Hurricane Katrina leaves impact on coastal foster care
One in three Mississippi children in foster care lives on the Gulf Coast, according to data from an annual report from the state Department of Human Services.
Foster care workers and other child advocates say a shifting landscape of increased drug use and demographic changes may have led to the increased number of children in custody, but a legislative watchdog report points to tensions between Youth Court and the DHS Division of Family and Children’s Services as a possible reason for one county to have the largest number of foster children per capita in the state.
DHS would not comment, citing ongoing litigation.
The coastal counties of Harrison and Hancock share some of the same issues — drug use related to their location on I-10 and the struggles of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, both of which foster care workers believe added to child abuse allegations.
During the 2014 fiscal year, Harrison County was home to 1,227 foster children — about 100 more than Hinds, Madison and Rankin counties combined. Hancock County had the highest number of foster children per capita in the state, despite its population of about 46,000.
In 2008, Mississippi settled a class action lawsuit called Olivia Y., and the state agreed to reform its foster care system.
One of the plaintiffs in the case was Olivia, a 4-year-old who weighed 171/2 pounds when she first came into care at Hope Haven Children’s Services in Bay St. Louis. The toddler had bounced around between five placements and at one point shared a home with a convicted rapist, according to Children’s Rights, an advocacy group that was involved with the lawsuit.
“We did not know that all of this physical and mental abuse occurred after she was in custody,” Hope Haven Director Terry Latham said. “We just thought a caseworker with DHS picked her up, and it happened in her own family. We were devastated.”
Child advocates differ when it comes to the effects of the lawsuit. In 2012, the state reached a new settlement that included new requirements to improve the foster care system. “It’s shining the light on deficiencies, but it has hurt in some ways, because it set up benchmarks DHS has to meet, and they continue to fail,” Latham said. “Now more supervisors are concerned about meeting benchmarks, and what’s best for the child gets lost in the dust.”
Harrison County Youth Court Judge Margaret Alfonso said she continues to see the impact of Olivia Y. in better training and supervision of DHS workers. She attributes the number of foster care children to increased reporting of child abuse and more DHS caseworkers.
“When you have an increase in staff, as we have experienced, that’s more work being done, more professionals on the ground and more investigations,” Alfonso said. “And it’s being done in a much more timely fashion. I think the overall system has improved, which has resulted in more children being protected.”
Lt. Coley Judy, chief investigator for Harrison County Sheriff’s Department, said most of the abuse and neglect cases he sees involve drug use, especially meth. “There’s no food in the house, unsanitary conditions,” he said. “People want to spend more money on drugs than on their kids.”
Sidney Massey, executive director of Harrison’s CASA, said the county lacks a sufficient number of foster homes that can accept sibling groups. DHS tries to keep them together but sometimes sends children outside the county.
“The last thing we want to do is split children up,” she said. “There are not enough foster parents.”
Experts in the field are more puzzled about the situation in Hancock County, which has 10 children in state custody per 1,000 people, about 10 times the state average, according to a report by the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review. Allegations of abuse and neglect in Hancock County have risen about 150 percent over the last five years.
Before Hurricane Katrina, the county averaged about 90 children in custody on average, Latham said, but the storm turned demographics upside down.
“People had lost their homes, so families that remained here were living in conditions and with people and other folks that they never had lived with before, and not everyone immediately got trailers, so … we saw a lot of disruption to the family unit and stresses associated with that,” he said.
New affordable housing and promises of construction work lured people to the area, but many found themselves unemployed or underemployed. Instances of child abuse began to rise, and DHS’ limited staff couldn’t keep up, Latham said.
“Youth Court was overwhelmed, social services was overwhelmed, and things have continued to get worse, I’m afraid,” he said.
Latham said the county now has about 30 caseworkers, but turnover for the demanding and stressful position is high.
Harrison County Youth Court Administrator Cindy Alexander spent five years as a social worker during the 1980s but left the 24/7 job to start a family. “These social workers are out at all times, never guaranteed when they get to go home and also on call at night,” she said. “So, it is a very, very time-consuming, emotional job.”
During the 2014 fiscal year, caseworkers with DHS investigated 1,897 allegations in Harrison County and 622 in Hancock County. “It’s just a huge number of referrals every day and each one of them have to be investigated, so caseworkers have to be overloaded,” Massey said.
The PEER report alleges that in Hancock County, DHS workloads and turnover may have affected how long it takes to complete investigations. About 40 percent of caseworkers in Hancock County were assigned workloads above the standards set after the Olivia Y. agreement, according to the report, and the majority of caseworkers have less than two years of experience. DHS set the workload standards at 100 caseload units for caseworkers. In all other counties statewide, 24 percent of caseworkers and 19 percent of supervisors had caseloads exceeding the standard.
The report also suggested a friction between DHS and Hancock County Youth Court that may have led the court to take an unusually active role in investigations and foster care placements. For instance, the court sometimes orders children into custody before DHS has finished its investigation.
Some child advocates, however, are skeptical that DHS and Youth Court are at the heart of the problem along the Coast.
“Frankly, I don’t think that is the complete answer by any means, but I don’t know what’s really the reason,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of A Better Childhood. “I think it also has to do with high caseloads and with a lack of accountability in that part of the state.”
Contact Mollie Bryant at (601) 961-7251 or mbryant2@gannett.com. Follow @MollieEBryant on Twitter.
Youths in foster care
Hinds, Madison and Rankin
counties have a total of:
1,114
kids in foster care out of a population of 493,487
Hinds
Population
243,729
Youth in foster care
812
Madison
Population
101,688
Youth in foster care
82
Rankin
Population
148,070
Youth in foster care
220
Harrison, Hancock and Jackson
counties have a total of:
2,288
kids in foster care out of a population of 386,144
Harrison
Population
199,058
Youth in foster care
1,227
Hancock
Population
45,949
Youth in foster care
638
Jackson
Population
141,137
Youth in foster care
423
*Youth in foster care 2014 fiscal year and 2014 estimated
population. Source: Annual MDHS report