The sprawling area extending from Honokaa to Ocean View on Hawaii island includes some of the most underserved communities, parts of which have come to be known as the “wild west” — an ironic moniker for what’s defined as East Hawaii.
This is not always meant as a bad thing — the lifestyle appeals to people who live a bit off the grid. But something clearly needs taming here, in both the short and long term. The children are plainly suffering.
Advocates for an intensive infusion aimed at expanding the district’s state Child Welfare Services office seem to have the wind at their backs. House Bill 2277, which currently proposes $2.5 million to increase staffing at the state Department of Human Services’ East Hawaii office is sailing toward enactment.
That will be a hugely important step in addressing the acute social welfare crisis facing the district. East Hawaii is not the only area in dire need of attention from social service agencies, but the numbers do underscore its particular vulnerability.
The bill’s preamble lays out the case succinctly. In 2015, the rate of abuse or neglect cases CWS handled was 213 children per 100,000 residents, almost triple Oahu’s rate. And it has experienced the highest increase in the tally of children in foster care, up 56 percent between the 2014 and 2017 fiscal years.
These are not conditions that Hawaii can allow to fester. As the Friends of the Children’s Justice Center of East Hawaii observed in its testimony, there’s the possibility that the lack of staffing resources factored into the starvation death last year of a 9-year-old Hilo girl who had been under watch.
Certainly the state can’t tolerate conditions that underlie such human tragedies.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser writer Rob Perez documented some of the sad cases in Sunday’s cover story, tales that poured into state Capitol offices in submitted testimony. Shandon Cuba, 18, told how two young sisters endured abuse over the course of a year that they were not visited by case workers.
Many of the clients said their social workers were dedicated but simply had to cut corners to keep up with the paperwork required; often the human touch — their eyes and ears on the daily welfare of their young charges — fell by the wayside.
Simply looking at the workload explains how that happens. HB 2277 seeks to cap the number of foster children assigned to each social worker to 20. This is already five more than is recommended by the Child Welfare League of America.
The East Hawaii CWS office staff each oversaw 40 cases. Such an unreasonable caseload has to be drastically reduced if the children are to get the supervision that is essential.
The bill proposes to do so through establishing a five-year pilot program, creating 23 new positions to enable the work reduction and address the current emergency.
But what about after five years? In order to achieve a sustainable improvement, the state, paired with private partners, need to address the root of such a child-welfare crisis. Among the partners could be charities such as Kamehameha Schools and agencies such as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs that could help fund ongoing intervention programs, through community organizations and schools.
The foster parents themselves need support to keep those with the capacity to care for children engaged with the program. National figures show that many foster parents quit after the first 12 months, leading to more turnover for children who have endured enough instability in their lives.
The aim is to tackle persistent problems of poverty, substance abuse and domestic violence. These are the sources of the trauma that leaves such a scar on children, many of whom grow up to repeat the cycle. Interrupting that cycle, achieving progress that lasts, must be everyone’s goal.
