Lillian Koller / Bureaucracies are notorious for their emphasis on the kind of wonkish rhetoric (“pushing the envelope,” or “thinking outside the box,”) that creates bloated organizations long on conversations and short on accomplishments.

Hawai’i Department of Human Services Director Lillian Koller said that when she took office in 2003, she took a stand against the kind of talk that sounds good but ultimately adds up to wallowing in words and empty promises. She said you have to be fierce to get anything done in politics, and she was ready to be a catalyst for change. It’s that attitude that first earned Koller the nickname “blunt instrument”–and more recently earned her the distinction of “public official of the year” from Governing Magazine, a publication that scrutinizes local governments across the nation.

Most notably, initiatives Koller developed to overhaul the state’s foster care system have led to a 43 percent decrease of children in foster care and a three-fold reduction in re-abuse cases in just three years statewide. She went beyond tackling the problems themselves–and first looked at the interworkings of the system in which these problems festered. What Koller found was a block in discourse between state courts and agencies, established in the name of child safety and confidentiality, but operating at the expense of those same children’s well-being.

“Everything was shrouded in secrecy,” she said. “Agencies aimed at strengthening families and preventing child abuse wanted to partner with us but we couldn’t even identify who needed help.”

Koller said that the when state government was operating under confidentiality standards, it meant her department couldn’t share records with the public, police or child protective services officials. These standards led to holes in case investigations, narrowing the scope of protection available to children involved.

“I’m a lawyer, so I said ‘bring me the law,’” Koller said. “Well, it turns out that federal law says CPS records are confidential but states can adopt exceptions. If it’s in the best interest of a particular child or children in general, you can make an exception. And our state hadn’t made any stipulation otherwise. We didn’t even have to change the law.”

Reanalysis of state and federal law meant agencies could start coordinating with one another and records could be disclosed at Koller’s discretion. She created a website that included information about missing children, so that concerned citizens could help. She said despite drawbacks that led to the adoption of confidentiality statutes, deciding to shift operations away from secrecy was a no-brainer.

“Trying to protect children from embarrassment, yes, there’s value in that,” she said. “But the children were paying too high a price. When they’re in danger and the community isn’t even allowed to know what happened, it leads to public outrage and that can be a good thing. We couldn’t have had the progress if we didn’t challenge the status quo of secrecy. It just wouldn’t have happened.”

As transparency improved, Koller said her department found that families were being broken up unnecessarily and at the expense of children’s well-being. It also meant that children in Hawai’i were being taken away from families at four times the national level. But rethinking the foster care system meant ultimately finding a better way to determine who should be a part of it–including better training of case workers to tailor questions to each family and facilitating new methods for interaction with families deemed at-risk but not at-risk enough to merit state intervention. In the past, DHS made internal notes about such families. Now, the department sends a letter right away to explain what is going on.

“We explain that we received this report and while we’re not taking action at this time, we urge them to take advantage of free programs–and we give them the name and contact numbers for the programs,” Koller said. “Then we explain that if they don’t take advantage of them, we will investigate. And if we confirm abuse or neglect, three things will happen. Number one, you will not be able to get a job in any industries that involve direct contact with children. Number two, you won’t be able to become a licensed foster parent for your own kin. And on top of that, you may lose your own child. So these parents are responding and they are participating voluntarily. Instead of coming in with a heavy hand, taking children and asking questions later, we are saying, ‘we’ll help you keep us out of your life.’”

Koller said extra cost of providing preventative services to willing parents is covered by federal grant money that Hawai’i has always qualified for, but never before utilized as such. Prevention, she said, is key.

“It’s about working with at-risk youth–helping them stay in school, avoid substance abuse, avoid teen pregnancy, avoid school drop-outs, get ready for work and really get ready to be an adult and raise a family themselves,” she said. “There’s a lot of research that shows foster kids in the lower economic strata end up in poverty themselves once they age out [of the system]. It’s a lot easier to grow a healthy child than to fix a broken adult.”

With a drastic dip in re-abuse rates and a massive reduction in the number of children going into the foster care system in the first place, DHS has fixed plenty in three short years. But while Koller is basking in some of her successes, she isn’t letting up. She said her major priority now is to help those children who do have to be removed from their parents by connecting them with other family members who can support them. It’s that new priority that already has those who dubbed her the “blunt instrument” now calling her “the kin maker.”

“Kin maker is a lot more warm and fuzzy, isn’t it?” Koller laughed. “But this is just as important a task. These kids tend to be teenagers or older kids and so it’s harder to find homes for them. Some of the kids don’t even see a need for a family. They say, ‘I’ll be 18 soon,’ but they don’t realize that a family really can be there for you for life, to share the good and bad with you, and that you really do get more out of giving than taking.”

So DHS started using software that was originally designed to connect Holocaust survivors, to determine whether local foster kids had family members who would take them in.

“This boy who had been in our child welfare system for 13 years didn’t think he had a single family member,” Koller said. “He didn’t want to connect to relatives, and he knew his mother had committed suicide, he just wanted to know if his father was still alive and who he was. We ran his name and his mother’s name through, and we found he has 118 relatives, so many of them right here in Hawai’i, successful business people ready to open up their arms to him.”

Koller said that when looking for matches, DHS runs each name through a national criminal registry and does an extensive background check. The department connected the boy Koller mentioned with his family, flew out his brother from New Mexico for a meeting and ended up changing his life.

“He said he assumed his whole family had rejected him, that they all didn’t want him” she said. “He felt like he didn’t exist and he wanted to be alone. Now, he has so much ‘ohana around him. The richness of his life, it’s amazing. But it takes work and we can’t abandon the needs of these children. We have to do everything we can.”

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