My District Sinks to a New Low

What happened to keeping the child at home and educating the parents? I’d love to know the numbers they are using to defend the isea that it is cheaper to place her in a residence and not use aids to maintain her at home!!! I work with residential facilities in NY state and our push is to downsize….(close developmental centers and place back into counties of origin) with the emphasis on integrating them into the community with community supports (church groups, people with similar interests, ie music, arts, sports etc), idealy keeping them within their family structure (or units) with appropriate supports.
My heart goes out to this family, and especially this girl!!

I think that they are keeping a guy in jail over mis-planted trees or something.

Do these people not understand that this is all on the taxpayer’s dime?

First of all…

“The case involved no allegations of child abuse or neglect. Rather, it grew out of a years-long struggle between the county school district and Caleb and Ann Chang over the best treatment for their severely disabled child.

Social workers said Jessica Chang could injure herself at home and should go, instead, to the live-in facility that the school district wants her to attend.”

The state should NEVER be allowed to remove a child from the home in the absence of abuse or neglect. Overstepping their bounds (as the Changs’ atty put it)? Well, that’s putting it mildly to say the least. Where do we stop with this scenario? Do we take all children who could conceivably get hurt away from their families? What about all the poor kids who live in bad neighborhoods? They face even more immediate danger of injury (self or otherwise), not the least of which is an increased risk of drug abuse, teen pregnancy and the occasional drive by shooting. In truth, CPS could go door to door in many areas of the country and take children into “safe” custody all day long, and still there would be those individuals who run the risk of being injured. Where do we stop?

And what of the Changs? “Twice they have tried group homes. They say she was poorly cared for in them.

In addition, they said, she reacted badly — injuring herself by rubbing the skin on her face raw, scratching her hands, and tearing her underwear and shoes — during a recent eight-month stay at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, which runs a hospital for children with neurological problems.

In court, Segal said Caleb Chang had agreed to place the girl at the Rockville center for the autistic when she was admitted to Kennedy Krieger. When the family did not take her there Monday, child welfare officials stepped in and issued an authorization for emergency shelter care, which led to yesterday’s hearing.

Caleb Chang said he did not agree to placing his daughter in the 24-hour residential program. In court, he said, years of bad experiences have led him to not trust the county bureaucracy in making good decisions about his daughter. “

So on the one hand, we have the possibility of this girl engaging in SIB (self-injurous behavior) if left in the home, or the possibility of her having an accident. Kids have injuries all the time, they break arms and legs riding skateboard or climbing trees, they skin their knees playing football, stove their fingers playing basketball, etc. Just because this girl is autistic does not make it somehow worse that she faces the risk of getting hurt.

“A county social worker testified that Jessica has shown multiple signs of self-injurious behavior in previous contacts with county officials, including eating inedible objects, throwing things randomly, climbing onto window sills, and touching herself inappropriately. Claudia Segal, the social worker, said the Changs’ North Potomac home — where the girl has lived most of her life with her parents and three siblings — did not provide a stable, secure environment to ensure her safety.”

Sorry, but this “social worker” obviously knows very little about either autism or SIB. The eating of inedible objects (also known as PICA) is a problem, but in the grand scheme of SIB it is very minor (granting the more dangerous cemicals are locked away from access). Throwing things may pose the threat of injury, but that is seldom SELF injury. And as far as touching herself innapropriatly, exactly what are they saying? In whose eyes is it innapropriate? Is she masturbating or is she just touching herself? How much of this is the arbitrarily drawn set of standards that some narrow minded idiot has determined, and how much is what people who are better experienced in LD’s (and indeed with psychology and children in general) who wave off as unimportant in the grand scheme of things?

And are we to believe that by placing this girl in residential she will no longer touch herself, or climb on things? I suppose if they keep her restrained she will not be able to do these things, but short of that they cannot.

And indeed, the track record the Changs have experienced is that when in residential care, their daughter actually became more troubled, and engaged in true SIB, including “rubbing the skin on her face raw, scratching her hands, and tearing her underwear and shoes”. For many people with profound communication impairment, SIB becomes the only method they have to express their upset, sadness and anger. The fact that she began these behaviors while in the state’s care should have clued the judge in as to which environment was actually safer for her.

Unfortunately, judges may be well steeped in the workings of law, but are seldom very well versed at all in the subtle workings of the autistic mind, or in what is best for these kids. And remember that CPS (child protective services) is one of two areas of law where the burden of proof is NOT on the state to prove guilt, rather guilt is assumed by the courts until the accused can prove they are innocent. This can be an expensive, emotionally draining, spiritually destroying process that can take years to rectify for the families, who are treated as pariahs by all even if they are cleared, and doing untold damage to the children as they struggle to understand why they were removed from their loving parents. The worst of it is that the people making the initial allegations are immune from civil penalty should it be shown they were overreacting, or even fabricating evidence. (the down side of “good samaritan” protections).

The second aspect is even more insidious. One can understand that zealots would fight very hard to protect children, and perhaps should be given a small benefit of the doubt for being a bit over the top in their actions. But that is apparently not what occured here.

“Social workers said Jessica Chang… should go, instead, to the live-in facility that the school district wants her to attend.

The Changs would like Jessica to attend a private or public school for the disabled and be able to stay home with her family. Ideally, they would like the county to provide her with in-home caretakers.

Before the hearing, Astrove said the county stands to save money by placing Jessica in the residential facility, rather than paying for a private day school and aides at her home. School officials said the live-in facility was more expensive than the day school, but did not include the cost of at-home aides, which the county provided the Changs for years.

Officials said the girl did not show progress with the at-home services and continued to show signs of injurious behavior. The aides were dropped in 1999, and school officials said Jessica’s developmental needs would best be met in a residential program so she could receive constant treatment.”

So we get to the real motivation here… money. We are to remove a girl with profound problems, and in the absence of true danger we turn instead towards saving the county money…

Again, there are other methods the county could employ to save money. What about forced abortions for those receiving public assistance so we do not add more mouths to feed at taxpayers expense? Then there is the forced stterilization of any who test positive for known genetic problems, such as Fragile X, Down’s Syndrome, Rhett’s, William’s Syndrome, as well as other tests which can point to CP, MS, SB, etc. While we are at it, better abort any who run a high risk of other chronic and costly problems, like diabetes? And also of course, all of those (especially older) people who develope serious chronic illnesses that are a drain on society in general. Time to call Kevorkian…

Residential care will NEVER be as cost effective as keeping a child at home, regardless of how you juggle the numbers. The average cost of keeping an autistic child in residential is currently $35K to 50, with some private facilities running twice that amount. I doubt very seriously whether the in home care ran anywhere close to that figure, unless they hired highly educated people whose only job was to work with this girl (as if ANY county would do that).

The fact that this girl did not show any major improvements is not an indication that home care was inappropriate. What it shows is the methods the county’s personnel were using were inappropriate. If the county truly wanted to improve this girl’s life, they would seek out persons with better experience in autism to work with her, and not use storm-trooper legal maneuverings to strip her from her home.

I suspect that this is a case where the cultural differences play a role. The Changs are recent immigrants to this land, and their daughter apparently knows more words in their native tongue than she has learned in English. So what? Perhaps they should be teaching this girl in Mandarin, and not looking for sleight of hand arguments to remove her. Of course, that would require insight and compassion, traights that the district hatchetmen seldom posess.

Be very afraid of decisions like these. Removal of a child should be the last resort, after all other avenues have been explored. I do not trust the govt. to make a wise decision in the purchase of a screwdriver, let alone with the care of my child. Once the child is in the system, she is gone, shuffled about whereever the faceless machine sees fit, often in poorly managed homes where the minimum wage staff could care less.

Be very afraid, because YOUR child could be the next.

PS:

“I find that this young girl is very, very ill. I find that she, in a split second, could do something that is irreversible,” Klavan said. “My sympathies go out to this family. They are nice people. They’ve done nothing wrong. Nobody’s accusing them of doing anything wrong.”

No Judge Klavan, she is not very, very ill, she is very, very autistic. It is not an illness, it is a different way of thinking and acting that will never go away, and at best can be remediated to the point where it is not debillitating. And EVERY child is capable of doing in a split second something that is irreversible.