Showing posts with label DCF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DCF. Show all posts
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
HARTFORD COURANT OP-ED BY PAUL CHILL, UCONN PROFESSOR OF LAW DECRIES CHILD WELFARE POLICIES THAT TAKE CHILDREN FROM AMERICAN FAMILIES!
Hundreds Of U.S. Children Taken From Home
Paul Chill
"It has been heartening to see such widespread revulsion and opposition, seemingly across the political spectrum, to the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border. But this is also a potential teaching moment, when it may be possible for people to see through some of the myths and false assumptions that still surround much child welfare practice in the United States.
Contrast the condemnation and outrage over the Trump administration’s policy of removing children from parents who enter the country illegally with the silence over the 700 to 800 forced child removals that occur daily in American cities and towns, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Government agencies take these children from their parents, often in sudden and chaotic circumstances, and the children suffer at least as much damage as those separated from their parents at the border..."
FOR MORE ON THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW:
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
PROPOSED BILL S.B. 313 COULD POTENTIALLY ALLOW DCF TO INTRUDE UPON THE RIGHTS OF PARENTS!
OLR Bill Analysis
AN ACT CONCERNING MEDICAL CARE FOR CHILDREN IN THE CUSTODY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILIES.
By law, the Department of Children and Families (DCF) commissioner and any agent she appoints must exercise careful supervision of each child under her guardianship or care. This bill permits the DCF commissioner, on the advice of a physician, to authorize non-emergency medical, psychological, psychiatric, or surgical treatment, or a medical multidisciplinary evaluation, to ensure the health of a child in the department's guardianship or care. But if the child's permanency plan involves reunification with the child's parent or parents, the commissioner must provide written notice to the parent or parents at least five days before the treatment or evaluation.
If the child or the parent or parents object, they may file a motion for emergency relief within five days after the notice is given. (It is unclear if this means within five days after the commissioner sends the notice or five days after the parents receive it.) The child generally may not have the treatment or evaluation within that five day period or while the motion is pending, unless there is an emergency necessitating it.
Additionally, the bill permits individuals and agencies to whom DCF has granted care and custody of a child under a temporary custody order to authorize medical multidisciplinary evaluations for children in their care. The law already permits DCF and these individuals and agencies in such circumstances to make decisions regarding emergency medical, psychological, psychiatric, or surgical treatment.
EFFECTIVE DATE: October 1, 2018
COMMITTEE ACTION
Committee on Children
Joint Favorable Substitute
*THIS BILL HAS NOT YET BEEN PASSED BY THE STATE LEGISLATURE, BUT IS WELL ON ITS WAY IN THAT DIRECTION.
Friday, March 10, 2017
LEGAL OBSCURITIES AND LOOPHOLES USED TO OBSTRUCT A COUPLE'S FIGHT FOR JUSTICE IN "PREDICTIVE NEGLECT" CASE!
For a decade, Mr. Watley and Ms. Hasemann fought the removal of their children, ultimately losing three trials in State Superior Court in Middletown. However, they did win appeals of those decisions due to legal error and malfeasance on the part of the trial court. Eventually, however, Connecticut State Court terminated their parental rights permanently. Consequently, in 2015 they took their case to Federal District Court. Initially, that Court denied their complaint in response to a motion to dismiss filed by the CT Attorney General's office. However, the couple then appealed that decision to a higher Court--the Second Circuit Court in New York--which sustained their right to pursue their case. Since then they have returned to the lower Connecticut Federal District Court.
Wednesday, October 5, 2016
CT DCF FINDS 1 YEAR OLD BABY ABUSED AND STARVING, DOES NOTHING!
"A scathing review by the child advocate of the near-starvation of a baby placed with relatives in Groton reveals "staggering failures and omissions" on the part of the Department of Children and Families, and raises doubts about DCF's decisions on child placements beyond this case.
A DCF social worker visited the boy, identified as Dallas C., on at least five occasions over 102 days between late July and late October 2015, but managed never to see Dallas awake, never roused him and never assessed what others who had contact with the family were calling the child's rapidly deteriorating health, according to the advocate's report, released Tuesday morning.
At one point, the social worker reported that he was "able to confirm that [the child] was indeed breathing," according to state Child Advocate Sarah Eagan's report..."
READ MORE:
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-foster-care-dcf-child-abuse-1005-20161004-story.html
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Monday, April 11, 2016
BOSTON GLOBE REPORTS MASSACHUSETTS HAS THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN IN THE NATION!
Matt Rocheleau and Andy Rosen of "The Boston Globe" reported as follows:
"Massachusetts reported the highest rate of abused and neglected children in the nation in fiscal year 2014 and had nearly the same number of victimized children the following year, according to newly released state and federal figures.
The sharp increase in reported abuse cases comes amid a string of high-profile cases of children who died or were severely injured — some while being overseen by the state’s child welfare agency.
Massachusetts tallied 31,863 victimized children in the federal government’s fiscal 2014, which concluded at the end of September 2014, according to a report by the US Department of Health and Human Services. That equaled 22.9 victims per 1,000 children statewide, making it the highest per capita rate in the country.
The next-highest rates of reported child abuse were in Kentucky (20.6), Rhode Island (16), New York (15.5), and New Mexico (15.2).
In the fiscal year ended in September 2015, the state tallied 31,114 victims, or 22.4 per 1,000 children.
National figures are not yet available for the more recent year.
State officials attributed the increased number of reported cases to greater public awareness and State officials attributed the increased number of reported cases to greater public awareness and increased vigilance by the state..."
READ MORE:
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
THE HARTFORD COURANT REPORTS THAT TWO DCF MANAGERS HAVE BEEN FIRED FOR LEAVING TWO YOUNG CHILDREN IN THE CARE OF FOSTER PARENTS KNOWN FOR ABUSING CHILDREN!
JOSH KOVNER OF THE HARTFORD COURANT REPORTS AS FOLLOWS:
"Two managers for the Department of Children and Families have been fired for failing to remove two young children placed with a couple in Plainfield – a husband convicted in the 1990s of raping a child, and a wife who was on the child-abuse registry for a previous DCF case.
Managers Leslie Roy and Linda Lukin, who worked in the Willimantic regional office, were fired Monday, according to records obtained Tuesday by The Courant. Discipline is pending against a third DCF employee in the Willimantic office, state sources said.
Despite receiving a complaint on DCF's child-abuse hotline last spring from someone concerned about the safety of the two children, and then learning about the Plainfield couple's background, caseworkers never removed the children. Four months went by before the director of the regional DCF office learned of the situation and had the two children — a 1-year-old and an infant — taken out of the home, DCF officials said. The children were not harmed.
The Plainfield couple had been seeking guardianship of the children, apparently because of abuse or neglect on the part of the children's biological parents..."
READ MORE:
Sunday, February 21, 2016
UPDATES ON IMPORTANT CGA HEARINGS RELATED TO DCF, ETC.!
This in from Cheryl Martone of CT Concerned Parents:
Dear Parents,
Please spread the word about this hearing as it is about CPS/DCF trying to get more programs and justify them selves that they are doing alright for the children and families when they are NOT! Come speak your mind
On 9 Bills, we need many here:
I will be speaking on this one:
Monday, February 1, 2016
BARRY GOLDSTEIN COMMENTS ON SUNDAY BOSTON GLOBE'S ARTICLE ON SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIMS PLACED IN THE HANDS OF THEIR ABUSERS!
Family Courts Exposed
CUSTODY COURT SCANDAL FINALLY EXPOSED
By Barry Goldstein
I have long believed that whoever exposed the custody court scandal would be worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. Today, Boston Globe reporters Nestor Ramos and Evan Allen produced a well documented story showing the pattern of ignorance, bias and harmful practices by the custody courts and child protective agencies in their response to child sexual abuse and domestic violence. The custody courts should never be the same and considering the enormous harm they have caused the needed reforms must take place immediately.
The reporters focused on the story of a now eight-year-old girl who suffered five years of sexual abuse and systemic failure despite her repeated reports about her father’s abuse. The reporters interviewed national experts to demonstrate that the mistakes made in this case are part of a larger pattern of custody courts and child protective agencies mishandling child custody cases involving abuse. Especially revealing was their comparison of the flawed practices used by court professionals and child protective caseworkers with the best practices described in the Saunders’ Study from the US Department of Justice.
The failure to believe the child’s reports of her father’s betrayal were based not on the circumstances in the case but the mistaken assumption by the professionals that false reports are common. One of the most important findings in the Saunders’ Study is that court professionals without the needed training and expertise tend to focus on the myth that mothers and children frequently make false reports. This is an important factor that results in the alleged offender winning custody in 85% of child sexual abuse cases. Near the end of the article, the child is quoted as saying, ” I think my mom believes me.” Her mother did believe her, but the authorities who could have saved her from further torture failed to believe her. They work in a system that routinely errs on the side of risking children. Needless to say the failures of the custody court and child protective agency have left the child severely traumatized.
Why Is This Article So Important?
Professor Garland Waller wrote a prophetic chapter in the first volume of Domestic Violence, Abuse and Child Custody that I co-edited with Dr. Mo Therese Hannah. The chapter explained the various factors including fear of lawsuits, lack of resources and difficulty in putting these kind of stories together that discouraged the media from exposing the scandal. Garland discussed the “Tipping Point” and predicted when enough people became aware of the scandal it could no longer be hidden and would have to be corrected. This story will either take us to the tipping point or bring us very close.
The Boston Globe reporters produced a powerful story. I believe it will encourage other journalists to cover an important topic they had previously avoided. The story should also encourage court and child protective administrators to consider needed reforms. They have been very defensive and routinely blame victims, but they will want to avoid further stories that would make them look bad and harm their careers. Legislators will want to show they are doing something to protect children. This should come in the form of more resources to improve the system and reforms that I hope will include the Safe Child Act.
Dr. Dianne Bartlow wrote an important chapter in the second volume of Domestic Violence, Abuse and Child Custody concerning the 175 children murdered in a two-year period by fathers involved in contested custody. She interviewed many of the best judges who have the most training and expertise about domestic violence. One of the points they made is that courts need to err on the side of safety which is the opposite of what the reporters found. The Safe Child Act specifically requires courts to make the health and safety of children the first priority. It requires an evidence based approach by integrating important scientific research into court practices. The legislation promotes a more multi-disciplinary approach as supported by the Saunders’ Study. And our proposal requires a trauma-informed response based on the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Research that found exposure to domestic violence and child abuse is far more harmful than previously understood.
Moving Forward
The only thing worse than the torture the court made the little girl suffer and the murders of the 175 children and the millions of children who have been forced to live with abusers is if society fails to learn from these tragedies. What frustrates me more than anything is that we now have the knowledge and practices that could save most of these children. The judge who made so many decisions to place the child in jeopardy surely did not want to hurt the girl. But the professionals in the broken system cannot prevent these frequent tragedies using the outdated and discredited practices that were developed in the 1970s. They are afraid of bad publicity which is why they use gag orders and retaliation in an attempt to silence anyone who would criticize their mistakes. The professionals who failed this child would like the story to go away, but our job is to make sure this girl is remembered. It is painful and traumatic to think about all these horrific stories, but we must remember our pain is nothing compared to what this little girl and so many other children are forced to suffer every day until we make it stop.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
HOW THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS DROPPED THE BALL AND PLACED CHILD VICTIM IN THE HANDS OF FATHER WHO SEXUALLY ABUSED HER!
Nestor Ramos and Evan Allen of The Boston Globe report as follows:
"The bad stuff hurt too much, the girl said, so she took trips in her head. She imagined she was playing in the park, not lying on the basement floor or standing naked in the bathroom where, she said, her father touched her.
He told her not to tell anyone, she said, but she told anyway.
She told her mother, who went to the police. She told her therapist, who wrote a letter. She told the people who supervised her visits with her mother, who filed reports.
“I tried to tell anyone who would listen, but no one believed me,” said the girl, then 7, during a trauma evaluation conducted last spring. The Globe is withholding her name to protect her identity..."
READ MORE:
"REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN" REPORTS ON COUPLE'S DCF BATTLE!
LARAINE WESCHLER reports as follows:
"Connecticut parents whose children were removed from their care at birth by the Department of Children and Families will have a chance to argue that their rights were violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
DCF took custody of the children of Karin Hasemann of Watertown and Joseph Watley of Thomaston under what the agency calls predictive neglect. In this case, DCF assumed the parents' mental health would negatively affect their ability to care for their children. .."
READ MORE:
http://www.rep-am.com/news/local/936468.txt
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
CT DCF FAILS THE NEEDS OF OVER HALF OF THE CHILDREN IN ITS CARE!
"Hartford – Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano (R-North Haven) released the following statement regarding the court monitor’s new report on the Department of Children & Families’ (DCF) compliance with federal-court orders. Sen. Fasano has previously proposed a series of DCF reforms and repeatedly asked DCF Commissioner Joette Katz to consider policy changes. He has also called for Commissioner Katz to resign following multiple reports citing systemic failures within the DCF system..."
READ MORE:
http://ctsenaterepublicans.com/2016/01/fasano-statement-on-court-monitors-report-renews-call-for-commissioner-katzs-resignation/
Monday, January 25, 2016
TASK FORCE TO STUDY THE STATE-WIDE RESPONSE TO MINORS EXPOSED TO FAMILY VIOLENCE, MEETING MINUTES, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015!
10:00 AM in Room 2A of the LOB
The meeting was called to order at 10:00 by Garry Lapidus,
The following committee members were present:
Rachel Powlowski; Donald Frechette; Jennifer Celentano; Laura DeLeo;
Mary Painter; Damion Grasso; Cynthia Mahon; Linda Mattigan; Christine
Rapillo, Hon. Elizabeth Bozzuto; Linda Harris; Kayte Cwikla-Masas; Dr. Nina
Livingston; Garry Lapidus and Karen Jarmoc
Garry noted that the first part of the meeting would be from DCF. Mary Painter would be giving an
overview.
Mary Painter stated that they had a lot of information that they would try to get through and asked
task force members to hold their comments until the end. She discussed the overall mission of the
department and noted that there had been some significant practice shifts under the current
administration. She would also discuss their work with families with regard to intimate partner
violence. Cynthia Mahon would discuss how the department operates within its legal mandate and
how DCF worked with the juvenile court. Damian Grasso would discuss data relevant to the charge
of the task force. James Geissler would discuss his work as a provider and how his work helps
families. The presentation would conclude with recommendations from the department on moving
forward.
The department’s mission is to ensure the safety and well-being of children in Connecticut and there
are a lot of legal mandates to get them through this work , which involves a complex process to get
them through the juvenile courts.
Cynthia Mahon presented on legislative mandates. She noted that these focused on prevention;
child protective services; children’s behavioral health; educational services; and juvenile justice. She
would be discussing the involvement of DCF in the juvenile court process and would be discussing
the perspective of how families dealing with family violence interact with this system. She noted that
§17A-101 is the mandated reporting statute and that this is very relevant to DCF’s work because this is often how cases come into the department and they start their work with families through
mandated reporters often. This statute requires that certain individuals report suspected child abuse
and neglect.
The policy behind this statute is to provide children and families with the help that they need,
whether this involves enhancing parental capacity for good childcare; providing a safe, nurturing
environment for children; or protecting children from injury and neglect. There are 37 different
categories of individuals that are considered required mandated reporters. Cynthia noted that just
because someone reports something to DCF, this doesn’t always become a case or mean that the
family will become involved in the juvenile court process, but this is a gateway of getting the family’s
case brought to the attention of child protective services. Cynthia noted that in her capacity as
assistant attorney general, the juvenile court is sometimes the “black hole” of the judicial branch
because there’s a degree of ambiguity to what goes on in the juvenile courts. This is partially due to
confidentiality statutes that govern DCF and the juvenile court itself.
She stated that §46B-124B is an important statute for the task force to consider because it allows for
information sharing across the system but doesn’t provide any guidance on how to administer this or
any regulations or procedures on how to share this information. There isn’t currently a system to
share this kind of information. This information sharing system represented one of the
recommendations for the task force to consider. There are currently 13 juvenile courts in the State of
Connecticut with two child protection sessions, which are located in Willimantic and in Middletown
and are specific courts designed to hear multi-day complex trials that can’t be handled expeditiously
in the regional courts. Juvenile courts handle child protection and delinquency cases. The juvenile
court’s goal is to secure the welfare, protection, proper care and suitable support of the child subject
to its jurisdiction. The juvenile court assesses the conditions of the child, and this is very different
from how the criminal court looks at family violence cases. In Connecticut juvenile court, finding that
a child is neglected is different from finding who is responsible for the neglect. The adjudication is
not a rendition against an individual or individuals in these cases, but rather a finding that a child is
neglected. The juvenile court system is not punitive and they are not looking to assign guilty or not
guilty but that they look simply at a child and what’s in the best interest of the child. DCF files a
petition when families become involved in the juvenile court system. Cynthia referred to documents
that she provided regarding child neglect. These petitions can also be filed by Guardians ad Litem.
There are a range of situations that these petitions can apply to, and some cases don’t involve any
petitions whereas other cases have petitions filed right away. DCF has been working to collect more
data on these petitions.
There are various reasons that DCF will file these petitions, ranging from a long duration of activity
with DCF to a lack of engagement on the part of the family with regard to their case. DCF files a
petition if the children are struggling or suffering and the department feels that they’re being
neglected. Cynthia provided an example for the task force of a case that came in on a neglect
petition where a mother had five children and there were two different fathers and the case came in
on the DCF Careline with a concern of substance abuse. In the course of the referral to the Careline,
there was a disclosure of domestic violence by one of the fathers. The case was opened by DCF for
ongoing treatment; services were provided to the family and within one month of the case, one of the
fathers was arrested and incarcerated for violating the full protective order. The mother was the
subject of this protective order. The case continued with DCF and it turned out that the respondent
mother was not compliant with the services that were being recommended and offered for her and
her children. After about 7 months of having an open case, the department decided to file a neglect
petition. When this case was disposed of in the juvenile court, the court’s disposition was 6 months
of protective supervision where the department stayed involved in oversight of the family to ensure
compliance with DCF services and to make sure that the children were safe and well taken care of.
After 6 months, the mother did finally accept services and after this, things went smoothly for the
family and the case closed. Cynthia pointed out that there is often a perception that families going
into the court have a bad experience and in this particular case, the mother and social worker
walked out of the courtroom together and hugged and the mother thanked her for her help and said
on the record that this was a positive experience.
The neglect allegations that come on petitions can encompass a wide variety of scenarios ranging
from substance abuse to mental health to inappropriate housing; ongoing criminal involvement;
intimate partner violence or family violence in the home, and one of the allegations is being
permitted to live under conditions injurious to a child’s well-being. This allegation typically comes
under the classification of domestic violence in the home.
Regarding orders of temporary custody, Ms. Mahopn noted that in the example she provided, the
children were never removed from their mother’s care. There are times, however, when it is
necessary to remove a child because of the high level of danger present in the home and in these
cases, an order of temporary custody is presented to the court. The court assesses whether there is
reasonable cause to believe that the child is suffering from serious physical illness or serious
physical injury or is in immediate physical danger from the child’s surroundings. Additionally, the
court considers whether immediate removal from the surroundings is necessary to ensure the child’s
safety.
The department tries to avoid removing children from their parents or their surroundings and removal
is a last resort, as this can be a traumatic experience. The department works with families to reduce
family violence and find resources for the child such as placing them with a relative or someone the
child knows rather than going into foster care with a stranger. When a child is removed from their
family, an order of temporary custody is filed with the juvenile court. Attached to this is an affidavit
typically filed by the Department of Children and Families or by a Guardian ad Litem, which includes
information that is provided to the judge ex parte explaining why it is believed that the child is in
immediate physical danger and needs to be removed immediately from their guardians or
custodians.
Occasionally a judge of the superior court may, on their own, issue an order of temporary custody if
during the course of the court proceeding there is information presented indicating that the child is in
physical danger. If the judge grants this order of temporary custody, by statute the family is required
to have a preliminary hearing within 10 days where families come in and meet with the court service
officer, who sits down with the families to mediate the cases and discuss with the parents whether
they will sustain the order of temporary custody and allow the child to remain in DCF care or send
the child back to the family. At these hearings, the parents are entitled to court-appointed counsel
where they fill out a financial affidavit for the judge to review and counsel can be assigned. The child
in the juvenile court is automatically provided an attorney. The child is not provided a Guardian ad
Litem unless the appointed attorney deems that this is appropriate. Guardians ad Litem are
appointed in cases where the child’s position is different from what’s in the child’s best interests.
After this preliminary hearing, if the parties decide whether they want a full trial, by statute they can
have another trial within 10 days. This process in juvenile court happens very quickly because in
cases where a child is removed from their parents’ care, the parents have a right to have that
resolved as quickly as possible. At the trial, the standard is a fair preponderance of the evidence to
prove that more likely than not a child is in immediate physical danger if returned to their parents or
guardians.
Neglect petitions still have to be resolved after the court proceedings to adjudicate the child as
neglected. This is where the court is looking at the condition of the child; age of the child; whether
the child has been abandoned and denied proper care or being permitted to live under conditions
injurious to the child’s well-being, and once the court makes the determination they can move on to
the disposition of the case.
Ms. Mahon listed three different dispositions in her presentation. Protective supervision is where the
child remains in the home with the parents and services are provided by the department and court
oversight is provided as well. Court oversight can have different interpretations ranging from the
court bringing the family back on a monthly or weekly basis to check in with the family and to verify
that they’re complying with the services being offered. The juvenile court does have significant
control over the case and can be as little or as much involved as necessary. Ms. Mahon defined
“commitment to the department” as when the child is in foster care and “transfer of guardianship” is
when the court recommends that another third party assume guardianship of the child.
Ms. Mahon noted that the juvenile court has authority to issue orders over the parties, which is
important to note because families have involvement in many different definitions of the judicial
branch at the same time. These judges are issuing orders that affect the children and can affect the
families as well as the other divisions. Ms. Mahon referred to another form that she brought and
noted that there was language on the form about cooperating with domestic violence programs. She
noted that the juvenile court is ordering families to be involved in domestic violence programs and to
cooperate with restraining orders and protective orders. The steps on the form are ordered at
different times throughout the case and can be ordered at the temporary custody order phase if this
happens at the beginning of the case or can be ordered at the disposition of and neglect petition.
These steps can be modified throughout the course of the case by families coming in before the
judge and they will typically remain in place until the case is over.
Ms. Mahon noted that the steps that the court issues are issued to the parties, so in cases where, for
example, there is a mother and children and the boyfriend is a perpetrator of domestic violence, the
juvenile court does not have authority to issue orders on the boyfriend because he’s not a party to
the case. The specific steps also include orders that are directed toward the Department of Children
and Families because they are also considered a party in the case. If the juvenile court determines
that DCF needs to provide services, that can be included in the orders as well.
Mary Painter presented on the Department of Children and Familes’s work with families. She stated
that the department is trying to approach their work with families in the most beneficial way. She
went over some of the broader strategies that the department has employed under the current
administration. Ms. Painter noted that the department works to strengthen families as the main
framework of its mission. The driving belief behind their practice is that children do best within
families and that all families have strengths that can be built upon. DCF wants children to be at
home with families or with kin whenever possible. She listed two examples of how this plays out in
practice. DCF does announced visits, which wasn’t the case years ago, and they’re also trying to
look at everything through a racial justice lens, which is a significant priority for the department,
which allows them to analyze who accesses services and who uses services. The Fatherhood
Matters Initiative was employed in 2010 and the purpose of this was to increase the involvement of
fathers and their family members in the families they work with to combat both internal and external
myths about fathers and change the culture around fatherhood to emphasize that fathers are
important and are capable of nurturing young children. To do this, DCF has increased services for
fathers and worked on engaging them more in all of these processes. Each area office has a FELT
team, or a Fatherhood Engagement Leadership Team, which is built of internal and external
stakeholders to move the work forward.
DCF has the Considered Removal Child and Family team, which is the department’s effort to always
have a team meeting with DCF in partnership with families and whoever the family wants to bring to
the table when there’s consideration of removal of a child from the family. This does not always
occur in imminent risk situations, but the department strives to do this whenever possible. The
purpose of this is to avoid removal and mitigate safety factors. Should a removal decision be made
to mitigate the safety factors, the team works to find solutions so that the child can return home
quickly. 75% of the time, there is a meeting with the family before the decision is made and when
that meeting happens, only about 25% of the time is the child removed from the home. In 2015, 68%
of the children removed from their families stayed with kin and within the larger family framework.
Ms. Painter discussed the department’s efforts on trauma-informed practice, They had a large
federal grant to move this forward and they trained their entire workforce to be able to respond to
trauma and also to not create more trauma in the lives of the families they work with. The
department also more routinely screens for trauma symptoms and has expanded evidence-based
practice services for children and keeps data on trauma response.
With regard to DCF-specific practice regarding intimate partner violence within the department, it is
the goal of DCF to meet the needs of all families that are impacted by IPV and do this in a way that
preserves the culturally responsive coordination across systems, individualized, and based on best
practices and what the data is informing them on. This work started about 9 years ago and is
grounded in the Green Book Initiative, which lays out the framework for how to work with domestic
violence and child welfare. The primary principles include: ensure the well-being and stability; better
accountability; and keeping the child at home with the non-offending parent whenever possible.
There are also a lot of recommendations related to workforce capacity and building the ability to
cross-collaborate across all of the entities that are part of this council. Presently, DCF is working to
enhance this foundation and move forward so that there is a stronger internal capacity to respond to
all of the families and different typologies that present related to IPV; evaluate how they are doing
and then adapt accordingly.
DCF first elevated intimate partner violence to an office in its central office to work on the policy
areas that are significant in the department such as early childhood; substance abuse; mental
health; transition-aged youth—all of these have offices within the central office of DCF. Domestic
violence did not, however, so they elevated it to one of these offices. They also created a program
lead position that didn’t exist previously, and they also switched from an external consultation model
for social workers to an internal model so that social workers have access to expert consultation on
areas like education; physical health; and mental health. The department used to pay for external
consultation for this for IPV but they shifted this to an internal model, which is in line with the rest of
their practices. This allowed them to repurpose these dollars back into service delivery. The
department also conducted a request for information where they got a very robust response from
stakeholders in Connecticut that told them to remain grounded in the Green Book Initiative but to
close the gaps of the services that are not available to meet the needs of families. One of these gaps
was meeting the needs of fathers, who didn’t have a lot of options for treatment if they were not
meeting the threshold to be court-mandated to a batter intervention program. Last year they began
to partner with the injury prevention center, which is a three-year evaluation of their internal practice
and the service array they are trying to build, and DCF also launched some new services.
Ms. Painter also noted that the department has been studying the link between animal cruelty,
domestic violence and child abuse more thoroughly. There is a link between these areas and
Connecticut now has cross-reporting requirements of animal cruelty and child abuse. DCF was
recently tasked with putting together the protocol and training for animal-assisted treatment for
children exposed to trauma. In 2016, they will be working with injury prevention center and CCADC
to design and roll this out.
Specifically, DCF is trying to build a comprehensive and complete service array and they need to
meet the needs of all of the families that they come in contact with so they need to be able to meet
the needs of those impacted by IPV. DCF has increased access and utilization of the protective
order registry by department staff so that it becomes a more common practice that it is used
regularly to make determinations that are needed for the families.
DCF has worked with CCADV on a few different initiatives, one of these is aligning their safe sleep
initiative with the department along with the shelter so that they have federally-approved cribs and
they have information to provide to families. The department also supports efforts to train staff on the
safe dates and adolescent violence prevention curriculum to disseminate this out to the workforce as
much as possible. There are also a variety of interventions for children who are exposed to trauma.
The department is making a big push at disseminating practice and making these services available
throughout Connecticut. Ms. Painter referred to her slide and the four interventions identified by the
injury prevention center with regard to families impacted by IPV. The slide depicts what each of
these services address in terms of prevention or low, moderate and high-risk family situations.
This year, DCF launched a family assessment intervention response. This is available statewide to
DCF-involved families and serves as an avenue for families to get services that they otherwise
cannot get. This is an intensive, community-based intervention, which means that a family has
access to the service when needed for about 4-6 months and the service is delivered where the
family needs it. All family members receive an individualized treatment planning based on their
needs and DCF conducts safety planning where they use the VIGOR safety plan, which includes
assessing the needs of the children; pets; finances; social issues and all of the issues related to the
families that they work with. Based on this, the family receives a combination of services which could
include, if needed, trauma-focused CBT; there is a family navigator who will help the child connect to
engage in this service. If the family needs some support related to financial or housing issues, there
is a case management component to this service. Fathers for Change is embedded in this model,
which was put into place to address a significant gap in Connecticut. This is an intervention program
for fathers with low to moderate IPV and substance abuse problems, which uses motivation to enter
into cognitive behavioral therapy intervention for things like taking accountability for behavior;
parenting skills; teaching co-parenting; and parent-child sessions as appropriate.
Damien Grasso discussed his collaboration with DCF. His goal is to do research and provide
recommendations for ways to improve identification of children exposed to domestic violence in the
system and find ways to help improve intervention for these children and families with regard to their safety and well-being. This is being done in two ways, one being a comprehensive chart review
where the department looks at children and families served by DCF with identified IPV. The second
is evaluation of the feasibility and effectiveness of Fathers for Change and other programs focused
on eradicating IPV.
The data was compiled from 100 different randomly-chosen reports within a 12-month period, and
focused on extracting data on family violence. Within these families, there was past involvement with
DCF, demographic risk and so forth. Their first goal is to examine the prevalence and characteristics
of children’s exposure to IPV in this process. DCF has a means of indicating whether a family has
identified IPV and this number has hovered at 20-21%. The majority of children in these situations
are between 0 and 5, followed by 6-12 year olds, and 18% are 13-18 year olds. Damian
acknowledged that this ratio is probably much higher and in a study he conducted with colleagues
some years ago where they did a comprehensive chart review and followed this with questionnaires
and semi-structured interviews with families, they found that 70% of those children have witnessed
domestic violence. This study focused on children removed from their homes, so they were probably
exposed to more severe maltreatment, but they would expect this rate to be higher. Mr. Grasso
stated that they were careful in their chart review to detect chases where there is evidence of IPV
that hasn’t been flagged and where DCF can do a better job with this. He noted that one possible
reason that DCF is not identifying as many potential cases for domestic violence, has to do with
screening and assessing. In the study he conducted, the best identification for children exposed to
domestic violence had to do with putting together multiple sources to get better information. Damian
referred to his charts to illustrate that by incorporating multiple sources of information, it was easier
to determine if domestic violence was an issue in various cases. DCF is also interested in
understanding what the violence looks like in homes. The research indicates that violence predicts in
a linear fashion a host of adverse outcomes for children. They are going to be extracting this data
and using a coding scheme used in past research to quantify the severity and then look at the
relationship between severity of IPV and other forms of maltreatment and outcomes for children and
families.
The second goal is to examine the co-occurring maltreatment and contextual risk in children in DCF
involved families with IPV. 30-60% of cases involving domestic violence involve some other form of
child abuse with 45-70% of children exposed to DV also being victims of physical abuse, often from
both parents. One study found that 65% of men who abuse their partner also abuse their children
and another study found that mothers who were victims of IPV were four times more likely to
endorse behaviors indicative of physical abuse and emotional abuse. There is also increased risk for
sexual abuse among children exposed to domestic violence. Damian stated that with this new
knowledge, he hopes that the department can examine the overlap of IPV with other maltreatment
and how this relates to the severity of different forms of maltreatment.
The third goal is to examine decision-making for DCF families and looking at rates of acceptance
based on IPV identification and looking at differences between substantiated versus unsubstantiated
reports among families where IPV is identified versus not, and how many of these families go into
different programs. Ultimately, the department would like to determine how identifying IPV guides
decision-making from the first time it is identified until the case closes.
Damian noted that the research is quantitative but also involves a significant amount of interviews.
There are several anthropologists on staff that are meeting with stakeholders in DCF, so they will be
compiling this information.
The fourth aim of the study was to examine the recidivism in DCF families with IPV over the course
of the year. DCF is going to extract data for 12 months after the date of the report to look at new
substantiated and unsubstantiated reports and see if the severity of IPV and other forms of
maltreatment and the overlap are predictive of outcomes over time. Damian went over the IPV FAIR
evaluation slide in his presentation. Damian discussed the families that have come into the program
and noted that these families have a good deal of risk and needs and there is definitely an indication
of domestic violence within these families. Police have visited the homes of these families and
arrests have been made, oftentimes with children present. There have been other legal problems
identified with these families as well as mental health needs.
Trauma exposure for mothers and fathers was quite high among these families, with families being
exposed to an average of 5-6 different types of trauma. Using the department’s questionnaire for
evaluating PTSD symptoms, it was found that 42.9% of mothers and 52% of fathers were meeting
criteria for full or partial PTSD and 23% of mothers and 24% of fathers are meeting full criteria based
on this questionnaire.
James Geissler discussed his work with the intake process and how the assessment plays out with
regards to families. James is very passionate about the program and has seen it working every day.
He went over the administrative process of how families get to him: forms get filed with a gatekeeper
who is an IPV specialist, then this is faxed over to him and he goes over the information with a family
navigator who does the majority of the case management with the family. After this, an intake is set
up with a DCF social worker and James’s team meets with everyone in the family to talk about
different programs and answer any questions the family may have to start to build a relationship with
the family before going into the assessment process. During the assessment process, James and
his team gain an understanding of what the family’s needs are and different components of the case.
The assessment also helps determine whether the father is going to be engaged and whether he
qualifies for the Fathers for Change program, as well as the needs of the mother and the needs of
the child or children. Oftentimes, the mothers are traumatized from multiple situations, so James
works to connect them to services in the community. The program also works to connect children to
mental health services with clinicians trained in TF CBT after witnessing trauma in the home.
James always has a family navigator accompany him to determine the best clinical treatment plan
for helping the family. He noted that there are many needs that go beyond the mental health
treatment aspect of assistance, so he helps with connecting these families to heating assistance,
insurance and other programs. Through the assessments he conducts, James looks for indications
of substance abuse and issues with parenting and domestic violence. Fathers for Change addresses
many of these issues, which is a 4-6 month program requiring the whole family to get involved with
treatment. This can be difficult, but James is able to convince families that it works and will help
families. The program operates in three different phases, where fathers are engaged in two months
of individual counseling with James before they try to transition into co-parenting sessions if
appropriate. The third phase of this program is one-on-one counseling with the father and child
where the father will talk about domestic violence with the child in a constructive way. At this stage in
the program, there is typically a change in the home and families acknowledge that the fathers are
working hard to change. James noted that safety planning is very important in these situations,
which he does following the assessment. This looks at goals, options and risks for the family and the
family navigator does this with the mother and father first because this looks at the whole
environment. This assessment process is very important because it is comprehensive and takes into
account current and historical abuse and looks at the co-parenting situation that gives social workers
and therapists the ability to see how they can best help the family.
James shared an example of one of the fathers he was working with. When James finished this
father’s assessments and they talked about different options and the father qualified for the fathers
for change program. James saw this father’s potential but he lacked the emotional regulation skills
and had poor communication skills that were causing domestic violence, but the father wanted to be
a better parent to his three young boys. The father was initially resistant to doing a 4-6 month
program. While they were having this conversation, one of the father’s sons had a panic attack—he
was experiencing a lot of anxiety as a result of his father being incarcerated and the father was able
to respond immediately and calm his son down. James noted in the assessment process, though,
that the father wanted the best for his children. The father communicated that he was concerned for
his children and wanted to make better choices. James was able to connect this with the Fathers for
Change program and get the father to sign up. The father is now going into his tenth session, and
since starting the program, there has been no domestic violence in the home. James stated that he
has seen significant transformations in these families through this program, and that the program will
have a long-term impact of stopping the cycle of domestic violence in these families and
communities. Because the program steps into place quickly and is able to provide an intake and
referral to these families at a critical time, it is able to transform these families quickly and effectively.
James reiterated that the program aims to develop the foundations for long-term positive changes
for these families that will help the children grow up in healthy homes.
Karen introduced Betsy McAllister. Betsy is a founding director of the Children Witness to Violence
Project out of Boston Medical Center and is currently serving as a lecturer on human development
and psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Betsy has come to Connecticut on
several occasions to offer training to child advocates and victim advocates within the statewide
network of domestic violence providers. The task force appreciates Betsy’s presence and her insight
on keeping children safe in homes where family violence is occurring. Karen noted that the next
meeting would be on November 19th, and that the task force would be receiving draft recommendations pared out subject matter to discuss at upcoming meetings, followed by discussion
to capture task force members’ feedback. The final report is due in January, and Garry and Karen
have been discussing the best way to prepare the final report. Upcoming meetings will go over 2-3
different subject matters and won’t go outside of what has been presented, but task force members
will be able to weigh in with their thoughts and recommendations. At the last meeting in January,
there will be a full draft of the recommendations and a subject matter public hearing so that the task
force can make sure to get public input. Karen and Garry will also present this draft to the Criminal
Justice Policy Advisory Commission at their meeting in December.
Betsy McAllister began her presentation stating that she had done work with several groups related
to domestic violence, including CCADV and that she has a lot of respect for the work that
Connecticut does on behalf of women and children affected by domestic violence. She stated that
she was impressed with the work of the task force and was looking forward to the task force’s
recommendations. Massachusetts is conducting a similar initiative that focuses on the courts. The
legislature approved a mandated training last year for all of the courts in Massachusetts on the
Fender risk assessment. As a component of this, the courts are weaving in a look at risk assessment
for children.
Betsy McAlister Groves drew on her experience as the former director of the Child Witness to
Violence Project at Boston Medical Center, which is a counseling program for young children as
domestic violence where they serve children aged 8 and under. About 85% of these children have
been referred because of their experiences with domestic violence. She learned many things from
this experience. The project worked collaboratively with DCF around providing reporting of children
affected by domestic violence and providing services for them. The project is located in Boston
Medical Center and is part of the Department of Pediatrics. Referrals come from medical providers;
from neighborhood health clinics and other hospitals in the city. They also get reports from the police
department; from the courts; domestic violence agencies; and from DCF. About 25% of their
referrals are self-referrals. The heart of this program is the provision of counseling and advocacy
services. They use an evidence-based therapy intervention called Child-Parent psychotherapy that
was used widely in Connecticut as well. This is a therapy that focuses on the non-offending parent
and the child doing therapy together and is particularly appropriate in interventions for children
affected by domestic violence, and especially for young children because so much of what needs to
happen for these children also needs to happen for the non-offending parent and the family. The
program also takes appointments for Guardians ad Litem and they have done expert witness
testimony and worked extensively with DCF not only in case collaboration but with the domestic
violence unit around policy and thinking about appropriate ways for mandated reporters and DCF to
work together. Betsy noted that because they are a voluntary agency, 80% of the families that they
see are not involved with DCF. When looking at the entire population of families exposed to
domestic violence, there is a continuum of families and they tend to see the families where the
domestic violence may have been less lethal or dangerous, but is just as toxic to children.
Betsy discussed some lessons she’s learned in her work. The first lesson is the notion that being a
bystander to violence may be just as traumatizing for a child as being the victim, so there is a
population of children who are not direct victims but who are truly a witness to violence or are
exposed to violence. The second lesson is about the fact that domestic violence is a particularly
toxic form of trauma for young children. The third lesson is that helping a non-abusing parent in
these situations is essential to helping children affected by domestic violence.
Betsy discussed the bystander effect. She used a study from the mid-90’s that was done to
understand how very young children were affected by trauma. There was a debate as to whether
very young children could be diagnosed with PTSD, and as more research emerged about the
effects of stress on the young brain, this question was put to rest and now there is a diagnosis in the
DSM 5, the mental health diagnostic manual for pre-school PTSD, so it has now been codified in this
manual. This study was on children who were in DCF custody in the state of Louisiana who were
about age 4 and younger. This study was a way to look at their symptoms and behaviors and
compare that constellation of behaviors to what is known about symptoms and behaviors consistent
with PTSD in older children. The study found a great deal of overlap and made a strong case for the
fact that very young children can be affected by violence or trauma and the symptoms are similar to
those found in older children. The unanticipated finding was about the variables that predicted PTSD
symptoms in these children and what they found was that witnessing violence or threats against the
caregivers was a stronger predictor of PTSD than direct physical abuse, which is probably unique to young children. This says a lot about the caregiving environment and the fact that very young
children depend on their caregivers for physical and psychological survival. Seeing or witnessing a
threat is very potent for children and connects directly to symptoms. Ms. McAlister Groves reiterated
that most of the children exposed to domestic violence are under age 8 and several other studies
show this. At Boston Medical Center, they survey children in the waiting room who have parents who
have reported violence, and the average age of those children is 2.7 years.
Ms. McAlister Groves noted that stressful events can be harmful, tolerable or beneficial to a child,
depending on several variables. These events can be moderated by a safe and dependable
relationship that a child has access to. Whether an event is stressful or not can depend on whether
the child has access to a safe and dependable relationship.
With regard to the impact of trauma on the caregiver-child relationship, Ms. McAlister Groves stated
that what they have learned from the children in their program is about the way the child experiences
the violence. She used an example of a drawing from one of the children in her program and noted
how the child depicted a violent incident that hadn’t happened but the child felt threatened that it
might happen. In the moment, the child did not feel a refuge from either parent—one parent was the
perpetrator of violence and the other parent is a victim and in the moment, the child has no
protection. She noted that young children are often confused about who is safe and who is
dangerous because they lack the cognitive ability to make sense out of these situations. The role of
trauma in non-abusing parents is significant in the way that children can or cannot be buffered from
the impacts of trauma. Oftentimes, mothers have a hard time addressing the psychological needs of
their children because of the situation that they’re in. The work that Ms. McAlister Groves does
focuses on helping the non-abusing parent as the best way to help the child, and this means
addressing the non-abusing parent’s mental health needs; helping the child understand what has
happened with the violence; giving the parent information about how the child has been impacted
and specific support around parenting what may be difficult behaviors with the child. To the extent
that this program can support the parent, that child is able to heal, and this connection is important to
helping the parent and child heal together. The program does not deal with critical safety issues in
the home, but in many cases there aren’t critical safety issues.
Ms. McAlister Groves discussed the work that her program has done with DCF and how they work
on the nexus of care to address the challenges that families face where there are significant
concerns about the caregiver and a lot of violence. She left with some take-away messages:
1. The reminder that young children are disproportionately represented in the populations that
domestic violence programs work with.
2. Young children are more vulnerable and less able to communicate verbally about the impact of
violence or what is going on in the home.
3. Young children recover from traumatic experiences ideally in the context of caregiving
relationships.
4. The best way to help a child ideally is to help the non-abusing parent for access to safety
and support.
Ms. McAlister Groves discussed the role of DCF, voluntary agencies and the court system.
With regard to DCF, she noted that years ago DCF went through a two-year process to look at the
question as to whether their requirement was going to continue to be that all cases where children
witnessing domestic violence would require automatic reporting by a mandated reporter. DCF
developed a task force; community meetings, and held lengthy discussions with various groups and
voluntary service providers and this concluded in a policy called “promising approaches”, which
dictates that mandated reporters are encouraged to review each family situation and to consider
whether or on to file with the Department of Children and Families. Mandated reporters should also
give due consideration the family environment and to the negative impact of violence on a child.
They are encouraged to assess the caretakers’ and child’s conditions when considering whether or
not to file a report of concern with regard to several factors including potential danger; access to
weapons; escalating threats; mental illness; suicide threats; substance abuse; a history of protective
orders; prior arrest; and stalking. There is also a focus on the non-abusing parent and assessing
efforts or willingness to seek help; connections to the community; ability to evaluate and recognize
the impact on the child; the presence of mental illness or substance abuse. There are criteria that
apply to the child, including the age of the child; the fact that the child voices constant worry or fear
about danger; a lack of safety presence or symptoms related to traumatic stress sleep disorder; withdrawal from friends; separation anxiety; worried about the safety of loved ones, etc. From the
perspective of a voluntary service provider, and in her program they struggled with the notion of
being mandated reporters and worrying that for many families that they saw, women were hesitant to
seek services, restraining orders, and other kinds of help because of the fear that the children will be
removed from the home. Realistically, there is only a small percentage of children that are removed
from the home to protective services, yet there is the myth or the fear in many communities that if
they tell someone about the violence in the home, the children are going to be removed. The policy
that DCF adopted gives her program a little bit more leeway around reporting. The program has filed
many reports, but the fact that reports don’t always have to be filed allows them to help more
families and make these women feel more comfortable coming forward. If her program is working
with a family where the mother has sought services and is connected to her community and is very
concerned about her children, she’s taking the appropriate steps to protect her children and the
children have some symptoms of concerns but are basically doing okay, the program can help the
family in ways that don’t involve mandated reporting. Ms. McAlister Groves noted that this is an
important piece of practice that she has in her state that has been very helpful. When her program
does file a report, they inform the family and invite the parent to sit with them when they call in the
report or have the family call in the report themselves, and work with them through the process. If it
is a situation where the organization thinks the child should be removed, they make this known to
the family. In the majority of the cases that her program has worked with, after a report has been
filed, typically the therapeutic relationship remains intact and they are able to continue to work with
the family in a collaborative effort with DCF.
Ms. McAlister Groves then discussed the role of voluntary agencies in determining risk assessment.
They look at the history of violence and acknowledge that chronic exposure to trauma is much more
impactful and takes a great toll on children in a single episode of violence, so they’re looking for
chronicity. In a chart review of the organization, they found that 62% of the children seen in their
programs had a lifetime exposure to violence, presenting a serious threat to their mental health. The
programs also look at the natures of threats or abuse; at the presence of alcohol, drugs or weapons
as reported by the non-abusing parent; history of mental illness; the opinion of risk of safety or
danger; the non-abusing parent’s efforts or willingness to seek help or safety; connections to family
and friends and social institutions; and the age of the child.
Regarding the court system, Massachusetts has a statewide order to train all courts that work with
children and offenders in the state. The judge leading this has asked a small group of people who
work with children affected by domestic violence to think about ways that in the context of doing
offender risk assessment, there are opportunities for the court to have their eyes on the children. In
some cases, the courts don’t see children at all, so the offender risk assessment is a way to make a
judge think about children. There has been only one training done so far and as they look at offender
assessments, they are dictating to judges that chronicity matters and if there is a history of domestic
violence and that there are prior restraining orders that could be a red flag to think about children
more seriously. They ask that the court ask about the children and about their ages; whether they’re
in childcare or if they’re being seen by a provider. If the judges think about children in these cases,
the courts can have some reassurance that someone is thinking about and considering the children.
The age of the child is another important consideration, and if the children are very young, courts
should be more concerned and ask more questions.
Massachusetts is also thinking about increased use of the guardian ad litem evaluations to
understand and think about what’s best for children when parents have been separated and there
are custody or visitation orders.
Karen Jarmoc asked if other task force members had questions.
Dr. Nina Livingston asked about the wiggle room that Massachusetts is giving around reporting, and
noted that across disciplines this is a primary question she’s asked when giving guidance on this
issue—how do providers know which kids to report, etc.? She noted that Connecticut’s guidance is
pretty vague and asked Ms. McAlister Groves if she could elaborate on this and whether she used
forms or risk assessment tools because pediatricians don’t necessarily have these tools at their
disposal. She asked how the guidance translates into practice.
Betsy McAlister Groves responded that when mandated reporters are in doubt in a situation, their
guidance is to file. The policy they follow leans toward filing a report, and the important point with the
guideline is the leeway to report or not report. DCF provided extensive training when this rolled out,
and they provide a long list of questions/ guidelines on their website to help make determinations in
risk assessment, but this hasn’t been evaluated or tested. She noted that her program is in the
Department of Pediatrics, and she doesn’t often have time to do these risk assessments. The
guidance from DCF to caregivers is that if they have concerns, they should file a report. If there are
domestic violence programs in the hospital, pediatricians can call an advocate to have a meeting
with the pediatrician or social worker and the family and perhaps do an assessment together and
make a decision. DCF recognizes that not every mandated reporter can do this.
Sarah Eagan asked about the focus on a need for parent-child psychotherapy as a critical
intervention to respond to the trauma that is created within the family system and to improve
outcomes for children. She noted that in Connecticut, practitioners are aware of the breadth and
scope of family trauma and that not all services are equal or interchangeable and there aren’t very
many models of service intervention that are dyadic and trauma informed and capable of effective
work with families along the continuum that Ms. McAlister Groves discussed. She noted that there is
some of this type of service in Connecticut, and asked what kind of strategies Massachusetts uses
to meet this need and bring these types of interventions to scale. She asked how Massachusetts is
funding this kind of initiative and for guidance on how to match capacity to need.
Betsy McAlister-Groves stated that the focus on evidence-based treatment in mental health has
been a huge move forward for the field because they have been able to more accurately understand
what works and how to train clinicians to use effective tools. She noted that the challenge for the
field is that training and getting credentials in these models is costly in terms of time and dollars, and
the whole trauma field is struggling with this. Her program has been funded through the National
Child Traumatic Stress Network, and in this network things are changing because now people are
asking questions like how they can take the core components of evidence-based treatments and
adapt them for uses in other settings. She noted that one specific component she has been involved
with is taking the principles of child-parent psychotherapy, which is a model that involves a lot of
training, but it would be a good idea to take the principles of this kind of training and adapt it to
influence the way that advocates work with families. Her program is partnering with Futures without
Violence, a large national domestic violence advocacy resource information website organization.
Together, they have completed a curriculum that’s a 3-day training for advocates called “Building
competence in parents and children affected by domestic violence”, which takes a dynamic relational
model and applies this in shelter programs. She noted that mental health systems cannot serve all
children and families that need it, and that programs need to figure out other places for service
delivery and other ways of using the theories that work and adapting those for other systems.
Karen asked about the development of the guidance that the Massachusetts DCF gave and how this
was created as a result of community meetings, etc. She also asked Mary Painter to discuss the
kinds of guidance that Connecticut’s DCF currently offers. She noted that while everyone isn’t
always on the same page, when there is policy development, this is an inclusive process, which can
be really meaningful. Karen also asked the presenters from Connecticut’s DCF about their work with
the non-offending parents and the model that DCF is using to work with these parents, and whether
separation is completely voluntary for both parents or if there are circumstances where they’re not
both in the home but DCF is still working with the offending parent.
Betsy McAlister Groves responded that she would ask Sue Hubert, the head of the domestic
violence unite in Massachusetts DCF to give details about the collaborative work to come up with
their guidance principles. She noted that there was a series of community meetings that brought
together people from within the domestic violence advocacy community; batterers’ treatment
programs, police forces, the court system, DCF; and other groups in a process that took two years to
develop these recommendations.
Mary Painter responded that Connecticut’s DCF is looking conceptually at the approach that
Massachusetts took and figuring out how to put this into practice. She noted that in Ms. McAlister
Groves’ practices, advocates will make calls with families, which is an excellent practice and its
important to figure out a way to make their workforce stronger in this capacity. She noted that programs aren’t always able to pair therapists and social workers with families who need services in
the provider’s best area of expertise, and that there is a need to elevate the entire workforce to have
these skills. She also stated that Connecticut has a broad definition for mandated reporting
deliberately, which gives people the opportunity to look at the whole situation and make
determinations based on the individual situation. There is a need to train people to look at these
cases in a complete way. There are mandated reporting requirements that mandated reporters get
trained annually, but these trainings don’t go into the detail that Massachusetts’ DCF does with a
guide, which may help Connecticut’s DCF move forward.
Karen noted that there are many people who are mandated reporters and noted that there is a
consistent curriculum that is utilized across the spectrum of mandated reporters.
Mary Painter noted that the training for this is either administered by DCF staff or online and is
modified periodically over time. This stays within the broad definitions of mandated reporting and
ensures that all mandated reporters have a knowledge base of the issues.
Betsy McAlister Groves stated that in Massachusetts, DCF tells mandated reporters that when
they’re not sure whether or not to call in a referral, to do so any way and protect a family’s anonymity
unless it is necessary.
Sarah Eagan stated that we can do this here in Connecticut, where careline workers will talk to
people without taking information and try to provide some guidance.
Mary Painter interjected that sometimes the call is taken but not accepted because there isn’t a full
amount of information, so making a call doesn’t always mean that DCF is going to be involved in a
situation. She then addressed Karen’s question about DCF’s work with the non-offending parent and
stated that DCF used the green book as their foundation for working with these parents. The primary
focus of the department is to work with the non-offending parent and the child and connecting people
to the trauma interventions for children that are growing in Connecticut, especially for DCF-involved
families. They also connect people to an existing service system, which is stronger for the non-
offending parent where they use different services in the community. The FAIR model had an
important piece of having a family navigator to connect non-offending parents to services because
these exist as a much more complete system than exists for men who need services for the same
policy area.
James addressed the question as to whether both parties want to stay together or not, and in most
cases they plan to, but the goal of the treatment program is not to talk to couples about whether or
not to stay together but the fact that they have to be co-parents to their children. There are families
where there is a protective order in place and they have time apart and they take time to learn skills
and come back to the table when things are modified or when they’re lifted and then they're
prepared to continue on with the relationship with these skills and try to get things another try. The
co-parenting piece has been very effective.
Mary Painter stated that often there is no co-parent to be working in the situation and with
considered removal teaming, they hold separate meetings as needed; separate case planning. In
Fathers for Change, the non-offending parent needs to be agreeable to the co-parenting sessions.
These families receive completely separate services in FAIR that are not connected and there are
teams so that each parent will have a different therapist.
James agreed that they give these options in his program because they understand whether it’s
appropriate or not to set two parents up in these co-parent sessions, as families may not feel
comfortable addressing the issue together. There are times when women will say that they don’t
want to continue with a relationship and during the therapy sessions, they’re careful not to impose a
set agenda on each individual family’s makeup.
Garr Lapidus asked about the information systems in DCF to support this kind of work. He noted that
it is difficult to get information from providers and parents and the community and asked whether the
system is currently operating sufficiently to support this work.
Mary Painter responded that currently, they have two data systems that they work with, one being
their provider information system that providers put information into and a Saquis data system which
is due to be updated and currently the Injury prevention center is manually going through all of the
records to get the detailed information about families, and this takes significant time so the system
needs to be updated. They are also using a system through the injury prevention center called
Qualitrex, which gives a lot of detail about the comprehensive assessment, which is going to provide
lots of helpful information but this needs to be built and expanded upon in the department and
across agencies.
Cynthia agreed that in the judiciary department, they have advocated for sharing information across
systems so that juvenile, family, criminal and probate courts can communicate. She suggested it
would be very helpful to have a universal system so that individuals in each divisions have access to
a universal model where they can all access the same information. She voiced that there is a
significant need to have a more streamlined approach to dealing with this cases, whether this was
funneling all cases through one judge, or by having a liaison across departments. This would make
the system more efficient and would serve parties and families better so that efforts are not
duplicated and information doesn’t get lost because it isn’t being shared.
Karen Jarmoc asked whether there were statutory prohibitions to this.
Judge Bozzuto answered that there are statutory prohibitions and probate and juvenile courts have
completely confidential cases. There are hurdles to this, but there is a significant need to be able to
share some information, and it is counter-productive for judges to be operating in a vacuum.
Christine Raipllo noted that 46b-124 allows for quite a bit of agency sharing, and it was suggested
that the systems are not operational to the point where people have access to the information
because there are different data systems. The statutes do allow people to share information, but
current practitioners aren’t educated on what information is and isn’t appropriate to share.
Cynthia Mahon noted that 46b-124 does allow this information to be shared, but there needs to be a
better, more effective mechanism in place to allow people to share information so there need to be
some guidelines and policies in place as to how this is to transpire. She also stated that it would be
helpful for court officers to have access to protective registries in the courthouse.
Judge Bozzuto responded that judges don’t always know that another case exists and it would be
helpful to have notifications that another case exists.
Linda Harris asked about the three-day training and how this would manifest itself so that workers
could go into homes and work with families.
Betsy McAlister Groves responded that this would be a great program for home visitors and could be
easily adapted to them.
Sarah Eagan noted that trauma-informed therapy services for young children and parents is still a
major service dirth. She also asked about the developmental impact for a child exposed to trauma
and noted that there is a need to have a strong connections between screening service provision
and early intervention services that is also a capacity builder for the non-offending parent. The state is
still working on how to connect with very young children exposed to maltreatment and connecting
those children to programs and services.
Karen Jarmoc adjourned the meeting at 12:13
A motion was duly made and seconded to adjourn the meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at 12:00..
Sara LeMaster
Task Force Staff
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