By Steve Brawner
© 2020 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Who are the unsung heroes of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic? Let’s add child abuse investigator Rachel Speights of Texarkana to that list.

The 37-year-old walks into strangers’ homes and interviews children, their sometimes hostile (and sometimes drinking or drugged) parents, and others, and then decides if the children should be removed.

It takes guts for Speights to do her job under normal circumstances, let alone during a pandemic. She conducted six face-to-face interviews in two homes April 7 while wearing a mask.

“Yes, the coronavirus is here, and yes, it’s a very scary thing, but I don’t let it stop me protecting these children because these children are vulnerable and they need us, and if I don’t go in there, then who’s going to go in there and help them?” she told me.

Speights is an investigation supervisor managing five counties for the Division of Children and Family Services. Like many other employers, DCFS has had to improvise during this crazy time. More work is being done remotely or by videoconference. But as Director Mischa Martin told me, some things still must be done in person.

“We have not shut down the child welfare system. … What we’ve messaged is, we want to use technology when we can, but for that … initial child abuse investigation, we have to see the victim,” she said.

Children removed by the state from their biological families live with foster families or in group settings while their cases are being resolved. The biological families receive support in hopes their children can be returned to them. Unfortunately, sometimes the state must find the children another permanent home with a relative or through adoption by another family.

The state’s foster children population has risen by about 150 in recent weeks to 4,445 as of Wednesday. That’s because courts are no longer holding in-person hearings because of the pandemic, so fewer cases are working their way toward completion.

Meanwhile, fewer children are entering the system, at least for now. Fewer calls were made to the state’s child maltreatment hotline (800.482.5964) in the last two weeks of March because schools, a so-called “mandated reporter” required to report suspected abuse, are closed.

Martin told me foster parents were reluctant to accept placements during the first week of the coronavirus epidemic, but DCFS has tried to communicate with them to allay their fears, and placements are continuing. She said foster parents have been “amazing.”

No foster child brought into the system has tested positive for COVID-19, but two children have contracted the disease after they were placed. They and their foster parents are being quarantined. No foster parent has tested positive as of this writing.

Foster parents have special challenges and costs as they navigate the pandemic’s new realities, which is why DCFS made a one-time $125 per-child increase in families’ stipends. Jonathan Bailey of Benton is helping raise three foster children along with his and his wife’s three children. In a text conversation, he said school-issued computers “are absolutely everywhere. The amount of food we are going through has increased for sure. (And we’ve gone through our share of TP as well! What many would call stocking up, we call a normal trip to Sam’s.)”

Meanwhile, more foster families are being recruited to help carry the load. (There’s never enough.) The state works extensively with a faith-based organization, The CALL, that recruits and trains parents. Executive Director Lauri Currier is anticipating more foster families will be needed as already struggling biological families face isolation and economic hardship because of the pandemic. The CALL cancelled trainings in March but last weekend held its first online training, which attracted 176 individuals from 93 families from 32 counties.

In a perfect world, none of these roles would exist. No one would be needed to investigate child maltreatment cases, and there would be no need to place a child with another family, temporarily or permanently.

That world didn’t exist before the pandemic and doesn’t exist now. As a result, while most of us are trying to keep our distance, Speights must still investigate strangers’ homes while foster parents welcome strangers’ kids into theirs.

As Speights said, if they don’t go in there and help, who will?

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.