For a while this morning, let’s pretend that you’re a Missouri Children’s Division caseworker. One of the many cases that crosses your desk involves a newborn. A relative has called in to report that the baby is being abused in the home. You’re dispatched to investigate.

First, you find that the baby’s mother is already in jail on felony abuse charges. The baby suffered bruises to his rib cage, under his arms and around his legs from being squeezed — almost as if someone tried to squeeze the life out of him. With the mother locked up, you may wonder who is caring for the infant.

Second, you see that a relative who actually lived in the home filed reports of abuse to the baby and two older boys who lived in the home. The relative says she saw the father kick the boys on repeated occasions. Another caseworker investigated at the time, but the older boy took the blame and said he bruised the younger boy while they were playing.

Another relative — in fact, the father’s own daughter — has also contacted your office and reported abuse to her brother.

Before visiting the home, you might log on to a computer and search for the Your Missouri Courts Web site for information about the father. Although he was not convicted of a violent crime, you do find that he had two orders of protection granted against him, one in 2000 and the other in 2006.

The Web site doesn’t list who requested the order of protection, but obviously someone was frightened of the father.

You schedule a home visit, but can’t spend much time there because paperwork is piling up and you have other pressing cases.

What would you do in this situation?

Without ever setting foot in this house, alarming signs are telling that at least the boys in this house are being abused regularly. Should you start the process to have these kids removed from the home? Or should you recommend keeping the family together and try to get the father some anger-management help?

These are decisions that Children’s Division workers face every day.

The situation is compounded by the fact that you have no real power here. To take a child away from parents, law enforcement or juvenile authorities must be contacted, and they are the ones placing the kids in protective custody.

In addition, your employer, the Missouri Department of Social Services, has a policy to guide your thinking. It’s called “family reunification.” The belief is that kids should remain with a family whenever possible and, if they are removed, they should be returned as soon as possible. The policy aims to stop the flow of children into the state’s foster care programs by using abuse prevention programs.

Unfortunately, this policy didn’t help 7-week-old Donald Rathman.

The baby suffered several severe blows to the head and eventually died at Heartland Regional Medical Center. His life was short and filled with violence that he could not understand.

Maybe it’s time for Missouri to rethink family reunification. There’s no doubt that families are important, but the safety of children should be paramount. Some families should be ripped apart, especially if doing so will save the life of a child.

And, maybe we need to look at the procedure for removing kids from that danger. It’s good to have checks and balances, but if we have to expose a kid to danger because removing them requires the help of another overworked, overloaded department, then maybe that should change, too.

Of course, it’s too late to help little Donald Rathman.

But maybe we can save the next child, or the next one, or the one after that.

Steve Booher’s column runs on Monday. He can be reached at steveb@npgco.com.

SOURCE:  http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2009/oct/26/missouri-should-rethink-policies-keep-children-saf/