A New Look at Child Protection.

• Author: Williams-Mbengue, Nina

Several states are trying new, flexible ways to protect children by enlisting community helpers to give child protective services a hand.

An anonymous caller alerted Arizona's child abuse hotline staff in January 1998 to the plight of five young girls, living with their mother and her boyfriend in a Phoenix weekly rate motel room. The boyfriend had hit the oldest girl on the arm, and the caller was fearful something worse might happen.

Ordinarily, this case would have gone unchecked. The child wasn't injured or bruised. And while the girls were very young, ages 2 to 12, they weren't in any immediate danger, just harshly disciplined and often left alone. Arizona's child abuse reports had jumped 37 percent the year before, so harried caseworkers were able to handle only the most serious. Nearly 5,900 cases had gone uninvestigated.

This time, however, child protective services referred the call to Family Builders--an innovative new network of community and volunteer agencies that helps with less serious cases. What these specialists found was a single mother whose teeth had been knocked out by abusive boyfriends. Her current live-in boyfriend was starting to take out his anger on her children. But she still relied on him to take care of the girls while she worked long hours at a nearby fast food restaurant. Her mouth was infected. She was tired and ill.

Although the situation didn't call for a full-blown child abuse investigation, there was no doubt the family needed help. And Family Builders could do what child protective services could not. They found a dentist willing to repair Lori Brown's (not her real name) mouth and provide a set of dentures for only $1,000. They helped Lori with parenting skills so she could discipline and care for her children in a loving, effective way. She and the girls got counseling. Eventually, Lori got away from the boyfriend and moved her family to a two-bedroom condo. Family Builders helped the children with school clothes and supplies and even got Lori's brother to help pay for the utilities in the new condo. Finally, Lori got a new and better job working during school hours as a chef at a small fish and chips restaurant owned by a friend.

SYSTEM UNDER SCRUTINY

Nearly 3 million reports of abuse come into child protection agencies each year. How they are handled has come under much criticism in recent years. Thousands of families in situations similar to Lori Brown's are reported, but, depending on the agency's workload and resources, some families receive few or no services. In other cases and other states, even well-staffed, adequately funded child welfare agencies can misread a situation and children are badly harmed or even killed.

Families that are investigated are often treated with a "one-size-fits-all" approach. Those with relatively minor problems receive the same treatment as families where there is serious physical and sexual abuse. In some states, even unconfirmed reports of abuse may put parents' names on a central...