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A look at Arkansas' child welfare crisis, the struggle to reform the state's system, and whether governor (and presidential candidate) Bill Clinton avoided any effort toward systemic improvements

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00:00Frontline is a presentation of the Documentary Consortium.
00:07Tonight, America's child welfare crisis.
00:10A foster care system in the United States, I think, is in a state of crisis.
00:14Frontline examines the struggle to reform that system in the state of Arkansas.
00:19This is a system that is malfunctioning all the way down.
00:23Eight-year-old Torian Norfleet died only 36 hours after being placed in a state foster home.
00:29How many more children have to die in Arkansas before somebody does something?
00:35I don't have to explain anything. This is a problem in every state in America.
00:39The political battle focused on Governor Bill Clinton just as he launched his presidential campaign.
00:44Governments do not raise children. Parents do.
00:47Tonight on Frontline, who cares about children?
00:50With funding provided by the financial support of viewers like you.
01:02And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
01:05This is Frontline.
01:18Ladies and gentlemen, I have the high honor and the great privilege of introducing our Governor and the next President of the United States, Bill Clinton.
01:30Last fall, as Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton announced his run for the presidency, he put his record as America's longest-serving governor center stage in his campaign.
01:43I hope you're proud, because I am, of the work we've done in Arkansas to try to make a better future for our people.
01:50I'm proud of what we've done together to make our state a laboratory of innovation and democracy.
01:57I'm proud of what we've done to change without giving up the things we cherish most, the solid middle-class values of hard work and individual responsibility and family and community and faith.
02:10I'm proud of what you and I have done together.
02:14But as Governor Clinton set out on his national campaign, he left behind unsolved, one of Arkansas's most painful social problems.
02:27We have failed our children. DCFS has failed our children. As a result of that, providers are beginning to fail our children. It is unfair, and the children will tell you that they don't like it.
02:43For years, child advocates in Arkansas had been telling Governor Clinton that the state was running an inadequate and dangerous child welfare system.
02:53We've got to prevent some of these problems if we want to make a difference.
03:00Across the country, child abuse and neglect increased dramatically in the 1980s.
03:06In Arkansas, the number of reported cases more than doubled, to almost 16,000 a year.
03:13But in recent years, state funding for abused children had not kept pace with the exploding problem.
03:19And now, the system in Arkansas was being overwhelmed.
03:23Eyewitness News has obtained two family photographs taken last September, a few days after little Steven Walters suffered a black eye.
03:32The system failed to protect four-year-old Steven Walters, beaten to death by his father, after neighbors reported the abuse.
03:40The neighbor of the father and stepmother in Searcy said she had called White County Human Services, warning officials about the black eye.
03:46I called on a Monday morning, and they came out Thursday when the boys weren't there. And, uh...
03:51So it took them four days to respond?
03:53Mm-hmm.
03:54And what happened as a result of their coming out, anything?
03:57They never came back.
03:59The director and an employee of the White County Human Services office were fired.
04:03They did just about everything wrong that they could do.
04:06And then there was the case of six-year-old Daniel Torek.
04:09A so-called slave child rescued from this house, a place where he was tortured for years, beaten, his left leg placed in scalding water.
04:18Daniel's leg was amputated because of the injuries inflicted by his foster mother, a woman approved by the state of Arkansas.
04:26Mrs. Watson was guilty of battery, and to sentence her to 13 years in prison, plus a $10,000 fine.
04:32She could have received 20 years in jail.
04:35It's bust over here, and then we patch it over here, and it busts another place.
04:39Well, the dam has burst, and it's all coming down before you.
04:43And if we just try to put up a barrier over here, the flood's gonna still keep coming.
04:48Child advocates repeatedly asked the state of Arkansas for more money to protect children.
04:53Finally, convinced their pleas were being largely ignored, they went looking for help.
04:59In San Francisco, they found Bill Grimm, an experienced child welfare attorney who had already sued the state of Maryland, forcing reform of its child protection system.
05:09In 1990, Bill Grimm came to Arkansas.
05:13We found a system that was surprisingly bad, given the number of children in foster care.
05:20Arkansas has about 1,200 children, 1,250 children in foster care.
05:25And you'd expect the kind of problems that we found here in a system like California, where there are 60,000 to 70,000 children, or New York, where 40,000 to 50,000, or even in Illinois, where there are 20,000 children in foster care.
05:37But virtually the same kind of problems that plague those systems existed just as much here in Arkansas.
05:44Although it sounds like they're...
05:46For more than a year, Grimm and his staff from the National Center for Youth Law, along with local legal aid attorneys, investigated hundreds of complaints about the Arkansas child welfare system.
05:58We found problems with children moving from placement to placement.
06:03We found problems with foster parents not being properly supported, foster parents suffering retribution for speaking out on behalf of the children in their homes and the lack of support for both themselves and the foster children.
06:17We found children who needed special services, particularly in the mental health area, going without counseling for months and months.
06:27In February 1991, Bill Grimm took his findings to Governor Clinton.
06:34We reduced the rate of infant mortality and child birth-related problems in Arkansas, and we need to pursue it aggressively.
06:42Child welfare was not a new issue for the Clintons.
06:45Hillary Clinton had worked on children's issues for more than 20 years.
06:49In the 70s, she founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and sued the state over its foster care policies.
06:56It's something that the Clintons are especially sensitive about.
07:01John Brummett is the editor of the Arkansas Times and a long-time observer and critic of Governor Clinton.
07:08It's odd that if any state would be addressing these problems, you might think it would be Arkansas because of her role.
07:18I don't mean to suggest he doesn't care. I think he and Hillary certainly do.
07:23I think that's one reason that you'll see them especially defensive about this issue.
07:29But the fact of the matter is he's a pure pragmatist, and he's looking for the things he can get done that will do him the most good.
07:38And this hasn't been one of them.
07:40As it has been widely documented, many of these problems have been discussed over the years and have been...
07:46We presented the governor with a long list of very concrete proposals of how to deal with the situation here in Arkansas.
07:54We got down to telling him exactly how many new caseworkers we felt needed to be hired in the system to bring them down to a level so that they could actually provide protection to children and reunite families where that was appropriate.
08:09We were met with virtual silence. It just didn't seem to be high on his priority list at that point.
08:16I said, can you cite me a single example that if we do everything you recommend, that child health will improve, that violence against children will diminish, that the children will be better off?
08:31Is there clear evidence that all this will really work to make our kids safer, if you just write a check for this money?
08:39And the answer was silence. I couldn't get a yes, here it is, here's the evidence, go do it.
08:44Instead of acting on Grimm's recommendations, Clinton appointed a blue ribbon panel to study the issue.
08:51But that wasn't enough for Bill Grimm.
08:54In July 1991, Grimm filed a federal lawsuit accusing the state of Arkansas and Governor Clinton of failing to protect the children of Arkansas.
09:07It made him mad, and it made Hillary mad.
09:10I mean, they just openly criticized people. Why are they going to court? Don't they know we care? We're going to address this issue.
09:16And the advocates are saying, you folks have been telling us that for most of the 80s, and we need relief for this program now.
09:28We've had repeated reports on that one. Yes, that's correct.
09:31The grandmother is the caretaker right now.
09:33Donna Hopper is a child welfare supervisor in rural Garland County.
09:37As in many Arkansas counties, this office had not seen a significant funding increase in five years.
09:43At the same time, the number of serious abuse cases was exploding.
09:47She's in a real mess right now with the drugs.
09:52We're seeing teenagers experimenting with sex and drugs at much, much earlier ages.
09:59I had a child, five years old, in my office who graphically described the sex act to me yesterday.
10:08She stated that she likes Budweiser the best.
10:11And how old is she? And she's eight years old.
10:14And she likes mad dog wine. She gets that on the weekends.
10:18And she likes to roll her own cigarettes. She knows how to do it. She helps her mom roll her cigarettes.
10:23We have been short-handed.
10:25In the past two years, Donna's caseload had tripled while her staff was actually reduced.
10:30In many rural offices, there was only one social worker to handle all the abuse investigations and foster care placements for the entire county.
10:38You have to be able to wear a lot of hats because you never know. Yesterday I was out doing investigations myself.
10:45We were very short-staffed. And when they call and say that there's a child in danger, somebody has to go.
10:51No, she didn't want to talk about that. She wanted to find out about your visit with him and how that went.
10:56Say we need placement for a child. We may have to go three or four counties a way farther even than that, a way to find a placement for that child.
11:06Somebody's got to take the child there, get them signed in. Then we have to try and work out visits with the family.
11:12That also involves shuttling the person. We may have to transport the mother. We may have to transport the child. We may have to transport both.
11:19All right. And then we'll set up a visitation either in the office or she can visit with the child.
11:23The person gets no relief. They have to be on call. Their personal life is put on hold. Their own family has to come second to that.
11:30That's why we see the turnover rate that we do and the burnout on new workers.
11:35The turnover rate for the state's social workers had risen to almost 50 percent each year.
11:43My first day on the job, I was given a policy manual to look at, which basically taught me how to get travel reimbursement.
11:52And so the second day on the job, I was handed cases to go out and investigate. So obviously, I went to investigate these cases without any experience or training whatsoever.
12:05The people who are making these decisions about children are still people that are under-trained, underpaid, and under-experienced.
12:14In Arkansas, many caseworkers handled up to 30 cases, twice the number considered optimum.
12:21Each child's case can require the worker to contact dozens of other people, the family, the foster parents, and the professionals.
12:31How can you, as a person, come into an office and somebody hands you 20 to 30 cases?
12:42Now, when I say 20 to 30 cases, I'm talking this much paperwork. To read, and you've got to be on that street tomorrow and know these kids. Impossible. Impossible.
12:57Last fall, one more tragedy demonstrated the fragility of the state's child protection system.
13:05One Saturday night, an ambulance was called to this housing project in North Little Rock.
13:10An eight-year-old boy was having an asthma attack. As paramedics treated the child, they discovered his babysitter was drunk. Police arrested her.
13:20And the boy, Toreen Norfleet, was treated at a local hospital, and then a social worker placed him in a foster home.
13:27The caseworker brought this boy from the hospital to the foster parent's home and didn't bother to mention he had to be treated on an emergency basis for an asthmatic attack.
13:37That information was never shared with foster mom. And in fact, she told me in an interview that the caseworker didn't even stay long enough to sit down.
13:45Gave her the name of the child, suggested to her that they would probably be back the following day to pick him up.
13:54The boy's mother returned from a weekend trip, unaware her son was in the care of the state.
14:00After several frantic phone calls, a caseworker assured her that Toreen was fine and she could take him home the next morning.
14:08But that night, in the foster home, Toreen had another severe asthma attack.
14:16We get there and we come up to the room where he is and I'm thinking and I'm praying that it's not him.
14:25We go in and he was just laying there.
14:30They said his heart stopped beating and that he had already died by the time the paramedics had got to him. He had died in the foster home.
14:38And by the time they got him to the hospital, he was dead on arrival.
14:47The reason it was so tragic to all of us is that it seemed like it was one that we truly could have prevented.
14:59Amy Rossi is the executive director of the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, the organization founded by Hillary Clinton.
15:07I don't think we can point the finger at that foster mother without pointing the finger at the worker, without pointing the finger at the system.
15:15She's not the only person to blame in this. The blame goes up the line and in many ways I think it's a burden that all of us in Arkansas ought to feel.
15:27It's not a situation where you can fire one person and hope it will be corrected. This is a system that is malfunctioning all the way down.
15:37I'm angry, but I am more hurt that this happened. That a child, period, was not taken care of the way he should have been.
15:51And it makes me wonder, has this been going on? How long has it been going on? And I want it to stop.
16:00Someone else's child could be put in that situation. And things need to be changed drastically because a child died in a foster home.
16:10At the state capitol in Little Rock, Governor Clinton's blue ribbon panel, made up of child welfare experts from around the country, continued to study Arkansas's problems.
16:24The people who are hiring the workers don't look for those same competencies.
16:28A foster care system in the United States, I think, is in a state of crisis.
16:32I think there's serious question that the system that was essentially designed at the end of the 19th century for one population of children is really able to take care of today's population of children tomorrow.
16:44I don't think it can. And I think what you see happening here in Arkansas, see happening across the country, people taking a very hard look at this and saying we're always going to have to try to provide some kind of substitute care for a, we hope, smaller number of children as we get other services to the families.
17:01But what's the best way to do that?
17:03A long term process because it really is building some capacities.
17:07One of the comments people made in our work is that we've had reports before, we've had recommendations, and they've sat on a shelf.
17:16That Arkansas can't seem to find the on switch to put these things into place.
17:22That may happen again. Certainly we as a panel can't do anything to prevent that.
17:27But it's my perception, talking to all of these people and working hard on this issue for the past few months, that there really is a commitment to change.
17:36There really is a commitment to set something new in place.
17:41The purpose of this conference is to release the interim report of the Arkansas Expert Child Welfare Advisory Panel.
17:51In October, Governor Clinton returned from the campaign trail to pledge his support of the panel's recommendations for change.
17:58Again, I want to say how very impressed I am with the recommendations of the panel, and particularly I'd like to say...
18:07There's no difference in their recommendations, with the exception of only one thing that I can pick up in their report, in that they talk about therapeutic daycare.
18:14And I don't believe we mention that in our report, but virtually every other problem, virtually every other finding, virtually every other recommended change, we dealt with in our February proposal to the Governor, and in much more detail, including a detailed budget.
18:30The Governor announced that he was releasing $16 million from a state emergency fund to solve the immediate crisis.
18:42It's a very, I think, clever move on the part of the Governor to be able to publicly say, I'm going to solve the child welfare problem in Arkansas, and look at this, I'm going to do it without raising taxes.
18:56Now, the problem, however, with that, and I think maybe the Lieutenant Governor and others are seeing this, is that $20 million or $16 million is going to solve the problem between now and 1993.
19:09But the next Governor, the next legislature, is going to have to find the continuing revenue to sustain these changes.
19:16So I think that this ought to be the basis for a good faith settlement of this lawsuit, and particularly...
19:23But Bill Grimm and other child advocates told Governor Clinton that his $16 million emergency plan did not go far enough, and that they intended to press the federal lawsuit.
19:36I don't think we have seen in our history as many lawsuits against public child welfare agencies as we're seeing now.
19:44What we have to do as a society is not get all of our courts involved in these suits as much as what we have to do is to convince the American public that these children are our children,
19:55that we have to invest our money and our time and our attention and our expertise in their well-being.
20:03As the child abuse crisis intensified in the 1980s, it also increased the pressure on the network of foster parents recruited to care for children who were removed from their own parents.
20:18These children needed a home. My home was open, and I opened my arms.
20:25Pat Montgomery has been a foster parent for about a year, but she's already cared for 12 children, mostly infants born addicted to drugs.
20:35That's pretty much any foster baby that you're going to get now are going to be drug babies.
20:42A drug baby, for instance, is going to cry constantly, and you just got to let the drugs pass its course.
20:50And it could sometimes be a couple of weeks to a couple of months, even up to a year.
20:56It just depends on that child and the drug abuse at the time that the mother was carrying the children.
21:01The latest foster child in Pat's family is a 14-month-old baby infected with the HIV virus.
21:09I've had a lot of friends. Like, last night I was talking to a friend that realized they had an HIV baby.
21:18I haven't seen her for a few months. And I said, yes, I do.
21:22And she says, oh, you need to give that baby back and get you another baby, honey.
21:25I said, you don't need, you know, problems like that.
21:28And I said, there's nothing different than that baby than any other baby. It needs, it has needs.
21:34Arkansas is a poor state and has a shortage of special facilities to care for these children.
21:40So foster parents, with little or no training, must often deal with complex medical problems.
21:46I was told he was a slow feeder. That's all that they knew.
21:49And when I went to the hospital to get the child, my eyes almost come unglued.
21:54The doctor said, did they not tell you?
21:57He has an enlarged liver, an enlarged spleen. He had massive heart failure.
22:01Both lungs were collapsed at birth. He had hepatitis, all the venereal disease.
22:07He had syphilis. They said that was the most severe syphilis case that they'd had there at Children's.
22:13He weighed a pound at two ounces at birth.
22:16And this is a new medication that they have him on.
22:19I'm not familiar with that very well.
22:22And that is real strong. This has to be given every six hours on the dot.
22:26This is the only one I'm having trouble with because I have to wake him up to give it to him.
22:32And if he doesn't get that, like they told me the other day, this medication right here,
22:37that if this does not work, he gets sick one more time, there's nothing they can do.
22:47They seem to think that he'll get better with age, but since I've had him, he's getting worse.
22:52It's something deep inside that you can't get rid of.
22:59It's the want and the need to help.
23:03Maybe one more child.
23:06Maybe there's someone else out there.
23:09Lee and Ted Roberts have been foster parents for 12 years
23:13and have cared for more than 100 children.
23:16In that time, they have seen the level of abuse grow dramatically.
23:20The one we have now, the cartilage, which in an infant, this is not bone at that age.
23:28It is still cartilage.
23:29But it was broken on both sides, presumably by a hand like this.
23:35Her left shoulder area here was broken and her right leg below her knee.
23:45It was all those injuries before she was a month old.
23:54A dental surgeon had to implant a prosthesis in her lower jaw.
23:58And it would look just like a mouthpiece for a boxer that fit right around the lower gums to keep her jaws in line.
24:07With this prosthesis, she couldn't even nurse.
24:10She had to be fed with tubes.
24:12Until she healed, she couldn't nurse a pacifier like a normal baby.
24:17The trauma to her because of the physical abuse has caused her to have infant emotional problems, which will take a long time to overcome.
24:36You really don't want to.
24:39Children coming into care right now, they've had more done than the kids 20 years ago.
24:45Kids 20 years ago, it was the stealing and the running away.
24:49And now it's the pitiful sexual abuse since they were teeny tiny.
24:56I had a little boy's back was scarred so bad from stabbings.
25:01They've just had a lot of traumatic things happen to them.
25:04And they deal with things differently than they did back then.
25:09They're harder.
25:11They're streetwise.
25:12They're more streetwise now.
25:16Glenda Biddle and her family have cared for more than 130 children during 17 years as foster parents.
25:23Their latest challenge is 12-year-old Lisa, a young runaway who had already exhausted the system.
25:31I have toughed it out with kids.
25:34But this little girl, I thought, oh, she was 11 at the time, just turned 11.
25:40And I thought, she can't be that streetwise.
25:44She came into foster care because Mom hadn't been able to deal with her since she was little.
25:49She was led from relative to relative until all the relatives were tired of her.
25:55And then her mother put her in a group home up in the northern part of the county.
26:00And then she escalated.
26:02She just went from where she'd rip up clothes and put them in the commode and flush,
26:05and she just did all sorts of things.
26:08And she went then from emergency shelters to emergency shelters.
26:12Lisa entered the system when she was 9 and has lived in 10 different foster homes and shelters.
26:20I went to get her just for an evening visit.
26:24And when I went to take her back, Department of Human Services says there was no place for her.
26:29They weren't putting her in.
26:30The shelters didn't want her because she had already run away from several shelters.
26:35And it really left me with her.
26:37I mean, I had no choice.
26:39When a child comes into care and they say, and you bring them back to the office and social services says,
26:48Well, we have no families.
26:49There's no place for her.
26:50The shelters don't want her.
26:52And you don't have any clothes right then.
26:55I consider that just dumped.
26:58And where would she have gone had I said, I'm not going to take her either.
27:04Lisa has been in foster care for three years, the last two with the Bittles.
27:11I didn't know if it would be different or if my life would stay the same or how it was going to be without my mom, my family.
27:21But now I know that it's been, it's been very hard.
27:26Very hard.
27:29But soon, Lisa may be going home.
27:32Her mother, in prison for the last three years, has been released.
27:36She gave me up before she went to prison because she couldn't handle me anymore.
27:41And then, um, and then my mom got out of prison.
27:45And now I'm trying to go back to her because I've been in foster care all these years and I'm ready to go back and have a real family.
27:53But for many children, foster care can become a permanent way of life.
27:58Jerome has not seen his mother since she went to prison when he was three years old.
28:10For a while, he lived with relatives.
28:13Five years ago, he entered foster care.
28:17A lot of these kids, they don't feel important.
28:21No one has told them, you know, I love you.
28:24No one's told them that you're somebody, you know.
28:29For the past two years, Jerome has lived with Brenda and Arthur Reed.
28:33Uh, we try to instill a lot of positive things in him.
28:36We try to build his self-esteem.
28:38Uh, we make him feel good about himself.
28:41Uh, let him know that he is, uh, he's an individual and he's important.
28:47Recently, the courts finally terminated the parental rights of Jerome's mother.
28:52Now, the state must find him a permanent home.
28:56We know the day is coming.
28:59Hopefully, some good family will come along and, uh, adopt him.
29:06We do seem to have a real problem with moving older children, handicapped children, uh, biracial children, black children to permanent homes.
29:17I would be estimating, based on past work I've done, but I would think you've got maybe one chance in five to place that child and maybe the percentage is not that high.
29:30You know, he asked questions about, um, has anybody said anything about anybody adopting me and, you know, stuff like that.
29:37I said, well, we haven't heard anything yet, but let's think positive.
29:41But it has taken the state five years to free Jerome for adoption, and that delay has hurt his chances.
29:48I've had people ask me, boy, uh, it's gonna be tough to let him go.
29:54Why don't you adopt him?
29:56Uh, uh, I think we can do a lot more by working in foster care.
30:04I mean, the whole goal is working in foster care where we can touch a lot of kids.
30:08Like, uh, I think if we, if we adopted a kid or two, that would be the end of it.
30:15As Jerome celebrates his 12th birthday, his life with the Reeds, the most stable home he has known, may be coming to an end.
30:25And if there's no adoptive family for Jerome?
30:30Well, he'll probably stay in foster care.
30:35That, or either he'll probably end up being, uh, institutionalized.
30:40Probably go back into the institution until he's 18.
30:44Uh, hopefully, he will get adopted.
30:49I'll miss him, uh, I'll think about him, I'll wonder about his progress.
31:01But, you know, in the back of my mind, I feel like he'll be okay.
31:05One week before voters head to the polls, Clinton is issuing them a challenge.
31:13If they've got any questions about me, I want them to ask them and get themselves satisfied, because I know that the people of New Hampshire, in effect, just met me a few months ago.
31:23As the Clinton presidential campaign intensified, so did the child welfare debate back in Little Rock.
31:30... have been made. Here we are, eight months later, and nothing is being done in terms of specifics.
31:38Bill Grimm was locked in negotiations with the State Child Welfare Agency and Arkansas' Lieutenant Governor, as they struggled to work out a settlement to the lawsuit.
31:48Frankly, I'm not sure if it even makes any difference which decision it is, as long as somebody makes a decision.
31:55Because that seems to be a major problem in the agency here, is that no decisions are made.
32:02Before you just make a decision, Bill, it's my opinion that you make the best decision.
32:09And that's why we have this group, and that's why we have as many processes going at the same time as we have going,
32:16is to make sure that when we make that decision, which we all believe, assume, that it will be the best decision.
32:23Tell us what needs to be done. Tell us what you think is best.
32:26We're turning it back to you as Arkansans and saying, you tell us.
32:32I think Clinton's basic attitude toward most human services programs, children's services included, is that it's a nightmare, it's messy, it is a necessity of government, but it's just necessarily trouble, bureaucratic trouble.
32:52We could have probably, right now today, 40 more therapeutic foster care programs if in February the state had said,
33:01we need those homes, we're going to find the money for them.
33:04But nothing has been done, and kids have suffered because of that.
33:08Kids have moved from one placement to another.
33:11Kids have been abused and neglected in inappropriate foster care placements.
33:15Tori Northleet has died at the age of eight, a third grader here in Little Rock, because of this.
33:21How many more children have to die in Arkansas before somebody does something, before somebody makes a decision and says,
33:28we're going to have training, we're going to have 200 more additional caseworkers, we're going to find them, we're going to prepare them,
33:35we're going to help foster parents, we're going to protect foster parents and support them.
33:40I want to thank all the people on this platform with me today who have shared with me in the decade of the 1980s our common struggle to solve the problems of our people, to create more jobs and educate people better and solve social problems.
33:56I think there's more political capital for an ambitious politician in making the schools better, getting teachers salaries up, and in the issues of economic development.
34:08That's the kind of thing you can fashion a presidential race out of.
34:12You go around the country saying, we had a bureaucratic mess in foster care in Arkansas and I fixed it and people say, well that's nice.
34:20I think that's good that you did that, but it may not be the big ticket political item.
34:26How many more children have to suffer is what the plaintiffs are worried about in this situation.
34:32And we haven't seen it forthcoming from the legislature, we haven't seen it forthcoming from the administration.
34:38And frankly, Lieutenant Governor, I am very concerned that it makes any sense for us today, as the litigants in this case,
34:46and whether it's ethical for us to continue to sit down at the table and to talk about broad generalities
34:52and to talk about whether they're $16 million or not, or whether we ought to simply go down the street and begin to try this case,
34:58and to ask the court for a preliminary injunction so that another Toreen Norfleet doesn't die in the state of Arkansas.
35:04Help me win this election and I'll be your partner in a great American renewal. Thank you very much.
35:11For the past three years, Barbara Schultz has been fighting her own private battle with the Arkansas child welfare system,
35:28trying to get help for her daughter, Sunshine.
35:32My daughter and I were having problems since she was 10 years old, and I started seeking help at that time.
35:39I needed somebody to keep her away from me.
35:45She needed to be safe away from me, because I did not know what I was going to do.
35:49I couldn't tell you from day one to day two. I couldn't tell you my behavior.
35:54I could not tell you what was going to happen to her next.
35:57Barbara says she was abused as a child and has now been diagnosed with a multiple personality disorder.
36:04She says that as she lost control of herself, she began to mentally and emotionally abuse Sunshine,
36:11and that she begged the state to take her daughter.
36:14To DHS, that was not enough grounds. They didn't want to hear, this child is in danger,
36:20because if you don't show up with physical stuff, it doesn't matter to them.
36:29You know, it didn't seem like that was important. It was almost like, well, it sounds like it's okay.
36:35You know, you just need to get yourself together. You can't just get yourself together.
36:40I was scared. I was scared for her.
36:42Barbara says her attorney finally told her the only way she could get help for Sunshine was to actually abandon her daughter.
36:51I had to neglect her and be charged with something before I could get help.
36:57When Barbara abandoned Sunshine, the state finally placed her in foster care.
37:03Sunshine was moved three times in the first 18 months.
37:07Her latest home is with foster parent Jackie Van Dyke.
37:12Jackie, a single mother with two teenagers of her own, takes in as many as four foster children at a time.
37:22Some of these children have been on the street.
37:25They have been through abusive situations that no person, much less a child, should ever go through.
37:31The child is the ultimate goal, you know, to help the child.
37:36But some children just can't be helped.
37:39The growing number of teenagers needing care is one of Arkansas's biggest problems.
37:46And for the foster parents, teenagers can be the toughest cases of all.
37:51Teens are extraordinarily hard to care for.
37:55They challenge you. They defy you.
37:59I've met teens that I can tell, you know, a few years from now, this child's going to be out there on the street,
38:06being a prostitute or a con artist or writing hot checks, because there's not enough that you can do in a home,
38:15especially if you have more than one.
38:17You know, sometimes it takes one-on-one.
38:19And there's not enough foster parents that can do that.
38:22There are so many children in so few homes, partly because of the burnout rate on the foster parents.
38:27And there are also financial problems.
38:30In Arkansas, a foster parent receives about $8 a day for each child, one of the lowest rates in the country.
38:37How can you raise a child with these needs on $195 to $240 a month?
38:43How can you feed, close, educate, and raise a child on that?
38:48My child supports more than that.
38:51You can't do it. You can't do it.
38:55I know what they are going through.
38:57The time they stay in the program or the time they stay, they keep their homes open to teenagers, it's very limited.
39:05I don't see it getting any better.
39:07Berdina Nickerson supervises the recruiting and training of foster parents.
39:14We have to take these children and literally beg people to take them into their homes as foster parents.
39:21I wanted the smoke out of the house, and we kind of got started off on the wrong foot because of that.
39:26We have had children come in foster care who were suicidal, who were expelled from school for carrying weapons,
39:34who have pulled weapons on their parents.
39:37You know, and we are asking foster parents to take these children because a shelter will say no because of the past.
39:43A facility will say no, we're not equipped to deal with that type of child.
39:47So hence, you're begging, I'm begging a foster parent, will you please take this child and just work with the child as long as you can.
39:56For years, the Roberts opened their home to foster children, no questions asked.
40:02But they have paid a price.
40:04I'm thinking of one eight-year-old child that we had, and he had been sexually abused by family members since he was an infant.
40:12This, through, uh, just digging social services, digging into the background,
40:20finally discovered that this had been happening to this child.
40:23that he was placed in our home under normal circumstances without any of this background being known to us.
40:33And, uh, we have a young grandson.
40:36And, uh, we had the experience of this child, uh, sexually abusing our grandson.
40:46I said, I've kept children here before, and we've not had to do that.
40:50Linda Biddle has become a leader of Arkansas foster parents, and a vocal critic of the system.
40:56The next week...
40:57The Department of Union Services are afraid that if you learn the history, you won't take the child.
41:02You deserve to know the history on the child.
41:06You dump a child in a foster parent's home, and you reveal nothing, and all this, uh, you know, escalates,
41:14then that's frightening, and that's what scares foster parents.
41:20And you've come a long way, young lady.
41:22Glenda is one of the most highly trained and best-paid foster parents in Arkansas.
41:27Her contract with a private agency has allowed her to work full-time with Lisa for almost two years.
41:34And now, perhaps, that effort is about to pay off.
41:41Today, Lisa will appear before a juvenile court judge,
41:45who will decide if she can return to her mother.
41:49I'm worried about her constantly.
41:54I worried about her all the time.
41:56There was not a moment that my mind wasn't on her.
42:01But I...
42:03I said a lot of prayers, too.
42:05I prayed a lot for her.
42:06I thank God for her.
42:10Lisa's mother has been out of prison for six months,
42:14and she's recently remarried.
42:17I have a record.
42:18I've been in prison.
42:19I'm an alcoholic.
42:20And there's numerous reasons why they would be judgmental
42:25to not award her custody back to me.
42:30Why would a child, after being abused so many times, want to return?
42:36There's just a need to go back.
42:39They forget all of that.
42:40And, uh, that's their mom and their daddy.
42:48After a 20-minute hearing, the judge returns custody of Lisa to her mother.
42:53I'm sure it's going to be different.
42:54I've had therapy. I've went to the drug treatment programs.
43:06I have bettered myself.
43:07And she has bettered herself.
43:08And I'm sure that if we all pull together, that things will be different.
43:12I feel confident and peaceful at at least being a typical family.
43:25I think we know enough to say with some certainty that New Hampshire tonight has made Bill Clinton the comeback kid.
43:43Five days after Bill Clinton's second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary rescued his presidential campaign,
43:56the governor returned to Little Rock to deal with a child welfare lawsuit that had been festering for a year.
44:03Ladies and gentlemen, the governor of Arkansas.
44:07Thank you. Thank you very much.
44:11It's good to be home.
44:14Clinton had called a special session of the Arkansas legislature
44:18to propose a new $57 million child welfare reform bill.
44:22With more than three times the funding he had offered only a few months earlier.
44:27The most vulnerable children in this state and any state
44:32in a sad time in which more and more children
44:36in homes that are broken, homes that are troubled,
44:39homes that are often poor or subject to addiction,
44:44homes that are always...
44:47Earlier in the day, Bill Grimm and the state had agreed to settle the lawsuit
44:50if the legislature would pass the new reform program.
44:55Our sexual abuse...
44:57They've finally seen the light. For too many years they've ignored
45:00growing and severe problems in the child welfare system.
45:05I also think that the lawsuit and the capacity of settling the lawsuit
45:10and getting us off their backs, so to speak,
45:13was a significant driving force in this moving fairly quickly.
45:16If we can make the life of one child better,
45:20if we can secure a future for one family...
45:23These people are cognizant that something had to be done.
45:27This was the least they could do.
45:29We could have a better tomorrow.
45:30Okay, is the regular meeting on that...
45:31Meredith Oakley, associate editor of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette,
45:36says it was the lawsuit that forced the new reform package.
45:41They have been in this situation before.
45:45We have had government by litigation for most of my career.
45:50They were well-versed in what could happen.
45:52For the next three days, Clinton worked the corridors of the Capitol,
45:58lobbying the legislators to pass the bill quickly.
46:02It's not unusual during any session for the governor to be out of his office,
46:07to be lurking in the hallways, peeking through the doors of meetings.
46:11Sometimes his mere presence can help at least bolster support,
46:17if not line it up at that point.
46:19Clinton's task is made easier, because he has located the money in a reserve fund.
46:25The legislators will not have to raise taxes to pay for the reforms.
46:34He doesn't like to anger people.
46:36He is a great compromiser, which stands him in good stead generally,
46:43because it helps him get his legislation passed.
46:46Clinton also works the child advocates, who have come to the Capitol to lobby for the bill.
46:54When we had a dinner for the legislators, I mingled with them,
47:00just to see how informed they were on the kids' issues.
47:04And do you know, not one of them told me they knew a thing.
47:09They told me that the governor said, we're going to get this passed.
47:14And I said, I want y'all to be aware of what the state of Arkansas pays foster parents.
47:20And they were aghast at what I was saying. They could not believe it.
47:23I think that, of all the states in the country, we'll certainly have the biggest increase in funding in the shortest time.
47:31But we have a lot to do. You know, we have to pay our foster parents more,
47:35particularly those taking difficult to place children.
47:37And we have to do a much better job of cutting these caseloads down.
47:40We want to try to get it so that no caseworker has more than 15 families to work with.
47:46Under the new bill, the state would increase payments to foster parents by 50%
47:52and hire 230 new employees.
47:55The plan would fund more training for caseworkers and foster parents.
48:00And a special watchdog panel will ensure the state fully implements the reforms.
48:04For advocates like Amy Rossi, who have waited years for the state to act, the bill offers new hope.
48:12The best I can tell from this proposal, we've taken bits and pieces of some of the best things that other states are doing
48:20and put them in one package. To my knowledge, I don't know of any other state who's done that
48:25or any of the other relief packages in other lawsuits that have done this.
48:31The whole reason we didn't do more before is that we didn't have a plan.
48:34This is something that had we had the plan, we could have done earlier.
48:38And so we think that quite independent of the lawsuit, we owe it to the children,
48:42to the families and to the citizens of this state to go on and act now that we have the plan anyway.
48:47It is a political feather in his cap that he has acted on this emergency.
48:53However, people cannot ignore the other fact that this administration knew about these problems
48:59going back to the early 1980s, knew about their increasing severity, and for whatever reason chose to ignore them all those years.
49:08As Clinton works to pass his bill, he is surrounded by the National Press Corps following his presidential campaign.
49:18Is that going to hurt your campaign and your message?
49:19No, because what it shows is that in the midst of this campaign, we're still dealing with the problems.
49:25Most states in this country are overwhelmed with child welfare problems.
49:28I'm a little tired, but I feel good.
49:31He knows how to embrace the popular issues.
49:34He knows how to minimize his negatives.
49:37Now, if we settle it and we fund it, then he's going to start talking about how we've got a model program in Arkansas.
49:43He's going to turn, you know, what is it, take a lemon and make lemonade.
49:47I mean, that's what he's great at.
49:49And if we get this thing settled, what might have been an Achilles heel is going to be one of his best calling cards.
49:57That's just politics.
50:00I believe that you will be doing your constituencies a good deed by voting for House Bill 1010.
50:10After three days of hearings and intense lobbying, the legislature votes on the reform package.
50:16Mr. Miller has explained the bill. Does anyone wish to speak against the bill?
50:21Anyone for the bill?
50:22If not, the question before the House, the adoption of House Bill 1010 and the emergency clause.
50:28Prepare the machine, Mr. Clerk.
50:32Cast up the ballot.
50:37By a vote of 96 ayes and one no, you pass the bill and the emergency clause.
50:42The title of the bill remains the title of the eye.
50:46Mr. Miller, please.
50:48I think that there are a lot of children over the last 10 to 11 years during this administration that have suffered probably irreparable damage
50:59because there were too many other priorities in this state and that abused and neglected children and children in foster care just weren't on high priority in this administration's list.
51:13So I want to thank everybody from the bottom of my heart for giving the most troubled children in our state a chance to have a better life.
51:20And I want to encourage all of you who are in the audience, some of you I know don't need any encouragement, but I want to encourage all of you to help us implement this plan to do it right and to make our state a model in this area of dealing with children as we have been in so many others.
51:38Thank you very much.
51:39This special session is the purpose of making our government look good nationally.
51:52Representative Jimmy Wilson was the only legislator to vote against the bill.
51:57So with Governor Clinton, who is a great friend of mine, running for office, this session was brought together immediately,
52:07to dress up his presidential campaign.
52:10And I think that it probably has done that.
52:12It was good.
52:14Thank you, sir.
52:19The day after the new child welfare bill became law, we returned to northern Arkansas to check on Lisa.
52:26She had now been back home with her mother for more than a month.
52:33We haven't adjusted.
52:35It's been a roller coaster ever since she's came home.
52:40She refuses to obey by the home rules, the house rules.
52:45And she gives me no other choice but to say, it's got to be the house rules or, Lisa, you've got to go.
52:53Her mother says Lisa has run away several times and was suspended from school twice.
52:59This is what happens to kids and parents not getting the support they need.
53:07You know what I really feel like?
53:09I did the best I could for nearly two years.
53:12And I think she really did well.
53:15And I guess I want to say at least two years I kept her from slipping away.
53:23Now, she has, she's had an overdose of, of, uh, pills.
53:30Her mom said they had to rush her to the hospital and have her stomach pumped.
53:34I don't understand.
53:35I really don't why she's doing the things she's doing unless it's to get back at mom.
53:41Sometimes they do these things like, I'm going to get back at you for what you did to me.
53:47And there is other news.
53:50Pat Montgomery continues to take in babies and is trying to adopt one of the children.
53:57Sunshine is still in foster care.
54:00She visits her mother occasionally, but it is unclear if Sunshine will ever return home.
54:08And Jerome is still living with the reeds and waiting for someone to adopt him.
54:13We've got a lot of kids in care now.
54:17The numbers are, are high.
54:20And kids coming every day.
54:22More kids coming, more, big sibling groups coming into care now.
54:26More than ever.
54:28Glenda is thankful for Governor Clinton's new reform bill.
54:33But her gratitude is tempered by the knowledge of how far Arkansas has yet to travel.
54:38I don't think the public is aware of what all goes on with these kids.
54:45These kids are falling through the cracks.
54:48We're sick of our kids just dying in the system.
54:51And we've got kids out there that have been through the system that are rebelling now,
54:56that are coming back saying, this is what you've done to my life.
55:00And they're fighting back.
55:01So we're just now making the public aware of the needs of these kids out here.
55:07This has just begun.
55:14Last week, in a surprise move,
55:16the state of Arkansas challenged the out-of-court settlement reached in February
55:20between the state and Bill Grimm.
55:22The state asked a federal judge to eliminate from the protection of the lawsuit
55:27most of Arkansas's abused and neglected children,
55:30all those not actually in state foster care.
55:33The state cited a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting the legal rights of those children.
55:39The Arkansas Attorney General's office says this is not an attempt to renege on the provisions for reform.
55:45That's an absolute falsehood, replies Attorney Bill Grimm.
55:50They've asked the court to gut the entire agreement and to throw it out.
55:55A hearing on the new dispute is scheduled for Thursday.
55:5819EP
56:05Or
56:0810EP
56:12Also
56:14cleaned
56:15THE END
56:45THE END
57:15THE END
57:17THE END
57:19THE END
57:21THE END
57:23THE END
57:25THE END
57:27THE END
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57:55THE END
57:57THE END