Lawyer’s uh-oh moment

LITTLE ROCK — Ouch. Talk about a full-blown public display of foot-in mouth disease.

Lisa McGee, a lawyer with the state Human Services Department’s Division of Children and Family Services, or DCFS, ignited some pre-Fourth fireworks the other day during the final minutes of a legislative subcommittee session in Little Rock.

Legislators and others interested in supporting Arkansans who wind up having to raise their grandkids had gathered to discuss an interim study on this issue. State Reps. Mike Burris and Johnnie Roebuck, co-sponsors of the study, are deeply interested in the plight of kinship caregivers.

More than 30,000 Arkansas children are being raised by grandparents and other relatives. Children can find themselves suddenly abandoned by their parents from causes ranging from drug use or prison to death or even plain ole shirked responsibility.

In the course of an otherwise tedious meeting, McGee was pontificating right along when she proffered an example of a potentially inappropriate placement of a child with a grandparent. I now call it her “uh-oh” moment. Two attendees told me that McGee used the example of a grandmother walking in on a grandfather who is raping a grandchild and the grandmother reminding the grandfather to be sure and use a condom.

Holy mackerel, McGee. That’s what the state considers to be a potentially inappropriate placement? No kidding. It sounds like a pure-dee black-and-white criminal case to me. (For that matter, couldn’t something that horrible also happen in one of the state’s foster care homes?)

State Rep. Rick Green, a Republican from Van Buren who was in the audience as an interested observer, said he immediately raised his hand and asked why McGee would offer such a scenario.

“I felt the example was unnecessary, as if legislators or [other] Arkansas citizens would ever question the department’s judgment call in this kind of situation,” Green told me. “I would hardly call that a ‘gray’ area. Some legislators, and many grandparents, do not believe that DHS gives due consideration to grandparents or other blood relatives first in placing children who are removed from their parents.”

He said that McGee had previously stated that in all cases-she had repeated the word “all”-a child’s grandparents are given every consideration for placements.

“She’d barely taken a breath, in my opinion, when she offered this [rape] example of why they wouldn’t choose a grandparent.” Green continued. “My impression was that she has some preconceived suspicions about grandparents. But those [cases] are not the norm and shouldn’t be treated as a benchmark in judgment.”

Green said that when he asked McGee to clarify her example, she replied that that she hadn’t intended to leave a negative impression. Well,maybe. But it still sounds a lot more negative than positive, and it didn’t do much to smooth over Green’s shock at her remark.

“I’m afraid I can’t forget it that easy as she offered the example so quickly and so firmly as to make a point and impression with the legislative members that were attending,” he said. “Later, she passed me in the hall and asked if I was all right. That also caused me to pause.”

Dee Ann Newell directs the organization Arkansas Voices for the Children Left Behind and is a consultant to both the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Council of State Governments. She was in the room and seemed as upset as Green byMcGee’s little analogy.

“In my 20-plus years as an advocate for grandparent and other relative caregivers, I’ve never had a more disgusting affirmation of the prevailing negative attitude at DCFS toward placement of children with relatives than Lisa McGee’s example,” she said. “No wonder so many relative caregivers avoid contact with the child welfare system at any cost. I’ve yet to meet a relative caregiver who would condone the rape of a child.”

McGee’s supervisor, Breck Hopkins, wrote me to say that while McGee had used that particular “anecdotal” example of unsuitable grandparents, her comments had come after “a lengthy discussion of the agency’s relative placement policies and was intended to illustrate . . . that each case is unique and should be evaluated accordingly.”

Hopkins said DCFS actually prefers to recommend placing children with relatives unless agency staff believes that wouldn’t be in the child’s best interest, adding: “That is evidenced bythe fact that 74 percent of the children exiting foster care last year were reunified with parents or placed with relatives.”

Burris, a Democrat from Malvern, later told me that he considered McGee’s comment an unfortunate “misspeak,” a mistake rather than anything intentional.

I wasn’t there to observe McGee place her foot in her mouth, but I can’t find that much, if any, gray matter was used in selecting this as an example of a potential gray area.

I do know that our state needs to support and encourage kinship caregivers in every possible way. Most of these folks planned to be retired in the final quarter of their lives, not suddenly be starting over with one or more children to nurture.

Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.