National Child Advocacy Organization Praises Decision Effectively Shutting Down 'Model' Orphanage

9/19/2003

From: Richard Wexler of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, 703-212-2006; web: http://www.nccpr.org

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 19 -- The decision by the State of Illinois to pull state wards out of what was once the state's largest orphanage, effectively shutting it down, is a victory for children that should be emulated by child welfare systems all over the country, according to a national child advocacy organization.

"Illinois is one of the few states that doesn't have to turn its back on vulnerable children when the institutions in which they are warehoused are revealed to be rife with abuse," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

"Illinois rebuilt its system to emphasize safe, proven programs to keep families together. In the process, it is making orphanages obsolete."

Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) said today they will remove "state wards" from Maryville's City of Youth campus near Chicago.

That decision was made in the wake of revelations that Maryville, once touted as a national model, had become a place of terror for many children confined there. Last year, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that that "the place is often up for grabs, with staff struggling to handle suicide attempts, sex abuse, drug use, fights and vandalism..." The Chicago Tribune reported that in 2001, police were called to Maryville 909 times. Recent news accounts indicate the problems have continued. There also have been allegations of cover-up and, most recently, an FBI investigation of alleged Medicaid fraud.

"There's nothing unusual about an orphanage going bad, it happens all the time," Wexler said. "What is unusual is that DCFS could do something about it."

As recently as 1997, Wexler said, DCFS would have had to shut its eyes to revelations about abuse at institutions. At that time Illinois had 50,000 children in foster care and DCFS was desperate for places to put them. Then the state embraced safe, proven programs to keep families together. Today, there are fewer than 21,000 children in substitute care in Illinois "so the state no longer is at the mercy of Maryville or any other institution.

"DCFS discovered that many of the children it had taken from their parents had been taken needlessly, often because family poverty had been confused with 'neglect,'" Wexler said. "By keeping these children safely in their own homes, space was freed up in good foster homes for children who formerly would have been institutionalized. And though DCFS still has many serious problems, the fear-mongers were wrong," Wexler said. "As the foster care population declined, child safety improved."

Wexler noted that in January 1995, when 60 Minutes did a story about former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's proposal to warehouse poor people's children in orphanages, the program cited Maryville as the model supposedly proving orphanages are viable. Interviewed for that program, Wexler said at the time: "If we start building all these orphanages, 20 years from now, you're going to be back here doing an expose on conditions in America's horrible new orphanages."

And Maryville is not the only "model" orphanage in trouble. Last year a Florida newspaper revealed serious problems at SOS Children's Village in Coconut Grove.

Wexler said that even had Maryville not been revealed to be rife with problems, closing down City of Youth still would have been the right decision. "One hundred years of research is nearly unanimous: Even 'good' institutions almost always are bad for children."

Though there are a few children for whom there is truly no alternative, that number is far lower than what Wexler calls "the institutions lobby" would have people believe. Reforms elsewhere have proven that many children in Maryville could thrive in their own homes or foster homes if their families received the right kind of support. As a result, if City of Youth does reopen it is likely to be much, much smaller, Wexler said.

"The lesson of Maryville is simple," Wexler said. "Bad child welfare systems build orphanages. Good ones shut them down."