Inside the System: Truths About Foster Care, Caseworkers, and Advocacy With Lance Hillsinger
- 2 days ago
- 38 min read
Matt Darrah (00:01)
Hello and welcome to All Things Foster, a place for coffee, connection, and community. We've got a really, really interesting guest, Lance, that we're gonna get to here in just a minute. But before we do, I wanna shout out to our episode sponsor. So guys, if you have a teen heading towards college, I want you to check out College Solutions, LLC in Amarillo, and their lead college funding pro, Angie Grimm. College Solutions,
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and all that you've done for us. So today we have Lance Hilsinger with us on the podcast. Welcome, Lance. Thanks for coming on.
Lance Hillsinger (01:32)
Thanks for having me.
Matt Darrah (01:34)
I'm excited to talk to you. ⁓ So let's talk a little bit. Why are you on a podcast about foster care? is your experience with foster care?
Lance Hillsinger (01:48)
Well, I started as a child welfare social worker in Los Angeles County. I was there for five years. And at that point, the child welfare system, juvenile court system was going through a lot of changes. There was a lot of unmet needs, very high caseloads. And I said, this system's got to be better. And so my original purpose for writing the book was just to kind of to alert people that, hey, there's this crisis going on and there's these problems. Of course, between
Matt Darrah (02:05)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (02:17)
the demands of the work and then eventually having some kids and my of my own I actually didn't finish the book until retirement. So I wrote the book for three main reasons. One ⁓ was to inform people. There's a lot of misconceptions about the child welfare system. So this is this is what I want to describe. My co-workers who read the book have says, yes, you got it right. So second was to encourage people to become foster parents or guardian ad litems.
Matt Darrah (02:39)
Right.
Lance Hillsinger (02:45)
because that will help the system work just that much better. And third, some various changes that I wanted to see still in the system. The system has improved over my career, but backslided in a few places, to be honest about it. And so I want to make sure that people understand that it's a never-ending process to make the system work better.
Matt Darrah (02:59)
Yeah, sure.
Absolutely. So how long were you involved in the system?
Lance Hillsinger (03:12)
Well, I was with LA County for five years and then for 29 years with San Luis Obispo County. And San Luis Obispo County is just north of Santa Barbara.
Matt Darrah (03:21)
So 34 years. what was your, were you in the same role that whole type of role? Were you in investigations and then, know, caseworker and stuff like that? what did you kind of hold the same, did kind of do the same thing? Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (03:38)
For the first year I did emergency response. So that's when someone calls on
the hotline and social work goes out to investigate, sometimes with the police, sometimes not. I did that for a year. I did not particularly like that job, that particular assignment. And then opening open in what we call the court, we colloquially call the court, though that's not an official investigation, to do the court investigation between when kids have entered protective custody, when they've gone into foster care, file the initial court.
Matt Darrah (03:48)
Yeah.
Sure.
Lance Hillsinger (04:07)
paperwork and take it through disposition where the child is declared dependent of the juvenile court. Just for people to know, ward is for when a child commits a crime, dependent is when a child has been abused or neglected.
Matt Darrah (04:19)
And so you were ensuring that, so the kiddos, you spent a year doing the investigation emergency part, then you spent the rest of the time ensuring that kiddos, as they're kind of navigating the court system, that's where you were at.
Lance Hillsinger (04:20)
So
Well, I did. That's where my initially went back. Then changed offices so that I did case management. So sort of in a split case load for a little while and then lo and behold, my wife and I decided my parents were retiring up to San Luis Obispo. We went up here and bought a house on built across our fingers to get jobs and fortunately both of us did. And then I was a court investigator for probably over 20 years with San Luis Obispo County and then.
Times changed and I became what we call an ongoing worker, which is after the child's been declared independent of the court. Most of the kids are in foster care at one time, but some were under court supervision. And then I did that. I've never did adoptions, but I've referred many kids to adoptions. San Luis Obispo is a small county, so of course I would get to know the adoption workers, the other ER workers, you know, other people.
Matt Darrah (05:17)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Yeah.
Absolutely. So do you know how many cases approximately, how many cases you worked on or were a part of?
Lance Hillsinger (05:42)
Well, I filed over 600 petitions with the court. I figured out one, you know, and unlike most states in California, the social worker files the petition, the legal documents says, Judge, this child needs protection in juvenile court. We need to do something here. In most states, the social worker files an affidavit or similar declaration and then an assistant state attorney general will file the actual documents. We have, of course,
Matt Darrah (05:58)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Well, that's how it is in
Texas,
Lance Hillsinger (06:12)
Yeah, that's how it is in most states. had county council would review our petitions and sometimes they had issues or something, they wanted something clarified. But after a while you got the knack of it and it would be filed and then you'd have the detention hearing, then the jurisdiction hearing, which is what are the facts, and then the dispositional hearing, what are we gonna do. In practice, the jurisdictional disposition hearings would be held at the same time. Most of the time, about 80 % of the time.
Matt Darrah (06:16)
Mm.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, wow, six, that's not 600 kids, that's 600 cases, right? So which, I mean correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot, many of those are gonna be more than one kiddo.
Lance Hillsinger (06:47)
Right. Right.
Yeah, you figure some three kid cases, some single kid cases, so maybe 1200 children, you know, somewhere in there.
Matt Darrah (07:03)
Yeah,
wow. So why, what got you into this? Where did the impetus come from for that?
Lance Hillsinger (07:12)
I love to sell the story. I got my master's degree in psychology from Vanderbilt University and I was on a PhD track and then I realized academia was not for me. That was not where I was destined to go. I returned back to my California, my native California, got a job working with dual diagnosis, people who were development disabled and have a mental health diagnosis. And it was a sort of a sheltered workshop setting.
Matt Darrah (07:18)
wow.
Mm.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (07:39)
We worked with the partnerships. I was like a senior partner and then had a junior partner. And because that junior partner, I wasn't paid very much, the junior partner was paid very little, not much more than minimum wage. There was a lot of turnover. So anyways, one day I got paired with a woman and there's, you know, you run into these people that you say green and they say blue. You know, you just don't, we just did not get along.
Matt Darrah (07:47)
Yeah.
Yeah.
you
Lance Hillsinger (08:05)
And you know, I was the supervisor, technically, so I figured, hey, you could kind of have to one day though, she said, why don't we try to get so and so a job as a dishwasher in the county cafeteria. And I was about to say, that's a really bad idea. Then realized that's a really good idea. That's a really good idea. So we make it a little field trip. And this is in the pre internet days, we go down to the Hall administration, downtown LA, look at this huge
Matt Darrah (08:05)
Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Mmm.
Lance Hillsinger (08:32)
listing that has everything from arborist to zoologist. And fortunately, children's services worker came before county dishwasher, and that's how I got the job.
Matt Darrah (08:39)
Hahaha.
Wow, that's crazy. And so what does it mean to file a case?
Lance Hillsinger (08:50)
Well, that means you tell, you're filing a document that says that the legal system needs to intervene. And the initial hearing and detention similar to an arraignment hearing in criminal court. You have to cite which code sections you think apply. In California, 300A is sort of your generic physical abuse. 300B of the Welfare Institution Code is neglect.
Matt Darrah (08:50)
image now.
Mm.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (09:17)
So on D is sexual abuse. Some of the code sections aren't used very often, so that's why they don't always go in alphabetical order. ⁓ D is sexual abuse. G is parents not available. So.
Matt Darrah (09:24)
too.
Mmm.
And so you were the one filing the case with the court, not like removing or moving, overseeing the placements, is that right? Or were you, overseeing the kiddos that you filed their paperwork for?
Lance Hillsinger (09:44)
It's logistically very difficult if you're an emergency response worker and you don't know if you're going to go out and knock on our door and you're going to be fine, you know, nobody's home or you're going to pick the foster care and you're going to be, you know, be involved with that, family for the next several hours. So it's very hard for those people to be in court at a certain time. So the system divides it between emergency response people who are these all these different social workers because it's just a matter of practicality.
Matt Darrah (09:45)
It's on both ends.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Right,
yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (10:12)
So I would be more available. I would do ongoing investigations. What's the story of the background? Okay, mom was arrested on drugs. Where's dad? And then we have to find dad and ⁓ his mom's drug use. it a sporadic thing or is it really a chronic thing? And does she have family? Does he have family? And do more thorough investigation of the whole totality of the circumstances. And then, present that you prevent the detention report.
Matt Darrah (10:17)
Hmm.
Yeah.
wow.
Lance Hillsinger (10:40)
which is you were asking the judge only has to make a prima facie case, you know, that the particular subsections apply. And then you have the jurisdiction hearing where you need the preponderance of evidence, the more evidence, yes, the new. But under California law, you have to have clear and convincing evidence, little bit higher legal standards. So you can say, yes, this abuse occurred, but we're still going to leave the child in the home because there's not clear and convincing evidence. Maybe it's a one-off kind of situation.
Matt Darrah (10:54)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (11:09)
and you
don't need to put the kid in foster care. ⁓ And so you can have that as a result. But I want to stress that most, two thirds of our cases were neglect due to substance abuse, with probably domestic violence being the next most common reason. Now, of course, you get a domestic violence and substance abuse and physical abuse and parent unavailable and all this. You can have multiple reasons.
Matt Darrah (11:22)
Right.
Lance Hillsinger (11:35)
And under California code, there was a 300E, which was severe physical abuse of a child under five. So if you really brutalized a young child, there was a special provision in the code where you might not get reunification, that parent might not get reunification. A generic physical abuse of 300A, which was very rare. would file what I would call a pure 300A case only once every couple of years. And usually they were more mental health cases or domestic violence, or as I said,
Matt Darrah (12:03)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (12:03)
substance abuse and neglect, or parents
just not available. One of the situations, you know, we have this image of brutalized tutelage. Most of them are not. They may be traumatized in other ways. But a very common scenario is the mom leaves the kids with her mother and then just doesn't come back and grandma calls and says, I need something, I need help. You know, so nobody's been abused, but the child doesn't have a parent. Now that's a common theory, of course, many.
Matt Darrah (12:24)
Yeah.
Yeah, sure. So what do you, you said that there's kind of some misconceptions around child protective services. What do you, what's something that you think people like misunderstand about the system?
Lance Hillsinger (12:45)
Well, think there's a one of the things is that the federal government recognizes that we kind of want equality. We want every child to protect it. So if the child comes from a poor home, the federal government will pay bulk of the foster care expenses. OK. And so that has been distorted into, ⁓ CPS gets paid for us to remove kids. That's how it gets distorted. And this is if I could just digress a bit, roughly 90 percent.
Matt Darrah (12:53)
Hmm.
Alright.
Yeah, right. Right. Right.
Lance Hillsinger (13:15)
the families in San Luis Obispo County, which is fairly affluent county, qualified report off to qualify court appointed lawyer. Not quite the same standard as federal, very close. ⁓ In some states, the parents do not get a court appointed lawyer if their kids have been taken. They have to represent themselves. And so that's the smug bugger. So that's one of things I'm gonna point out. So I think that the financial thing is the big misconception.
Matt Darrah (13:22)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
Yeah.
no, absolutely. Yeah, I was in foster care. I was adopted. And when I connected with my biological mom later, she was like, those CPS workers get a bonus every time they place a child in care. And I'm like, no, they don't. They absolutely do not.
Lance Hillsinger (13:58)
No, we don't. No, we don't. And I would sometimes
parents would say, sometimes they would say to me, you just want to take my kid. said, you don't know how hard I have to work when I take your kid. If I don't take your kid, I don't work as hard. And so that usually, usually satisfied people.
Matt Darrah (14:08)
Yeah, right. We're not just down here. Yeah,
yeah, just boggles my mind that, you know, ⁓ they tell themselves these stories really to kind of...
make them not culpable, or they don't want to accept responsibility ⁓ for this happening. It's just, yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (14:40)
And I think there's also the misconceptions. Maybe it's a holdover from a long time ago, but I think it still lingers that foster parents are in for the money. Because we do recognize that teens are more expensive than kids and school-aged kids, so they're a pair more. But the cost of childcare is tremendous, and kids are expensive. And as I talk in my second book, Build a Better Bridge, Social Policy for the Seconds,
Matt Darrah (14:49)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-mm.
Lance Hillsinger (15:08)
21st century is that, you know, you know, everybody has bills. You know, foster parents have bills. Housing is extremely expensive in San Luis Obispo. We are like on par. If you take salaries and cost of home, we're on par with San Francisco. So you obviously have to pay foster parents a decent amount of money if they're going to take the time away from being employed to be a foster parent.
Matt Darrah (15:16)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah,
right.
Lance Hillsinger (15:35)
Parenting is time intensive and foster parenting even more so.
Matt Darrah (15:39)
Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, in Texas, they're not, they're still coming up with some money out of their own pocket. The money from CPS is not, it's not enough to, to like make a living at, you know, I mean, it's enough to offset the expense, the majority of the expense of having the kiddos in your home. They're not,
Ain't gettin' rich being a foster parent.
Lance Hillsinger (16:12)
No, And though I was talking with the social worker, I was on a podcast with UK and UK and they're much more generous than they are. They're very much more generous. And one of the things that historically happened in California is that ⁓ foster parents were not getting raised for, know, the foster parent reimbursement was not raised for many years and many years of trying to save budgets or whatever. And so kids were going into expensive group homes because of the shortage.
Matt Darrah (16:13)
You
Mm.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (16:42)
It was much more expensive to place the child in a group home. And so the legislature's, ⁓ maybe if we paid foster grants more fewer kids would go into group homes. Yeah.
Matt Darrah (16:42)
Mm-hmm.
No doubt. Right. Well,
there's there's a huge, huge lawsuit in Texas around group homes. And ⁓ and so they I mean, like in Texas, you can't have a group home unless there's which is so more than six kiddos in the home total.
unless there's a staff member awake 24 hours, seven days a week. And so they made it much more complicated. Just your typical average foster family cannot go beyond six total kids at any given time. And so...
Lance Hillsinger (17:27)
We
can go beyond six if they're related and then it's max of eight. And actually one of my cases helped set that it was tangentially related to help set that that that rule that we made in San Luis Obispo County was later adopted statewide. ⁓ But one of the things that I learned is that there are for-profit group homes. In California you can't place a kid in a profit group home.
Matt Darrah (17:29)
Right. Right.
Mm.
my
Lance Hillsinger (17:54)
And I thought that was a federal law, but it's actually a state rule. And so I think there's been a lot about where there would have been for profit group homes. yes, that's I have placed kids in good group homes and there's some kids that that is that is a part of the system that we need. I think there's people who did. It's just some kids that that's the structure that they need and the help that they need and. ⁓ You know, it's a practicality if you're not hiring foster parents, you're to have to.
Matt Darrah (17:54)
Wow.
Mm.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (18:22)
place these kids in their group home or let them, we're talking mostly about teens, let their behavior get worse and they wind up being wards of the court because they just find a gang life to adopt or something.
Matt Darrah (18:30)
Right.
Right. What was the emotional weight of filing your first case? Was it just like, my gosh, this is heavy? Or was it maybe a relief, saying, ⁓ my gosh, this kid was in a hellacious situation and we're helping them be safe? What was that like?
Lance Hillsinger (19:00)
I don't really remember filing my first case. The first time I put a kid in protective custody was very ⁓ stressful and very, back then actually we didn't put them in protective custody. They were put in custody of law enforcement. Law enforcement released the child to me, the children, were twins. And just doing the mechanics of everything, just taking two newborn twins to a foster home, to an unfamiliar location in LA traffic.
Matt Darrah (19:16)
Mmm. Well.
Mm.
Lance Hillsinger (19:27)
was a very stressful moment and then the interview with the mom was actually kind of not that stressful, less stressful than I expected. ⁓ I feel good about the cases that I filed and felt like it was justified.
Matt Darrah (19:37)
Right.
Lance Hillsinger (19:44)
So yes, I take pride in my job, but people say, you know, but again, I do think that things were better most of the time, I should say, you know, the system isn't perfect, but I think the end result was ⁓ more often good than we left the situation better.
Matt Darrah (19:53)
to.
Right, well, and that's the, you know, there's this, you know, thought process that, you know, that the system itself is just, you know, destroying these kids when in reality, I mean, it's, you know, number one, it's generational, you know, the likelihood of.
your kids being in care, if you were in care, was much higher. then, and then the cycle of abuse continues and things like that. And so like, there's always room for improvement, you know, but it's, mean, these caseworkers are not out trying to just ruin these kids' lives. They're trying to help, you know? So, it's just tough.
Go ahead.
Lance Hillsinger (20:51)
ahead. When I left LA County, I had 77 children in my caseload. And then that was just, you're supposed to see every child every once a month. There's some exceptions back then. And that was just unrealistic. And I think sometimes things when they have caseloads that high, things are more likely to happen.
Matt Darrah (20:57)
Hmm
Right.
Right. Well, Texas has a balanced budget amendment. And so during the during the housing market collapse, ⁓ and we had these these babies, our we had four caseworkers that year. And our fourth caseworker, we were have 54th case, not counting kids, but 54 separate cases. And yeah, how in the world are you supposed to do a home visit with every single
Lance Hillsinger (21:34)
Wow.
Matt Darrah (21:44)
kiddo. Because you know, some of them are placed together, but a lot of them are not because there's not space, you know.
Lance Hillsinger (21:54)
That's one of the reasons why people talk about how the system should be pro parent or pro child. I think the way the system will work better is if there's more foster parents. If you have a social worker driving 10 minutes, it's a lot better, a lot more efficient system than if they have to drive 50 minutes to a foster home.
Matt Darrah (22:05)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah, that's it's just definitely, you know, in, I don't know the numbers across the state or across the country. I know Texas's numbers pretty well. And there's not there's nowhere near enough ⁓ homes in Texas.
I saw a study that said that there was something like 400,000 kiddos in foster care in the US. And so, this is crazy.
Lance Hillsinger (22:49)
Just to
make a point about that, when I started with San Luis Obispo County, we had 15 emergency beds that we could do. Now, for people who are listening to podcasts, not familiar with foster care system, there's some foster parents that want to be long-term, but there's also group people who are short-term, people who would call at three o'clock in the morning and say, child's on the way, and they are contractually obligated to take the child. So we had 15 beds, including a group home that we shared with probation.
Matt Darrah (23:04)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (23:15)
time with the Santa Rosa County, the population increased by about 50 % in the county. When I left, we had about eight emergency homes. So half the number of homes, 50 % more people. So you can imagine the stress that just adds to the system. so.
Matt Darrah (23:23)
⁓ geez.
What kind of kept you going? I mean, this is tough, heavy, emotional work. What kind of kept you going for 34 years doing this? Because most caseworkers, they're not lasting almost three and half decades.
Lance Hillsinger (23:50)
Yeah, well, I had my days. Don't get me wrong. In LA County, my caseload was so high that at any given time, few people were doing good, a couple were doing bad, most were doing so-so. Okay, so over time, but...
Matt Darrah (23:56)
Sir.
Mm-hmm.
Lance Hillsinger (24:09)
When my caseload was much smaller in San Luis Obispo County, especially as a court worker, some days would everybody who caseload was having a tough day or, so that was, that was the stuff. And when I just realized that there's just sort of random, you're randomly going to have those days that are just one crisis after another. So you're going to have to some really good days where everybody's going to the treatment programs. Everybody's going to their visits. You're having no contested hearings that month.
Matt Darrah (24:28)
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (24:35)
And you just have to accept that there's a sort of a random chance in the universe there. ⁓ And I also liked the work. think that the working in a smaller county ⁓ was working with the same attorneys. And that was very good. having we only had one judge. you get, at any one time they would rotate. We would usually get a new judge every six years. ⁓ But least you would have consistency about that.
Matt Darrah (24:40)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Sure. Right.
Lance Hillsinger (25:04)
And so I liked that and fortunately, I was fortunate for most of the time, lived close enough to work too. That was another thing to help that, to never really long commute. But on those days when I would be in one part of the county and then have a late night, coming back late and you know, okay, you know, coming home at 730, hey, dad, kids need to go to bed at eight for school the next day. It's tough.
Matt Darrah (25:25)
Yeah.
⁓ huh.
Yeah, for sure.
So what do you wish foster parents knew?
from a caseworker's perspective.
Lance Hillsinger (25:37)
My experience is that over time, we did a better job of educating foster parents about the system. We would, think initially it was all about.
You know, get your fingerprints on what your house looked like and, you know, do you have a prior criminal record and, you know, that kind of stuff and focusing on that or focusing. But I think as part of the classes that foster parents have to take, I think that's one of things that people are unaware of, foster parents have to take classes and be recidivized. Same with relatives. Relatives are required in California. I see the wisdom of that, but I also see that it could be unconstitutional, to be honest.
Matt Darrah (25:52)
Alright.
yeah.
Right.
Lance Hillsinger (26:11)
But to learn to be a foster care, learn to be a relative caretaker, I think that they understand that one of the things that as a court worker, I would tell people, we don't want to do this over again. One of the most difficult times is if you provide services, you provide unification, but you didn't do a very good job of it, the appellate court can say, we want to do over.
Matt Darrah (26:35)
Mm.
Lance Hillsinger (26:38)
That's what, because if you didn't provide the parents with their legally entitled services, appellate court can order a do-over. Now, I never had that happen to one of my cases. I took over a few cases that someone left or whatever that ⁓ was transferred from another county. ⁓ And they're one of type, very difficult cases to work in. You do not want a do-over. So people say, well, why don't we have to these, why can't we just move on with the legal system?
Matt Darrah (26:44)
Right.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (27:08)
Why can't I just adopt the challenges? We don't want to do over. And that's why one of the things that they are so strict about in California now is Native American ancestry. If you have any, if there's anything that remotely could be Native American ancestry, have to search that through the tribes. And sometimes people, you know, mom belongs to or thinks she belongs to the Apache or maybe the Cherokee and dad thinks it's the Iroquois.
Matt Darrah (27:11)
Yeah.
yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (27:36)
You're not talking three tribes, you're talking like 15 because there's several, there are multiple. And in a practical matter, it doesn't change anything. I had only two cases in my history where the child was an Indian, what we call an Iqbal child, a Newt child, a Wafraq child. And the sequence of events was not changed because the child was Indian. The same things would have happened had that child not had a Native American ancestry. The outcome would have been the same.
Matt Darrah (27:39)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (28:02)
but was just
a lot of procedures. that's my bugaboo is I wish that the Supreme Court originally had a ruling on that, that there was special rules, what they call active ⁓ efforts to place the child in need home. And they've said, yes, you've got to do this.
Matt Darrah (28:15)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. So let's talk about your book. You said you started writing it when you were a caseworker and then ended up finishing it at retirement. But you had some recommendations, right? Some thought processes and ways to make the system a little bit better.
Lance Hillsinger (28:39)
Right, right. One of them is the ICWA law, that that has just outlived its usefulness. The ICWA, Indian Child Welfare Act, I think it has outlived its usefulness. Back in the olden days, several hundred children were taken simply because they were Native American. In the early 1900s, late 1800s, there was the orphan trains.
Matt Darrah (28:46)
What is it?
Okay, okay, yeah
Lance Hillsinger (29:05)
tens of thousands of largely white children were taken without any judicial oversight. So I just want to make that ⁓ as a comparison. I think it's an insult to the profession of social work that somehow we ⁓ be prone to remove an Indian child simply because of their ethnicity. That's really an offensive to the profession of social work. And I think every hour that we spend complaining with ICWA is an hour.
Matt Darrah (29:10)
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (29:32)
not spent helping somebody in their substitute program or getting the transportation or the other hundreds of little things, the other things that social workers do. And so there's a penalty. It's a penalty that keeps social workers from spending time doing something that's really more genuine social.
Matt Darrah (29:49)
Mm-hmm Sorry, is there there others that you like looking back you're like man We should be doing it this way, but we're doing it that way
Lance Hillsinger (29:59)
My is more like we're doing too much paperwork. As I say, I spend more more screen time and less of that real face time with people. And ⁓ there was lots of forms about is the child, ⁓ do you suspect the child is victim of sexual exploitation? To go through every child over the age of 10 in your caseload to fill out all those forms.
Matt Darrah (30:03)
Yeah. ⁓ yeah.
Right.
Lance Hillsinger (30:28)
on what would be a common sense, you probably know if this kid's been exhibiting sexualized behavior, you're probably suspicious. You don't really need the paperwork to make that common sense that any reasonable parent or person, I should say, would say, okay, this kid's maybe something's going on here. And so again, hour wasted doing silly paperwork is an hour not doing actual social work.
Matt Darrah (30:50)
Mm.
Yeah.
Right. Well, I mean, you know, the paperwork on the foster parent side is obscene. know, Kiddo gets a scraped knee and we have to fill out a form. have to give them Benadryl because they have allergies or they had a headache. gotta give them some motrin and you you gotta fill out a form, you know. And that's just one example of paperwork that the foster parent has to do.
And then that has to be reviewed by the caseworker and so on and so forth. It's just like obscene the amount of paperwork that's required on a consistent basis just to make things the way that they're supposed to be. It's just crazy.
Lance Hillsinger (31:48)
The number of forums that we had to complete when we placing the child in foster home was just what to take to 45 minutes, an hour to go through everything, you know.
Matt Darrah (31:54)
Yeah, right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean sign here sign here initial here sign here sign here
Lance Hillsinger (32:01)
And
we tried to get the system where like the name and the birthday would be pre-populating the forms. Even that was a struggle to get that.
Matt Darrah (32:07)
Right.
Yeah, yeah, just the just the paperwork is absolutely ridiculous. ⁓ I just can't even I can't even imagine ⁓ on the on the caseworker side, the amount of stuff that you have to you have to deal with. Man, it's just so where do you think the system
is broken and could be very much improved.
Lance Hillsinger (32:39)
Well, like I said, I think it has gotten better. But I think that again, we also have what we call structured decision making. In California, you to fill out a form, you have to say why the child, know, is the perpetrator still have access to the child? Yes, no.
Matt Darrah (32:42)
Mm-hmm.
Lance Hillsinger (32:58)
And again, most of that is just common sense, logical things. And if you don't have that logical sense, you probably should be a social worker, know, and, you know, meeting with the supervisor is your SDM complete, not like how's the Smith case going? It's is your SDM complete, you know, and that kind of thing. And that's the one thing that I think that is very discouraging. People come out of graduate school, they're going to help the world, they're going to ⁓
Matt Darrah (33:01)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (33:23)
and then they realize here's a lot of paperwork. And I think that part of it is management at the local level doesn't have much control of state mandated paperwork. But if you live in an empathetic year, then people will stay. like any job, ⁓ it's important to experience helps. You don't want to turn over. think one of things that is really hard on kids is if they keep getting a new social worker.
Matt Darrah (33:34)
for sure.
yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (33:52)
They're
in foster care and gee, I might going home, but am I getting a new social worker? Nobody cares about me. You know, it's like, you know, like when you guys, when you were in school, you got a substitute teacher, you kind like, oh, you know, maybe I'll act up or maybe I'll, know, I don't have to work so hard. I've got to get a new substitute tech next week. And so, you know, we're not as invested in the school day. And then, so I think that's also true with kids. If their social worker is changing.
Matt Darrah (33:59)
Mm-mm.
Yeah, right.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, like I said, that one year we had four caseworkers that just in that with those kids in that one year. mean, and so, you know, they're the learning, you know, how do you have any kind of continuity of plan of what's going on when, you know, we're just constantly.
Chasing chasing your tail with with all the different with the constant new new caseworker And then you know and then to that I mean I got a master's degree and then you know the number of hours That they're working. I mean they're not even making minimum wage at least in Texas
Lance Hillsinger (34:53)
and
Yeah, and for any bureaucrats that are watching, any people in government that have the power, you might be reluctant to pay, but you don't buy the cheapest car in the lot. You may be okay, not going to pay social workers' BMW rates, but pay them a decent rate, pay them, because you'll have ⁓ supply and demand. As I write in my book, I come from a family of lawyers. My dad was a family lawyer.
Matt Darrah (35:20)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Lance Hillsinger (35:38)
My uncle was a corporate lawyer, made lots of money. I was very tempted at one point to just quit saying, hey, know, as much as I love this job, I'd like a better paycheck. And if you don't give the social worker a better paycheck, they're gonna move on to something else. One of my buddies is now a chauffeur. He makes a lot of money and he has less stress. He does it, yeah.
Matt Darrah (35:41)
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
No doubt.
So in that in that what what keeps you what kept you going?
Lance Hillsinger (36:08)
I just, I like the joy of it. Like I said, I came from a family lawyer, so I really liked the legal aspect of it. There's a, I think there's a real, for lack of better moral question. When does the state have the right to take somebody's kids? You know, and I was fascinated by that. And also at one point there was no other options. San Luis Obispo County, have agriculture and tourism are two biggest industries. There wasn't any place for me to take.
to take my experience that would pay decently. And I just like to tell this real quick story. One day I was feeling kind of down and I thought, well, let's see if they're hiring in Kentucky. An entire state system of Kentucky, they were only hiring one job. There was one job vacancy for a plumber in the entire system of Kentucky. Not just social work, I mean the entire state government. So I thought, okay, I better just accept my job here.
Matt Darrah (36:48)
Ha
Holy cow.
Thank you.
Wow,
that's crazy. So you...
You
were exposed to a whole lot of trauma, right? ⁓ How did you manage those emotions? I mean, I know when we did a placement package, we did placement packages for kiddos coming into foster care. And so we did a placement package last week for a little girl and she was
Four months old, she'd just finished her third brain surgery. She's got two broken femurs, you know? And my experience with it is, you know, this much, you know, as far as the families and stuff that we're interacting with. I'm not overseeing this family for, you know, six months a year, two years, whatever. I see them when we deliver the placement package.
You know, so how did you?
What did you do with all of that?
Lance Hillsinger (38:17)
Well, the really serious cases from a social worker, you find it relatively easy. You have a police report, you have a medical report. A court worker was put like, could, one case I remember with those shaken baby. ⁓ And he has very serious injuries and everything. But getting the backstory to that and finding out that this dad, he did a bad thing that day, but was a decent guy every other day in his life. ⁓ And ⁓
Matt Darrah (38:43)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (38:47)
wanted to see that. that was a good case in the sense that, mean, know, we good, but never having been abused. But as far as it didn't traumatize me because I saw this family actually getting better from this horrendous thing. ⁓ I think that the cases that would frustrate me would be when people would relapse on drugs and they were doing well. One of the things that happened towards the end of my career, I had this case where the
Matt Darrah (39:03)
Right.
Lance Hillsinger (39:18)
The two kids, were two like preschool age kids. Mom had a long history of drug use. And she got the kids back after being in treatment for a while. She was testing clean, testing clean. And okay, I felt like I had no legal recourse but to dismiss the case. I didn't have a reason for the government to stay involved in this person's life. One of the attorneys said, I am not so sure about this Lance. I said, maybe you're right, but I.
I can't, I don't have it, I'm from a legal point of view. And sure enough, we dismissed the case. I think we did hang it on for like another month to see, we hung it on for another month to continue it for something. And then sure enough, two months later, the mom relapsed and the kids went back into treatment. So those are the heartbreaking ones when people relapse.
Matt Darrah (39:55)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. No, absolutely.
Yeah, they measure recidivism. I don't know if they do there, but I probably do. But in Texas, in the area that we serve in Texas, the recidivism rate is 45 % within five years. So if they go back to the biological family, there's a 45 % chance
that they're gonna be back in care within five years, right? And that's not doing any, that's not, yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (40:44)
That's horrendous. This is
one of the things that I want to educate about. The federal government sets certain performance standards to the states. One of those is for every thousand children abused or neglected, how many abused and neglected again within an 18-month period or whatever that is. And of course, we'd like that number to be zero, but it's not going to be zero. But how close to zero are you getting?
Matt Darrah (40:52)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm, all right.
to.
Right.
Lance Hillsinger (41:11)
And the
scorecards, there's other measures about children, how many days do they stay in foster care before termination of rights or adoption, blah, blah. There's several of these measures, but these states have given a scorecard. And so I think that that is something that think that people don't know about and that ⁓ from the administrators pay attention to because ultimately the federal government can say, we won't give you any money. Of course, if the system is broken, you're not doing a very good job.
you're gonna do a really lousy job, you get less money, but they're supposed to submit a corrective action plan if something is, so.
Matt Darrah (41:40)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, so when I look at these statistics, mean, and then in our part of the world, you you talk about you served a county, so most of the kiddos were removed from your county and placed in your county, right?
Lance Hillsinger (42:04)
Most,
yes. We were placed with relatives, of course, in another county or sometimes another state, but most were either relative or foster care placements in the county.
Matt Darrah (42:09)
Sure. Yeah.
So our numbers right now, of course, we cover the 26 counties of the Panhandle. So that's the size of West Virginia. That's a big area that we serve. But 22 % of the kiddos removed stay in the county that they're from, in the 26 counties.
Lance Hillsinger (42:40)
That's very low.
Matt Darrah (42:41)
Yeah, it's awful. There's just, there's not enough, you know, you got, and we got, you know, we obviously, we have some really small towns that, you know, the county seat has, you know, 1500 people in it, you know, ⁓ and they don't have any licensed homes or whatever. ⁓ But just as a, as a whole in the 26 counties, 22 % stay, you know, and I try to explain it to people that it's kind of like dropping a kiddo and then
It's kind of like you being dropped in the middle of the Amazon jungle naked, right? Nothing is familiar. Nothing's safe. I don't know these people, you know? Things have been hellacious, but they were my normal, right? And so now I'm not going to the same school. I don't have the same friends. I don't have this. Nothing is familiar for these kiddos.
Lance Hillsinger (43:41)
And I think that's a challenge for foster parents. They have a nice home, you know, back, and then why isn't the child grateful? Well, you know, they don't have their, it's all the surprise and all the things. This is one of the things that I think the system has improved. We have what we call an educational liaison. So when a child enters foster care, there's supposed to be coordination from the child's former school to the child's current school, especially if it's the ⁓ different school districts, which would happen in your case a lot.
Matt Darrah (43:44)
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (44:11)
We were supposed to try to keep the child in the same school, you know, but on a practical basis, we have, it's very expensive, as I said, to live in the county, but the two less, lesser expensive are the extreme ends. So if you have a child living in Nipoma, which is in the south end, foster care in Paso Robles, you're not going to physically be able to take the child to the same school. It's just good if the kid would be on the road all day long. So.
Matt Darrah (44:36)
Mm-hmm, yeah, Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (44:41)
That was one of the things where, okay, let's look at things practical, but you try to make some continuity here. And it is tough. I remember when I was in fifth grade, my parents moved. I was in a new school, nothing, no abuse, no neglect. We just moved to a nice house. That was a big surprise, was adjustment.
Matt Darrah (44:54)
Yeah, sir, yeah.
but still disconcerting for a little bit.
Yeah, yeah. Because nothing's the same. Nothing's familiar, nothing's safe. Nothing's safe. so, you know, that's what, you know, they've done so much research around, you know, helping kiddos heal and understanding felt safety and the fact that just because you're physically safe right now does not mean that you feel.
safe, right? ⁓ And so, you know, there's foster parents out there that I don't understand. They're safe. Nothing's happening. They have food to eat, they have clothes to wear, they have this, they have that, you know, and stuff like that, but they don't, the kids don't feel safe because everything's new, everything's scary, you know, nothing, the smell in the apartment or the house is different.
You know, the food tastes different. Everything is different. And so they don't feel safe, even though they are safe, because...
Everything's new, you know? And that can go on for a heck of a long time. mean, it's not like, okay, you've been here a month, you should feel safe by now. It's not the way it works.
Lance Hillsinger (46:19)
You know,
in the notes you sent me, said, what case got you or what was the case? And when you were talking, you reminded me of this case where I had had some tendental contact with the grandmother in the case from another case. So I got assigned the case. The child had been raised by the grandmother because both parents were in prison. Grandmother had some pretty serious mental health problems and wound up being hospitalized for those problems. And so the child went in foster care.
Matt Darrah (46:25)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Mmm.
Lance Hillsinger (46:49)
nice upper middle class foster home. ⁓ And the child, know, was just, the foster parent would just open the pantry and the kid would just be big eyed, you know, wow, you know, and even, even days after he was just wolfing down food, just because it had been inconsistent in his life. But then as he realized, okay, I'm going to fed it away. I don't have to worry about this. He also started realizing that grandma and I, and I couldn't track down where grandma went to, you know.
Matt Darrah (47:00)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (47:18)
She was hospitalized somewhere, nobody, I couldn't find out how, I couldn't find out where, and we couldn't find the parents. And the kids started saying, I'm mad at the world. I'm mad because I don't have anybody, I don't have anything that's familiar. I don't even know my grandmother, even though she was kind of crazy, I had her, she was loving, as far as I could tell. It was probably not like I'm depriving her the child of food, it's probably she just didn't have the money.
Matt Darrah (47:21)
Mm. Wow.
Mm-hmm.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (47:48)
because he was in a very poor, very modest apartment. And we eventually had to place the child in a group home and that really hurt my... And foster parents felt guilty that they couldn't manage a child. And I felt the kid was mad at me. And then, then what do I do? I go to San Luis Obispo. This was a case in LA County. So what do I do? I abandoned the kid too. You know what I felt? I felt really bad.
Matt Darrah (47:59)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I was talking to a caseworker. You guys have CASA there, right? Court of Appointment Special Advocates. So there was a caseworker, and she'd been a caseworker for a long time, but she left the agency that she was with ⁓ to go work at CASA. And ⁓ the reason she did was she was placing a kiddo, which was moving.
a kiddo from one home to somewhere else. And so the kid was 15 and he'd been in care since he was five. And so she's going through, he's got a cell phone and she's like, okay, I need to check all the phone numbers that you wanna have access to people you wanna call. And he writes down one person. She's like, well, who's that? And that's my CASA.
and had been in his CASA for 10 years. This was in the panhandle and the CASA was from Houston. But the kid didn't even know where he was born. He bounced around so stinking much. And so she ended up going to CASA to work just because those advocates, they can be a piece of continuity when...
Lance Hillsinger (49:13)
Wow.
Hmm.
Matt Darrah (49:39)
Everything is chaotic.
Lance Hillsinger (49:41)
Now, are the cost of workers paid in your area?
Matt Darrah (49:44)
Well, so they had they have a few staff like four or five staff ⁓ that run seven counties. And then all the CASA advocates are volunteers. But yeah, they had a few staff.
Lance Hillsinger (49:56)
Yeah,
have the, like the supervisors are paid, there's an office, there's clerical support, there's a, you know, but beyond that, the ongoing person is just volunteer, yeah.
Matt Darrah (50:01)
Right.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, the actual advocates are are volunteer. so but yeah, so she she realized I mean, she's got a front row seat to the impact that this CASA worker had on this young man. And so, yeah, she went to she stopped working as a caseworker and went went to go work at CASA because it was, ⁓ you know, there was it was such a such an important role.
Lance Hillsinger (50:24)
That's nice.
Matt Darrah (50:37)
And that kid I was life.
Lance Hillsinger (50:39)
Yeah.
And people wonder why doesn't social worker keep the case or why they won't want one is there's turnover. There's burnout and two people get promoted or they transfer another office because they bought a new home in the other area and they don't want to commute an hour. ⁓ So there's reasons that have nothing to do with the child or the case that are just ordinary reasons that people change shops.
Matt Darrah (50:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's not, mean, you know, the caseworkers that I've known, you know, they'll work for a licensing agency and then, you know, they'll go to a different agency or whatever, just for various reasons. you know, it's on the one hand, you want the kiddos to have the same worker as much as possible, you know, we don't want to switch.
switch case workers just to switch case workers. you know, yeah, you want to try to keep them the same as much as possible. you know, there's going to be turnover, there's going to be job changes and career moves and stuff like that. Did you have like a mentor that really kind of impacted your work?
Lance Hillsinger (51:48)
Thank
Not really. had three or four different supervisors in LA County. I had one supervisor, same supervisor, about 10 years in San Luis Obispo County. I wouldn't call it a mentor. It was a straight supervisor. wasn't anything. She... I think County Council was very helpful sometimes. Sometimes if they would say something, they would say, you know, I go with this petition. I say this thing. says, Lance Lee with the most important fact.
And also that helped me write clear. And because the judge is looking at 20 cases, you don't want to get into the. Not that they're stupid or whatever, but you need to say it in really clear term, almost like a writing and I'm raised like a good newspaper article. You know what are the facts and let me know this and then what's the conclusion here and write it like that and and.
Matt Darrah (52:33)
Mm.
Yeah.
Right.
Lance Hillsinger (52:57)
I think that's one of struggles that some social workers have as a court system. You have to write in this system that is legalistic and you have to tie this to that and make as opposed to some sort of, I had one social worker come to me, look at this child, the drawing this child made.
Matt Darrah (53:05)
Mm-hmm.
Lance Hillsinger (53:17)
Isn't this important? That's not gonna hold up in court. it's not. You'd have to be testified as an expert in art therapy. And I go, no. But did the child say, you know, the boyfriend's a bad guy? No! You know?
Matt Darrah (53:20)
Right.
Right. Wow. So with the book,
where do folks find ⁓ it?
Lance Hillsinger (53:46)
It's on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and ⁓ other major booksellers.
In place of the parent inside child protective services.
Matt Darrah (53:54)
Okay, okay. And we'll put links to that in ⁓ the show notes and stuff so folks can find it. Do you have anything you feel like you'd like to say to foster and adoptive families or to other organizations out there that we haven't touched on?
Lance Hillsinger (54:17)
Well, I just want to express my appreciation to foster parents. To borrow the Peace Corps expression, the toughest job you'll ever love, that's the Peace Corps slogan. And I think that's very true for foster parents. I know some of them socially and I think that they're just, know, like anything, you know, but the...
Matt Darrah (54:27)
Yeah.
Lance Hillsinger (54:41)
people are scared, they're, you know, people are earning it for the money or there's, there's a bad apples in any group of people. But the percentage of angels is very high in foster parents and the bad apples are very, very, very few in between. kudos to anyone who's being a foster parent out there. ⁓ So, and then just a little, if I may, I have a website, LanceHillsinger.net.
Matt Darrah (54:45)
Yeah, yeah
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
Lance Hillsinger (55:09)
There's
my other books there. One of the things I found is that very few of my families ⁓ had any connection to organized religion. ⁓ And some found faith and that was helpful in their recovery and establishing it in life. I write about some of those stories in the book. But ⁓ my latest book to draw people to faith is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, A Court Investigator Exams the Gospels.
Matt Darrah (55:37)
Mmm.
Lance Hillsinger (55:37)
Majority of people today for the first time, I mean like since about 2020, are not attached to any organized religion. You go back, and I draw this very quickly, I know you wanna wind things up, but during the pandemic of 1917, the flu pandemic, the suicide rates the year before that pandemic was half of the year before COVID.
Our suicide rates are actually double what they are historically. And one of the reasons is that people are not attached. They're not attached to a religion, they're not attached to their neighbors. There's a lot of reasons for that, but one of the reasons is that I think that people are less connected to God. And so that was my purpose in bringing the book and coming through a different angle because a lot of people don't like knocking on the doors of what I would call the hard sell about religion.
Matt Darrah (56:15)
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
Lance Hillsinger (56:30)
That turns a lot of people off and this is very much a soft sell.
Matt Darrah (56:30)
Yeah.
It kind of sounds reminiscent, I don't know if you've seen Lee Strobel's book, A Case for Christ. It sounds kind of like that would be something similar. was a hardcore atheist, and then he set out to prove Christianity false and then ended up proving that it was real.
Lance Hillsinger (56:44)
I've heard of it, I have not read it.
Good
for him, good for him.
Matt Darrah (57:02)
So very cool, that's cool. So LanceHillsinger.net and again, we'll put links down in the show notes ⁓ for folks to find it. ⁓ Man, I appreciate.
Lance Hillsinger (57:07)
That's right.
Matt Darrah (57:17)
34 years in that environment. I just, I've had experience with lots of caseworkers over the last, you know, 12 years longer. And I know very, very few that, you know, that made it five or 10 years.
And so 34 years serving broken people and kiddos coming in horrible situations. mean, that's just, that's amazing. I mean, I do, I wanna say thank you. mean, just wow.
Lance Hillsinger (58:02)
Well,
I had a lot of help along the way.
I think San Luis Obispo was a better place than other places. There's some challenges unique to our county, but it was my pleasure to do it. I thoroughly enjoyed it though it had its days and I was just thrilled that this was what I felt. is talking a little bit about religion. I just felt that this was my calling and I'm very grateful for the opportunity.
Matt Darrah (58:28)
Yeah.
Well, again, thanks Lance for coming on. Again, it's LanceHillsinger.net. We'll put links to the books and his website down in the notes below. So if you want to connect with him, you can do it that way. Guys, thanks for tuning in. We want to have stories on here that some of them are real hard, tough stories, and some are filled with hope.
and things like that, but resources that are out there for foster and adoptive families and for the community to say, my gosh, this is what foster care is all about. ⁓ So, you know, like, share, subscribe to the episode wherever you're streaming it from. ⁓ You know, we want more and more people to see what we're doing here, see what foster parents go through, get some community built.
around foster and adoptive families. so guys, if you want, go to my website, panhandleorphan.org. You can set up a monthly donation, $100 a month, buys us all the clothes we need for a placement package, and $50 buys us a case of diapers, and 10 bucks buys us an outfit. And we are giving out so many placement packages to families as they bring kiddos in and we're...
helping them feel connected and valued and loved. And so if you're interested, go to our website, panhandleorphan.org and check that out. Angie, thanks again for your sponsorship for this episode. you need, if you got kids that are getting ready to go to college or thinking about it, middle school, great time to look into it. Go to collegesolutionsllc.com. Thanks you guys and have a great week.
Lance Hillsinger (1:00:20)
Thanks for everything, Matt
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