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State Board Kills Corporal Punishment Rules

By Elizabeth Simpson
Originally published in The Virginian-Pilot, April 19, 2001

Vehement public opposition led a state board Wednesday to kill regulations that would have allowed foster parents to use physical forms of punishment, such as spanking, on foster children.

The Virginia Board of Social Services voted unanimously at a meeting in Roanoke to withdraw the regulations, which were three years in the making. The original ban on corporal punishment of any type will stay in place.

Board members said the public outcry made the difference.

“We’re talking about foster children, our most fragile population of kids,” said board member Brian Campbell. “Many of us were queasy about these regulations from the beginning.'”

Child advocates and foster care parents who attended the meeting applauded the decision.

“It’s democracy at work,” said Patti Huber, legislative chairwoman for the Virginia Foster Care Association. “I’m proud that the public came forward on this issue and that the board listened.”

The issue surfaced last summer when the staff of the state Department of Social Services proposed the regulations. They would have allowed foster parents from private child-placing agencies to spank or use other forms of physical punishment—such as pinching, jerking, binding, shaking or locking a child in a room—as long as the discipline did not rise to the level of abuse.

The state’s legal definition of abuse is any action that “creates a substantial risk of death, disfigurement or impairment of bodily functions.”

At the time, Commissioner of Social Services Sonia Rivero said the regulations would help parents distinguish between abuse and discipline. She said she wanted to make sure potential foster and adoptive parents were not turned away because they refused to sign a statement saying they would not use any type of corporal punishment.

The regulations were passed at a June 14 Board of Social Services meeting at Peaks of Otter, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Most people, however, didn’t hear about the action until July, when a host of groups banded together to protest it.

The Coalition for the Protection of Children in Foster Care included social workers, pediatricians, child abuse prevention advocates, foster care parents and child-placing agency officials.

The regulations were supposed to take effect Nov. 1, 2000, but were suspended in July in response to the public outcry. A hearing in Richmond in September drew 53 people who opposed the regulations and eight who supported them. The board also received about 350 letters and e-mails opposing the change and about 20 favoring it.

In October, the board assigned an ad-hoc committee to review the regulations and propose changes. On Wednesday, that committee recommended to the board that it withdraw portions of the new rules that allowed corporal punishment but keep other parts.

The board decided to scrap the entire set of regulations, however, because eliminating portions of them would have required more public hearings. Board members wanted the issue of corporal punishment to be settled once and for all.

“You could have put new tires on it and get it down the road, but it was still going to fall apart in the end,” Campbell said.

Board member Robert Spadaccini said the past 10 months have shown the board how important public involvement is in writing regulations.

Child advocates also felt the controversy provided a valuable public lesson.

“The board members have fulfilled their role in the citizen review process,” said Stephen Jurentkuff, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse, Virginia, who helped organize the coalition against the regulations. “They’ve stood up to the challenge of doing what’s in the best interest of the children.”