Report Says Agency Acts Too Quickly To Remove Children

An article in the Washington Post by Teresa Tomassoni examines unnecessary removals of children from their parents' care, the subject of a recent Citizens Review Panel report.

The number of children removed from their homes by child abuse investigators in the District has fallen in the past year, but a recent review of some cases concluded that children are still regularly separated from their parents without adequate justification. The federally mandated Citizens Review Panel examined 27 cases involving 41 children. In many of these instances, children who were placed briefly in foster care should have stayed with their families, the report concluded.

Under D.C. law, children are not supposed to be placed in foster care without an order from family court. Removing children on an emergency basis without a judge’s permission can happen only if a child’s physical safety is in immediate danger, and if the only way to avoid serious harm is to remove the child from the home. In more than 75 percent of the cases reviewed by the panel, no such risk was identified, and in none of the cases examined was a court order sought prior to removal.

“In essence, they’re [Child and Family Services] not following the law,”said Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children’s Law Center, which represents more than 500 children involved in abuse or neglect cases in the District each year.

The removals are traumatizing for children, she said. “We’ve had kids that thought they were kidnapped,” she said. Whether a child is removed from the family for a few days or a few months, there is potential for kids to regress developmentally. “If a kid is just learning to talk, for example, they might stop talking for a while,” she said.

Read the online version of the full story, or download a PDF.

Graphic by the Washington Post.