Programs combat neglect
Most late-night ice cream runs made by University of South Dakota students don’t end with a coloring session at the Vermillion Police Department with three young children.
Junior Kate Turner, who is also The Volante’s advertising manager, had a “relatively strange” evening last October with a friend, who asked not to be identified. Shortly after midnight, Turner and her friend saw three girls walking alone, one without any shoes on, by the Lee Medical Building on the first cold night of the semester, Turner said.
“We pulled around into the parking lot, I got out and walked over and they were all three crying,” Turner said.
After Turner approached the girls, she bent down to hug the girl, a toddler, who wasn’t wearing shoes and was wrapped up in a blanket.
“She was literally only in her underwear,” Turner said. “No shoes, no clothes — only underwear, wrapped in a blanket.”
Turner gave her sweatshirt to the little girl. She said the other two children had on mismatching shoes with no coats and were wearing pajamas. Turner believed them to be early elementary age.
“I asked them what they were doing and they were all crying, so we put them in the back of the car because it was warmer in there,” Turner said. “We drove around until they could calm down and tell us where they lived, but when we went back there were no lights on in the house.”
Turner took the children to VPD after the children told the students they were walking to their mother’s boyfriend’s house across town.
“(We) stayed there with them, and we just colored,” Turner said. “We just sat in this little room, and the one little girl in my sweatshirt sat on my lap and we drew. It was about two in the morning by the time everything was resolved.”
Neglect in Vermillion
Jim Kallsen is the family services supervisor for Vermillion’s Department of Social Services (DSS) office.
The office includes Child Protection Services and covers Clay, Union and the southern portion of Lincoln County.
Kallsen said the number of referrals, or reports, Vermillion’s DSS office receives fluctuates and changes from year to year.
“I would say that in a year we average right around 400 reports, just the Vermillion office,” Kallsen said.
On a statewide level, Kallsen put South Dakota at only two to three percent concerning national statistics.
While neglect may be difficult to label, Kallsen said it is the most conspicuous out of the four maltreatments — neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse and emotional maltreatment.
“When you look at statistics, not only just statewide, but also nationwide, neglect is the most prominent,” Kallsen said.
VPD Lt. Crystal Brady said neglect is situational and has to be taken in a case-by-case manner.
In order for a child to be classified as neglected, Brady said the caretaker is not providing basic needs such as food, clothes and shelter. To remove the child from the home, the police and DSS must prove the child is in imminent danger, Brady said.
“If you’re living in a house that has exposed wires or we find a trailer that has holes in the floor or something where the child is in imminent danger that they could be injured if we left them in that place, then we would take them,” Brady said. “We have also gone to homes where they are absolutely filthy. That wasn’t enough for us to take them, but it was enough for Social Services to stay involved with the family and keep checking in with them week after week to make a plan to fix what was going on.”
SD Codified laws about child maltreatment
In general, the cases Brady said VPD and DSS receive come from a person contacting either departments and filing a report. After a report is filed, an officer will visit the house with a DSS worker to assess the situation and see if the child or children are in imminent danger, Brady said.
“If that happens, an officer can contact a judge and remove that child from the home,” Brady said. “Then the judge can grant custody of that child to the state and then we have to have a hearing within 48 hours where the parents get to come in, and then law enforcement and Social Services get to come in and testify.”
From that point, Brady said the judge will determine whether to keep the child in the custody of the state or return them to the parents. If a child stays in state custody, they will either stay with a close family member or be placed in a foster home, and Brady said the DSS takes over from there.
“They obviously work toward reuniting the child with the family, whether that’s having the family go through parenting classes or finding a new place to live or showing that they can correct the issues there were to get the child back,” Brady said.
Brady said court dates will follow up after a certain amount of time to determine whether the parents are following through with what the DSS is requiring of them.
“If they are, at some point they will get the child back,” Brady said. “If they’re not, it might go to the point of termination. Once the rights are terminated, that means that DSS has exhausted all avenues of trying to reunite the family and it just wasn’t working.”
Over time, Kallsen noticed a deviation from the focus on criminal aspects to targeting the child and the situation.
“The biggest shift that I’ve seen since I’ve worked in Child Protection Services is really more of that focus on safety, not necessarily what the parent did, but is this safe for that child to be in that home,” Kallsen said.
In Vermillion, Brady listed several opportunities for families to receive help if needed, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), housing, food stamps and medical assistance. Kallsen agreed, and said having a good relationship with USD was beneficial in involving professors and students at USD.
“I think that Vermillion has a very good network of services for the community this size,” Kallsen said. “We’re fortunate to have the university here because there’s a lot of services that are available in Vermillion for this community that I don’t think that are necessarily available in all communities this size.”
Clay County has a Child Protection Team (CPT) which is made up of professionals such as social workers, law enforcement and school staff members, and has monthly meetings. Kallsen said the team sponsors training such as parenting and babysitting classes, raises community awareness and discusses current cases involving children and their families.
For the month of April, the DSS works with Vermillion’s CPT and other county’s chapters, to raise awareness by making buttons, magnets or drawing contests with children.
Following up
After talking with VPD officers, Turner found out this wasn’t the first time the girls had been found without a parent.
“It just really bothered me that there was nothing we could do,” Turner said. “[We] looked into it the next couple of days for what we could do, and there’s honestly nothing we could have done.”
Turner and her friend didn’t follow up with VPD to see what came of the situation. She doesn’t believe the situation should be classified as neglect, but rather a bizarre incident.
Since the night they found the girls, Turner said she has seen them around town and each time they come up to her to give her a hug.
“We kept the picture they drew us because it was cute,” Turner said.
Follow reporter Cristina Drey on Twitter @CristinaDrey
National child abuse prevention month
In 1983 President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the month of April to be National Child Abuse Prevention Month, according to the Children’s Bureau website.
Child maltreatment
Every decade the Department of Health and Human Services conducts a National Incidence Study (NIS) assessing child maltreatment in the United States.
What are the standards?
The Endangerment Standard includes “children who were not yet harmed by abuse or neglect if a sentinel thought that the maltreatment endangered the children or if a CPS investigation substantiated or indicated their maltreatment,” the Executive Summary of the NIS-4 stated.
What are the numbers?
Between 2005 and 2006, the NIS-4 found nearly three million children, or one out of every 25 children in the United States, experienced maltreatment. Of those three million, 77 percent of children were neglected and 29 percent were abused.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
