Washington State Senator Rosa Franklin has proposed legislation that would discontinue use of terms that negatively identify children such as “at risk” and “free lunch recipients” and replace them with more positive terms such as “Children at Hope.”

Democratic State Sen. Rosa Franklin says negative labels are hurting kids’ chances for success and she’s not a bit concerned that people will be confused by her proposed rewrite of the 54 places in state law where words like “at risk” and “disadvantaged” are used. The bill has gotten a warm welcome among fellow lawmakers, state officials and advocacy groups.

“We really put too many negatives on our kids,” says Franklin, who is the state Senate’s president pro tem. “We need to come up with positive terms.”

Republican legislators have challenged the program on pragmatic grounds:

“It’s not the label, it’s the people who show up to help (children) that make the difference,” he says. “What helps is a smart, well structured program, that has funding and credibility.”

The use of such terms may not only be ineffective but risk harmful unintended consequences. Juvenile justice has a long and ignominious history with euphemisms. The harmful effects of labels were recognized by the founders of the juvenile courts. In the 19th century, legislation began referring to children convicted of crime as ‘juvenile delinquents’ to distinguish them from adult ‘criminals’ and to the proceedings to incarcerate them as ‘adjudications’ rather than criminal ‘trials.’ This unobjectionable and seemingly innocuous change in nomenclature, carrying with it the decision to treat the proceedings as civil adjudications rather than criminal trials, was intended to reduce the stigma of the terms and judicially mandate a rehabilitative mission. It’s most lasting effect was to strip children of the constitutional protections in criminal trials that they would otherwise enjoy. The future of children accused of criminal activity was often left almost wholly to the whim of juvenile judges. By 1967, in In re Gault, the mistake was apparent enough for the Supreme Court to intervene. The lewd phone call that would have cost an adult ‘criminal’ at most a $50 fine would have sent 15-year-old Jerry Gault into state custody at the Arizona Reformatory school until his 21st birthday - a 7-year sentence not mandated by any sentencing guideline or statute but all because he was called a ‘juvenile delinquent’ instead of a ‘criminal defendant.’

No obvious harm looms in Senator Franklin’s proposal and she is absolutely correct that labels matter. I’m ‘at hope’ that if adopted, unintended ‘at hopeful’ consequences will be the unfortunate legacy of the bill.

• State. Sen. Rosa Franklin, Labels can shape children – and our attitudes toward them, News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) (January 22, 2010)
• Donna Gordon Blankinship, Wash. lawmaker wants to banish negative language

Ashleigh Gardner-Cormier, a MSW candidate in social work, provides the following analysis for Texas Senate Bill 1219, signed into law in June, relating to parenting and paternity awareness in public high schools.

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Vietnam’s National Assembly struggles to answer a familiar but labyrinthine question: how do you create an international adoption framework that doesn’t allow for abuse?

Last month, an adoption fraud trial opened in Vietnam, naming sixteen charity and medical workers as defendants. All of the individuals were found guilty of fraud in over 266 adoptions, generating fake documents for adoption agencies to facilitate foreign adoptions. (The official charge was “abuse of official position”, and six of the defendants were sentenced to jail time.) In some cases, the infants’ parents had not actually given their consent.

The widespread nature of the fraud has persuaded many countries (including the United States) to halt Vietnamese adoptions without exception. Ireland has said that an adoption of a Vietnamese baby under the current law “might not be recognized” by the state. The international attention has granted a renewed sense of urgency to the National Assembly’s pending revisions of its adoption law.

The significance of foreign adoptions in Vietnam can be put into context by sheer numbers: of the 20,000 infants adopted in the last five years, 7,000 were adopted by international petitioners. To ensure the legitimacy of future foreign adoptions, changes are being considered for both the structure and oversight of the process. Under new law (Draft Article 15), a child will first be eligible for adoption within Vietnam. After a 30-day period, if the child has not found a placement, foreign families may pursue adoption of the child. The only children for whom this regulation would not apply are those suffering from specific disabilities, HIV/AIDS, or another serious illness. The new law would also increase the involvement of the Ministry of Justice and other state agencies; the former would be inserted in the process as a liaison between foreign parents and domestic, eligible infants. Some disagreement remains, particularly as to whether or not the Ministry of Justice is well-suited for this proposed role.

Vote Kids, a 501(c)(4) “devoted to making children a political priority, not a political afterthought” has released a 2009 Senate Scorecard based on its interpretation of the voting records of our Senators and how it affects our Nation’s children.

There’s room to differ on the methodology; the ranking breaks fairly cleanly on partisan lines. Of the 33 perfect scores of 100 for instance, all were Democrats and no Republicans. The highest scoring Republicans were relative outliers - Susan Collins and Olympia Snow of my home state of Maine scored 75 and 67 respectively - and Republicans accounted for all of the zeros.

Vote Kids analyzes a set of 12 votes largely as a function of funding - for instance the Economic Stimulus Package - American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is interpreted as a vote for kids due to earmarks for medicaid, education programs, IDEA funding among others. Similarly, a vote for the Equal Pay for Equal Work - Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is interpreted as a vote for kids to the extent that kids have mothers and a law that benefits mothers presumably benefits the kids, particularly in single-mother families. Plausible, but not as direct as the quantification might lead one to believe. In one sense that’s expected of a scorecard of federal legislators; a much larger proportional impact on children comes from state rather than federal law and our federalist system limits the impact federal legislation can have to areas of spending and taxation. In another sense it raises fundamental questions about how to evaluate the impact of legislative choices on children - funding is necessary and there isn’t nearly enough of it - (1) for the sake of the children (2) for the social and economic benefit of society that invests in its next generation.

• Website: Vote Kids

Established in 1949, the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) is the state’s juvenile corrections agency.  In Texas, TYC is charged with housing and supervising delinquent youth committed to state confinement by county courts.

TYC is subject to the Sunset Act and will be abolished September 1, 2009, unless continued by the Texas Legislature during this legislative session.  In January 2009, the Sunset Advisory Commission submitted a report to the state legislature with a controversial decision recommending that TYC be abolished and merged with the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission (TJPC) into a single state agency.

In that report, the Sunset Advisory Commission stated, “[the] Sunset staff  recognizes the controversial nature of consolidating these agencies, but could not justify their separate continuation.  Texas needs to seize the opportunity to create a more integrated system of services for youthful offenders.”

Reacting to the Sunset Advisory Commission’s decision, Texas State Representative Ruth McClendon, introduced HB 3689 calling for both the abolishment of TYC and TJPC.  HB 3689 proposed that the powers and duties of those agencies would then be transferred to a newly created state agency, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department.  

Some predicted that this would be the end of the troubled TYC.  However, this has turned out to not be the case.  After a lengthy work session and public hearings, the House Committee on Corrections made the following changes to HB 3689:

“The Sunset Commission found an ongoing need for the functions of these . . . agencies, but identified improvements needed to address the persistent lack of coordination between TYC and TJPC, ongoing problems within TYC, and other issues of state-level communication and oversight in the juvenile justice system.  This legislation contains provisions to address these needs, including continuing TYC and TJPC as independent agencies with separate governing boards, and creating the Juvenile Justice Policy Coordinating Council to make recommendations to TJPC and TYC regarding ways to improve the provision of services, operations of juvenile programs, and agency coordination.”

It’s important to note that in 2007, amidst allegations of sexual abuse and agency mismanagement, the State Legislature responded with radical changes for reforming TYC. When the Sunset Advisory Commission reviewed TYC earlier this year, sunset advisory staff found that TYC was still struggling to implement those reforms. Furthermore, the staff also found that even after repeated legislative attempts to improve collaboration between TYC and TJPC, there was still a lack of communication and cooperation between the two agencies.  This is precisely why the Sunset Advisory Commission recommended abolishing TYC.

Whether the legislature’s newly proposed Juvenile Justice Policy Coordinating Council in HB 3689 will be able to truly address these issues remains to be seen.  

If allowed to continue as an independent state agency, TYC will be up for review again in 2011 by the Sunset Advisory Commission.  One can hope that at that time if improvements have not been seen, that the legislature will finally take action to create a more integrated system for youthful offenders.

HB 3689 has been reported favorably as substituted above out of the House Committee on Corrections and is currently being scheduled for a vote by the entire Texas House of Representatives.