Kentucky officials knew that many of the children who died from abuse might be at risk
http://www.courierjournal.com/article/20091213/NEWS01/912130303/Kentucky+officials+knew+that+many+of+the+children+who+died+from+abuse+might+be+at+risk
By Deborah Yetter
dyetter@courier-journal.com
Nearly 270 Kentucky children died of abuse or neglect during the past decade — more than half of them in cases where state officials already knew of or suspected problems.
During one recent 12-month period, 41 children died — the highest rate of any state, according to a recent report by the Every Child Matters Education Fund, a Washington child-advocacy group.
In a six-month review of the problem, The Courier-Journal found that:
– Child-protection officials, day-care workers, and parents, friends and relatives missed signs of abuse such as suspicious bruising and evidence of previous injury, or were hesitant to act.
– While reports of abuse have soared, the rate at which social workers substantiated child abuse and neglect has declined . Nine years ago, problems were substantiated in 27 percent of the reports received compared with 12.5 percent this year, according to reports by the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
– Since 2008, the state has cut $51 million from human-service programs, including child protection. Social workers say that they don’t have time to fully investigate cases or to follow up with families. Nor do they have money to provide the in-home assistance, drug testing and treatment that some families need.
Secrecy within the child-protection system protects it from scrutiny rather than protecting children, many judges and critics believe.
Most troubling is that many child deaths could have been prevented had state social workers, physicians, day-care workers, friends and relatives responded sooner and more aggressively to signs of abuse or neglect.
“It would be rare for a child to have never been abused and then be abused to the point of death,” said Dr. Gerard Rabalais, chairman of the University of Louisville pediatrics department. “Much more typically, it’s violence that escalates over time.
“There’s time to find the perpetrators and stop it and intervene on the child’s behalf.”
In its investigation, the newspaper examined hundreds of pages of court records and outside studies and interviewed more than 50 judges, state officials, medical experts, children’s advocates, prosecutors, lawmakers and others including family members who suffered the loss of a child.
It found that since 2000, Kentucky Child Protective Services officials have investigated reports of problems in cases of 149 of the 267 Kentucky children who subsequently died from abuse or neglect, according to the annual report on such deaths produced by the cabinet.
“That’s pretty alarming,” said David Richart, a consultant and longtime child advocate in Louisville. “Those are dangerous, ominous signs when you are already involved with the family or with the home.”
Patricia Wilson, commissioner of social services for the cabinet, said she believes that the state’s nearly 1,520 “front-line” social workers who handle child protection are hard-working and do a good job helping protect children.
But she said she is disturbed by the 41 deaths highlighted in the Every Child Matters report — which covered 12 months that ended Sept. 30, 2007 — and acknowledged it’s not an area where the state wants to be No. 1 .
“We really wish there weren’t any fatalities,” Wilson said. “Every fatality is a tragedy.”
MULTIPLE REPORTS
21 cases involved 10 or more notices
State officials had received two or more reports of suspected mistreatment in 60 percent of the 304 cases in which a child died or suffered life-threatening injuries during the past 10 years, according the state’s annual report on child-abuse deaths.
And in 21 of those cases, the cabinet had received 10 or more reports of suspected mistreatment, according to the annual report.
Wilson said the state’s policy about confidentiality prevents her from commenting on specific cases or whether the cabinet was involved at the time of a child’s death. But she acknowledged that multiple reports about suspected mistreatment would be potentially serious, depending on how recent they were and their nature.
“It makes a difference whether it’s three times this year or three times three years ago,” Wilson said.
Though the details of state child abuse cases are secret — even after a child dies — court records of adults charged with murder in some recent cases show state officials were well aware of suspected problems. For example:
Two-year-old Christopher Allen of Louisville died Aug. 28, 2008, from a severe battering three days after a social worker removed him from his mother and placed him with an aunt.
Social service and other officials had repeatedly investigated allegations that he had been mistreated. The aunt and her boyfriend are facing murder charges; the case is scheduled for trial next year.
Kayden Branham, 20 months, of Monticello, died May 31 after drinking drain cleaner that his 14-year-old mother and 19-year-old father allegedly were using to make methamphetamine in a Wayne County mobile home. Both Kayden and his mother were under the supervision of state child-protection authorities and were supposed to be in another home.
Seven-month-old Gaige Pyles, of Elsmere, died Aug. 15 after being shaken to death. His father, Matthew Pyles, 27, was indicted Oct. 22 and charged with murder. State child-protection officials had been involved with the infant before his death, according to the Kenton County prosecutor.
Each death is devastating to family and friends, survivors say.
“It really sickens me, how the baby suffered so much,” Samantha Chapman said of grandson Robert Ross Jr., a 3-month-old Covington baby who died in 2008 from a skull fracture and suffered multiple broken bones. “That just tears my heart apart.”
SIGNS UNRECOGNIZED
More vigilance is needed by all
Child-abuse experts say the true picture may be even worse because as many as half of all child-abuse or neglect deaths may not be recognized and reported, being classified instead as accidental or from natural causes.
“I think some people are too nice to allow themselves to imagine what some people are capable of doing,” said Dr. Melissa Currie, director of the University of Louisville’s pediatric forensic division.
The Every Child Matters report said national research shows that officials may be missing as many as 50 percent of child-abuse deaths.
In Kentucky, the leading cause of death of abused children is head trauma, and 70 percent are under age 3. Other causes include shootings, strangulation and poisoning, according to the state’s 2009 annual report. Neglect deaths were most often caused by drowning, failure of adults to seek medical treatment, exposure to drugs and suffocation, the report said.
State law requires anyone who knows of abuse or neglect to report it to police, prosecutors or the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. But those involved in child-abuse detection and prevention say even the most obvious signs of abuse — bruising, especially in infants — often go unrecognized and thus unreported.
“Bruises on babies are not normal — period,” Currie said. “If you see them, you should do something.”
A 2007 study led by UofL researchers examined the abuse deaths or near deaths of 20 Kentucky children under age 3 and found that in most cases, evidence of prior abuse, such as suspicious bruising, had been previously documented by someone, such as a social worker, nurse or doctor, but not acted on.
Officials say that many more children could be saved, even with Kentucky’s risk factors for child abuse, such as high rates of poverty and drug abuse and low educational attainment. But that would require more vigilance on the part of everyone who encounters such children — not just state child-protection officials.
“There is only a certain percentage of cases CPS has an opportunity to intervene in,” Currie said. “All the rest need to be caught by the rest of us.”
Some advocates believe opening confidential state records of abuse deaths or near-deaths would shed more light on the system and help improve it. Though such disclosure is allowed under federal law, many states including Kentucky, choose not to do so.
“Information about these tragic events … is withheld by many jurisdictions,” said a national report released last year by the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego law school and First Star, a Washington child advocacy group. “This is unacceptable.”
LACK OF FUNDS
Social workers face enormous pressure
The state’s annual report shows a sharp decline in the rate of cases where social workers substantiate abuse or neglect, despite an increase in reports of abuse or neglect since 2000, a trend advocates and some social workers blame on a shortage or workers and resources.
Wilson, the social service commissioner, credits a better system of screening out complaints that don’t appear to involve abuse or neglect — such as families without utilities or food. But child advocates are skeptical.
“That just doesn’t compute,” Richart said of the decline in substantiation rates. “There’s no logical reason why that would be so.”
Critics note that the underfunded state social-service system has undergone three rounds of budget cuts in the past two years and likely faces more.
“The state leads the nation in child abuse deaths,” Sheila Patrick, a 15-year social worker from Eastern Kentucky, told a legislative panel in October. “That’s as high a price as you can pay.”
Judges also lament the shortage of services for families — such as counseling, drug treatment or parenting classes — all reduced sharply by state budget cuts.
“Typically, parenting classes are one of the things we order,” said Jefferson Family Court Judge Stephen George. But now poor parents must wait several months to get into a class while the children linger in foster care, he said.
Also cited is a culture within the state social-service system that gives regional supervisors broad power to put enormous pressure on social workers to meet paperwork deadlines or face discipline. That sometimes forces them to skimp on investigations or take short cuts, a group of social workers told lawmakers this fall.
“We are just putting out fires,” Barbara Cowan, a Kenton County social worker, said at the October meeting of the House-Senate Health and Welfare Committee. “Corners are definitely being cut.”
Compounding the problem is that social workers are afraid to speak out, say officials of their union and others.
“Workers are scared to say anything,” said Shane Sidebottom, a Covington lawyer who has represented seven state social workers in “whistleblower” lawsuits alleging that they suffered retaliation for trying to point out problems. “This is a culture of fear.”
In failing to adequately deal with signs of abuse, Kentucky is hardly alone among the states. The Every Child Matters report found that child-welfare authorities nationwide generally have had prior involvement in about half of the cases of children who die each year from abuse or neglect.
Michael Petit, president of Every Child Matters, said his organization is calling on the federal government — which provides about half the money states spend on child welfare — to step forward with national standards and stricter oversight of state child protection programs.
“This problem isn’t going to go away,” he said. “I don’t think any state can wrestle this to the ground. You’ve got to have federal involvement.”
Reporter Deborah Yetter can be reached at (502) 582-4228.
Confidentiality exceeds law’s requirements in Kentucky
Some child advocacy organizations say it’s time for that policy to change
By Deborah Yetter • dyetter@courier-journal.com • December 15, 2009
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/2009912150301
In the weeks before Samantha Chapman’s infant grandson was murdered by his mother’s live-in boyfriend, she said she pleaded “face-to-face” with state child protection officials to investigate after she observed a handprint-shaped bruise on the face of the baby’s sister, then age 2.
“I went to Covington and I walked into the office,” said Chapman, referring to the local office of the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services. “I just started bawling. I was crying and begging the social workers, ‘Please go in there and get my grandkids.’”
State social workers did open an investigation, according to court records in the case of Aaron Allen, who was convicted of murder Nov. 5 and was sentenced Dec. 8 to 30 years in prison in the 2008 battering death of Robert Ross Jr., the 3-month-old infant son of Brandi Ross, Chapman’s daughter.
But neither Chapman nor the public can learn exactly what social workers did because of Kentucky’s rigid policy of secrecy involving records related to child abuse and neglect investigations — which applies even when a child is killed or nearly killed.
Some national child advocacy organizations say it’s time for that to change.
“An open system is a better system,” said a joint report last year by the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego Law School and First Star, a Washington child advocacy group.
The report, which reviewed the policies of all 50 states regarding access to abuse and neglect information, said “child abuse deaths and near deaths reflect the system’s worst failures” and concluded that information in those cases should be public.
“The public has a right to know if the laws for protection of children are being followed and its tax dollars well spent,” the report said.
Patricia Wilson, Kentucky’s social service commissioner, said she believes confidentiality is important to protect children from public embarrassment or shame.
“The reason for it is that children are not put in a position of being stigmatized,” she said. “I think the system is designed to protect innocent victims.”
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But David Richart, a longtime child advocate and consultant, rejects that argument, especially in cases involving the deaths of children.
“In a fatality, it ends up on the front page of the newspaper, so the identity of the child is already known,” he said. “It seems to be a false argument to argue we can’t look at those records.”
All states must keep confidential most records related to reports of abuse or neglect, under the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. But a key provision of the law allows states to authorize public disclosure in cases where a child was killed or nearly killed from mistreatment.
How states interpret that rule varies — with most, including Kentucky, opting for confidentiality, the report found.
Kentucky’s law on child abuse records says: “Information may be publicly disclosed by the cabinet in a case where child abuse or neglect has resulted in a child fatality or near fatality.”
But cabinet officials in recent years have consistently refused to release such reports, saying the law gives them discretion. A 2007 Kentucky attorney general’s opinion upheld the cabinet’s policy after The Courier-Journal challenged it.
Although a few states — including Indiana — earned high ratings for allowing access to such information, most do not and secrecy only serves to hide flaws, the report said.
“The current undue emphasis on confidentiality only masks problems inherent in child protection systems,” it said. “Public exposure is a necessary step” toward fixing these problems.
LITTLE REVEALED
Grandmother fears failures are hidden
For Chapman, Kentucky’s policy means she likely will never get to see the results of the cabinet’s internal investigation into how it handled the case of her grandchildren, a report known as a “fatality review” that is required under state law.
Chapman said she thinks that’s wrong and believes the state is using confidentiality as an excuse to cover how social service officials botched her grandchildren’s case.
“They’re hiding what they’ve done wrong,” she said. “I think they failed at their jobs, and I’ll stick to that till I croak. I just know they failed.”
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Brandi Ross, who has not been charged in the case, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Chapman said she would like to know more about what the cabinet did after she reported her concerns about the bruise on her granddaughter’s face.
The criminal court records show that in Robert’s case, the July 30, 2008, beating that ended his life wasn’t his first. He died from a skull fracture and brain damage, and suffered fractured ribs and a broken leg and wrist. But his autopsy revealed previous injuries, including evidence of healing rib fractures and earlier bruising, according to the records.
“The autopsy results indicate Robert Ross was subjected to child abuse throughout his short life,” said a motion in the court file.
On the day Robert died, social workers placed his sister in foster care, Chapman said.
She said that when she visited the Covington social service office in early June 2008, she urged a social worker to check on the children immediately while the bruise was still visible on her granddaughter’s face.
She described it as a large handprint on the cheek, with finger marks along the toddler’s jaw and dark bruising evident on the child’s gums.
Chapman said she was insistent that social workers investigate, even though it could have implicated her daughter.
“I said, ‘We need to know who’s hurting the kids,’ ” Chapman said.
About the same time, she said, she visited the police department in Ludlow, the small city in Kenton County where her daughter lived, to express her concerns about the children’s safety and possible drug activity in the home.
Ludlow Officer John Dorman confirmed that account and said that, based on Chapman’s information, police arrested a man at the home on drug charges. He said they later attempted to serve a search warrant but found that the occupants had moved suddenly. He said he recalls Chapman being extremely concerned about the safety of the children.
“She was adamant,” Dorman said. “Her main concern was the grandchildren.”
Chapman said that about 10 days after she first visited the cabinet’s Covington office, a social worker came to her home while the two grandchildren were visiting and inspected them for bruises or injuries. The bruise to the girl’s face had faded and neither child had any visible marks at the time, but Chapman said she urged the social worker not to drop the matter and to visit them at their home.
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The worker said “I’ll take care of it,” according to Chapman. But she said she has no idea what he did — if anything.
Her daughter won’t tell her because she’s angry with her for going to authorities, and the social workers she questioned say they can’t comment, citing confidentiality, Chapman said.
“I don’t know what happened,” Chapman said. “Nobody will tell me.”
In October, a family court judge in Kenton County terminated Ross’ rights to her daughter, now 3, who remains in foster care, making her eligible for adoption. Chapman said she wasn’t allowed in the courtroom, although she had hoped to tell the judge that she would be willing the take custody of the girl, whom Chapman has helped raise since birth.
OPEN COURTS
Most judges back idea, one says
Even some judges think it’s time to open family court.
“I think the benefits are that the public has the opportunity to see what is going on in court,” said Patricia Walker FitzGerald, chief judge of Jefferson County Family Court. “I think there’s a tremendous distrust of the court system, and keeping it closed adds to that distrust.”
FitzGerald said she and most Jefferson Family Court judges support opening family courts as long as judges retain the right to close hearings of a particularly sensitive nature — involving such things as sexual abuse of a child or sensitive medical and psychological records.
The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, of which FitzGerald is a member, endorsed that proposal in 2005 and continues to support open family and juvenile courts.
Half the 50 states — including Indiana, Tennessee and Ohio — have family and juvenile courts that are either fully open or have limited access to the press and public, according to the 2008 joint report by the Children’s Advocacy Institute and First Star.
FitzGerald said she knows of no judges who oppose the idea in states where such courts are open.
“I have yet to talk to a judge in another state where the courts are open where it’s been a problem,” she said. “Where the courts are open, it’s a non-issue.”
FitzGerald and other advocates supported a bill in the 2008 General Assembly that would have authorized a pilot project allowing Jefferson and a few other counties to hold open sessions of family court. But the bill died in committee after some lawmakers expressed concern that it might lead to undue publicity of child abuse and neglect cases or stigmatize youths accused of crimes.
FitzGerald said she believes those fears are unfounded, based on her experiences and on what judges in other states have told her.
“The fact of the matter,” she said, “is that most of the world isn’t interested in coming down and watching these cases.”
Reporter Deborah Yetter can be reached at (502) 582-4228.
Painful lives cut short: Three tragic tales of child abuse in Kentucky
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20091213/NEWS01/91210004
Robert Ross Jr.
3 months, Covington
Aug. 1, 2008
For Robert Ross Jr., the Covington infant who died at the hands of his mother’s boyfriend, life was as agonizing as it was brief.
After the July 30, 2008, battering that killed him, an autopsy revealed previous bruises and healing broken bones, indicating that he “was subjected to child abuse throughout his short life,” according to records from the murder case against Aaron Allen, who was convicted of Robert’s death Nov. 5 after a three-day trial in Kenton Circuit Court. Allen was sentenced last week to 30 years in prison.
Robert’s death occurred as state social-service officials were investigating the possible mistreatment of him and his 2-year-old sister in the home that their mother, Brandi Ross, shared with Allen, according to court records.
On the day Robert died, Allen told police he was taking care of the baby while Brandi Ross went out with friends to eat and get her nails done. Allen, who told police he’d been drinking and smoking crack cocaine that day, said he became irritated when the infant wouldn’t stop crying while he was trying to watch a pornographic movie.
“I grabbed him by his leg and pulled him up and he was crying, and I was like, ‘Stop crying, stop crying,’” Allen said in an interview with police.
He told police that he shook Robert until his “eyes rolled back into his head” and jerked him. He also acknowledged striking the baby’s head on a door frame, according to the Aug. 7, 2008, arrest citation.
Kenton Commonwealth’s Attorney Rob Sanders, who prosecuted Allen, said in an interview that the only way to stop child abuse is through more education.
“And it’s not just education of potential defendants — it’s the education of mothers spotting who might be an abuser,” he said.
Christopher Allen
2, Louisville
Aug. 28, 2008
In the case of 2-year-old Christopher Allen, social workers had visited his Louisville home several times in 2008. The boy lived with his mother, Jeannette Allen; her twin sister, Janet Allen; and her 2-year-old son, Wyatt. State officials had visited to investigate reports that the home was filthy, cluttered and filled with animals, feces and urine, according to court records.
On Aug. 25, 2008, following up a new complaint, a state social worker visited the home, observed similar conditions and found the sisters “rude and not cooperative,” according to the deposition of social worker Gabriella Marks in the court file.
After seeing the boys’ dirty and cluttered room, where they were confined with a cord tied to the outside doorknob, Marks said she conferred with a supervisor who recommended that she try to find a relative or friend who could take the boys until social workers could finish an investigation.
The twins’ sister, Nereida Allen, who lived with her boyfriend, Joshua Peacher, in south Louisville, agreed to take the boys and picked them up that afternoon, Marks’ statement said.
The following day, Marks said she called Nereida Allen to check on the boys. The aunt told her “everything’s fine,” Marks’ statement said.
A day later, Christopher Allen arrived at Kosair Children’s Hospital, having been severely battered and covered in bruises — even on the soles of his feet — with injuries to his brain, liver, gall bladder and spleen, according to court records. He died Aug. 28.
Wyatt, who also was injured, was treated at the hospital and has been taken into state custody.
Nereida Allen and Peacher, who told police they hit Christopher during his two days in their care, have been charged with murder. They have pleaded not guilty, and their trial is scheduled next year.
Kayden Branham
20 months, Monticello
May 31, 2009
In some cases, neglect can be just as deadly as abuse.
Twenty-month-old Kayden Branham died from burns and internal injuries after drinking Liquid Fire from a cup at the dilapidated mobile home his mother and father allegedly used as a meth lab. It’s not clear why state child-welfare officials failed to realize that neither he nor his mother, Alisha Branham, then 14, were at the Monticello home of a relative where social workers had placed them.
State officials won’t comment, citing confidentiality, and others involved in the case say they don’t know.
Five people involved in the alleged meth lab were charged with murder in Kayden’s death, including his parents, Alisha, now 15, and Bryan Daniels, 19.
Mark Stanziano, a Somerset lawyer who represents Daniels, said officials won’t say where Alisha is or who had custody of her at the time Kayden died because of confidentiality rules.
The charges against Alisha were resolved in juvenile court, which is confidential, and Stanziano said he hasn’t been able to learn whether she admitted to an offense or what the state has done with her. The adults charged in the case have pleaded not guilty.
“We have nothing about her,” he said.
At a June 15 hearing in the case, Kentucky State Police Detective Douglas Boyd said Wayne County social-services officials had “not been real cooperative” in providing information about Alisha and that police likely would have to subpoena their records.
In an Oct. 7 interview, Alisha’s grandmother, Linda Kay Anderson of Wayne County, said that before Kayden’s death, he and his teenage parents had been staying at the nearby mobile home of Alisha’s father, Larry Branham, who is Anderson’s son — even though state social workers had placed Alisha and her child in the home of another relative.
Anderson said she believes Alisha and the child left their previous home after the utilities were cut off.
Anderson said she didn’t know if state social workers, who were supposed to be supervising Alisha and Kayden, knew of their whereabouts, and she blames the social workers for not doing more.
“Now we’ve lost the baby,” she said.
But she said she doesn’t blame the girl or the young father for the death of Kayden. His death was “a terrible accident,” said Anderson, adding that she doesn’t believe allegations that the parents were making methamphetamine.
“Everyone involved loved that baby,” Anderson said. “His parents took good care of him. I thought he was safe, but accidents happen. They were good parents.”
As allegation rate rises, advocates fear Kentucky is missing some abuse
http://www.courierjournal.com/article/20091214/NEWS01/912140301/As+allegation+rate+rises++advocates+fear+Kentucky+is+missing+some+abuse
By Deborah Yetter
dyetter@courier-journal.com
Even as reports of suspected child abuse and neglect have risen sharply in Kentucky, state social workers are substantiating far fewer allegations than a decade ago — alarming advocates who fear workers with too many cases and too few resources are missing dangerous situations.
In only 12.5 percent of such reports are the state’s social workers finding abuse or neglect — far less than Kentucky’s average of 27 percent nine years ago, according to a Courier-Journal analysis of data from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
Yet the decline comes as reports of suspected child abuse and neglect have risen from about 44,000 nine years ago to about 72,500 for the fiscal year that ended June 30 — a 64 percent increase, according to the newspaper’s analysis.
Patricia Wilson, the state cabinet’s commissioner for social services, said she believes better screening of reports accounts for some of the decline.
In 2004, the cabinet implemented a new screening process workers use to separate calls about abuse and neglect from those where families may merely need assistance with such things as housing, food, clothing or utilities, she said. Once such calls are eliminated from what the cabinet considers actual allegations of abuse or neglect, “we’re seeing rather consistent results” in substantiation rates, she said.
But advocates worry that the decline means the state is missing abuse and neglect.
“That just doesn’t compute,” said David Richart, a longtime child advocate and consultant in Kentucky. “It means investigations are not being done thoroughly or they’re being screened out. That’s very dangerous.”
About 2,800 fewer reports were substantiated last year than nine years ago, even though the number of allegations had risen by nearly two-thirds, the newspaper’s analysis showed.
Michael Petit, president of the Every Child Matters Education Fund, a Washington group that produced an October report that showed Kentucky first among the states in the rate of child deaths, based on 2007 data, said the declining substantiation rate doesn’t mean the rate of abuse is declining.
“It may be going up,” he said.
LIMITED RESOURCES
Social workers are ‘crushed by caseloads’
Frontline social workers told lawmakers in October that they simply don’t have the staff and resources they need to do the job properly.
“The state leads the nation in child abuse deaths,” said social worker Sheila Patrick, holding up a copy of a Courier-Journal story on the subject to members of the House-Senate Health and Welfare Committee. “That’s as high a price as you can pay.”
Workers told the committee that because of staff shortages and growing caseloads they have scant time to thoroughly investigate reports of alleged abuse or neglect.
In Louisville, supervisors are pulling workers with little experience from other areas to investigate reports so they can meet timelines established in state regulations — one hour for an emergency, where a child’s life is believed to be in danger, and 12 to 48 hours for nonemergencies, social worker Patricia Pregliasco told lawmakers.
Without doing that, Pregliasco told lawmakers, the cabinet simply doesn’t have enough investigators to meet the deadlines and file reports.
“We are stretched too thin,” she said.
Even the 2006 death of Boni Frederick, a Western Kentucky social service aide slain on the job, brought few improvements. In 2007 lawmakers passed the “Boni Bill,” aimed at providing more resources for social service employees to do their jobs safely. But they never funded it fully.
“After the Boni Bill, we were supposed to see changes,” Patrick said at the October hearing. “In reality, not a lot has changed.”
Today the state has about 1,520 “front-line” social workers to investigate child abuse and neglect — about 125 fewer than in 2007.
Budget figures provided by the cabinet show that three rounds of cuts since January 2008 have eliminated $51million in General Fund money from human services programs — about 15 percent of the $347million in state money allocated to the cabinet in fiscal 2008-09.
And that has forced the social services agency to eliminate many programs for children and families that were funded solely with state money.
Meanwhile, caseloads — supposed to be limited to 18 per social worker at any one time under professional standards — are climbing. Many workers are managing 25 or more, several workers told lawmakers at the committee hearing.
“Workers are being crushed by caseloads,” Pregliasco said.
Wilson said that she realizes workers are under stress and that she is trying to fill as many jobs as she can — even as workers quit or retire.
“Absolutely, the sense of having more work than they can say grace over is real,” Wilson said. But she added that, with a series of cuts to human services programs since early 2008, it’s unlikely she will be able to significantly increase staff.
“It is a function of the budget,” she said. “There is not likely to be any new money in the state of Kentucky any time soon.”
Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates — which is lobbying for a complete overhaul of the state’s tax system to create a more stable revenue base — said he believes child welfare in Kentucky is “headed toward a cliff.”
“You can’t do child welfare on the cheap,” he said. “I think legislators are delusional if they don’t think budget cuts are going to affect children and families. The question is, what kind of tragedy is it going to take to get the attention of legislators?”
Perhaps such a tragedy as the case of 10-year-old Michaela Watkins.
In 2006, Michaela was placed in the home of her father and stepmother by state social service officials. The next year she died from horrendous abuse, suffering a crushed chest from a beating and a scalding so severe that her skin sloughed off.
“It was horrible,” said Charles Johnson, a Clark County assistant commonwealth’s attorney who also served 26 years with Kentucky State Police.
“It was the most horrific case I every prosecuted —– the most horrific in almost 40 years in the criminal justice system.”
Michaela’s father and stepmother, Patrick and Joy Watkins, were convicted of murder last year and sentenced to life in prison.
The Every Child Matters report highlighted the death of Michaela — one of 41 children killed in fiscal 2007 -08 — as a reason states need to put more resources into helping troubled families and children, particularly for services meant to recognize and prevent abuse.
PROGRAMS CUT
It ‘positively’ has hurt needy families
Yet in the two years since Michaela’s death, Kentucky has been forced to eliminate numerous social service programs because of budget cuts and is anticipating more. Cuts made since early 2008 range from intensive in-home help for parents at risk of losing their children to free bus tickets for poor families ordered to attend counseling or drug treatment.
While the loss of free bus tickets might not seem like a big cut, it has had a major impact in Jefferson County, where family court judges relied on them to help impoverished families get to appointments, Jefferson Family Court Judge Eleanor Garber said.
Participants in the year-long family drug court program are required to get jobs, attend regular Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings, keep appointments to visit children and appear in court. Most are too poor to own cars or afford bus fare, so the loss of free transportation is “a serious problem,” Garber said.
The state also has cut funds for drug screening of parents — even as workers report that suspected substance abuse among clients is soaring.
Wilson, the social services commissioner, said she regrets having to cut many worthwhile programs.
“There’s no question that for the families that otherwise would have received these services, absolutely, positively it has hurt them, ” she said. Further cuts, she said, “will have a significant impact on our ability to meet service needs and our ability to meet our mandates.”
Some programs affected by the cuts are run by nonprofit agencies, such as Louisville’s Brooklawn Child & Family Services and Home of the Innocents, where trained staff worked with families to prevent parents from losing custody of their children.
“It was tremendously successful in keeping kids out of the foster care system,” David Graves, president of Brooklawn, said of the $255,000-a-year program his agency offered for eight years until the state canceled it last year. “It’s one less option for families.”
Now families are more likely to lose children to foster care — a more costly and less desirable outcome, said Bill Smithwick, president of Sunrise Children’s Services, a statewide nonprofit children’s agency.
“Early, in-home intervention is much cheaper than the subsequent foster care or residential treatment, and better for the children and their families, ” he said.
Jefferson Family Court Judge Stephen George agreed that some cuts end up costing the state more.
Delays in getting counseling classes for parents, for example, means that children removed from their home must stay with relatives or in foster care longer — at a cost of $300 to $900 a month. It would be cheaper and better for families to try to resolve problems and get kids back home sooner, he said.
And the state forecast of an even worse budget outlook for the next two years has many child advocates alarmed.
“I’m scared about this coming year,” said Gordon Brown, president of Home of the Innocents in Louisville. “We’re already on a razor-thin margin. The only way I’m operating now is going out and begging money from donors.”
STRAIN ON WORKERS
Under ‘much more of a burden’
Judge Garber said the strain on social workers is evident.
“We definitely see it,” she said of social workers who appear in Jefferson Family Court. “We can tell how much more of a burden per person they have when we see them in court.”
Kenton County social worker Barbara Cowan told lawmakers in October that in some offices, workers are under pressure from supervisors to close cases faster to meet various state and federal deadlines.
“I have been told I spend too much time on paperwork,” she said.
In seven “whistleblower” lawsuits filed in recent years, workers allege that in some cases, documents that showed workers were meeting deadlines and making required visits to homes have been falsified. Covington lawyer Shane Sidebottom filed the suits on behalf of social workers who claimed they suffered retaliation when they attempted to point out violations.
In 2007, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services paid $380,000 to settle one of those cases, from a former social worker who claimed she was pressured to ignore suspected child abuse and withhold information from a judge to speed up the adoption of two small children into an unsuitable home and close the case.
A Grant County worker with similar claims settled her case for $45,000, and five lawsuits are pending.
In one of the pending cases, a former Jessamine County worker alleges she was pressured to change dates on reports of abuse to cover delays in investigating them. If an emergency report came in late in the day that needed to be investigated within the hour, for example, supervisors would tell workers to date the call as having come in the next day, the lawsuit said.
Sidebottom, who said he has fielded calls from dozens of social workers statewide, doesn’t believe conditions are improving.
“Every worker I’ve talked to said it’s virtually impossible to do your job to the best of your abilities and meet the time deadlines,” he said. “They don’t want to get in trouble , but they want to do the right thing.”
Reporter Deborah Yetter can be reached at (502) 582-4228.
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