DHR faces challenges such as parental drug abuse, abandonment and staff turnover

Most of the youngest children are in the state's foster homes because their parents abused drugs, Nancy Buckner, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Human Resources, recently told a panel of lawmakers.

“It's not just about substance abuse. When you pull the strings, it's about your ability to protect the child, your ability to educate them,” Buckner told the Joint General Fund Budget Committee.

Buckner told the story of a mother in Birmingham who locked her children in the house while she went out to a club one night.

“What's so dangerous about that?” she asked. “Just look at all the other things in the house. What if the house burned down? The kids wouldn't be able to get out because everything would be locked up.”

prevention

In an interview, Buckner told Alabama Daily News that DHR could work to prevent similar situations through rehabilitation if the agency was already working with the parents. She said that's not usually the case.

“If it's their first child, we may not have seen it on the child protection side of DHR. The mental health department could have seen it, and some of their clinics might have seen it,” Buckner said. “But we are involved in child protection for people who have children.”

The second most common reason children are placed in foster care is abandonment, which is more common for children over 14. Buckner said this occurs when a parent gives up their child for mental health reasons or because of criminal activity. She told lawmakers DHR is not prepared to deal with such youth.

“With younger children, it's usually the people who just can't take care of them,” she said. “With older teenagers, it's often the parents who are afraid of them and they can't go home.”

Rep. Linda Coleman-Madison (D-Birmingham) expressed concerns and a desire for state agencies to work together. Buckner said DHR would not necessarily handle rehabilitation and that would need to go to another agency, such as the Alabama Department of Youth Services.

“Anyone who is involved with this child's life, or any child that comes to us, needs to understand that there is a continuum here, there is a connection here,” Coleman-Madison said. “We can't buy our way out of this. But more importantly, we are losing all of our state's human resources and talent that we are not rehabilitating, and we are not identifying them at an early age to take action.”

Against the current

Republican Rep. Chris Blackshear of Phenix City shared Coleman-Madison's concerns and said incarceration is not the solution.

“We keep talking about how we need to meet the federal mandate to build prisons, and we're spending billions of dollars on prisons to fix the problems at the top and down the line. We're not moving far enough forward to see what's going on and help these people rehabilitate,” he said. “So I think we need to look at this issue more deeply, because continuing to build mega-prisons is not the answer to our problem.”

There are currently 5,906 children in foster care, most of whom are either under the age of 3 or between the ages of 14 and 17. She said DHR needs state funding to reimburse foster parents for recent inflation increases.

Buckner said DHR has advocated for permanent placement of children, with a focus on returning the children to their biological families.

“Our permanent residency numbers have gotten much better in the state because we have to provide services faster and we are able to do that much faster than we used to,” she said.

Buckner also spoke about the challenges DHR faces in recruiting and hiring. She said there has been a 50% turnover in child protection staff in the last year.

“(Employees) often find themselves in situations where there are a lot of other companies competing with some employees whose work environment is more predictable,” she said of DHR employees. “They get threats on social media. People drive by their house. They're scared.”

EDITOR'S NOTE — This story was written by Anna Barrett and originally published by Alabama Daily News. It is reprinted with permission.