Injuries to Minors

January 26, 2016

Oregon-focused Study Highlights Dangers Surrounding Home Birth

A harrowing story in the magazine Pacific Standard highlights how loosely regulated midwife-supervised births often are, and the tragic consequences that can result. As the article’s sub-head notes: “in 30 states, Certified Professional Midwives are licensed to practice medicine with virtually no medical training.” This, in turn, can lead to serious injuries to children and even, as in this case, to deaths.

The article focuses on the experience of a Nevada couple whose baby died a few minutes after being born. As it lays out in detail, the warning signs about this particular pregnancy were clear for any trained professional to see. The problem was that by hiring a midwife in a state with particularly lax regulation the parents were left getting advice from someone fundamentally unqualified. “Had (the baby) been born in a hospital under the care of a nurse-midwife or physician, he almost certainly would have lived,” the magazine concludes.

The article goes on to note that it was only after matters had gone too far that the parents discovered that the ‘supervising physician’ listed by the midwife had never met her, and that the woman in question had moved to Nevada to evade a license suspension in California.

January 12, 2016

Day Care Case Raises Questions About State’s Approach to Protecting Children

by Matthew D. Kaplan

As the scandal surrounding, Give Us This Day, a foster care provider, and its oversight by the state grows it is becoming clear that a number of state officials did not have their priorities in order when it came to preventing Oregon injuries to children.

As outlined in a recent Oregonian article, newly released documents show that state officials were warned nearly seven years ago about possible abuses at the center. The potential dangers there grew from an operation where, according to a 2009 memo from the head Oregon’s child welfare programs, the site was unlicensed, and there were “numerous concerns… the most serious of which is that every single staff person has a criminal record.”

Yet, as the newspaper goes on to note, the event that eventually prompted the state to stop placing children with this questionable facility involved money rather than safety: allegations that Give Us This Day “had misspent nearly $2 million in state funding.” The newspaper reports that the latest batch of records released to the public “add to disturbing questions about state officials’ willingness and ability to crack down on troubled (foster care) providers.”

December 23, 2015

British Boy’s Death Leads to New Focus on Concussions in Youth Sports

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A lengthy article published earlier this month by the New York Times (see link below) is a fascinating addition to the growing public conversation here in the United States on youth sports and concussions.

The piece tells the story of one family’s struggle to change the laws related to concussions and youth sports in Scotland after their 14-year-old son “died after being hit in the head multiple times during a rugby match in which he should have been pulled from the field.” In the wake of their son’s death the bereaved parents became very public advocates for a re-thinking of youth sports and partnered with some of Britain’s most prominent doctors to “produce some of the most comprehensive concussion guidelines in the world.” The key difference between Scotland and the United States, according to the paper, is that the governing bodies of individual sports are no longer allowed to set their own protocols for when an athlete should be pulled off the field and how he or she should be assessed. Instead, “blanket guidelines aim to protect all amateur athletes and take the guesswork out of assessing potential concussions by calling for players to be removed from the game at the first suspicion of injury.”

While no equivalent national standard exists here in the United States we in Oregon are lucky enough to have something along these lines at the state level. In 2009 legislation known as “Max’s Law” required Oregon school districts to use a standard set of concussion guidelines. Four years later a companion piece of legislation known as “Jenna’s Law” extended that requirement to non-school athletic programs such as club sports, travel teams and leagues organized at the municipal or county level.

November 30, 2015

Preventing Injuries to Children by Improving Holiday Safety Awareness

by Matthew D. Kaplan

As the holiday season kicks off this is a good moment to remind ourselves how important safety is, particularly when it comes to preventing injuries to children, especially since some dangers are not as obvious as one might imagine.

A recent report from Michigan Radio, the state’s public radio network, focused on potentially hazardous toys and other common items, taking its cue from an annual survey issued by the state’s Public Interest Research Group. The good news from the PIRG report is that “none of the toys this year tested positive for lead,” but the radio network went on to note that other hazards remain. In particular it quotes an emergency medicine specialist urging parents “to look out for toys that can break into small parts.”

A particular focus of the report is devices that are not toys but which children are apt to play with such as key fobs, small flashlights or inexpensive watches that may contain small ‘button-style’ batteries. These can be “particularly dangerous” if they are swallowed: the moisture in a child’s body can activate the battery’s contacts leading to dangerous burning of the esophagus. The report notes that many of the potential dangers stem from the fact that by law “button batteries have to be held in place on toys with screws – but that’s not a requirement for other common devices.

November 18, 2015

Oregon Considers Changes to Foster Care System

by Matthew D. Kaplan

An article this week in The Oregonian described an unexpected appearance by the governor at a State Senate committee hearing considering ways to prevent injuries to children by overhauling Oregon’s foster care system. As the newspaper explained, the hearing, which it described as “tense”, was prompted “by accusations that officials did little as a Portland provider neglected vulnerable children.”

The governor made “a surprise appearance before the Senate’s human services committee, (and) offered details on a promise this month to order an independent review of the Department of Human Services. The assessment… will focus on abuse investigations, licensing practices and how the far-flung agency can better share warning signs, among other topics.”

The hearing was prompted by the discovery that state officials continued to place children with a Portland facility even after they were aware of abuse allegations there, according to the paper. The investigation was set in motion by the state’s justice department but raises broader legal questions. If a child were to die at such a facility both state officials and the people directly responsible for caring for the children could be the subjects of an Oregon wrongful death action. Injuries to children are especially serious, which is why the law needs to allow for swift and tough action in both criminal and civil courts.

November 10, 2015

Arbitration Requirements Close off Court Access

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A groundbreaking three-part series published last week by the New York Times has drawn much-needed attention to a problem threatening almost everyone in America despite the fact that many people are not even aware that it impacts them directly.

As the paper reports in part one of the series: “Over the past few years it has becomes increasingly difficult to apply for a credit card, use a cellphone, get cable or Internet service, or shop online without agreeing to private arbitration. The same applies to getting a job, renting a car or placing a relative in a nursing home.” As the series goes on to detail, while arbitration may originally have been conceived as a way for businesses to resolve disputes among themselves more quickly and cheaply than by using our courts it has become a more-or-less routine way for corporations to tilt the field in their favor in any dispute with their customers. The newspaper quotes a federal judge in Boston who aptly describes this development as “among the most profound shifts in our legal history… Ominously, business has a good chance of opting out of the legal system altogether and misbehaving without reproach.”

What makes the new realities outlined in the Times so scary is how widespread they have become in the years since 2011 when a Supreme Court ruling opened the way for wider use of arbitration clauses and made filing class action lawsuits more difficult. The system is particularly lopsided because the growing class of professional arbitrators who administer it generally rely on large corporations to bring them repeat business (an arbitrator must be approved by both sides to a dispute, but large companies have far more knowledge of who they are agreeing to, and can make it clear they will not pick a given individual again if he or she rules against the company) – a conflict of interest that the Times examines at length and which strips away even the thin façade of impartiality that surrounds the arbitration process.

October 31, 2015

Take Extra Care for Halloween this Year

by Matthew D. Kaplan

As an article in today’s Oregonian warns, Halloween has long been a night when pedestrians and drivers alike need to exercise particular caution. This year, however, the fact that October 31 is also the evening when we move from daylight saving time back to standard time makes tonight especially dangerous.

Halloween has always been a night when everyone should be especially aware of the possibility of injuries to children. In the twilight and early evening hours small children – many wearing dark costumes – are running around residential neighborhoods all over the country. The danger of a car accident rises significantly even for the most careful of drivers. The Oregonian reports that Halloween is traditionally the third-worst day of the year for pedestrian fatalities, surpassed only by New Year’s Day and December 23.

In recent decades, however, Halloween has also emerged as an adult party night with a reputation for drinking and driving that rivals New Year’s Eve. According to today’s article “in 2012 when 54 pedestrians died in car crashes on Halloween nationwide, nearly half of those deaths involved a drunk driver.”

October 11, 2015

Injuries to Children Prompt Examination of Foster Care

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Problems at a Portland-area foster care facility have brought wider issues surrounding the state’s child care system to public attention, including making it the focus of a recent state senate committee hearing. According to a recent article in The Oregonian “the issue flared… when the Senate’s human services committee confronted the Department of Human Services over accusations that a publicly-funded foster care agency abused or neglected children with little apparent oversight from state officials.”

Charges included the withholding of food, use of force with the children and unclean and unsafe conditions in some facilities. The newspaper notes that state officials stopped sending children to one particular facility in North Portland last month, but also raised broader questions about the system as a whole. More legislative hearings are expected in the coming months and several investigations are now underway. In addition, a former employee of the facility accused colleagues of altering reports and other data to conceal the wrongdoing. The director of the facility also appeared before the committee, where she denied all of the accusations.

According to the newspaper, state officials claim that 83 percent of the children in foster care receive a visit from a state worker each month. As this case demonstrates, however, that simply is not good enough. Injuries to children in the Oregon foster care system are far more likely to occur, and will be far more difficult to prevent, as long as both public and private foster homes are able to operate with so little supervision.

October 5, 2015

Injuries to Children and the Risk of Laundry Pods

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Laundry ‘pods’ – essentially pre-packaged detergent that can be thrown in the machine with no need to measure it – have only been around for a few years but have quickly become popular here in Oregon and across the country. As a recent story on MyCentralOregon.com details, however, they also pose a significant risk of Oregon injuries to children – a risk critical enough that the industry is being forced to take note.

According to the website “after tens of thousands of calls from frightened caregivers to poison control centers across the country” the products are being remade. The site reports that according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers there were nearly 12,000 incidents involving laundry pods and children age six or younger last year. This year there were 7,184 such incidents through July – a figure that puts the country on pace to surpass that shocking 2014 number.

As a result Consumer Reports is recommending that people with young children in the house not use liquid laundry pods. When swallowed, the liquid detergent can “sometimes cause children to experience excessive vomiting and difficulty breathing,” MyCentralOregon reports.

August 29, 2015

Oregon Distracted Driving Case Leads to Criminal Conviction

by Matthew D. Kaplan

The Oregonian this week reported on a guilty plea by a 24-year-old Gresham woman in an Oregon distracted driving case that encapsulates everything that is wrong with this growing problem.

According to the newspaper, the defendant admitted to “taking cellphone video of her child when she crashed into three teens outside their high school in January.” The three 14 and 15-year-old girls “sustained skull, pelvis and knee fractures” according to the paper, as well as “a broken nose, concussion and a lost tooth, and… a torn ACL and a concussion, court documents said.”

“Investigators found a 19-second clip on (the driver’s) phone that showed her hands off the wheel just before she plowed into the teens in the crosswalk, court documents said. She appeared to be holding the phone in her left hand and making gestures with her right hand at her son sitting in the back seat. Phone records show she had also been texting before the crash,” the Oregonian writes.