Louisiana has a Children's Cabinet and an inspector general, an auditor's office and other agencies. Is there a need for a specific "state child ombudsman" as well?
The Legislature, seeking to respond to instances when children in our most distressed families were mistreated and sometimes died, is considering the concept as a way to address a number of serious, and vexing, issues.
The Department of Children and Family Services and Office of Juvenile Justice have been under fire for the worst possible outcomes in some cases: Toddlers who died from overdoses after overlooked warnings. Children who slept in state offices without enough immediately available foster beds. Teens who were shackled in solitary confinement after escapes from juvenile lockups.
When leaders of both departments resigned last year, legislators said they wanted things to improve.
And yet agencies and advocates have been calling on those same legislators and Gov. John Bel Edwards to better fund these understaffed and overwhelmed agencies for years now.
If another office with a specific child advocate would help matters, we're for it.
But we cannot escape the realities of our situation. A larger percentage of Louisiana families live in poverty than in most states, and the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic stripped away the veneer of normalcy that covered up deeper social problems than we'd like to admit seeing in our state.
Crimes committed by juveniles are among the hot-button issues raised during the last couple of years.
We don't agree that the answer to every crime wave is to simply treat juvenile offenders as adults. Recognition by lawmakers that rehabilitating a juvenile offender is one of the most difficult problems facing our state, and granting agencies funding commensurate to that challenge, remains the best answer.
And that, of course, would be just one of the complex social and bureaucratic problems a child advocate's office would in theory investigate and report about.
Legislation in the current session proposes creating an ombudsman to investigate specific cases and to report independently of the state agencies which fail to prevent children ending up in body bags. There's some debate over where the ombudsman would be located and to whom that office might report, and the governor probably will have his own thoughts if he gets a bill in a few weeks.
The case for an ombudsman: Research by Rick Wheat, president of Louisiana United Methodist Children and Family Services, shows that Louisiana is just one of five states without any ombudsman services for children. All five states that lack an ombudsman also rank among the worst in the nation in terms of child well-being.
We don't know if that's cause and effect, but we commend those who are looking for answers. Fundamentally, though, it's legislators controlling the checkbook who have to fund children's challenges in line with other states in the nation.
-- The Advocate, May 24