{"id":200,"date":"2010-06-12T15:23:20","date_gmt":"2010-06-12T21:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/?p=200"},"modified":"2022-05-13T14:49:40","modified_gmt":"2022-05-13T21:49:40","slug":"human-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/?p=200","title":{"rendered":"Problems of Child Welfare"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Abrupt Introduction to the Problems of Child Welfare<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Governor Michael O. Leavitt sensed the looming problems dealing with child welfare along the campaign trail.\u00a0 At this time, Norm Angus was the head of the Department Human Services (DHS) which included the Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS).\u00a0 DCFS was responsible for services to abused and neglected children and foster care services.\u00a0 DCFS was deficient, malnourished, and neglected.\u00a0 Case loads were out of control; as Leavitt states, \u201cThe agency had an explosion of new children and very little new funding.\u00a0 This was one of those situations in government where legislators did not feel rewarded by increasing funding for child welfare for abused children, and likely no reasonable amount of funding increase would be wholly sufficient.\u00a0 So, it became viewed as an agency that could be funded at whatever level was available and the agency would work it out, and it had been done that way for a long time.\u00a0 The system was also badly in need of modernization.\u201d\u00a0 Serious deficiencies existed in meeting the needs of foster children, and the agency severely lacked the tools to operate efficiently.\u00a0 For example, the agency still did not operate using email.\u00a0 There was very little training for employees and foster families, and they continued having problems where children were poorly treated. \u00a0There had been several high profile child deaths that were very visible.\u00a0 Robin Arnold-Williams reflects that those cases have a tremendous impact on all staff involved \u2013 from the line worker to the agency leaders \u2013 \u201cthey always stay with you; you remember the names and the faces.\u201d Leavitt and Robin Arnold-Williams observed the flawed system and sincerely wanted to fix it.<\/p>\n

Along the campaign trail, Leavitt was faced with advocates that would approach him to complain about the many problems in an effort to advocate finding a solution.\u00a0 As Leavitt explains it, \u201cI was introduced to it along the way.\u00a0 The more I got into it, the deeper I dug; and the deeper I dug, the more I could see it was a real problem.\u00a0 I sincerely did want to fix it, and I did have every intention of making it a priority.\u00a0 However, even before I was even sworn in as governor, they sued us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional Information<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
The case of Breanna Loveless: https:\/\/caselaw.findlaw.com\/ut-supreme-court\/1369441.html<\/a> Breanna Loveless\u2019 Obituary: https:\/\/www.deseret.com\/1996\/2\/25\/19227205\/death-breanna-loveless<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Abrupt Introduction to the Problems of Child Welfare Governor Michael O. Leavitt sensed the looming problems dealing with child welfare along the campaign trail.\u00a0 At this time, Norm Angus was the head of the Department Human Services (DHS) which included the Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS).\u00a0 DCFS was responsible for services to abused and neglected children and foster care services.\u00a0 DCFS was deficient, malnourished, and neglected.\u00a0 Case loads were out of control; as Leavitt states, \u201cThe agency had an explosion of new children and very little new funding.\u00a0 This was one of those situations in government where legislators did not feel rewarded by increasing funding for child welfare for abused children, and likely no reasonable amount of funding increase would be wholly sufficient.\u00a0 So, it became viewed as an agency that could be funded at whatever level was available and the agency would work it out, and it had been done that way for a long time.\u00a0 The system was also badly in need of modernization.\u201d\u00a0 Serious deficiencies existed in meeting the needs of foster children, and the agency severely lacked the tools to operate efficiently.\u00a0 For example, the agency still did not operate using email.\u00a0 There (more…)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4232,"href":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/4232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leavitt.li.suu.edu\/leavitt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}