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Eye On Boise

H&W: If child neglect is found but it’s for religious reasons, it’s classified as ‘unsubstantiated’

Roxanne Printz of the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare described for lawmakers how the department handles child protection cases. It received 22,000 calls in 2015, she said, and responded to 8,500 of those. About half of those were “coded as neglect,” she said. They were prioritized for response, with life-threatening and active sexual abuse situations as top priority for immediate response. A quarter of the 22,000 were Priority 1 calls.

“We approach a family, we ask about the concerns, and we ask to interview the child alone,” she said. “We are not medical personnel, we are social workers. So we do indeed need the court to intervene in terms of treatment or assessment of a child’s medical needs.”

Printz said, “We do have 30 days to make a determination of neglect.” At that point, she said, “If … (it is) because of their religious beliefs, then the case is dispositioned as unsubstantiated.”

Printz said the department doesn’t track religious-exemption cases. She cited a few examples with which she was involved. In three, the child’s diagnosis was terminal. “We went back to the judge. … The child is eventually going to die and there was nothing medically that could be done,” she said. “So we were dismissed. … Those cases were unsubstantiated.”

She said in another case in which parents cited the faith-healing exemption, “We were called in due to lack of medical care, but we found out that the injuries that the child sustained were inflicted by the parents, so … we had a broader issue to consider.” That child was taken into state custody, she said.

In another case in which a child had a broken bone and the parents denied medical treatment on religious grounds, a doctor said there was no infection. Though the doctor said the limb would not grow properly and the child had a lot of pain, “We did allow the family to practice their beliefs,” Printz said.

When Rep. Janet Trujillo, R-Idaho Falls, asked if the state could protect children when needed, Nicole McKay, head of the Attorney General’s health and human services division, said no. “The state is only able to do what is statutorily authorized in these situations if it comes to the attention of the state that there is a child in a potentially life-threatening situation,” she said. If the state or the Department of Health & Welfare isn’t notified of the case, it can’t do anything, she said.



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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