In a briefing this month, legislators focused on requirements to ensure that children receiving homeschooling have at least one annual, face-to-face meeting with public school educators, who are “mandated reporters” of suspected child abuse. That’s a welcome move, albeit years overdue.
The fact is that the state Department of Education has no continuing contact with kids removed for homeschooling, even if abuse was previously suspected. A “report of academic progress” and standardized test results must be submitted yearly, but there’s no personal contact — and until records were computerized just this year, schools did not adequately track even these requirements.
As suggested by the state Attorney General’s Office, one important fix is to have homeschooled children personally assessed for academic progress at school sites annually. This requirement, along with a mandate that schools track and report deviations from existing requirements in a timely manner, should be legislated, funded and placed in effect as soon as legally possible.
A homeschool reporting requirement is welcome, but it would resolve just one flaw in an inadequate system.
Withdrawal from school was just one of the actions allegedly taken to conceal the abuse of Ariel Sellers, also known as Isabella Kalua, who was reported missing by her adoptive parents three months after she supposedly began homeschooling in June 2021. After the 6-year-old girl disappeared, investigators turned up evidence that Ariel was starved, beaten, restrained and locked in a cage. The girl was pronounced dead, though her body wasn’t found, and the adoptive parents have been charged with murder, abuse and hindering prosecution.
Child welfare operations of the Department of Human Services (DHS) have also been found wanting. Legislators singled out DHS’ vetting for foster and adoptive parents, and the inadequacy of caseworker interactions with families; and a 2023 audit showed dangerously low staffing and poor retention for the Child Welfare Services (CWS) branch. DHS responds that improvements are underway, with more robust training, a new program of proactive caseworker visits with foster families to establish contact and offer “resources,” and stepped-up hiring practices. OK, but not enough.
In 2023, the Legislature established the Malama Ohana Working Group to investigate and recommend reforms to child welfare. Malama Ohana released its report in December, dedicating it “to the memory of Ariel Sellers.”
The advisory group’s guiding precept is that the well-being of children and families is a “collective kuleana (responsibility).” This approach offers statewide benefit — reducing child abuse and domestic violence, along with the trauma it inflicts on everyone it touches, and improving societal stability, with the increased security and opportunity that offers to all.
Contrast that to the horror and high cost to a child and community if the keiki arrives at school traumatized by events in their home life — or worse, suddenly disappears from the school community, lost to contact, and most tragically, gone forever.
School, welfare, justice and legislative systems that knowingly accept our current state of “family service” degrade the quality of life for all. This cannot be tolerated. As Malama Ohana reports, real change is required — not Band-Aids, as even an annual school visit would likely be. More coordination between public agencies, and more attention to families’ real-world needs are both necessary. But instead, the report describes “an uncoordinated system that … lacks proper resources and accountability … that hurts instead of helps.”
As initial, urgently required actions, the working group recommends added outreach and emphasis on assistance as preventative measures — and this does dovetail with DHS plans. However, additional family-tailored services must also be available to make the outreach worthwhile.
An overhauled, thoroughly improved and culturally sensitive training process for caseworkers and others is also needed. As documented in the report, state statistics and recurring headlines, all too frequently caseworkers have “inadequate training and knowledge” to detect or prevent child abuse in families also marred by domestic violence. Hawaii’s notorious “Peter Boy” Kema case is a prime example, with a boy killed and death hidden from authorities for years — and far too many abused children since then have fallen through the gaps.
Acknowledging CWS constraints, Malama Ohana calls for a sustained effort to expand services, supported by the Legislature. The first step: Establishing an entity to plan out and support execution of a re-imagined child-protective effort that is community-based, rather than administrative and bureaucratic. This proposal warrants serious consideration, among many others.
Improvements are urgently needed. For each day that Hawaii’s current inadequate processes continue, the well-being and the future prospects — in some cases, the very lives — of many of Hawaii’s children are at risk.
