The death of a child early Monday in the Oklahoma County shelter is heartbreaking to all involved. In more than 25 years of operations by the shelter’s director, this is the first death of a child in the shelter.
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Thousands of children have received excellent care at the shelter, and the services today are better than ever. Space and staff have been added, two nurses are employed at the shelter, and ready access to a pediatrician exists. At this point, we have no reason to believe that the death was other than by natural causes. The 3-month-old was seen breathing normally less than two hours before he was observed not breathing.
Nevertheless, the demographics of this child are increasingly typical of the children entering foster care. They are increasingly younger (under age 3), from multiple-birth families and often with only one parent in the home.
This pattern should not be surprising to anyone. The national trends in out-of-wedlock births (more than 35 percent of all births) are extraordinary. These couples are increasingly less prepared to be parents than prior generations. Many of the couples saw their parents divorce and have themselves been reared in single-parent households. Nothing on the horizon indicates that this trend is going to abate any time soon. More than half of all births in Oklahoma are funded with Medicaid, and nearly half of all births nationally are funded with Medicaid.
It is my belief that federal Medicaid laws should be amended to permit states to require, as a condition of Medicaid paying for the birth, that moms and dads, whether married or not, be required (except in cases of domestic violence) to attend pre-birth, healthy family education classes. Most young parents love their children greatly. But a healthy family relationship is not an experience most of them have ever had.
Fortunately, Oklahoma is one of five sites nationally where such a curriculum is being tested voluntarily. We hope to learn from this study if more healthy two-parent families can be formed by such an effort. Wouldn’t it be nice if someday children were reared in such healthy families that no shelter would be necessary?
Hendrick is director of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.
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