Introductions, Press Releases, and Communications

	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.

Introductions, Press Releases, and Communications

We had been in contact with DCFS and others for several months about our efforts and while doing research on child maltreatment allegation investigations. However, our official introduction to Roy Kindle, director of DCFS, and Kurt Knickrehm, director of DHS, was sent on October 29, 2003. Our pre-announcement to the members of the Arkansas legislature was sent on November 3, 2003. And, our public introduction to the governor and lieutenant governor, the legislature, the media, and other groups and individuals was sent on November 12, 2003. We have also sent other e-mails to them to keep these issues before them. Those e-mails are shown below. Our story, Play Interrupted, was also submitted to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as a Letter To The Editor on November 7, 2003, but was too long for the Voices page, according to them. It was forwarded to Perspective Editor Ed Gray for possible inclusion at a later time (please contact Mr. Gray and let him know that you would like to see it published in the Democrat-Gazette).

Note that we had introduced our group to DCFS/DHS as Arkansas Advocates for a Kinder DCFS (AAKiDS); however, someone registered that name as a non-profit and sent us a cease-and-desist e-mail on October 31, 2003, the day we had planned to send our pre-announcement to the legislature, so, we had to scramble to change our name to Concerned Arkansans for a Kinder DCFS (CAKiD) before sending any other e-mails out. We have tried to contact that registrant to see if we can work together on our seemingly mutual interest for a kinder DCFS; however, we have not heard from him, so, at this time, our two groups are not related.

Our introduction to Roy Kindle, director of DCFS, and Kurt Knickrehm, director of DHS, on October 29, 2003, is shown below (note: DCFS/DHS did not respond to our request for them to review our full web site before we went public):

Mr. Kindle and Mr. Knickrehm,

This is to formally introduce our new advocacy group to you. Arkansas Advocates for a Kinder DCFS (AAKiDS) is a public advocacy group being formed to develop and implement procedures, policies and legislation to minimize the trauma to our children before, during and after DCFS examinations and investigations of child maltreatment allegations, while also supporting the extremely important and vital mission of DCFS to protect our children.

While the focus of DCFS is mainly on the physical well-being of the children, our group will mainly be focusing on the emotional well-being of the children, along with their parents, guardians, relatives, and friends, who are caught up in a child maltreatment allegation investigation. We will be looking at how the case workers can do those investigations and examinations better and with more compassion, and to only do what is necessary during those examinations.

Our goal is to work cooperatively with DCFS, the legislature, the courts, and other groups and state and federal officials to address the issues with those investigations and examinations of children which come to light during our ongoing research, along with addressing other issues coming from the public arising out of their encounters with DCFS. We will not be a visually oppositional type of group protesting outside the DHS building or anything like that; however, we will diligently pursue resolutions to problems that we do see or that are brought to our attention. Cooperative efforts are much more effective than confrontational efforts, especially when we expect our group and its offshoots to be active for years to come.

Another focus of our group will be to get the procedures and best case worker practices set down in writing and in law as requirements to be followed during an investigation, instead of as suggestions taught in a class or in on-the-job training, in order to limit the assumptions, personal interpretations, biases, guesswork, and questionable case worker practices that can lead to errors, oversights, and potentially unnecessary but life-impacting invasive examinations and personal trauma to the children, and to make sure that those steps are actually done in practice, which would provide for more consistency in those investigations and would help the case workers do their job more effectively. We will also be looking into practices which should be prohibited by law, and will be working to get legislation defining them as such enacted. The case workers undoubtedly need some flexibility in their investigations, since each case is different, but there are certain aspects and procedural steps that should be set down as requirements, not just suggestions or advisements, especially when it comes to protecting a child who cannot protect herself or himself. Who could want anything less when it comes to the emotional well-being of our children?

In addition to our advocacy group, we are developing a web site, http://www.KinderDCFS.org, which states: "This web site is an outreach to you caring adults, Arkansas legislators, and DCFS case workers, supervisors and managers, in the hopes that you will also see the need, as we have, for a more compassionate approach in protecting the unfortunate children caught up in a DCFS child maltreatment allegation investigation. This is also a resource center for those of you who find your own child or a child that you love and care about in "the system" and just want to know what in the world is happening to them or why you are being investigated and what you can expect."

The goals for our web site are to get people involved in our mutual effort to protect our children as well as to provide a comprehensive collection of information for people currently going through an investigation of their own child, along with information relevant to those conducting child maltreatment investigations. Currently, the pre-announcement web site just lists the topics that will be on the actual web site when we go public, but, the actual web site contains around 70 pages of printed information, along with dozens of links to information on other web sites. This has been a large undertaking, for which I estimate that we have spent over 80 man-hours over the past two months doing research, gathering material, attending classes, talking with people at DCFS and MidSOUTH Training and in other child-related professions, child advocacy groups, public policy groups, and in the Arkansas legislature, getting information from professionally-recognized social researchers and equivalent social service agencies in other states, and setting up the web site. We would like for you or someone at DCFS to review our actual web site and make comments and suggestions to us about it before our public announcement to make sure that we aren't including any confidential or sensitive information - just let me know whom to send the web address to which contains our full site. (I've already had to make some changes in our web site contents to exclude sensitive forms, such as CFS-310 and CFS-312, when I realized that they could be printed off and fraudulently used by non-DCFS personnel to the detriment of a child or a child's family, which is the last thing I would want the material or information on our web site to be used for.)

Besides just giving people caught up in an investigation information on DCFS procedures, we would also like to include information on our web site to address their misconceptions and allay their fears of DCFS, especially when it comes to what would result in DCFS taking away their child - which is what many parents and guardians are afraid of when their child is the subject of an investigation (especially since 2 out of 3 investigations are ruled unsubstantiated). This is a topic that we have requested and are awaiting clarification on from DCFS, in order to alleviate those misconceptions and questions by us and the public.

If you could provide us with a contact(s) at DCFS that could act as a liaison between DCFS and AAKiDS and could talk with us about these topics and other aspects of DCFS investigations, procedures and policies, along with other issues to be addressed, please let me know that as well. We would also welcome additions to our web site from DCFS's point of view on the topics we cover, which would give it a much more balanced presentation to the public. As I said, we are hoping that this will be a cooperative effort between us, and what better way to show that to the public than presenting input from both of us in the information on our web site.

We will be sending out a pre-announcement to the legislators on Friday, followed by a public announcement to you, Governor Huckabee, Lt. Gov. Rockefeller, the legislators, CASA of Arkansas, Arkansas Commission on Child Abuse, Rape and Domestic Violence, Carol Griffin of MidSOUTH, the media, and others, a week or so after that about our group and opening up our web site. Thank you for your time, effort, and consideration. And, please tell the case workers thank you from us for their efforts in protecting our children. I hope that we at AAKiDS and at DCFS, along with other child advocacy groups such as CASA, and public policy groups like Arkansas Commission on Child Abuse, Rape and Domestic Violence, have a long and mutually beneficial relationship while working together on our common goal to protect the children of Arkansas, both physically and emotionally. After all, aren't our kids worth our efforts that we will put into this goal?

Regards,
Stephen Rea
Nancy Riemenschneider
Arkansas Advocates for a Kinder DCFS <advocates@KinderDCFS.org>
AAKiDS - Working for a Kinder, Gentler, Arkansas Division of
Children and Family Services. Aren't our kids worth it?
Web Site: http://www.KinderDCFS.org (pre-announcement version)

Our pre-announcement to the members of the Arkansas legislature on November 3, 2003, is shown below:

What would you do if someone came into your child's day care, took your child into a room by themself, had your child strip completely naked, and took pictures of her or him? What would you do if it was a state agency that did that? Well, we are doing the best thing we know to do to address this and other issues with DCFS child maltreatment investigations by taking these issues to the people of Arkansas, to you in the legislature, and to the media. If you would like your local media to receive our child advocacy group's initial public introduction, which we will be sending out in a week or so to you and to them, in order to keep your constituents informed of our efforts and ideas to lessen this and other types of trauma to our children during DCFS investigations, please send their e-mail address to us at advocates@KinderDCFS.org.

There's a new KiD in town, Concerned Arkansans for a Kinder DCFS, and we at CAKiD want to work with DCFS, the legislature, the courts, and other groups and state and federal officials to get to the kinder, gentler, DCFS, that we know we can achieve, so that they see a kid, not just another case. So, please join our effort to protect the emotional well-being of our children while DCFS protects the physical well-being of our children. After all, if we don't, who will?

Regards,
Stephen Rea
Nancy Riemenschneider
Concerned Arkansans for a Kinder DCFS <advocates@KinderDCFS.org>
CAKiD - Working for a kinder, gentler, Arkansas Division of
Children and Family Services. Aren't our kids worth it?
Web Site: www.KinderDCFS.org (pre-announcement version)

(FYI: In our introductory e-mail to Mr. Kindle of DCFS and Mr. Knickrehm of DHS last Wednesday, we included a request for DCFS/DHS to review our full web site, which currently contains over 70 printed pages of information, before our initial public introduction; however, they have not, as of yet, responded to our request. Also, we have changed our name from Arkansas Advocates for a Kinder DCFS (AAKiDS) because a John Brownlee, who is not associated with our group at this time, registered that name last month with the Secretary of State after we had been using it in our e-mails, including our introduction to DCFS/DHS.)

Our public introduction to the governor and lieutenant governor, the legislature, the media, and other groups and individuals on November 12, 2003, is shown below:

The following is our public introduction of Concerned Arkansans for a Kinder DCFS (CAKiD) to Governor Huckabee and Lieutenant Governor Rockefeller, to you in the Arkansas legislature, to you in the media around the state, and to you in child advocacy groups and public policy groups, along with other concerned Arkansans working for our common goal to protect the children of Arkansas.

A child alone, frightened, confused, isolated, maybe a victim already, maybe not, with trust and innocence shattering, who is being questioned, examined, disrobed, and photographed, leaving a lifetime of disturbing images, takes place almost every day in Arkansas. Is what happens to these children during DHS investigations of abuse too disturbing for even us adults to deal with? Will we ignore and abandon these children to face the trauma of the system alone after they have already been a victim of circumstances? Or, will we say, like DCFS director Roy Kindle, that DCFS "can do better", and that we can make the needed changes in procedures and laws to lessen the emotional trauma to these children, and get to the kinder, gentler, DCFS that we must in all good conscience achieve?

Well, There's A New KiD In Town, and we Concerned Arkansans for a Kinder DCFS (CAKiD) are joining together and working to make that difference for these traumatized children of Arkansas by implementing a more compassionate approach to child maltreatment investigations, so that DCFS will see a kid, not just a case. And, it really shouldn't be that hard to do - each of us have just got to face the realities that we would rather ignore and put behind us, and make up our minds to be advocates for these kids who cannot help themselves. They have only you and me to depend on, and we must not let them down by ignoring them and leaving them to face this adult-sized life-impacting event alone.

How do we minimize the trauma to these helpless children caught up in a DCFS investigation, without eroding the vital mission of DCFS to protect our children from abuse and neglect?
* By passing legislation to provide guidance to the case workers as to what we will allow to be done to our children to minimize the invasiveness of examinations while maintaining their effectiveness.
* By establishing checks-and-balances, such as consultations with the home office and with the parents before invasive examinations of the children are carried out, so that only what is necessary is done to establish the facts.
* By providing equipment to assist the case workers, such as camera-enabled cell phones for those consultations and for securing their very sensitive photographs, and digital voice recorders to capture the interviews with the children for review and to minimize the need for subsequent questioning.
* By documenting best case worker practices and putting them into an easy to carry and reference format for the case workers to follow.
* By documenting and reviewing variances of procedures and laws during individual cases to adjust case loads and modify standard procedures if needed to address the reasons behind those variances.
* By implementing child interviewing techniques that get the maximum amount of unbiased information from the children without them feeling interrogated.
* By creating a group of child advocates to look out for the child's emotional interest during the interview by the case worker.
* And, by working with other groups and professionals and the public to develop and implement ideas, procedures and legislation to address the emotional well-being of the children.

With all of us working together to focus on the child herself or himself as a little one with feelings just like the rest of us, but still unable to comprehend an adult world, we can achieve our goal of a more compassionate approach to this life-changing event in a little child's world. And, perhaps in the process, DCFS investigations can become a model that other states can study and adopt so that they, too, will strive to protect the emotional well-being of the children that may or may not have been abused, but have been caught up in the system anyway, while also protecting them from physical harm.

Our web site, www.KinderDCFS.org, contains over 70 printed pages of information about the issues we and the public see a need to address with child maltreatment investigations in Arkansas, along with possible solutions for them to be debated and implemented. The details of those goals can be seen on our web site at http://www.KinderDCFS.org/goals.htm. We also want it to be a resource center for those of you who find your own child or a child that you love and care about caught up in the system and just wanting to know what's going on and what you can expect during a DCFS investigation. Finally, there is information and reference material for you that are DCFS case workers to help you with your passion to keep our children safe.

And, if you want to know what one little girl went through during a DCFS investigation and why we must change the system for our children's sake and for our own sake as caring parents and relatives and friends, please read her story, Play Interrupted, at http://www.KinderDCFS.org/play_interrupted.htm. Although the case worker informed the parents early on that the case would be closed and ruled undetermined, she and her family are still dealing with the aftermath of the examination. She tries to still be a little girl, but, that experience has changed her, and she won't talk about what she was put through on that day when her world and her view of adults was turned upside down. We don't want one more child, who may even be your own child or a child that you love, put through the ordeal that she went through, especially when more compassionate methods are already known by DCFS and in the child welfare community. But, that depends on all of us getting involved and working to achieve our goal of a kinder, gentler, DCFS. After all, aren't our children worth it?

A Thanksgiving message to the governor and lieutenant governor and the legislators on November 24, 2003, is shown below:

As the holiday approaches for giving thanks, we would like to take this opportunity to thank a group of our state employees that work every day and all hours of the night and weekends to keep our children safe from physical harm, and would hope that you would join us in giving them the thanks they deserve as well. They are the case workers of DHS's Division of Children and Family Services, and they have a hard, tiring, emotionally draining and usually thankless task, but one that is vital to the protection of our children.

We hope that you will join in our efforts to help the DCFS case workers and the 18,000 children they protect each year as we work towards a more compassionate approach to child maltreatment allegation investigations (see www.KinderDCFS.org), but, if you can't do anything else, at least say a prayer for the case workers every day. They can use all the prayers they can get. Pray for them for wisdom, compassion, insight, discernment, health and protection. And pray that they would love and care for each child and treat each child as they would want their own child to be treated, and that their passion for the children would never dim.

Happy Thanksgiving,
Stephen Rea
Nancy Riemenschneider
Concerned Arkansans for a Kinder DCFS <advocates@KinderDCFS.org>
CAKiD - Working for a kinder, gentler, Arkansas Division of
Children and Family Services. Aren't our kids worth it?

We tried to get the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, KARK Channel 4, KATV Channel 7, and KTHV Channel 11, to take another look and report on these issues in the following e-mail on December 10, 2003, which they failed to do.

We have been trying for a month to get the news media to report on the reforms needed in DCFS child maltreatment allegation investigations, but, it seems that the decision makers have deemed them not newsworthy, which I just find astonishing. I would have thought that the decision about reporting on a kid's issue would be a no-brainer. Please look again at the information on our web site (www.KinderDCFS.org) about these issues, and make these children one of your priorities, instead of ignoring and abandoning these children to face the trauma of the system alone after they have already been a victim of circumstances. These are serious issues that demand serious attention by our state leaders and news media.

Regards,
Stephen Rea
Nancy Riemenschneider
Concerned Arkansans for a Kinder DCFS <advocates@KinderDCFS.org>
CAKiD - Working for a kinder, gentler, Arkansas Division of
Children and Family Services. Aren't our kids worth it?
Web Site: http://www.KinderDCFS.org

Since the legislators weren't coming to our web site to see our list of goals to reform DCFS child maltreatment allegaion investigations, we sent the list from the web page to the legislators and the governor and lieutenant governor, instead, on December 11, 2003 (while they were in session). There were four legislators that responded to it.

Below are some of the procedures, policies, legislation, and case worker equipment that we Concerned Arkansans for a Kinder DCFS see a need for in order 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.

Please e-mail us at legislators@KinderDCFS.org to indicate that you will look into the problems with DCFS child maltreatment allegation investigations and make these 18,000 children one of your priorities, instead of ignoring and abandoning them to face the trauma of the system alone after they have already been a victim of circumstances. These are serious issues that demand serious attention by our state leaders and news media.

* Enact 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) 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.)

For more information on DCFS child maltreatment allegation investigations and why these reforms are necessary, please see our web site at http://www.KinderDCFS.org. You can also contact us by e-mail at advocates@KinderDCFS.org. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Since we couldn't get the news media to report on these concerns and get our story out, we committed several hundred dollars to make the people of Arkansas aware of our efforts to address the plight of these 18,000 kids, and to show Governor Huckabee, the legislators, and the news media that we are serious about addressing these issues, by placing the following Personal Opinions classified ad in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for 30 days starting December 19, 2003 (it was initially in the Special Announcements section).

REFORM DHS child abuse inves-
tigations! Tell the Governor, Reps &
media. www.KinderDCFS.org

We sent a thank you to the legislators that had responded and a reminder to those that hadn't on January 21, 2004, along with word of another group's protest and the results of some test messages to DHS/DCFS, since most of the people we have been hearing from complain about the non-responsiveness of DCFS to their attempts to find out what's going on with their loved one's case and what is supposed to happen next, which we have also found to be the case. However, within 3 hours of our sending this message to the legislators and copying Mr. Kindle and Mr. Knickrehm, the DHS Office of Chief Counsel did send us an answer to our procedural question to them. We have still not received any answers to a simple yes/no question sent to Mr. Kindle and Mr. Knickrehm about their quotes posted on our web site asking if they meant them.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you legislators that have contacted us about our efforts to make DCFS child maltreatment allegation investigations less traumatic on the children that are caught up in them. Hopefully, by the 2005 legislative session, if not before through procedural changes, we can start making inroads, if not giant leaps, to bring about a more compassionate approach to those investigations while making them more effective and less subject to controversy.

And for those of you who have not made up your minds yet that these children deserve your attention, we would like to remind you that, since our introduction to you on November 12, around 3,556 children have endured the life-impacting event of a DCFS investigation in which they were questioned, alone without an advocate, usually physically examined, and photographed, sometimes after being disrobed by the case worker, and for the most part without any regulatory guidance from you. But, there are better ways to do these investigations that maintain the dignity of the child and address the emotional impact to the child, while still having the same, and most likely better, results in determining the facts of the case. These children need you to be their protectors and to make the changes in procedures and regulations and legislation that are needed to get to the kinder, gentler, DCFS that we must, for their sake and in all good conscience, achieve. So, write to us and let us know that you will at least look into how these DCFS investigations are carried out, and will look into the changes, such as those we outlined in our e-mail to you on December 11, that are necessary to make these investigations less traumatic on the children. Please don't let it take a tragedy to occur before you decide that these children need to be a priority on your legislative schedule, especially since you are now aware of this issue.

A couple of notes about the e-mails that we have received are in order here. Most of the e-mails are from frustrated citizens who can't get information about their loved one's case from DCFS or from the case workers, and are at a loss as to what to do next or what to expect. So, as a test, I sent a short and simple procedural question to the Office of Chief Council at DHS, as well as a short question to Mr. Kindle of DCFS and to Mr. Knickrehm of DHS about a quote attributed to them that could be answered with a yes or a no. Neither the Office of Chief Council, nor Mr. Kindle nor Mr. Knickrehm responded to those e-mails. So, apparently we have a public agency that is not responsive to the public when they have questions, which is resulting in a negative perception of that agency by the public. DCFS and DHS will need to take steps, possibly with encouragement from you in the legislature, to improve communication with the public, especially in keeping those involved in individual cases informed as to the status of their case and what to expect next.

Also, we have been contacted by a group that is organizing a protest to be held this year, probably at the DHS main office in downtown Little Rock, and coordinated with protests in other states around the country at child protective services offices. We told them that, as a registered non-profit public advocacy organization, we had already informed Mr. Kindle and Mr. Knickrehm that we, as a group, would be working behind the scenes and would not be taking part in any protests. We know that protests can get short-term attention, but, we are hoping that our organization will be around for a long time working with DCFS, DHS, the legislature, and the public, in roles such as public policy, advisory, oversight, research, as an intermediary, and in child advocacy. We just need to work to convince DCFS and DHS that we are not just another enemy in a line of enemies, but really want to help them develop procedures that improve their investigations while minimizing the trauma to the children caught up in an investigation who can't defend themselves. And, once we convince them of that, the changes we are proposing shouldn't be that hard to make.

CC: Gov. Mike Huckabee, Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller, Roy Kindle, Kurt Knickrehm

Below is a sample article that we sent to Kitty Chism, editor of the North Little Rock Times, on February 25, 2004, in hopes that they would publish it, since we have North Little Rock ties, or that it would pique their interest into interviewing us for their own article.

Former North Little Rock activist, Stephen Rea, who was once declared by The Times to be the one person that the city council least liked to hear from, after he gave little "caskets" to the aldermen and Mayor Hays with the remains of a pavilion that former Alderman Dan Carter had removed from Witkowski park, has now set his sights on the largest agency in the state, the Department of Human Services (DHS). Along with current resident, Nancy Riemenschneider, who was formerly the Chairman of the Board of the Central Arkansas chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, the couple, who have recently announced their engagement, are turning the spotlight on the treatment of children during investigations by the Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) of reports of suspected child abuse, which is around 18,000 investigations across the state per year.

"There is no one out there to look out for these kids during this vulnerable event in their lives which they face alone, many of whom are traumatized by the investigation itself, especially those made to strip completely naked and to be photographed at the case worker's discretion without prior consultation and approval by higher ups and without first contacting the parents. And there are practically no laws or regulations governing what the case workers can do when questioning and physically examining a child. This has got to change, and the Governor and legislators have got to step in and do their part to make sure these kids aren't traumatized by the system they are supposed to be regulating." according to Rea, who has formed a public advocacy group called Concerned Arkansans for a Kinder DCFS (CAKiD). He has also set up a web site (www.KinderDCFS.org) containing the research they have done into DCFS child abuse investigations over the past several months which documents the problems they see with those DCFS investigations and proposes solutions to address those problems, which they have sent to the state legislators.

Besides changes in laws and procedures, the group hopes to some day fill a void in those investigations by sending trained child advocates out with the case workers when they interview the children to "look out for the emotional best interest of the child. The CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) organization fills a similar role when the child enters the legal system, but that leaves out the children in the 2 out of 3 cases that don't enter the legal system. Those kids are left with no one to help them through this. And the kids that actually have been abused certainly don't need to face this next trauma in their lives alone." according to Rea, who sees their group and it's offshoots continuing on long after him in roles such as public policy, advisory, oversight, research, as an intermediary, and in child advocacy.

Since their public introduction last November to DCFS, DHS, the legislature, state officials, and the newspapers and media across the state, and after several e-mails since then, they say that they have received replies from just four legislators. "We've tried to start a dialog with Mr. Kindle of DCFS and Mr. Knickrehm of DHS, but they have not replied to our e-mails. And the news media doesn't want to touch this subject and can't find anything newsworthy about what DCFS puts these kids through, which just atonishes me. We really need the public to call or write them and ask them why."

But, somebody was listening. On the day they said they would be sending out their public announcement to the legislature, they got a cease-and-desist e-mail from someone who had registered their original name (AAKiDS) after they had been using it in their e-mails to DCFS, which they traced to the home of a former DHS employee. "I don't want our important message to be overshadowed by something like this." said Rea. "It's the kids that matter, not the games that some adults may be playing. And, even though our name may change, the message is still the same."

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CAKiD - Working for a kinder, gentler, DCFS.