ST. PAUL TODDLER FOUND SUBMERGED IN BATH DIED THURSDAY

St. Paul toddler found submerged in a bathtub died Thursday

 

 

Investigation focusing on time toddler, sibling were alone

 

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_12755782

By Emily Gurnon

egurnon@pioneerpress.com

Updated: 07/04/2009 10:15:54 PM CDT

The toddler who was found submerged in a bathtub at a St. Paul foster home Wednesday has died.

The 18-month-old girl, whom police have not yet identified, was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, but the medical examiner received the body Saturday, said Sgt. Paul Schnell, spokesman for the St. Paul police. It was not immediately clear why officials said the child was in critical condition until Saturday.

Investigators could present a case to the Ramsey County attorney’s office for possible charges by the middle to the end of this week, Schnell said.

“We’re devastated,” said Barbara Wright, the foster mother. She said the negative media reports are insensitive to the child’s biological family and added that their attorney has advised them not to talk to reporters.

“This is a terrible tragedy for the biological parents of the toddler, as well as for the family that was trying to provide a safe environment for the child,” Schnell said.

“The only thing that we can hope is that it serves as a reminder to all of us about the importance of keeping an eye on our kids and how quickly tragedy can strike,” he said.

An autopsy is scheduled for today.

Many questions remain about the incident.

The victim had been in a bathtub with a 3-year-old sibling at the home in the 1600 block of Darlene Street when her foster father stepped out of the room momentarily, Schnell said.

An adult, who described the man who had left the room as his father, went in the bathroom and found the younger child submerged and unresponsive, Schnell said.

Paramedics began resuscitation and took the girl to Children’s Hospital and Clinics in St. Paul.

Police are investigating how long the children were alone in the tub.

“They don’t have an exact length of time; that is one of the things that they’re focused on,” Schnell said.

As of Saturday, Daniel and Barbara Wright still had an active license to provide foster care for up to five children, according to Minnesota Department of Human Services online records. The department hasn’t issued any sanctions to the license since it was issued in March 2002, according to the DHS licensing division.

Last year, St. Paul police notified child-protection officials after the foster mother said she was having trouble caring for children in the home because her husband had left the home after an argument, according to a June 2008 police report.

Janine Moore, director of Ramsey County Children and Family Services, said she couldn’t comment on whether her office has investigated or is investigating allegations about the home.

Neither Wright has a criminal record.

Emily Gurnon can be reached at 651-228-5522.

FUNDAMENTAL LEGAL RIGHT OFTEN DENIED PARENTS

 

http://www.freep.com/article/20090705/OPINION05/907050455/Fundamental+legal+right+often+denied+parents

BY VIVEK SANKARAN • July 5, 2009

Last week, the Michigan Supreme Court refused to hear the case of Ronald McBride, a father whose parental rights to his three children were permanently terminated despite the fact that the juvenile court denied him the right to a lawyer throughout the entire case.

The Department of Human Services admitted that the trial court made a mistake. The Michigan Attorney General’s Office conceded that the father’s statutory and constitutional rights were violated and that reversal was required. National groups, including the National Association of Counsel for Children and the Public Counsel Project, urged the court to correct the injustice. And Justice Maura Corrigan, joined by Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly, wrote a powerful dissent providing compelling reasons why the court should hear the case.

All for naught. The court’s one-sentence response: “We are not persuaded the questions presented should be reviewed by the court.”

With that, the court endorsed the permanent severance of the parent-child relationship — often characterized as the “civil death penalty” — without affording the Bay County man the most fundamental of procedural rights: the right to a lawyer.

The McBride outrage was no fluke. But even though the Michigan Juvenile Code and court rules explicitly provide poor parents the right to an attorney in all child protective proceedings, much work remains to be done to implement this right and to ensure that parents receive effective representation.

In 2005, the American Bar Association concluded with respect to parent representation in Michigan that “what was reported to evaluators … and what was observed in court hearings fall disturbingly short of standards of practice.” More recently, Justice Corrigan observed a “disturbing and recent pattern of trial court’s failures to appoint counsel and untimely appointments of counsel to represent parents in child protective proceedings.”

How lawyers help judges

Justice Corrigan’s observations match anecdotal evidence documenting wide variation across the state in the quality of representation provided to parents. Each county sets its own standards for how parents’ attorneys are appointed. Compensation rates, training requirements, and the timing of appointments vary widely. The quality of counsel parents receive often depends on the county in which they reside.

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And quality counsel matters. Without zealous advocates, parents face an uphill battle navigating the child welfare system. Far too many children are needlessly removed from their homes, and frequently parents feel overwhelmed by a complex system governed by an array of interrelated federal and state laws, controlled by sophisticated professionals who are the only ones who know the rules.

Alone, parents lack the tools to tell their stories or challenge governmental overreaching.

The assistance of a zealous advocate not only reassures the parent that he or she is not alone in navigating the child welfare labyrinth, but also improves the quality of decisions that courts make. By challenging unreliable information and producing independent evidence of their clients’ strengths and supports, attorneys ensure that courts rely upon only the most accurate and complete information available prior to rendering life-altering decisions.

Additionally, these lawyers expand options available to courts by proposing creative alternatives, such as guardianships or other custody arrangements, intensive in-home services to preserve a child’s placement in the home, or extensive visitation between parents and children supervised by family members, friends or neighbors.

Without zealous parent representation, courts lack an important perspective — that of the parent with whom reunification is sought — which increases the likelihood that courts will reach an erroneous decision.

In the child’s best interestNot surprisingly, national studies strongly suggest that strong advocacy for parents dramatically improves outcomes for children. Studies from Washington, New York and California demonstrate that strengthening parent representation leads to fewer children being removed from their homes, shorter stays for children in foster care, and fewer terminations of parental rights — exactly the types of results the system should strive for.

And ensuring that only those children who truly need foster care enter the system would result in significant public cost savings. As evaluators in the State of Washington concluded, “the enhancement of parents’ representation has the potential to save increasing millions in state funding on an annualized basis.”

Fortunately, child welfare leaders across the state recognize the need to strengthen the quality of parent representation, and important discussions will begin in upcoming months to fix the system.

For the sake of our children, we can only hope those talks bear fruit soon.

VIVEK SANKARAN is a clinical assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School.

14 POLICE CALLS TO FOSTER HOME LED UP TO NEAR-DEATH

 

The near-drowning was the latest in five years worth of calls to the St. Paul house, including one last year from the frantic provider herself.

 

http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/49894862.html?page=1&c=y

By ANTHONY LONETREE, Star Tribune

Fourteen times in five years, police have been called to a St. Paul foster home where an 18-month-old girl nearly drowned this week after being left unattended in a bathtub.

Once last year, the caller was the foster-care provider herself, seemingly frantic about her husband leaving the house after an argument and warning she was “emotionally unable to care for the children” when alone, police said.

Police and state human services records have identified the foster-care providers as Barbara L. Wright, 46, and her husband, Daniel L. Wright, 50.

Since that afternoon, five more calls have been made to police about the house across the street from an East Side playground, the most recent involving the near-drowning Wednesday. The girl remains hospitalized in critical condition.

Initial reports indicated the 18-month-old and her 3-year-old sibling were left alone for a brief period before the toddler was found submerged, said police spokesman Sgt. Paul Schnell. The 3-year-old since has been moved elsewhere. Nobody appeared to be home Thursday or Friday.

Investigators now are working to determine how long the children were left unattended, Schnell said. It wasn’t clear how many children had been living in the house.

Paul Gustafson, a spokesman for the Ramsey County attorney’s office, said that as of Thursday, police had not forwarded to prosecutors any request to consider charges. Since 2007, however, authorities have prosecuted at least two cases in the Twin Cities area in which mothers left toddlers alone in bathtubs and returned to find them drowned.

Last year, a Lakeville woman was sentenced to six months in jail and 10 years’ probation after an August 2007 incident in which she left her 11-month-old daughter and 2-year-old son in the tub while she shopped for shoes on the Internet. The girl died.

Earlier this year, a Brooklyn Center woman was spared jail time but was sentenced to six months’ house arrest after her 13-month-old son drowned in a tub while she talked on the phone for nearly 40 minutes.

At the start, Wednesday’s incident in the 1600 block of Darlene Street was investigated as a possible case of child neglect, according to a report filed Wednesday.

Past stresses

According to the June 4, 2008, report, Wright called 911 “continually” that day to report that her husband had gone and that she was unable to care for the children alone.

Daniel Wright had left to “cool down” after the couple argued, she told police then. She needed him, she added, to help care for their 5-year-old daughter and to lift in the bathroom a foster child using a wheelchair. She was very tired from a lack of sleep, the police report said, and was suffering from back pain.

Police persuaded her husband to return home.

The officer who was at the scene wrote that it was difficult to determine what kind of care the disabled child might be getting when the husband was not there. But the officer added: “The residence was clean and all three of the children inside the residence appeared to be clean and cared for,” the report said.

Police shared the report with child-protection authorities, but it was unknown Friday whether Ramsey County conducted any follow-up investigation.

Of the 14 police calls to the address since June 2004, three stemmed from disturbances and four calls involved incidents described only as “domestics.” No reports were written for those seven calls, making it difficult to gauge the seriousness of the incidents. In May 2008, police also responded to a report about a runaway there.

The house, which began taking foster children in 2002, is licensed to provide care for up to five children younger than 18.

Because of restrictions in the state’s data practices law governing child-protection matters, Schnell said there were limits to what he could say about Wednesday’s incident. For example, when asked whether any foster children had been removed from the house Wednesday, he said only: “There are no foster children there at the present time.”

Quiet aftermath

No one answered the door at the house Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. Children’s scooters were in the grass out front; a trampoline and a camper took up much of the back yard.

Across the street, neighbor Nicolas Wegener, 26, said that given the size of the foster home, he suspected the living conditions there would be tight. The house, which sits on a corner lot, was much like his own home, he said, and “I couldn’t imagine having more than two kids in this place,” he said.

Other neighbors, who asked not to be identified, said that some of the younger people at the house — residents and visitors — were unruly at times. Asked how the foster home fit into the area, one neighbor said: “Everyone in the neighborhood feels sorry for the woman living next door.”

Anthony Lonetree • 612-673-4109