“INCREASE OVERSITE? , HOW ABOUT CRIMINAL CHARGES FOR CPS INSTEAD?”

Boy’s beating death prompts L.A. County agency to increase oversight of child abuse cases

 

The Department of Children and Family Services will now have an administrator review all cases, even those in which abuse allegations are deemed ‘unfounded.’

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-death31-2009jul31,0,7945983.story

By Hector Becerra

July 31, 2009

Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services said Thursday that it would increase administrative oversight of child abuse investigations, review hundreds of past cases and provide more training to social workers and managers as officials deal with public outrage over the beating death of a 6-year-old boy last week.

The most significant change is a new layer of review when a social worker completes an investigation into child abuse allegations. An assistant regional administrator will now review each case, even when a social worker has declared the allegations “unfounded.”

The agency’s director, Trish Ploehn, announced the changes as the Los Angeles Police Department continued to search for Marcas Fisher, who police allege fatally beat Dae’von Bailey. Records show that social workers were told in April and June that the man had hit the boy — but in both cases, the county decided to leave the boy with Fisher.

The LAPD said that the boy also told adults at his school that he was being hit and that the school reported it to the Department of Children and Family Services. In both cases, Fisher denied the allegation, and the boy told social workers he had been physically abused, according to documents obtained by The Times.

L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina had proposed earlier this week that the agency establish another level of oversight in child abuse investigations. But the supervisor said only time will tell whether the change will better protect children served by the department. Molina noted that social workers are already trained and policies are in place to protect children, but they aren’t always followed.

“All these policies are in place. What happens is people are not doing things,” Molina said. “And that is why you lose a child. . . . Right now, under policy, there is no reason why that child would be left with someone with a criminal record.”

Fisher had been convicted of rape as a teenager and of nonviolent offenses as an adult.

L.A. County has struggled to address a pattern in which children have been killed after their cases already had come to the attention of county child welfare officials.

Dae’von’s mother, Tylette Davis, said she was letting the boy and a 5-year-old daughter live with Fisher while she dealt with some problems. The suspect was the girl’s biological father but not Dae’von’s.

Davis has said that she never saw her former boyfriend abuse Dae’von, but added that about three years ago, Fisher badly “whipped” an older son.

According to records, county officials are examining several issues, including the timeliness of social worker responses to the April and June child abuse calls.

The first referral was received on April 27, and alleged that Fisher had shoved Dae’von into a bathroom sink, injuring his nose. The boy missed one week of school. Documents indicate that a social worker could not find the family because they were not living at a listed address.

The social worker did not arrive at their home until more than two weeks later.

In addition to the added oversight, Ploehn has directed her staff to review 500 past child abuse cases to determine if there are problems with them. Molina has also proposed a pilot program in parts of the San Gabriel Valley and the Eastside in which all children who come to the county’s attention as possible child abuse victims would be examined at a county facility by forensic pediatricians and other experts trained to spot abuse. In Dae’von’s case, the private medical providers who examined him did not substantiate that there was abuse.

On Thursday, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas announced that he will seek a $10,000 reward for information leading to Fisher’s arrest.

hector.becerra@latimes.com

How many times will this CPS play the Increase Oversite card as a way to get out of responsibility for the deaths of these children?  What they have done is a pattern of child deaths and they need to be held criminally responsible for these deaths.  Enough is enough, how many more children have to die in L.A. County, before CPS is charged with these deaths!

NEW YORK’S CHILD ABUSE HOT LINE CAN SHIELD FALSE COMPLAINTS

 

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=826481&TextPage=1

 

By CASEY SEILER COMMENTARY

First published in print: Friday, July 31, 2009

 Someone is saying terrible things about Nicole Rera.

What’s worse, they’re saying them to the state of New York via the hot line set up to collect anonymous reports of child abuse.

So far, none of the three sets of complaints against Rera, who lives in Gloversville, have been substantiated; the first two have been officially recognized as “unfounded,” while the third is still under investigation.

Rera’s trouble started in January, after she separated from her husband. The couple, originally from Long Island, had been together for 10 years and married for three. Rera says the marriage became increasingly stormy, leading to her decision to move from Florida back to New York with her three children, ages 6 to 10. Rera’s daughter and two sons have conditions that put them on different points of the spectrum for autism.

Not long after she initially settled in Troy, Rera was visited by investigators from Rensselaer County’s Child Protective Services, who said that a call had been referred from the state abuse hot line alleging that she had committed acts of sexual and physical abuse against the children.

Those charges were determined to be unfounded; a few weeks later, another complaint was received, investigated and classified as unfounded. A third complaint was made in May.

“It’s hell,” Rera said. “It’s frustrating. It’s living on pins and needles waiting for these people to show up.”

Needless to say, family services investigators don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing which complaints to follow up on: They’re legally obligated to respond to every complaint of possible abuse. And that’s how it should be.

The baroque nature of the complaints against Rera — I’ll spare you the details, which are stomach-churning — suggest they come from someone with knowledge of family medical history. (Rera is unable to work due to various ailments, and lives on Medicaid and Social Security benefits, along with SSI payments to support her children.)

Rera’s husband could not be reached, either through conventional means or a database search.

Rensselaer County District Attorney Richard McNally says his office doesn’t currently have sufficient evidence to bring charges against anyone for filing a false abuse claim against Rera. In a two-decade career, McNally has never seen anyone charged with filing a false abuse claim.

There are two predominant reasons. First, the intentional filing of a bogus complaint is a Class A misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail — a crime, to be sure, but not one likely to draw much attention from local enforcement agencies with limited resources and long to-do lists.

(Page 2 of 2)

Also, it’s nearly impossible to build a strong case that someone is abusing the system. Even after a complaint is determined to be unfounded, it would have to be flagged as either egregiously false or part of a pattern. Then local investigators would have to track the complaint back up the chain by matching phone records to the state hot line’s intentionally incomplete records. In order to preserve anonymity, the hot line itself makes no record of the incoming phone number, although the agency does note the time a complaint is received.

But even if law enforcement can link a complaint to a specific phone, they’ll still have to prove the identity of the person using it at that moment.

Like all systems that rely on guarantees of anonymity, from the Internet to government whistleblower programs, the abuse hot line is itself open to a different sort of abuse. The greater-good argument, however, is fairly bulletproof: Even people kind-hearted enough to call the authorities — about hearing terrible sounds coming from the apartment upstairs, or the unexplained bruises on the child who lives next door — need to be assured that an alleged abuser isn’t going to try to exact retribution against them.

Similarly, it’s hard to determine when multiple reports from the same source constitute a pattern of lies. If the fifth complaint turns out to be genuine, it doesn’t necessarily mean the first four weren’t bogus.

Regardless of how many intentionally false claims are made every year — the number could be dozens or hundreds — it’s certain that every one takes time away from the pursuit of genuine cases of abuse.

Any effective solution would have to protect the anonymity of callers to the hot line. A partial remedy the state could take immediately would be to reclassify an intentional false report — something clearly done with malicious motive — as a Class E felony, which would have a deterrent effect on perpetrators and could go a long way to encourage prosecutors.

The state hot line can be reached at (800) 342-3720. If you think a child is being abused, use it. But if you’re thinking of using it to get back at someone, do us all a favor and find another method.

Casey Seiler can be reached at 454-5619 or by e-mail at cseiler@timesunion.com

 

REPORT FINDS FAULT WITH CONECUH COUNTY DHR FOSTER CARE

 

http://blog.al.com/live/2009/07/report_finds_fault_with_conecu.html

Posted by Connie Baggett, Press-Register July 31, 2009 4:57 AM

EVERGREEN, Ala. — A state probe of the Conecuh County Department of Human Resources shows it investigated abuse allegations by telephone, didn’t enforce a state ban on corporal punishment by foster parents, and failed to make efforts to place foster children with family members, among other problems, according to a report released Thursday.

The investigation followed the May arrest of foster parents Joyce Ann Savage Sims, 41, and Lonnell Sims, 51. Both were charged with attempted murder after a 2-year-old foster child in their care suffered severe brain injuries that doctors said could not have been accidental.

Both remain in the Conecuh County Jail, and a grand jury this week indicted them on lesser charges of aggravated child abuse and willful maltreatment.

Calls for comment to the local department were not returned Thursday. Alabama Department of Human Resources spokesman Barry Spear said the report “stands for itself,” and the agency would have no additional comment.

Conecuh County District Attorney Tommy Chapman has called it “the most horrific case of abuse” he’s ever prosecuted, and called for a state investigation of the local agency. The report arrived on his desk last week, he said.

“It shows DHR has been a shoddy operation here,” Chapman said Thursday. “There have been numerous people from Montgomery to help correct things, and I believe there will be some staff changes.”

The prosecutor said he was “encouraged by the outrage” he observed in meetings with state DHR Commissioner Nancy T. Buckner.

“I am persuaded she will make every effort to prevent this from happening again,” he said.

Among the problems cited in the report:

&bull Workers often made telephone calls, rather than face-to-face visits, to investigate abuse allegations.

&bull Documentation was lacking in both background checks and training of foster parents.

&bull Not all foster parents signed a required agreement banning corporal punishment, and instances of corporal punishment were investigated.

&bull There was no evidence that foster children’s relatives were assessed as possibilities for placement.

&bull Workers had no ongoing assessment program for foster homes.

&bull One foster home housed eight children for several days, which is above the maximum limit of six children.

&bull The county agency’s quality assurance committee did not adequately review cases, and reports for the last half of 2008 and the first half of 2009 were not done.

Chapman said in May that he suspected some DHR workers were referring children to certain foster homes in an effort to increase income for those parents.The state pays foster parents more than $400 per month per foster child.

Chapman said that his office had received no reports of abuse and neglect cases this year until the local DHR director brought more than 10 files to his office in recent days.

Some were from months earlier, he said, and that time lapse means evidence in potentially criminal cases could have since been destroyed or altered. Chapman said he is reviewing the cases to see if there is cause to prosecute.

He also offered an update on the toddler who had been under the Sims’ care, saying the child has improved a little and is currently living with family members.