteNot sure who is being labeled what, but this should not be considered a partisan issue. The laws are pretty clear about when the State can remove a child from parental custody. They strongly protect parental rights. Which is proper in a free country. But, we don't need band-aid programs, however, well intentioned that can interfere even more when that decision has been made. While good families are a great blessing, the opposite is true of dysfunctional families which are so out of control that intervention is necessary. You have to make a choice at that point, do you rescue the child, or do you continue to spend money and resources on tryin to fix the family. Band aid programs tend to waste money and fail to save the child. The long term effects are bad for the child, and costly to the community. Is one party more to blame than the other? Hard to say.
ReplyDelete2:36, I'd love to talk with the members of the party you're affiliated with.
ReplyDeleteI have no party affiliation, which allows me the freedom to think for myself. As I said, I hold BOTH parties responsible for the mess this country's in. Actually, I agree that some families are hopeless. My point is that most of these dysfunctional families are the creation of a dysfunctional society. Dwindling resources and the erosion of social standards are the root cause. It's a vicious cycle; dysfunctional people create dysfunctional societies that create dysfunctional people. Elected leaders and those of social prominence have a responsibility for the culture they create through their policies and practices. Both you and George are politicians; the decisions you and your parties make impact us all. When Democrats call for legalization of drugs, abortion, gay marriage and the like, you erode the moral standards that promote stable families. When Republicans de-fund every public institution and attack labor in order to give more money to billionaires, you erode the economic standards that promote stable families. Therefore, IT IS political, and you are both responsible.
DeleteI agree with a lot of 7:00's opinions, however it seems to me that a lot of dysfunctional people just happen, regardless of the families or societies they were born into. Yes, bad conditions of upbringing will tend to worsen the lives children come to lead, but even if all the conditions magically got fixed, dysfunctional people would still pose problems that would need to be addressed.
Delete7:00, just to make it clear. I am running as an Idependent, not as either a Democrat or Republican. There are five candidates running for the two State House seats up for election this year. Alice Emmons who has been elected continually for about 30 years is running as a Democrat. Bob Forguites who was the Springfield Town Manager for 19 years and a one term Representative is also running as a Democrat. Scott Frye and Dennis Pine are running as Republicans. I am running as an Independent. You have a full spectrum to choose from this year.
DeleteI wish I could get Democrats to call for the rational legalization of drugs!
ReplyDeleteIt's quite risky to associate substance abuse with recreational substance use, since three-quarters of heroin users and 88% of alcohol users are not addicted, so there's not much of an argument that casual use erodes stable families. We can get a good grip on addressing substance abuse and addiction when we stop treating them like crimes and addressing them as the public health problems they are.