Approaching Nine Months Since Tennessee’s Abortion Ban, DCS Remains in Disarray | Nashville SCENE
Tennessee is approaching a milestone. It will soon be nine months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision rolled back federal protection of abortion rights and, soon after, Tennessee’s trigger law made abortion illegal in the state — even in cases of rape or incest. While state law does provide an exception for situations in which an abortion will prevent death or serious bodily harm to a pregnant person, it’s a narrow provision, and punishment is very harsh for doctors who can’t prove that an abortion was necessary to save a life.
In the decade preceding Dobbs, Tennesseans had roughly 12,000 abortions per year. Now, nearly nine months after the institution of Tennessee’s strict trigger ban, pregnancies are coming to term that might not have otherwise. Babies will be born as actual humans who need food, medical care and love.
“We the people have a responsibility to raise these children that nobody is raising — that is a big task,” says Fayette County General Sessions Court and Juvenile Court Judge Jim Gallagher, a Republican who is also a member of the Tennessee Council of Juvenile & Family Court Judges. “This is the scary trend that I see. Mamas drop these kids off. Daddies are gone. They drop them off as infants when they’re born, they drop them off when they’re 5, whatever. And I’m not obviously saying all of them, but the ones that come to court. ‘Well Grandma is gettin’ too old. She can’t deal with ’em. She doesn’t have the energy.’ So where are these kids gonna go? Because Mama’s already dropped them off. She can’t pass a drug test. So they go to DCS.”
Before we’re faced with the consequences of the abortion decision on our already severely strained system for taking care of at-risk children, it’s a good time to stop and take a look at how that system is doing.
The short answer? The system is collapsing.
The Tennessee Department of Children’s Services is the agency responsible for reviewing complaints, investigating a child’s situation and ultimately getting children placed in temporary housing. With roughly 9,000 youth in DCS custody, the system is currently in disarray. In December, the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury issued a damning report on the department’s many failures. Another report released earlier this year by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth found that Tennessee’s foster children experience the highest levels of instability in the U.S.
“We’re traumatizing kids,” says state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville). “We remove them from their homes because of traumatic situations and then traumatize them further by making them sleep in offices across the state, or rushing them off to foster homes that weren’t fully vetted.”
Turnover of staff at DCS has reached crisis levels — a staggering 56 percent in 2022. Johnson doesn’t mince words about the reason why: “People don’t want to work at a place where you have 52 kids on your caseload, when the standard is 12. You can’t humanely do that work. And if you can’t humanely do your job, no amount of money is going to entice someone to put kids in danger. Social workers are literally traumatized by concerns of not being able to get their caseloads complete.”
One of the biggest reasons cited by the state audit is a lack of available foster care options. Teenage boys are particularly difficult to find placement for. Social workers report they are making the hard choice of leaving kids in abusive homes, because they have no better alternative to offer. A whistleblowing social worker was fired in 2021 after she clued in the public on kids spending months at a time sleeping on the floor in state office buildings because there was nowhere to discharge them to. These kids reported not having consistent access to food, beds, clothes or showers. “There were recently several teenagers who went for five days without showers,” says Johnson. “All they had for entertainment were coloring books. There’s no television, no computer devices, or anything like that for them.”
In that environment, it’s not surprising that foster kids face a highly disproportionate risk of being incarcerated. Tennessee has a strong foster-to-prison pipeline, and lack of staff means poor oversight of the state’s juvenile detention centers. The DCS audit found that these centers are typically at 100 percent capacity. A 2021 ProPublica investigation into Rutherford County’s detention of children found that 48 percent of juvenile court cases ended with children behind bars — kids as young as 7, and disproportionately Black. DCS inspectors repeatedly failed to intervene despite the county’s frequent and egregious jailing of children.
“When I commit a child to DCS and they remain in my detention center for weeks, and sometimes into months, without a place to go, that’s wrong — it’s illegal,” says Knox County Juvenile Court Judge Tim Irwin. “But it’s happening, it’s happening in Knox County.”
A 2022 report by the Youth Law Center details extensive abuses at Wilder Youth Development Center, a facility run by DCS and located in Somerville, Tenn. Wilder serves teenage boys, 97 percent of whom are Black. Reportedly, staff at the facility used ramen noodle packets as bounties to incentivize children in their care to physically assault each other. This treatment has led to child suicides and attempts. Here’s one case from the YLC report: “Shortly after being released from protective custody, Isaiah was moving into his new dorm when he was attacked by several other youth. Multiple staff were already present when the attack began, having been called to the dorm because they heard some youth talking about jumping Isaiah. Several youth later reported that one of the staff members present had put noodles on Isaiah’s head, prompting youth to plan to assault him. As the attack now unfolded, staff stood by, doing nothing to intervene.”
So how does the situation get fixed? “Throw money at it,” says Judge Irwin. “Throw tons of money at it. We’ve got to make positions attractive for people. They are vital to our children, and our state. Throw them some more money, make it a better place to work, give them benefits, shorten their work week.”
“Pay them,” echoes Judge Gallagher. “Pay them more now. The state has $1.5 billion in the rainy-day fund, and DCS’ budget is $1.1 billion. What’s the solution? I don’t know, but I think we can take both of those numbers and come up with a solution.”
In his State of the State address earlier this month, Gov. Bill Lee proposed putting an additional $190 million in the budget for DCS, along with an additional $10 million for Tennessee Fosters Hope, a grant program designed to increase options for care. Johnson says this is “too little, too late.”
“Yes, we need to raise salaries,” she says. “Are they going to be ‘real’ raises? Yes, he is giving money for some fixes, however, it’s too long to wait, and there are kids in trauma right now that we should be helping. He talked about higher salaries, but he did not talk about capping caseloads, and that is what is going to bring people to work at DCS, knowing they have a workload that’s manageable.”
How well-equipped is Tennessee to handle an influx of unwanted children after Dobbs babies start being born?
“Tennessee is not equipped in the least to handle that,” says Johnson. “They can’t even handle what they have now. An influx of thousands is something that is going to be a disaster in the state. There’s just no question.”
How families can sign up to become foster parents
Tennessee is desperate for foster homes. If you’re interested, you can start the application process via tn.gov. The state’s explicit requirements are:
Give without the expectation of immediate returns
Have room in your home and in your daily life
Learn and use proven behavioral management skills
Love and care for children with problems
Support birth families and help a child return home
Foster parents can be:
Single or married
With, or without, children of their own
Requirements:
At least 21 years of age
Must be fingerprinted and pass a background check
Participate in an informational meeting
Must complete a training program called TN-KEY
Participate in a home study
Provide documentation of a sufficient income
Complete a health exam