DCFS Can Do Better
	Working for a Kinder, Gentler, Arkansas Division of Children and Family Services If you have reason to suspect that a child you know is being abused, please call the Arkansas Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-482-5964.  Don't stop until you get an answer.

What Are Our Goals?

Below are some of the procedures, policies, legislation, and case worker equipment that we see a need for to emotionally protect our children before, during, and after DCFS examinations and investigations of child maltreatment allegations, while also supporting the mission of DCFS to physically protect our children.  One of the purposes of these items is to minimize the trauma to a child when a DCFS case worker performs or considers performing a disrobing and possible photographing of a child during the investigation of an allegation of abuse, and to minimize the after effects of such an examination, while making sure that all options are pursued before resorting to such an examination, with minimal relative impact on the case worker and DCFS, as compared with the child's emotional well-being, in their effort to protect our children, which is our common goal.  Such an investigation must be carried out with care and concern to limit the child's perception of isolation and violation, particularly when this procedure is carried out by strangers.

This will be a continually evolving list, and we hope that you can see a place where you can put your own talents and contacts to work in helping us define, refine, and implement these goals to protect our children as well.  Everyone can do their part, including contacting their state representatives and senators to encourage them to get on board to pass this legislation and implement these policies.  And, if you think some of these ideas are far-fetched or unworkable or just plain stupid, please let us know that, too, and why you think so - we certainly don't claim to be the experts!  We would very much appreciate a dialog with you to clear up any misconceptions and refine these ideas, or even drop them if we see your point - we don't have a problem with that, at least as far as CAKiD is concerned.  And, if you also see some goals from your own perspective that we should include, please let us know what you would like to see done to improve child maltreatment investigations and examinations in Arkansas.

• Enact Treating Children With Dignity legislation prohibiting fully disrobing a child at or over the age of 3 years old, or causing said child to be fully disrobed, when performing a bodily examination by a DCFS case worker or their designate, codifying the section entitled "Do not make the child disrobe completely" of the MidSOUTH New Worker Training Participant Resource Manual handout entitled "Visual Inspection of Children - Maintaining the Dignity of the Child" (edited July 1, 2003).  To meet this standard, the waist band of the child's underwear (panties, shorts, briefs, boxers, etc.) shall at all times be in contact with the front or back portions of the child's waist at some point.
• Create a set of best caseworker practices standard investigative procedures to be followed as defined for the individual aspects of the investigation for which they are defined.  These standards will be developed with input from a Best Caseworker Practices Panel of experienced ("master") DCFS case workers, child advocate groups (such as CAKiD and CASA), child social workers, child psychologists, pediatricians, trauma experts, and/or others involved in children's issues (professionals or the public).  These will be reviewed annually by said Panel to incorporate improvements in investigative techniques and best caseworker practices in the field of child-related examinations and investigations.  Any variance in these procedures by a DCFS case worker in a case will be fully documented and the reasoning behind the variance explained, which will be reviewed and approved by the case worker's supervisor as it occurs, and will be included in said Panel's annual review for discussion and possible modification of these standard procedures.
• Create an easy-to-carry flip chart, or equivalent, of common investigative scenarios with the steps to follow based on the best caseworker practices (see above) that the DCFS case workers can reference and follow.  For example, include a section containing the instructions from Visual Inspection of Children - Maintaining the Dignity of the Child, as well as a section containing age-appropriate forensic interviewing techniques, steps, sample questions and dialogs (see course description below).  Also include in it other reference information that the case workers may need, such as phone numbers of the relevant agencies, courts, and law enforcement contacts.  (The State of Michigan has a similar pocket booklet that their case workers and others carry.)
• Require that the DCFS case workers consult with and get the signed approval of their supervisor and/or other designated authority as it occurs to determine if partially or fully disrobing and possibly photographing a child is warranted during the initial investigation from what they can see in a cursory, non-invasive, examination, and from the initial interview of the child that they have just finished with, before they proceed with such a violation of the child's privacy.  This would provide a much-needed check-and-balance system to guard against potentially unnecessary and hasty decisions and actions which could affect the child for her or his entire lifetime.
• After an invasive bodily examination, require that the DCFS case workers counsel the children in an age appropriate manner that partially or fully disrobing for an adult is not the normal thing that they should be doing.  Otherwise, the children may be left with an impression that could lead to others taking advantage of them because of those inferred misconceptions, resulting in other violations to them at later points in time.
• Have the DCFS case workers document all variances from the Arkansas Child Maltreatment Act that occur during a child maltreatment allegation investigation, such as when the times set forth in Arkansas Code 12-12-509 are exceeded.  This will include the type of variance (such as "Interview with child did not take place within 72 hours of a Priority II report" or "Investigative determination report (CFS-312) was not sent to parents or guardians within 30 days of the initial report to the child abuse hotline (Central Intake)"), a narrative of why the variance occurred, and a narrative from the case worker's perspective of what could have been done to prevent the variance from occurring.  This document will be reviewed and approved by the case worker's supervisor as the variance occurs, and this information can be used by the supervisor to dynamically balance the load between case workers under their supervision.  It will also be included in the Best Caseworker Practices Panel's annual review for discussion and possible modification of the standard procedures.  The type of variance and the narrative of why the variance occurred will also be included with the CFS-312, Child Maltreatment Assessment Determination Notification, that is sent to the parents or guardians.
• Equip the DCFS case workers with camera-enabled cell phones.  These would be used to send photographs back to their supervisor and/or other designated authority for consultation, as well as replacing the current 35mm film cameras (or other current photographic equipment) in order to password encode, transmit, and store the photographs taken during the examination in a case file database or in CHRIS at DCFS.  This would provide instant security for those photographs in that database, would eliminate the current third-party development of the DCFS case worker's film (via one-hour photo shops - we bet that surprises a lot of you, too!) in which non-authorized personnel are able to view those sensitive photographs, and would eliminate unsecured photographs being produced by or left in the camera.
• Equip the DCFS case workers with digital voice recorders in order to record their interviews and other interactions with the child for evidentiary requirements in hearings and court cases (which could reduce or eliminate the trauma of testifying by the child during their re-living the event and the stress of cross-examination), for use in the case worker's clarification of notes and reports about the case, for review by the supervisor during the case review for signoff, for best case worker practices reviews, and to be made available to the parents or guardians upon request when the final report determination is mailed to them.
• Require that all pictures taken of a child will be destroyed within 30 days of mailing the final report of the child's case to the parents or guardians if the case will not be proceeding further in the judicial system, such as if the case is ruled unsubstantiated or if the case is ruled substantiated but perpetrator unknown.  This includes all photographs, negatives, and photographic image files on computers or CD's or any and all other storage devices, or on any and all other photographic medium, and any and all copies thereof, taken of a child during a DCFS investigation.  A carefully-drawn CFS-327a, Physical Documentation - Body Diagram, or equivalent should be sufficient for long-term recordkeeping and meeting legal evidentiary requirements for any future investigations (additional legislation may need to be enacted to make such diagrams to be sufficient for said evidence).  Hiring a forensic artist may be required to duplicate those injury patterns accurately enough on the CFS-327a body diagrams from the photographic evidence for future reference or proceedings, or, acquiring computer software that could overlay (or cut and paste) those injury portions of the photographs onto the CFS-327a may also be suitable, just so full or partial pictures of the child in which the child can be identified are destroyed.  The child would then not be further victimized and traumatized in the knowledge that nude or semi-nude photographs exist of them.  Furthermore, the child would be protected from potential violations by others accessing the child's files to satisfy their own prurient interests or from theft of the photographs themselves.
• Have DCFS make a good faith effort to inform the parents or guardians of a child before partially or fully disrobing and possible photographing of the child takes place during an investigation, and to make a good faith effort to obtain consent from them before said disrobing and possible photographing takes place (whether or not they agree to the consent request).  The parents or guardians would then know what was happening to their child and would be able to try to prepare themselves to calm the child when they came to pick the child up.  They would also be allowed to give an explanation and other facts (such as side effects of medication that the child is on, such as susceptibility to bruising) to the case worker that may be sufficient for the case worker to then conclude that the disrobing and possible photographing was not necessary.  And, any concern about flight with the child should the parents or guardians be suspect is alleviated by the child being in the custody of the case worker at the time of the examination, and they would find out anyway soon thereafter when they next spoke with the child.  (Note: This will supercede current legislation which prevents the case worker from informing the parents or guardians in the case where one of them is the suspected abuser.)
• Form an organization of child advocate volunteers, similar to CASA, to go out with the DCFS case workers on their interviews with and examinations of the child to act as a buffer between the child and the case worker and to advocate on the child's behalf.  Consider the case of a DCFS case worker interviewing the child and the day care director who phoned in the initial child maltreatment allegation report acting as a witness during the interview.  Both of those individuals have a vested interest in the case and have their own biases about what happened to the child that they may or may not be trying to prove.  The child needs someone in her or his corner that doesn't have a vested interest in the case, but is only concerned with the child's emotional and physical welfare, which role these child advocate volunteers would fill.  The child advocate volunteers will be required to attend training on DCFS child maltreatment assessment investigations and procedures and related laws, as well as training in forensic interviewing of children (see below).  Because of confidentiality rules covering child maltreatment investigations, this organization of child advocate volunteers will require federal legislation and approval, similar to CASA or as an amendment to the CASA legislation, so, please contact your US Senators and Representatives to get them to write, sponsor and pass this legislation.
• Develop a course on age-appropriate forensic interviewing of children, such as those techniques presented in the book, Investigative Interviews of Children, by Debra Poole and Michael Lamb (1998), and described in Forensic Interviewing Protocol by the State of Michigan (who has sent us their training material for their 1-day social worker training and their 2-day law enforcement and court-related training, both of which are taught the same protocol by their prosecuting attorney's office).   Forensic interviewing focuses on the general ("tell me what happened") and progresses to the specific only at the very last, and considers alternative hypotheses from the start, rather than targeting the questioning based on the case worker's preconception of what happened (i.e., trying to prove a specific scenario).  This course would probably be developed by (or helped formulated by) and taught by MidSOUTH Training, which currently trains the DCFS case workers, CASA volunteers, and mandated public reporters, and would be open to DCFS case workers, CACD officers, and CAKiD volunteers.  (Legislative approval and funding would be required to create and present this class, just as it is required for the other classes taught by MidSOUTH Training.)

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