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The director of Indiana’s Department of Child Services was in Fort Wayne this week to promote an infant sleep safety campaign. He was joined by local health and law enforcement representatives in publicizing the important information.
The initiative is an excellent one, and joining forces with local officials is the best approach in ensuring its success. But Director James Payne should remember the same approach is needed in working with local juvenile court officials. More communication and less top-down authority will best serve the interests of Indiana children and families.
DCS has come under fire from a St. Joseph County juvenile court judge for an 11th-hour addition to the state budget that gives Payne alone the authority to approve out-of-state placements of children and teenagers. Previously, judges could order placement out of state if they determined that was the most appropriate setting.
“This effectively blocks the out-of-state placement of children,” wrote Probate Court Judge Peter J. Nemeth in a letter sent to Indiana newspapers. “It is unfortunate that the General Assembly has seen fit to remove this important decision from the hands of judges at the local level and place it in the sole hands of a bureaucrat in the executive branch.”
Judge Charles Pratt of the Allen Superior Court’s Family Relations Division said he and Judge Steven Sims don’t typically make out-of-state placements, instead favoring treatment centers that are close to a young person’s home. But he acknowledged that the issue is one that should have been debated before it was approved.
“It’s further evidence of a trend of reducing judicial discretion,” Pratt said. “The less we’re able to weigh the best options and make a ruling, the less chance that kids are being well-served. That’s disturbing.”
In an interview, Payne defended the change, noting that 85 percent of out-of-state placements were made by judges in two counties. Those counties are Lake and St. Joseph, and while both are border counties, Payne said the placements were not just across state lines but to far-flung states.
He noted that children are best served when their treatment is close to home, where family can visit and be involved in counseling, if necessary.
Payne also cited the availability of spaces in Indiana-based treatment facilities, pointing out that it is in the state’s best economic interests.
“Why do we send Indiana tax dollars to another state when we have our facilities – IARCCA, Indiana Association of Residential Child Care Providers, here – since they have a 70 percent occupancy rate?” Payne asked. “We have empty beds here. They also advertise a success rate that is in the low 80s to high 80s, so it’s not that we have failing placement facilities that we can’t use.”
Nemeth, however, argues that one of his out-of-state placement orders, at a cost of $170 a day, was opposed by DCS in favor of an in-state placement at $325 a day.
Payne, in fact, admitted that in his 20 years as a juvenile court judge in Marion County, there were occasions when an out-of-state placement was the only option.
Given his years of experience on the court, it’s likely the current DCS director would authorize an out-of-state placement in such a case, but a subsequent director without that background might be driven more by budget concerns. Taking the discretion away from a local judge and placing authority with the DCS director is an issue that should have been allowed time for study and public debate.
It’s inevitable that shifting the total cost of child welfare programs to the state would result in more centralized authority, as it likely will with school general fund expenses. But issues involving children demand close attention. That’s more likely to come from a local juvenile court judge than from the head of a state agency.
The General Assembly allowed judicial discretion to be further eroded with the budget provision. It should reconsider the issue in its upcoming session.
