For the first two years of its existence, New Hampshire’s child services watchdog office was limited by a grim restraint: It could help only those children who were already hurt.
That watchdog, the Office of the Child Advocate, was set up in 2018 to ensure children are being adequately served by New Hampshire’s child services agency, the Division for Children, Youth and Families. That agency typically intervenes during or just before the most serious cases of child abuse or neglect in the home.
If a child was exhibiting warning signs long ahead of that, the OCA did not have the tools to get involved.
Now, that’s set to change. A new law signed this summer expands its oversight to all state agencies that provide services to children, as well as to other public and private organizations.
That would include private residential providers, organizations that serve children with developmental disabilities and those that provide special education services, said Moira O’Neill, the office’s director.
The expanded jurisdiction law went into effect Monday. To O’Neill, it’s a crucial development for the watchdog office.
“If I had been involved in developing this office, I would have put us like this from the beginning,” said O’Neill in an interview last week.
The change brings the office in line with how other states, including Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have structured their child advocacy offices, she said. And it’s particularly important because it means the office will no longer have to wait for children to be harmed before assisting them.
“We want to make sure services on the front end and on the prevention side help children get healthy and get their needs met, long before they’re looking at abuse or neglect or adjudication,” she said.
With the expanded jurisdiction, the office will be more active in bringing children’s voices to the table when policymakers consider changes to prevent harm and to promote the kinds of supports that will help families, she said.
It also will provide information about services and help navigate resources to citizens who contact the office, review complaints and, if necessary, conduct investigations.
The Office of the Child Advocate was created in 2018 as part of an effort to reform the state’s child protection system in the wake of two toddler deaths in 2014 and 2015. Its work since then has included systemic reviews of the use of restraint and seclusion of children in residential care and how the state supports infants born exposed to drugs and alcohol.
The office currently has four full-time staffers and one part-time worker. Though there is a hiring freeze statewide due to the coronavirus pandemic, O’Neill said she plans to seek approval to fill an open position.
O’Neill says while the mission of the OCA will stay the same, the new breadth of its oversight means that it will have newfound access to information about children – and authority to raise concerns.
“A lot of the work that we’re already doing is going to continue,” O’Neill said. “It’s just that we can go a few steps further.”
For instance, if the family of a child who has been placed in a residential facility noticed that child had bruises and reported it to the OCA, the original OCA had access to the child’s record only if the child was referred to DCYF.
The new OCA will now also have information on children referred to by a school system, O’Neill says.
For children in the school system who are exhibiting warning signs, the OCA can help them too now, even before DCYF takes notice.
And for children who may be exposed to opioids and other substances at birth, the OCA will no longer need to wait until the child is expressing behavioral problems later on in life. They can press for developmental supports for the child at birth, hoping to head off any side effects well in advance, O’Neill said.
“Same child, earlier intervention,” O’Neill said.
While the OCA deals with the system on an individual level, taking on complaints and advocating for those kids within the system, it’s also focused on broader policy goals. Having more expansive access to confidential information across New Hampshire’s state agencies will help the office identify gaps and inefficiencies and recommend fixes to the governor and lawmakers, O’Neill said.
“The power and the authority of the Office of the Child Advocate is in access to information,” O’Neill said.
Monday’s new law includes not just an expansion of the jurisdiction of the Office of the Child Advocate, but also a significant change in its operation: No longer will the office be under the control of the state Attorney General’s Office.
Instead, the office will now “operate with full independence from any state official, department, or agency in the performance of its duties,” according to the new law, RSA 21-V.
That change was controversial. When the law was being debated earlier in 2020, representatives from the Department of Justice argued it was too much independence for the watchdog group.
But last week, O’Neill argued that it was necessary for the office to have that independence in order to maintain the confidence of the public and work effectively.
“People need to trust that the Office of the Child Advocate is not part of any system,” she said. “That the Office of the Child Advocate is independent and impartial. So that when we go in and look at particularly system-level problems, people can be sure that we are looking at it objectively, without any undue influence.”