Posted on: Monday, April 30, 2001

Island Voices
Protecting abused children

This is the second in a series of articles from Hawai'i's Judiciary marking Law Week in Hawai'i.

By Kenneth E. Enright
Hawai'i Family Court judge

The Child Protective Services court calendar is the fastest-growing docket in our Family Court.

Currently, there are 2,708 active cases involving 3,859 children. Family Court statewide hears between 50 and 60 new or existing cases each court day.

Over the years, the number of cases have steadily increased. Even more alarming is that the degree of the seriousness of court cases has also dramatically increased.

Despite the efforts of dedicated and committed family members, social workers, their aides, police, guardian ad litem, doctors, foster parents, psychologists, therapists, legal counselors and judges who make every effort to protect the child from further harm, the current answer is too late for too many children.

The broken bones, burns and bruises will most often heal, sometimes even without visible scars. Therapy, counseling and caring can even help heal much of the emotional and psychological pain. A healed home, an adoptive home or other permanent caretaker's love can work miracles for a child.

But too often, the after-the-fact efforts leave the child far short of what the child's future well-being could have been and should have been.

Beyond the visible scars, child abuse has long-lasting and devastating effects. Victimized children are at threefold risk for substance abuse.

These children are 67 times more likely than other children to be arrested between ages 9 and 12. Two-thirds of pregnant teenagers were victims of child sex abuse, which also is the leading risk factor for adult alcoholism.

Our prisons are full of school dropouts who grew up in abusive homes — and the sad litany goes on.

We are working harder than ever, but we will not really be protecting our children's best interests until we develop a system of support for extended-family intervention, which must precede the protective system. A system that could tap into an abundant human resource in our state, the child's extended family's love and concern for their family's child's best interests. A system that would encourage and assist the extended family ('ohana) in knowing when and how to become involved in order to prevent harm from ever happening to their child.

We can develop a foundation for our present prevention efforts that promotes awareness, acceptance of responsibility and motivates appropriate action by extended family members at the earliest signs of potential harm to their child's best interests.

The extended family will most always be in a better position to know more about and impact the current functioning of a family member than will a protection system that exists outside of that family.

The timely expression of concern and support from a grandparent, a brother, an auntie, a clergy member, a good friend, a neighbor or, even better, a group of extended family members will almost always be far more meaningful than that of the most talented and caring professional.

When a family member cries out, "What can I do?" our community must do better than simply responding, "Call Child Protective Services."

This cannot be the answer: One, Child Protective Services' resources restrict services to serious cases; two, many family members only want to help their family, not get them into what is perceived to be trouble.

Indeed, the most effective overall system will be one that encourages and enables families to do everything they can do to prevent harm to their family's child, leaving only the more serious cases to be addressed by CPS.

The good news is we can do it. We know that CPS' "'Ohana Conferencing" program has very successfully brought together extended family members to provide the answer as to how to best care for their children who are involved in CPS cases.

We know we have a number of individuals and agencies, public and private, that are making prevention programs work better every day.

We know we have the love and concern of families and the expertise to expand our existing prevention efforts until they fully involve and support every extended family member who is interested in preventing harm from ever occurring to their family's child.

So let's do it, because the children deserve our best answer now.