More kids’ files destroyed

In the last two years, the state’s Children’s Administration has systematically destroyed more than 4,000 folders regarding its troubled child welfare system in Spokane – far more than had been previously acknowledged by top officials, according to documents released by the agency this month.

The folders, which included both public and personal records of more than 1,700 Spokane children, as well as clues to the conduct of Washington’s foster care system, likely represent only a fraction of the official documents destroyed statewide during the time period.

“It’s very disturbing,” said Michele Earl-Hubbard, a Seattle media law attorney and president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government. “Those are a thousand kids in Spokane who will not be able to find their histories. I don’t think anyone appreciated the length to which this practice has been conducted.”

So little is known about the practice that state officials in Olympia claimed last month they had difficulty locating an expert to talk about the records destruction. No annual reports – either internally or to the Legislature – track the number or content of the documents destroyed, and the state has never drafted a policy defining what criteria regional offices should use when deciding which files to save from its destruction schedule.

But since then, the Spokane documents, which were released under the state’s Open Records Law, have provided a glimpse into the extent of the records destruction.

Some of the destroyed folders contained as many as five or six volumes on children who were removed from their homes by social workers and placed in state care, according to the documents.

Each full volume contains a stack of documents about 2 ½ inches thick, according to state workers familiar with the records destruction. It takes about 625 pages of standard paper to create a stack that tall – indicating that some of the folders contained thousands of pages of documents.

Child welfare experts and trial attorneys have criticized the little-known practice, arguing that it not only obliterates private histories but also obscures the performance and conduct of a controversial foster care system entrusted with the care of 10,000 children on any given day.

“In terms of a public policy, it just doesn’t seem right for the state to have the ability to be able to destroy records about someone’s life,” said Laurie Lippold, public policy director for the Children’s Home Society, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group. “It seems like a good time for policy makers and legislators to be looking at this.”

Others have called for a statewide review of the agency’s records destruction.

“A lot of us who are concerned about children and youth are looking at this and saying yes, we need to review this,” said Kelly Stockman Reid, executive director of Washington State CASA, a nonprofit association that trains volunteers to advocate for abused and neglected children in court proceedings.

State officials acknowledge flaws in the practice, which began decades ago to preserve storage space. Because of the lack of state guidelines and oversight, the practice appears to differ from region to region.

“We probably need to start looking at some sort of uniformity in the destruction of these records,” said Connie Lambert-Eckel, deputy regional administrator for the Department of Children and Family Services in Spokane. “In the past, the question has come up, ‘Gee, should we have kept these records longer?’ ” As the newspaper reported last month, the records destruction creates obstacles to researching an individual’s past, reuniting former foster children with their caregivers or siblings, and establishing facts in both civil and criminal cases.

The practice divides the child welfare system into two populations – one for children who are adopted and another for those who drift from home to home. The agency must retain records for adopted children but not for those children in foster care who were never formally adopted.

That’s a significant portion of the children in care: Each year, more than 300 foster children age out of the child welfare system without being adopted. Thousands of other children bounce from foster care to their biological homes.

Six years after those children leave state care, the agency shreds their records. The administration, which is a branch of the Department of Social and Health Services, maintains only those records relating to homes whose licenses have been revoked or denied – a small percentage of the state’s overall foster homes.

Regional employees can prevent the destruction of individual files if they remove them from the destruction schedule. But sometimes, preserving the records relies on little more than the memories of veteran workers, officials concede.

“There are no written protocols on how to do this,” said Sara McGlothlen, a clerical lead in Spokane who reviews the destruction schedule. “What we do to make sure that we don’t lose important information – and that’s not fail-safe – I usually go in and look at what type of referrals there were, whether the children are still in the area. If I have a question, I check with my supervisor.”

The destruction of the records can leave gaps or completely eliminate official records of a foster child’s life.

Bev McLaughlin, an office support supervisor in Spokane, emphasized that regional workers were simply following instructions from the agency’s headquarters in Olympia.

“There is a concern that down the road something might come up regarding that family,” McLaughlin said. “But a rule is a rule.”

Lacking those files, agency workers may be unable to tell foster children where they lived, with whom, whether any allegations of physical or sexual abuse were investigated – indeed whether they were ever in fact in the state’s foster care system at all. As legal custodian of foster children, the agency holds a unique set of files for each child. The foster files often serve as a central archive for school, medical records, investigative reports and personal mementos.

“It may not seem that important to others, but for kids who have been in the system … those files should stay with the child,” Lippold said. “Are there pictures in there? Personal items? Letters from the parent? Once it’s gone, it’s gone. To not have that, it’s very sad.”

Earlier this year, the U.S. Congress ordered states to provide health and education records to foster children when they leave care. However, no restrictions were placed on the destruction of complaints, investigative files or placement histories, and the order will not be retroactive.

State officials said that some former foster children have asked that the records be destroyed. Those former state wards, now adults, say they are worried that their foster records could prevent them from becoming foster parents themselves, or from receiving other state licenses.

However, Lambert-Eckel said state licensing officials do not judge prospective foster parents based on the records from their childhood.

The paper files of thousands of children present a massive storage problem, officials say. But others counter that digital technology has made document storage easier than ever.

“There is technology that could allow them to easily house records,” Earl-Hubbard said. “It’s amazing how cheaply and effectively you can create digital records. The state is probably spending more time and manpower on destroying these records than they would on converting them to an electronic format.”