Plan aims to improve children's safety net.

Byline: Bill Bishop The Register-Guard

Calling for less talk and more action to prevent child neglect, a wide-ranging group of social workers, business leaders and church officials on Thursday established a volunteer-based, six-point plan to improve the safety net for neglected children in Lane County.

The group's goal was to devise a doable plan that relies chiefly on volunteer efforts aimed at the bedrock causes of child neglect, said Megan Friese, who organized the daylong Community Child Neglect Summit.

"It feels like today was not about talking," Friese said. "People here today are committed to action."

The plan emerged after an all-day conference on child neglect funded by a grant under the state Children's Justice Act.

It focused on the one-third of child abuse and neglect cases that are chronic - ingrained, pervasive and long-term parenting deficiencies that do not change in spite of repeated intervention by social service agencies.

Early childhood neglect causes delay in emotional and social development that is proven to lead to lifelong physical and mental health problems for individuals and to a wide range of social problems, said Dee Wilson, director of the Northwest Institute for Children and Families at the University of Washington and a speaker at the conference.

For example, chronically neglected children have trouble controlling their emotions and may be prone to rage. They are slow to learn language, lack confidence in social settings and are poor problem solvers, he said.

Most states have child protection services geared to detect and deal with individual incidents of neglect, which causes them to miss the bigger issue of chronic neglect in families, he said.

In Oregon, 52 percent of child abuse and neglect reports in 2006 were for parents neglecting to provide the basic needs of children. Wilson cited a 2006 study that found that families who are first reported to child protective services for child neglect frequently are reported in future years for physical abuse, conflict among family members and other forms of abuse. The neglect continues despite agency interventions, he said.

"We have a wrong concept of what (child protective services) should be doing," he told 40 people attending the conference.

For example, while data show the rate of child neglect rises in lockstep with parental methamphetamine abuse, social service agencies are neither recognizing the underlying depression that leads to parental drug abuse nor providing the long-term treatment to overcome it, he said.

The community's ultimate response to neglect - placing children in foster care - is not a viable option for two reasons, he added.

First, the foster care system already is overloaded.

More importantly, a large national study shows that the developmental problems of infants taken into foster care do not improve without proper training for foster families who must nurture them, he said.

"That was a very distressing finding. Infants were not thriving in care," Wilson said.

Effective responses to early childhood neglect require family treatment that includes teaching first-time parents how to interact with infants, providing early childhood services such as relief nurseries and early Head Start, and providing residential drug treatment services that include support such as mental health and housing assistance, he said.

While the challenge is daunting, Lane County Circuit Judge Kip Leonard reminded the group that progress depends not on waiting for government funding but on rolling up sleeves and working together.

"We can't change, as individuals, what the state decides to fund," he said. "What is within our individual control is what we can do for families, for kids."

Friese said the committees are setting their own meeting dates and are seeking additional volunteers from the community. The committees intend to issue a progress report after a year of work, she said.

CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT IN LANE COUNTY

Total incidents in 2006: 1,028; includes 342 reports of neglect

Primary parent trait: Drug/alcohol abuse, domestic violence, parental crime, new baby, unemployment, inadequate housing, parent was abused as a child (in order of occurrence)

Children in foster care: 1,261 on Sept. 30. Through the year, 1,732 individual children in care at least one day

Number of foster homes: 672 in Lane County

Number adopted from foster care: 162

- Department of Human Resources 

LESS TALK,

MORE ACTION

A varied group of child advocates is kicking off a six-point plan to combat child neglect in Lane County. Separate committees are addressing each point. For more information or to volunteer, contact Megan Friese at 984-3132 or by e-mail at [e-mail]

Train volunteers for in-home support for families where neglect occurs.

Provide Healthy Start home visits for all first-time parents.

Train more government workers and care providers about child neglect.

Make information about child neglect prevention available to parents through schools.

Coordinate child neglect prevention efforts to boost efficiency, avoid duplication.

Increase community awareness and involvement in child neglect prevention.