Forsaking Our Children: Bureaucracy and Reform in the Child Welfare System

The failings of the troubled Milwaukee social services system in many respects parallel those of other systems. Today, some short years have passed since an entrenched child welfare bureaucracy thwarted the reform efforts of Hagedorn and his Youth Initiative. The results have been tragic for children, and promise to worsen. After his departure, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the troubled Milwaukee County Department of Social Services, essentially charging the Department with failure to provide services to children, and with abuse and neglect of the children in its care. Today, a state takeover of the Milwaukee child welfare system looms imminent. It has been reported that as the takeover nears that conditions for children and families continue to deteriorate. It is expected that as the state takes over the troubled system, that the removal of children from their homes will double in number. All of this could have avoided had the bureaucracy not resisted the reform efforts of the Youth Initiative. As Hagedorn explains: "The last of our reform team left the Department of Social Services by the end of 1993. The good old boys whom we had tried to depose returned victoriously, and completely, to power." His observations are particularly timely in view of the recent departure of court-appointed receiver Jerome Miller, whose efforts at reforming the troubled District of Columbia child welfare system were chronicled in the Washington Post. Miller recounts that from his earliest days as receiver, the District's child welfare bureaucracy shored itself up in an effort to thwart his efforts. Once he departed it took the Department less than a week to undo the few reforms he had managed to implement, handing contracts back to favored service providers. John Hagedorn takes the reader into the innermost circles--the very nooks and crannies of the child welfare bureaucracy, explaining not just the how but the critical why underlying the failure of nearly every effort at reform. Challenged here are the most cherished assumptions about child welfare, among them the "myth of classlessness." Hagedorn recounts how the results of a study were suppressed when it was found that the vast majority of child abuse reports came from impoverished areas of the county--contrary to what the report was originally intended to convey. Also challenged are the commonly held assumptions about high caseloads, the lack of resources, and the core tasks of social workers--those tasks which define what they do on a day-to-day basis. But there is one most pervasive myth of all--central to the continued existence of child welfare as we know it--which Hagedorn boldly confronts. "It's simply too risky for bureaucrats to admit that their agency may not be 'doing good.' The erosion of that myth may lead someone to investigate them or even propose cutting their budgets." The failings of the Milwaukee system are in m