Practicing family attorney Gregory Hession confirms child protective service agencies engage in abusive, deliberate and dirty tricks motivated by federal funding.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-killed25-2009jul25,0,220819.story
Los Angeles Times
Dae'von Bailey was found beaten to death in his South L.A. home. “He smiled when he would see me,” a neighbor said.
By Hector Becerra and Garrett Therolf
July 25, 2009
A 6-year-old boy whose battered body was found on the floor of a South Los Angeles home was the subject of roughly a dozen calls to Los Angeles County’s child abuse hotline alleging abuse or neglect, a county official briefed on the case told The Times on Friday.
Dae’von Bailey had injuries that suggested blows or other trauma over an extended period of time, said Lt. Vincent Neglia of the LAPD’s Abused Child Section. Police are searching for the boy’s stepfather, Marcas Fisher, 36, as a “person of interest” in the case.
Dae’von’s death appears to fit a pattern in which children have been killed after their cases already had come to the attention of county child welfare officials.
The Times previously reported that last year, 14 children died after being evaluated by the county Department of Children and Family Services. Some of those deaths involved breakdowns in the system in which some agencies knew about potential abuse but had failed to share the information with other agencies. In other cases, investigators found that poor decisions by social workers had contributed to the deaths.
The county Board of Supervisors has repeatedly been warned by auditors and other experts that the child welfare system lacks efficient ways to share information about risks faced by children. After the reports in The Times, the board last month voted to approve a new effort to ensure that agencies share information.
Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose district includes South Los Angeles, called on the board Friday to appoint an independent investigator to thoroughly review Dae’von’s case. Thomas said the probe should include looking at the boy’s contact with Family Services and any other government agencies to identify any breakdowns that might have contributed to his death. The inquiry, if approved, would be the first of its kind since 2006.
“We need to get to the bottom of this,” Ridley-Thomas said. “To have a county that has a stain on its image, to have children dying under these circumstances, is very, very difficult to bear. . . . The public has a right to have confidence that we are taking care of these matters competently.”
Family Services Director Trish Ploehn, who since taking office two years ago has made better accountability of social workers a top priority (obvious not enough to make them do their jobs, in the two years since she took over roughly 29 children have died with agency involvement…probably many more), said she’s already launched “a full and comprehensive internal investigation.”
“This was a tragic and senseless death,” Ploehn said. “I’ve had a full team of people looking at it all day.”
On Friday, neighbors on South 87th Place tried to make sense of what had happened to Dae’von, whom they described as a sweet, well-behaved child. Relatives found him dead on the floor after being alerted by a frantic call from an unidentified person in his home. Fisher was not in the house when officers arrived. Neglia said Fisher had “no history of violent crime” but that he did have a history of property crimes. The coroner’s office had not determined the cause of death.
The county official, who was not authorized to comment on the case and therefore spoke on condition of anonymity, said the dozen calls reporting abuse or neglect occurred at various times in Dae’von’s life. The source said county officials had opened an investigation after each call. But it remained unclear Friday whether social workers had concluded that abuse had occurred or whether the county had an active case file on Dae’von at the time of his death.
The boy’s mother, Tylette Davis, 28, said Fisher had been with her when she was pregnant with Dae’von, but he wasn’t the boy’s biological father. She separated from him some time ago.
Davis said she never witnessed Fisher abuse Dae’von, but she said that about three years ago, Fisher “whipped” one of her older sons until “his butt was all red.”
Davis said that none of her six children, including Dae’von, were living with her because she was “going through things, and I thought he could take care of the kids while I got my stuff together.”
Dae’von and Davis’ 5-year-old daughter — who is now in protective custody — were staying with Fisher; a 14-year-old daughter was staying with a cousin in Compton; and her other three children were staying with her mother, also in Compton.
Early Friday morning, shortly after she was notified of her son’s death, Davis said county social workers went to her mother’s home and removed her 9-year-old son, 10-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. She said that she asked a woman why they couldn’t stay with her.
“She said I made a bad judgment by letting my two youngest kids stay with” Fisher, Davis said. “I’m hurt. I just lost my son,” Davis said. “There’s no way to describe the pain. . . . I want Marcas to turn himself in.”
Neighbors said Fisher and the children had moved into the house about three months ago. The street, with tall palm trees and tidy stucco homes and apartments, is described by residents as a relatively quiet oasis — neutral ground for the street gangs that battle over turf elsewhere.
Neighbor Kevin Davis, 49, no relation to Tylette, said Dae’von would stand ramrod straight in the front yard of the house, like a soldier, whenever he came home. With his little sister at his side, the boy would wait for Davis to give them a playful military salute.
“Hey, new neighbors!” Kevin Davis would say. The children would respond with their own salute.
“He smiled when he would see me, man,” Davis said of the boy. “He would stop in his play so he could stand and salute me. He was a sweet kid.”
Davis said Fisher moved in with his brother, who had lived there by himself. At least two other children — possibly belonging to Fisher — and Dae’von and his little sister lived there, Davis said.
Davis added that on Thursday, he had not seen the children playing in the front yard — something he found odd because Dae’von and the others were outside most days.
He and other neighbors say they heard the movie “Medea Goes to Jail” playing loudly in the house. Davis said the film seemed to be playing in a loop, along with a taped performance by comedian Katt Williams. Later, he wondered whether the sounds were intended to cover up tumult inside the house.
Davis said he left for Bible study in the early evening and that when he returned, the street was blocked by police cruisers.
“When I came back, my brother said, ‘Man, they killed that boy,’ ” Davis recalled.
Friday morning, a neighbor placed white balloons on the front door of the house. A stuffed lion in an aviator outfit sat on the stoop, along with a votive candle with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
hector.becerra@latimes.com
garrett.therolf@latimes.com
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
PREVIOUS STORIES ON THIS BLOG ABOUT L.A. COUNTY
http://stopcorruptdss.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/hawthorne-area-boys-death-shows-failings-of-system/
http://stopcorruptdss.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/unacceptable-child-deaths-in-la-county/
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/crime/ci_12584467
By Ruby Gonzales, Staff Writer
Posted: 06/13/2009 07:06:33 AM PDT
Ruben Ramirez, 18 months, of Whittier died of blunt force trauma Nov. 3, 2008. (Courtesy Photo)
WHITTIER – The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services investigated a report last year that 18-month-old Ruben Ramirez was being abused and neglected. It later ruled the allegations as inconclusive and closed the case Oct. 28, 2008
Six days later, the Whittier toddler was dead.
Coroner’s officials said someone hit and kicked Ruben, resulting in multiple blunt-force trauma. His Nov. 3 death was ruled a homicide. The Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau, which is investigating the killing, has not yet made any arrests.
Detectives are waiting for the District Attorney’s Office to make a decision on the case.
“We’ve talked to the principal parties we believe were involved. We’ve documented and conferred with the DA,” said Lt. Dan Rosenberg.
He said the District Attorney’s Office will decide what to do or have them go in another direction.
The Department of Children and Family Services served 56,241 children in 2008. Ruben was among the 14 children who died last year who were either in the care of DCFS or had prior contact with the department.
DCFS Director Trish Ploehn said the majority of the the 14 didn’t have an open case with the department. One was a boy who died from injuries he sustained from being shaken as a baby by his parents in 2001.
Some of Ruben’s relatives believe the DCFS failed him. Ploehn doesn’t think so.
“The fact this child died is a tragedy. (But) at the time we closed the case there was no imminent danger to the child,” Ploehn said.
Reports on the Ruben Ramirez case released at the request of this newspaper showed the department didn’t consider the toddler in danger once he and his mother, Vanessa Villalobos, moved out of the Whittier apartment where she stayed with her then-boyfriend and his relatives. She started taking parenting classes, stayed with her family then later moved in with a friend.
Villalobos denies ever spanking or hurting her son. Her former boyfriend, Robert Gutierrez, who she asked to watch Ruben on Nov. 3, couldn’t be reached for comment for this story.
But he has told detectives he wasn’t responsible for the toddler’s death.
Because a child who had a history with them died, DCFS launched an internal affairs investigation. The probe concluded recently and reports were sent to the performance management section which will determine if there’s any culpability and what discipline, if any, will be given.
Ploehn said she cannot name the four employees involved in the case, what positions they hold in the department or discuss the internal affairs investigation until the final outcome.
Vanessa Villalobos thinks DCFS could have done a better job.
“I don’t know exactly how their system worked. But keeping the case open a bit longer, making sure I finished class. I barely started (parenting) classes two weeks when they closed the case,” she said.
She would have wanted the department to visit her and her son once a month to see how they were doing – to be more proactive.
Villalobos said she would call the social worker who would return calls only after she called the supervisor.
“It was bad. I used to get frustrated,” Villalobos said.
DCFS got involved after a doctor noticed bruises on Ruben’s ear, cheek and buttocks during a Sept. 3, 2008 appointment to get lab results from an earlier visit, according to a Suspected Child Abuse report.
The report said the doctor noted some of the bruises are consistent with pinch marks and that Villalobos admitted to having an issue with alcohol.
“The mother said … when she drinks alcoholic beverages it would make her sleepy and she would fall asleep. Mother … believes while she was sleeping, someone was abusing infant at her boyfriend’s home,” according to the report.
However, Villalobos disputed parts of the report. She said there were no bruises on Ruben’s face. She saw suspicious bruising on his buttocks, got worried and took him to the doctor.
“I had told them I drink once in awhile but whenever I did, I wouldn’t pass out to the point where I would pass out and not hear anything,” she said.
She said if she drinks, it’s “a rare, rare occasion.” And when she did, she always had someone watching Ruben.
A Safety Assessment report by the department noted that the boy’s caregiver (mother) fails to protect him from serious harm or threatened harm. It said that one or more safety threats were present but didn’t explain what these were.
“Safety interventions have been initiated and the child will remain in the home as long as the safety interventions mitigate the danger. A SAFETY PLAN IS REQUIRED FOR THE CHILD TO REMAIN IN THE HOME,” the report said.
Ploehn said Villalobos moved in with her mother and grandmother who could assist with the child. The department deemed this home safe. When Villalobos later went to stay with a friend, DCFS also considered this home safe.
“The September case was closed because the child was now in a safe environment,” she said.
A social worker either finds an allegation of abuse substantiated, unsubstantiated or inconclusive.
Ploehn said an inconclusive finding is a big area. If there is a belief something occurred but there’s no way to determine when it occurred or who did it, she said that would fall under inconclusive.
“At the time that’s determined, you look at a way to ensure the child’s safety,” she said.
Once that’s done, Ploehn said the options include closing the case.
“We can’t keep the case open and keep interfering in the family’s life if they’re cooperative, if the child was placed in a safe situation,” she said.
By Nov. 3, 2008, Villalobos and her son were living with a friend in Whittier. The two women went to do errands and picked up Villalobos’ boyfriend on the way home.
Villalobos asked Gutierrez to watch over Ruben while she took a shower. She later helped him move the playpen to a room and put a sippy cup with milk for her son.
Her friend left to pick up her children.
While Villalobos was in the kitchen, she heard Gutierrez shout that Ruben wasn’t breathing. She said he came into the kitchen with a worried look on his face.
“I run there and I see him. And he looked lifeless. I start freaking out. What’s the matter with him? Bobby told me, `I don’t know. I saw him like that.”‘
She called 9-1-1 and they tried to perform CPR on Ruben. She said he started breathing.
Ruben was being taken by an ambulance to a helicopter when he went into cardiac arrest. Paramedics rushed him to Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital where he died. The doctor suspected abuse when he saw bruising to the back of the toddler’s head, according to the Nov. 3 Suspected Child Abuse Report.
Ploehn said it wasn’t because of this case or any other case but the department has revamped its initial response by retraining staff and shifting more experienced employees to the front end.
“Any child or baby death is the worst possible outcome,” she said. “We have a big operation. We have many children served. No child death is acceptable.”
ruby.gonzales@sgvn.com
(562) 698-0955, Ext. 3026
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/25florida.html?_r=1
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — After her daughter and a daughter-in-law were each jailed on drug charges last fall, Sylvia Kimble, 46, poor and with a deeply troubled history of her own, struggled to care for six grandchildren.
Only a few years ago, officials here say, the safest path would have been to split up the children in foster care. Yet here they are, rambunctious children wrestling in her living room, Ms. Kimble encouraging her daughter’s out-patient drug rehabilitation while also arranging for summer camp and a family trip to a water park.
Ms. Kimble hardly seemed like an ideal anchor for the children, three of whom have psychological problems. She had spent 20 years on the streets herself, using drugs and without receiving treatment for bipolar disorder. Clean for 11 years now, she nonetheless admitted she had little experience with parenting, having left her own children in her mother’s care.
But Florida’s radical transformation of its child-welfare system, marked by a wholesale shift in spending, allowed officials to take a chance on Ms. Kimble. Instead of spending large sums for foster care, it provided in-home counseling, therapy for the children and cash aid to help the makeshift family stay intact and even thrive.
While the focus on preserving families has taken hold in several states, here it has been backed by a federal waiver that allows the state to use foster care financing for prevention and mental health, an approach that advocates of the program hope will become standard nationwide.
In another move, popular with both conservatives and liberals, the state outsourced most child-welfare services to nonprofit foster agencies that have an incentive to preserve families.
In less than three years, Florida has reduced the number of children in foster care by 32 percent. Here in Duval County, essentially the city of Jacksonville, the number has declined by more than 50 percent since 2006. And the smaller number of children taken from homes deemed dangerous are more quickly reunited with parents or adopted.
The transformation, outside experts say, is remarkable for its speed — and was achieved without the protracted takeover by federal courts common in other states.
“Florida has quickly joined the top ranks of states that are turning around child welfare,” said Cari DeSantis, an executive vice president at Casey Family Programs in Seattle, which promotes family preservation. She cited Alabama, Illinois and New York City as other leaders in the movement.
Only six or seven years ago, there was a crisis mentality at Florida’s Department of Children and Families. The system was criticized for removing children too often and yet failing to protect them, including those in foster care. In one notorious case, it took the authorities two years to discover that a 5-year-old girl in foster care had disappeared in 2000; she is presumed to have been murdered.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush, a Republican, led the transfer of many child services to nonprofit agencies. State officials remain responsible for investigating charges of abuse and neglect, and deciding when to ask a judge to remove a child from the home.
In addition, Florida in 2006 was the only state to take full advantage of an experimental waiver offered by the Bush administration. Ordinarily, federal aid is determined by how many children are in custody. Florida asked to receive a flat fee that it could spend on counseling and other aid instead of foster care when it wished. The shift was seen as fiscally risky — an increase in foster children would not bring more money — but it has paid off.
“The new system is not only better for the children but it also saves money,” said George Sheldon, secretary of children and family services.
Investigators felt they could gamble on Ms. Kimble because for the first time they could offer extensive help as they kept close tabs on the home. “Family services has been a blessing,” Ms. Kimble said of the private agency that sent social workers to her home to teach about parenting, arranged needed therapies for the children and provided Wal-Mart vouchers for buying Christmas gifts.
To be sure, some critics say that in Florida and other pioneers of family preservation, flaws remain in child protection — illustrated recently in Florida by the suicide of a foster child who received psychiatric drugs without adequate oversight, and by reports that some social workers had falsified reports of family visits. The push to save families in many states and cities has often been set back by highly publicized deaths of neglected children.
Marcia Lowry, director of Children’s Rights, an advocacy group based in New York, said that keeping children with their parents was best but only if measures were in place to help the families and ensure safety.
“It worries me when people say the rate of children in care should be reduced by 50 percent,” Ms. Lowry said, referring to Florida’s statewide goal for 2012. “I don’t think you can do it that way. You need to look at the quality of decision making and services.”
A disquieting indicator in Florida, she said, was an overall rise in child deaths because of abuse and neglect in recent years.
But Alan F. Abramowitz, director of Florida’s family safety office, said the comparison was misleading because in 2006, deaths attributed to neglect rose after the definition was expanded to include more drownings. According to an independent university report, Mr. Abramowitz added, the rate of re-abuse of children within six months after their cases were closed was cut in half from 2006 to 2007.
For front-line social workers, a welcome change is an ability to work with parents who have not been formally charged with abuse or neglect. “We’re serving so many more families now, with a lot fewer kids in foster care,” said Nancy Dreicer, regional director for child welfare based in Jacksonville.
Bipartisan support has allowed the child-welfare system to preserve its state financing even in the current budget crisis.
As part of the privatization, a nonprofit group in Jacksonville, Family Support Services, is helping Ms. Kimble and her family.
“At first I didn’t think I could take on the challenge,” Ms. Kimble said.
She just gets by on federal disability payments for herself and the three of the children who have psychiatric problems, providing a total of about $2,700 a month. With its new flexibility, family services last fall gave her cash aid to pay utilities and muster a $500 down payment toward a subsidized house.
Ms. Kimble expects to close on the house at the end of July, and the group of eight will move in together. She knows that she is still learning how to be a parent, as is her daughter in the home.
“The thing I can share, though,” Ms. Kimble said, “is that I’ve got all the love in the world.”
http://www.tribtoday.com/page/content.detail/id/525066.html?nav=5021
By DARCIE LORENO / Tribune Chronicle
WARREN – Trumbull County Children Services Bureau Director Marcia Tiger remembers Tiffany Banks-Cross learning to walk in the halls of her agency.
Tiger said she and her CSB co-workers still are dealing with grief after the 21-month-old child died in what’s been ruled a homicide, the first of a foster child she remembers in her 30 years with the agency.
“There were always throngs of caseworkers around that child,” Tiger said. “She was a great little girl. We were devastated. We still are. We’re grieving right along with the natural parents.”
The Trumbull County Coroner’s Office on Wednesday ruled Tiffany’s April 2 death a homicide.
After an investigation by Champion police, CSB and the Coroner’s Office, the case has been handed over to the county Prosecutor’s Office. No charges have yet been filed.
Dr. Humphrey Germaniuk this week could not give a manner of death due to the pending investigation. A Champion police report states Tiffany’s foster mother, Bonnie Pattinson, said she found Tiffany not breathing after checking on her during a nap that morning.
After she ran next door, a neighbor performed CPR on the girl until police arrived to find the toddler unresponsive and blue with marks on her body about noon at the 663 Center St. W. duplex, police reports state. The report states that the marks were not caused by medical treatment and intervention during the call.
Marks were one thing Tiffany’s natural family said they were concerned with at her funeral. They said they saw bruises and other marks on Tiffany’s body and did not believe she died due to natural or medical causes.
After waiting nearly four months for a ruling and resolution to the ordeal, they want someone arrested. They also want to know why and how it could have happened on CSB’s watch.
“Who do you go after in this situation?” asked Tiffany’s uncle, Herb Putnam. “If I go out and murder someone, where am I going to be? I’m going to be downtown.”
Both Loretta Banks and the family of Tiffany’s father, Tommy Cross, plan to consult attorneys in the matter, though they aren’t sure what action can be taken and against whom.
According to Tiffany’s grandmother, Loretta Banks, her daughter Felicia, 19, gave birth to Tiffany on June 27, 2007, but never brought her home. CSB took custody of the baby and placed her in foster care. They visited her weekly until Felicia formally lost custody after their last visit in November.
As far as the foster-care process, Tiger said it is closely monitored from the licensure of a foster parent to the continuing care of the child in a placement.
Tiger couldn’t specifically discuss Tiffany’s case. but she said CSB conducts a home study, criminal background checks, security clearance, family, social and medical histories and psychological testing on anyone who wants to become a foster parent. Then, they make a recommendation to the state Ohio Department of Job and Family Services on the applicant, who then is either denied or granted a license.
They receive training before and after licensing on issues like bed wetting and separation anxiety, she said, and are not permitted to use corporal punishment.
“Our screening is extensive,” Tiger said. “Some screen themselves out.”
When a child is placed in a foster home, each foster parent is assigned an assessor and each child is assigned a caseworker. By state regulations, the assessor must meet with parents once every six months. The Trumbull County CSB requires they visit once every other month. The child’s caseworker must meet with them once every month, she said.
Bonnie and William Pattinson are no longer foster parents with the agency, she said.
Right now, there are roughly 195 kids in CSB’s custody, Tiger said. Children have passed away from medical causes before, she said, but never homicide, she said.
“Not in our county,” Tiger said, “and hopefully not ever again.”
dloreno@tribtoday.com
