CPPP on Why Texas Has Higher Child Abuse Rates
The Center For Public Policy Priorities released an analysis Wednesday of why Texas has a higher per capita child abuse and neglect death rate than other states.
Their reasoning?
1) Other states may be undercounting their child abuse and neglect deaths.
2) Texas has higher child poverty, a higher teen birth rate and lower child abuse and neglect prevention than other states.
The report notes that, since 1998, Texas' child abuse and neglect death rate has been consistently higher than other states. In 2006, for example, Texas had 4 child abuse and neglect deaths per every 100,000 children. The ...
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nccpr
This excellent report represents a heartening outbreak of intellectual honesty at Scott McCown’s CPPP. The report essentially shows that an important piece of the message they’ve been sending about child protective services for the past decade is wrong.
The key parts of the report are where it discusses what does NOT contribute to increases in child abuse deaths. By comparing a series of factors to child abuse death rates among the states, the report concludes:
--The rate at which people report child abuse, which is said to be below average in Texas, does NOT contribute to more child abuse deaths.
--The rate at which a state screens in reports for investigation, which is said to be above average in Texas, does NOT contribute to more deaths.
--The rate at which a state takes children from their parents, which is said to be below average in Texas, does NOT contribute to more deaths.
In short, none of the traditional investigative and “police” functions of child protective services contribute anything to raising or lowering the rate of child abuse fatalities.
I’ll get to what does make a difference in a moment. First, though – why don’t the traditional CPS functions make a difference? The CPPP report doesn’t say. But it’s not that hard to figure out.
The number of children who die of child abuse in Texas is horrifying: 228 in 2007. In fact, even if the number were 1 it would be horrifying. But there are nearly 6.8 million children in Texas. And of that total, more than 1.5 million are living below the poverty line. That is one gigantic haystack. Why in the world would anyone think that, say, doubling or tripling the number of families investigated or children removed would really help us find more of those 228 needles in time?
So everything we’ve ever heard from anyone, including CPPP, claiming or implying that hiring more investigators to take more children from more families will save children’s lives – is flat wrong. And, of course, so is every story whose anecdotal lead about a heinous child abuse death is followed by the OSMQ (Obligatory Scott McCown Quote) about the need to take away more children.
Yeah, I know. Some will say: But what about the needles CPS did find, in the sense that the children were “known to the system”? Although the CPPP analysis doesn’t mention it, and there are no reliable systematic data, news accounts from around the country suggest that the percentage of child abuse deaths “known to the system” is pretty similar. So there is no evidence that any of the CPS related factors contribute to an increase or decrease in those deaths either.
There is one exception: In the very few places large enough to detect a pattern, deaths tend to go up in the wake of a foster-care panic, a huge sudden surge in removals of children. And that, too, makes sense. When workers are inundated with a surge in false reports, trivial cases, and needless removals, they have less time to find any child in real danger – so more such cases are missed. When the haystack suddenly grows, it’s even harder to find the needles.
So if what CPS does or doesn’t do has nothing to do with rates of child abuse fatalities, what *does* cause the higher rate in Texas?
This is where the CPPP report also is useful in another respect: It provides more evidence that it is impossible to do an accurate comparison of child abuse fatality rates among the states. The report shows that the allegedly higher rate of such deaths in Texas is due in part to the simple fact that Texas has a broader definition of a child abuse fatality than most states and a more thorough process of child abuse death review. CPPP goes on to conclude this means other states are undercounting child abuse deaths. It also can mean Texas is overcounting them. For example, determining when a drowning is an accident and when it is neglect can be highly subjective. But this is CPPP we’re talking about; I’m not expecting miracles.
The report also says there are some factors which suggest that at least part of the higher rate in Texas is real. Texas has certain factors which *have* been shown to contribute to higher rates of child abuse fatalities:
--High rates of poverty
--High rates of teen pregnancy
--Low rates of services to PREVENT child maltreatment.
Which means, of course, had Texas taken some of the hundreds of millions of dollars it spent to hire more investigators and otherwise make the system bigger and spent it instead on proven prevention programs and help to ameliorate the worst effects of poverty, fewer children might be dead today.
Let’s see, what was the name of that group that kept pushing for the big expansion of investigators, and is constantly saying Texas should take away more kids…?
Of course, Scott McCown, CPPP’s director and the Godsource for Texas media on child welfare, didn’t actually write this report. But I sure hope he reads it.
Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
www.nccpr.org