Child welfare in Washington, D.C.: An “offer” families can’t refuse

Remember when the D.C. family police denied they take children if their parents are late to pick them up after school?  A policy manual from the D.C. schools reveals that it’s more complicated.

If you’re a parent living in poverty, you may need a lot of help.  But no matter where you turn for help you risk being turned in to the family police (a more accurate term than child protective services).  In Washington, D.C. that even applies if you’re late picking up your child from an afterschool program.  Turns out, it’s right in the D.C. Public Schools’ handbook for such programs.   

But that’s not the way the D.C. family police agency has been spinning the story.  

Back in late August 2019, a Washington, D.C. television station revealed that a local public elementary school was threatening to call the family police, known in D.C. as the Child and Family Services Agency, if parents were late picking up their kids from school. CFSA then would take the children to their central office.  

About eight months later, the head of the agency flatly denied this in a way that made it easy for listeners to infer the story was wrong. 

But the story was right. Only after the policy was exposed was it changed.  

And it gets worse.  No one at CFSA bothered to mention that handbook, the one that includes  a very similar policy – citywide – for some of the children in afterschool programs.

This is the story of what CFSA said, what CFSA did, and what CFSA still does. 

August, 2019: WUSA-TV breaks the story 

To understand the context, we need to go back to August 2019, when WUSA-TV, Channel 9 broke the story.  They reported on a memo sent to parents at one school at the start of the school year – and lest there be any doubt – displayed the memo, which said: 

If you choose not to have your child remain in the Afterschool Program, then he/she MUST be picked up promptly at 3:15 p.m. For those students that are not picked up on time (3:15pm) the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) will be contacted, and parents will be required to pick their child up from their office." [Emphasis most definitely in the original] 

Here’s the full story:

Channel 9 got comment from a CFSA deputy director, Robert Matthews, and D.C. Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee. At no point did either of them deny that the memo was real. At no point did they say the school was wrong to have issued it. At no point does Matthews say CFSA would not cooperate with demands to come and get children under these circumstances.  That’s worth keeping in mind in light of how the agency is spinning the whole thing now. 

I discussed the harm of this policy in a follow-up story on Channel 9.  At that time CFSA still did not make the claims it would make now, a year-and-a-half-later, as we’ll see below.

 

May, 2020: The CFSA Director on the radio 

Fast forward to May 2020. By then we were well into the pandemic.  CFSA Director Brenda Donald appeared on a prestigious local radio program, The Kojo Nnamdi Show, on public radio station WAMU. She touted the false master narrative that, in the absence of “mandated reporters” constantly keeping their eyes on children, they were at grave risk of child abuse.  Donald even urged the very people to whom families were most likely to turn to for help to become spies – though, of course, she didn’t use that word. Here’s what she said: 

So our big concern now is really not so much our children, who are in foster care because they are well cared for. They're in foster homes. … But it's the children we don't see who may be suffering that we are concerned about. … 

But now what we've asked our community partners to do who are out about in the community. They're providing meals to families. They're connecting with families in other ways to really step up and be more vigilant. If they see that, you know, perhaps they haven't seen a child when they've delivered meals to the family or they may observe some other signs where they note that something is not quite right. 

So now every D.C. parent with a hungry child has to worry about whether to accept a meal just when they may need it most.  

I called in to the program to raise that concern.  To which Donald replied: 

We’re not as – certainly when someone calls our hotline we have experts, who are trained to ask certain questions to really understand if someone is making a report that really doesn’t go to true abuse or neglect. We’re not going to respond to a frivolous call. 

Since Donald said they don’t respond to frivolous calls, that seemed like a good time to bring up the WUSA-TV story. This exchange followed: 

RICHARD: Last year Channel 9 reported that if you're simply a few minutes late to pick up your child from a D.C. public school those school teachers who are ever on the alert will call CFSA. CFSA caseworkers would be there and haul them off to Brenda Donald's office, a terribly traumatic experience for a child. 

NNAMDI: Brenda Donald. 

DONALD: Clearly bad information that was false that was corrected. Someone -- we don't know where that came from, but that absolutely does not happen and is not encouraged. 

 

Where things stand now 

All of which brings us to last week, when a similar situation arose in Chicago.  Lenore Skenazy wrote about that case for Reason.  And she discovered that the D.C. approach went way beyond one school.  She links to an old edition of something called the “District of Columbia Public Schools Afterschool Program Parent/Guardian Handbook.”  That prompted me to look further.  I found the handbook for the 2019-2020 school year – the school year in progress at the same time Brenda Donald was on The Kojo Nnamdi Show.  

Of course, the original WUSA9 story dealt with what a school did with children who were not in an afterschool program.  The passages below deal with what happens to students who are somehow involved with such a program – and sure enough, as you’ll see below, CFSA ultimately would split this very hair.  But either way, it doesn’t exactly sound like this “absolutely does not happen…”  Let’s take a look at Page 7: 

1. If a student is not picked up by the end of the program day (6:00 p.m.), afterschool staff will call the phone numbers listed in the child(ren)’s enrollment application to locate an adult who can pick up the student. 

2. If, after multiple attempts, the student(s)’ parent, guardian, or emergency contact(s) cannot be reached, the school will call the DC Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) at 202-671-7233. [Emphasis added.] 

3. If the parent, guardian, or another approved adult arrives prior to the CFSA representative, CFSA receives another call and a reported update. 

4. The student may not return to the afterschool program until the AA/full-time coordinator and/or the principal has spoken with the parent, guardian, or caseworker and has agreed to a plan by which the student will be picked up on time. [Emphasis added]. 

Now let’s turn to page 8, regarding students who are kicked out of an after-school program: 

DCPS implements the following steps in the event that the student (who has been previously removed from the afterschool program) is left after school dismissal: 

--The student will be held in the main office once school is dismissed (beginning at 3:15 p.m.). 

-- School staff will call the parent/guardian after dismissal to request immediate pick-up from school (at 3:30 p.m.). 

-- If the parent/guardian does not pick up the student within 30 minutes, a second call will be made to the parent/guardian and emergency contacts on the student’s afterschool enrollment form (at 4:00 p.m.). 

-- If the parent/guardian does not pick up a student within an hour of the first call, CFSA will be contacted and asked to take custody of the student (at 4:30 p.m.). [Emphasis added]. 

Yes, there is a slight difference between this district-wide policy involving certain students involved with afterschool programs and what happened at that one school that was the subject of the Channel 9 story:  The district-wide policy sometimes allows an hour’s grace period before turning over the situation to the family police.

 

What CFSA says

On Friday I reached out to CFSA Communications Director Kera Tyler for the agency’s response.  I asked her why Donald referred to what WUSA9 reported as “Clearly bad information that was false that was corrected. Someone -- we don't know where that came from, but that absolutely does not happen and is not encouraged.”  In an email, Tyler acknowledged the memo from the school was real but claimed the school was the one that got it wrong. Says Tyler: 

In addition to responding to your hyperbolic language re: caseworkers hauling children to her office, Director Donald was referring to the misinformation in the principal’s communication to parents. Teachers are not directed to contact the DC Child and Family Services Agency when families are “simply a few minutes” late picking up their children by the 3:15 p.m. elementary school dismissal. Shortly after this news story ran, Principal Thomas and DC Public Schools (DCPS) corrected the misinformation, children who are not picked up on time at the end of the regular school day are enveloped into available afterschool programming while staff members work to contact family members and emergency contacts. The DCPS Parent Handbook you’ve linked and referenced is regarding afterschool programming. 

So WUSA9 got it right – that was the school’s policy and only after Channel 9 broke the story, were things “corrected.” 

But notice that the response says nothing about why a very similar policy exists, districtwide, for afterschool programming.  (I’ll get to how CFSA spins that, below.) 

Tyler went on to deny that Donald was misleading listeners on the radio program.  There just wasn’t time to go into detail about it, Tyler said, because “The purpose of her appearance on The Kojo Nnamdi Show last spring was to address concerns regarding child welfare during the public health emergency.”  Translation: Donald was too busy scaring people into rushing to report any vague suspicion of child abuse and urging them to usie meal drop-offs for spying. 

But even if we accept this at face value, it doesn’t explain why CFSA didn’t say anything like this when the agency’s deputy director commented in the original WUSA9 story.  (Neither did the D.C. Schools Chancellor.) 

As for the policy that CFSA at no point denies, the one about afterschool cases, Tyler explains that’s just CFSA being kindly, benevolent helpers!  Writes Tyler: 

During emergency incidents where families and emergency contacts can’t be reached, CFSA offers schools and families respite. 

Let’s stop right there.  “Offer” implies the families can say no. But this is an “offer” they can’t refuse. 

Tyler continues: 

By and large, these incidents are not abuse or neglect, and a child requiring temporary safe supervision until their family can be reached is not a removal. 

But does it feel like it’s not removal to the child?  

Tyler continues: 

CFSA social workers are trained professionals who team with educators to support families during these incidents by helping to identify additional familial contacts and providing that safe supervision if necessary. 

But recall that the actual policy manual puts it differently: 

If the parent/guardian does not pick up a student within an hour of the first call, CFSA will be contacted and asked to take custody of the student (at 4:30 p.m.). 

In 2019, CFSA told Channel 9 they didn’t track how often this happens.  They still don’t. But Tyler says there have been only a handful of cases in the past two years during which CFSA had to take custody – oh, sorry, I mean provide safe supervision -- under these circumstances. 

Tyler did offer schools help with p.r. -- declaring that “we’re happy to work with them to help soften the tone of any language that comes across punitively.” 

Because how could children possibly feel punished by having strangers come to the school and, yes, haul them off to the downtown office of the family police?

Weaponizing CPS: In DC, if you’re late to pick up your child from school, you may have to pick him up from Child Protective Services (assuming they let you have him back)

UPDATE, SEPT. 30: See NCCPR's perspective in this follow-up story from WUSA9

Remember the school district that got national attention for threatening to turn families in to child protective services if they couldn’t afford to pay for their children’s school lunches?

It turns out it’s not just one school district.  The Philadelphia Inquirer found that in Southern New Jersey alone, at least eight school district that have policies allowing schools to do the same thing.

In New Jersey, as in Luzerne County, Pa., where the practice first came to light, the child protective services agency made clear schools should never do that, calling such threats “a misuse and misrepresentation” of the agency.

But in Washington, D.C., the CPS agency gave a disturbing non-answer when asked about a practice in the District that is as bad or worse: turning in parents for alleged neglect if they’re so much as a minute late picking their children up from school.

The practice was revealed by WUSA-TV, after they heard from a parent.  

She, and other parents at Paterson ElementarySchool, received a “welcome back” to school letter from the school principal that is anything but welcoming.  It is so dripping with condescension and filled with boldfaced, underlined, all-caps finger-wagging admonitions that one can only wonder: If this is how they treat the parents, what is it like to be a student there?

But one threat is particularly disturbing:

If you choose not to have your child remain in the Afterschool Program, then he/she MUST be picked up promptly at 3:15 p.m. For those students that are not picked up on time (3:15pm) the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) will be contacted, and parents will be required to pick their child up from their office." [Emphasis most definitely in the original]

Notice the part about the afterschool program.  It’s not as if the school would be empty by 3:30.  On the contrary, when a parent is simply stuck in traffic, or has some kind of emergency, or just thought it was someone else’s turn to pick up the child, presumably the school could simply allow the child to sit in at the afterschool program.  (And if, by some chance there’s some stupid bureaucratic rule prohibiting this, then surely there are adults who could stay a little later to watch the child.)

This cruel policy appears rooted either in making things more convenient for the school or contempt for the families who send children to Patterson Elementary School.

Guess who goes to Patterson Elementary

If you haven’t already guessed, the student population is 99 percent Black.  The other one percent is Hispanic/Latino.  One hundred percent are listed as economically disadvantaged.  These are precisely the parents who generally have the most stress in their lives, and are likely to find it hardest to always get to the school at precisely 3:15pm.

Officially, this appalling infliction of trauma on children is district-wide policy – but do you really think they’d get away with this at a school in tony Georgetown?

Worse than the threatening letter is the fact that schools in the District have, in fact, been carrying out the threat, and CFSA has been going along with it. 

Back when the Pennsylvania school lunch story broke, and the county child welfare agency responded the right way, I wrote this:

I suspect that, while most CPS agencies wouldn’t have endorsed what the school district did, they wouldn’t condemn it either – since their party line is report! report! report!  Call in with anything and everything, no matter how absurd, they say, and let our “professionals” decide.

And sure enough, CFSA lived down to my expectations.  According to WUSA:

[CFSA] Deputy Director Robert Matthews said that in many cases, they call mom or dad to find out they’re just stuck in traffic. CFSA couldn’t tell WUSA9 how often this happens because they don’t keep records of that. But he said they work with schools to track families down. 

Wait. Don’t schools also have telephones?  Why doesn’t CFSA tell the schools to do this themselves – instead of traumatizing children first?

What CFSA should have said is:

We are not in the business of doing the school district’s scut work for them.  We have real cases of abuse and neglect to investigate.  And we’re not here to inflict trauma on children for your convenience.  We will refuse to send our overloaded caseworkers to your school just because a parent is late to pick up a child, and we demand that you immediately stop calling us in such cases.

Instead, they said only this:

Situations like this do not automatically mean it’s a case of neglect or cause for investigation.

Well, isn’t that reassuring.  There are several problems with this.

From the 19^th Century, when Societies for Prevention of Cruelty to Children were known in poor neighborhoods as “the Cruelty,” to today, children in those neighborhoods know exactly what an agency like CFSA is all about.  They have to. For one thing, one recent study says a majority of African-American children will be the subject of a child abuse investigation at some point in their childhoods.

So children have every reason to be scared when caseworkers show up at the school and take them to the CFSA offices downtown.

And while this is not automatically deemed cause for investigation, that call is the equivalent of issuing CFSA a fishing license to poke and pry into every aspect of a family’s life.  Since any family subjected to this is likely to be poor, and poverty often is confused with neglect, the trauma of that first trip to the CFSA office could be only the beginning.

In my previous post, I said this keeps happening because we allow it to happen:

Half a century of horror stories that bear no resemblance to what CPS agencies typically see, combined with politicians trying to score points by “cracking down on child abuse” have led us to this: a child welfare surveillance state where everyone is under constant suspicion and CPS is the weapon of choice for all sorts of bureaucratic bullies.

In DC the problem is worsened by the local Child Advocacy Center, which, undoubtedly means well, but winds up stoking paranoia. Take a look at the repercussions.

There are two legislative bodies that could put a stop to this practice in Washington, D.C.: The schoolboard could bar schools from calling CFSA just because parents are late picking up their kids, or the D.C. Council could bar CFSA from acting on such calls.  Presumably D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser could do the same.

But the bigger issue is this: As long as we are driven by fear, and as long as child welfare agencies are the enablers, school districts, among others, will be able to exploit that fear for their own convenience.

Foster care in D.C.: The stories behind the statistics

A previous post to this Blog dealt with a report by the District of Columbia Citizens Review Panel (CRP), a group mandated by federal law to assess the performance of D.C.’s child welfare agency, the Child and Family Services Administration.

The report is a scathing indictment of CFSA for tearing apart hundreds of families needlessly – and often, probably, illegally.  The previous post sums up the facts and figures.  But one of the most notable features of the report are the case histories, and the appalling responses from CFSA.

Consider this case:

The “D” Family. A child was living with his uncle, who reported to CFSA that he was facing eviction. The uncle said he was feeling overwhelmed, “tired, frustrated, and hungry” and that caring for the child would hinder his relinquishing his apartment. CFSA interpreted this situation as an admission of the uncle’s inability to raise the child and an immediate threat to the child – even though the eviction was not imminent and the uncle’s story could reasonably have been understood as a request for assistance. CFSA removed the child.

The case record reveals a later email from CFSA’s lawyer to a Child Protective Services staff member stating “had CFSA responded differently to the uncle’s repeated requests for help, this case might never have led to a removal.” The Panel agrees with this assessment. No imminent danger was present. The eviction was not scheduled for several weeks. CFSA could have helped the uncle obtain a housing lawyer to help him fight the eviction in landlord-tenant court or helped him obtain housing assistance, but instead CFSA removed the child. It is possible that the uncle would have refused to take the child back even if CFSA had provided this sort of assistance. But there is no way to know. We do know that the uncle did take the child back just three days later – strongly suggesting that the uncle did desire to keep the child. [Emphasis added].

In response, CFSA argues that it was absolutely essential to remove this child on the spot because, according to the case record:

the child had been born prematurely had been exposed to PCP and was believed to have developmental delays. … [T]he uncle “noted several times …that he would not take the child back [emphasis added]… noting that he wants to leave the apartment as quickly as he could and having to care for the child would hinder this effort.”

The investigator further quoted that the uncle as saying [sic] that providing care for his nephew was “getting to me feeling overwhelmed” and the uncle was “tired, frustrated and hungry.”

Further, the uncle was himself a recovering PCP user.  The dangers associated with forcing this man to continue to care for a child under these circumstances are not acknowledged by the CRP reviewers.

But, of course, neither the CRP reviewers nor anyone else was suggesting that the uncle be forced to keep the child.  Rather, CRP was suggesting that had CFSA offered to ease the enormous stress faced by the uncle by providing him the help he needed – including a lawyer to fight the eviction or a new place for the entire family to live - the uncle would no longer feel overwhelmed and be glad to continue taking care of his nephew.

The fact that the nephew was, in fact, returned to the uncle three days later, suggests that CRP got it right.  And, of course, it’s not just the Review Panel that drew this conclusion.  As is noted in the Panel report, CFSA’s own lawyer reviewing the case reached the same conclusion.

The Panel also found appalling behavior by CFSA in cases involving battered mothers, like this one:

The “L” Family. The father of four children assaulted their mother. The Metropolitan Police Department arrested both the father and the mother following this incident.  … An aunt of the children appeared on the scene but neither MPD nor CFSA considered releasing the children to her. The case record reflected no effort to determine the mother’s wishes regarding short-term care of her children. CFSA removed the children. Their mother was released from jail very shortly and CFSA returned the children three days after their removal. CFSA could have avoided this traumatic separation and the placement of the mother on the child protection registry by permitting the aunt to take the children or asking the mother to designate a temporary caretaker via a custodial power of attorney.

Incredibly, CFSA responds that whenever it uses its emergency power to tear apart a family it has concluded, on its own and on the spot, that the parents must be “unfit” and it would be “improper” to have an “unfit” parent “make a custodial decision.”

But how, exactly, does being beaten by a man make a mother unfit?  This speaks volumes about the mindset at CFSA, as does this case, which raises the same issue:

The “M” Family. This child’s parents were in the process of divorcing, and her
father physically assaulted her mother. MPD arrested both parents and contacted CFSA. The child’s brother was temporarily staying with the children’s grandmother. The grandmother physically came to CFSA to request that she take care of the child who was removed, but CFSA did not release the child to her grandmother. The case record indicates no effort to ask the mother to designate a caretaker. CFSA removed the child, placed her with strangers, and placed her mother on the child protection registry. Her mother was quickly released and reunified with her daughter four days after the removal.

Thanks to a successful class-action lawsuit, in New York City such behavior by the child welfare agency is illegal.  (NCCPR’s Vice President, Carolyn Kubitschek, was co-counsel for the battered women who brought the suit.)  That’s because the harm of removing a child from a parent is actually worse for that child, sometimes far worse, when the parent is, herself a victim of domestic violence.  As one expert testified, taking a child from a battered mother because that mother has been beaten “is tantamount to pouring salt on an open wound.”

Unfortunately for the children, at CFSA, the policy on these cases boils down to “please pass the salt.”

Foster care in DC: District’s own expert panel blasts widespread needless removal of children

            It’s not unusual for outside agitators – like me – to say that a given child welfare system is taking away a whole lot of children needlessly.  It’s quite unusual when the charge comes from a panel of experts named by the community’s own government leaders.

            But that’s what happened last month in Washington, D.C., in the form of a scathing report about the D.C. Child and Family Services Administration.  The report was issued by the District’s child welfare Citizen Review Panel (CRP).  Federal law requires at least one such panel in every state to examine child protective services agencies. 

           

            The D.C. panel was appointed by the mayor and the D.C. Council.  It’s quite a distinguished group.  Members of the panel include a former social services administrator in Maryland who now is the legislative policy associate for the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators – a trade association for agencies like CFSA.  Another member spent 23 years in human services, including five years as a CPS caseworker.  Another is a senior attorney for the D.C. Children’s Law Center – the group that represents children in child welfare cases in the District.  Another served as Coordinator of Child Abuse and Neglect for the D.C. Public Schools.

            The Review Panel was disturbed by the large numbers of children taken from their parents by CFSA who were sent home again within four months.  Typically, anywhere from 18 to 35 percent are sent home that quickly.  Depending on how you run the numbers that’s an average of anywhere from 161 to 225 children per year.

 It’s not that the CRP doesn’t want children returned home quickly.  But it raised an obvious question: If the children could be returned within four months, did they really need to be taken at all?  After carefully reviewing a random sample of such cases, the CRP concluded that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the answer was no. Said the panel:

This study concludes that, when children leave foster care quickly – a significant and longstanding feature of the District’s child welfare system – it is likely that CFSA removed the child unnecessarily.

            Indeed, the report found that only 25 percent of removals met the legal standard for taking a child away on the spot, without even asking a court’s permission first.  Such removals are supposed to take place only when CFSA “has reasonable grounds to believe that the child is in immediate danger” and removal is necessary to eliminate the danger.  Yet CFSA uses this grab-the-child-first-ask-the-court-later power in 97 percent of all removals.

            Now consider the implications:  75 percent of the cases did not meet the standard for an emergency removal, and that’s pretty much the only kind of removal CFSA does.  That means that every year, D.C. tears anywhere from 121 to 169 children from their families unnecessarily. 

            But that’s probably an underestimate.  Because when families get decent lawyers, the number of children sent home fast soars.

Nearly three years ago, Prof. Matthew Fraidin of the University of the District of Columbia Law School presented the results of his law students’ work representing families whose children had been taken away by CFSA.  (His findings are included in material he released at a joint news conference with NCCPR in January, 2009.)  In fully 60 percent of the cases the children were returned within three months – and in most of those cases, they were returned within a week.

            If the real number of children who can go home that quickly is 60 percent, then the real number of wrongful removals every year is nearly half of all the children taken away by CFSA.

            “For these children,” notes the report, “these are severe, possibly life-changing events.” 

OTHERS REACH SIMILAR CONCLUSIONS

            The review panel and Prof. Fraidin are not alone in sounding the alarm about wrongful removal in the District. 

            ● Organizations that provide “guardians ad litem” for children in child welfare cases typically only complain when a child welfare agency isn’t taking away even more children.  So it speaks volumes that Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children's Law Center - the group which provides such representation in D.C. wrote a letter to The Washington Post in which she estimated that at least 100 DC children every year are taken from their families unnecessarily.  She writes that "These removals traumatize children and devastate families." 

            ● The independent monitor overseeing the long-running class-action lawsuit settlement in the District also examined a sample of cases. The CRP report points out that the monitor found that CFSA’s action in immediately removing the children was justified in fewer than half of those cases.

One of the strongest features of the CRP report is the case examples, like this one:

In one case, CFSA refused to release two children to their own mother who had done nothing wrong. The children’s maternal grandmother was a recovering substance abuser and had been clean and sober for a substantial amount of time. Their mother reasonably relied on the grandmother’s babysitting. Unfortunately, the grandmother relapsed one evening and left the young children alone. CFSA could not immediately locate the mother and reasonably took custody of the children. But when the mother showed up at CFSA that same day, CFSA inexplicably refused to release her children to her, despite its legal obligation to release them to her “with all reasonable speed.”Instead, CFSA kept the children in foster care for three days and then released them.

The report provides an excellent discussion of precisely what child welfare agencies so often forget – the need to balance harms:

Many parents have had the experience of a toddler crying when dropped off at preschool – even with a parent giving him a goodbye hug, assuring him that she will return within hours, and turning him over to a classroom full of unfamiliar faces.

Now imagine that same child taken away by a stranger, over the parent’s objection, and without anyone able to tell him what will happen next or even when he will see his parent again. Days pass and people still cannot explain what will happen next, or why he hasn’t been able to see mommy for a long time. Weeks pass, and he gets to see his mom for brief visits, and then is taken away again, with no idea when he will see her again. It is not hard to see the emotional toll these separations impose on children or their parents.

On the other hand, very real safety concerns are at stake. Some children do suffer serious abuse and neglect at the hands of their parents and in some cases the only available response is to separate the child from the parent because the emotional harm of that separation is less than the harm inflicted by the parent’s abuse or neglect.

But over and over again, the report found, CFSA flunks this balance-of-harms test.

CFSA: NOTHING’S WRONG – AND LOOK HOW WE’RE FIXING IT!

In a response to the repot most notable for its sheer snottiness (read it and see for yourself – it’s included with the report) CFSA insists that every single decision it made in every one of these cases was the right call.  On the other hand, in a very good story about the report in The Washington Post, CFSA’s acting director talks about how it’s reduced entries into care this year (though even at the reduced rate, children in Washington D.C. are torn from their homes at a far higher rate than in New York, Chicago and Miami, among other cities, even when rates of child poverty are taken into account).  She also discusses new programs to keep families together.

So apparently CFSA’s position is: Look at all we’re doing to fix the problems we deny ever existed in the first place!

In a future post: More case examples, and CFSA’s appalling response to the report. 

Foster care hearings: “Sunshine is good for children”

Matthew Fraidin is Associate Professor of law at the David A. Clarke School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia. Two years ago, he started a clinical program in which students represent exclusively birth families in child maltreatment cases – thereby doubling the total number of such programs across the country (the first is run by NCCPR's President, Prof. Martin Guggenheim, at New York University School of Law). His previous work has included representing both children and parents.

Below are excerpts from testimony Prof. Fraidin gave last week at a hearing of the D. C. Council, in which he calls for opening court hearings in these cases to the press and the public. The title for his testimony, "Sunshine is Good for Children" is a quote from the former Chief Judge of New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, Judith Kaye, who ordered child maltreatment hearings opened in that state.

In my law students' cases, more than 60% -- that is 60% -- of the children taken from their families have been returned without ever being found abused or neglected. Yes, more than 60% of the children taken from their living rooms and schoolhouses, from their brothers and sisters and teachers and grandparents and friends – more than 60% of the children housed in foster care with strangers! – do not need to be there, by the government's own admission. They take the children, the Court rubber-stamps the removal, and only later, when my students find the information the agency missed, explain to the agency the information it distorted, and demonstrate that the child would be safest and healthiest in her own home, does the government agree – voluntarily! – to send the child home and dismiss its own case. Secret proceedings means that you can't meet the children whose lives are turned upside-down, perhaps never to be righted – for no reason.

You can't observe the rubber-stamp hearings. You can't watch a case worker hem and haw an explanation about why a distraught child hasn't been referred to a therapist, despite a court order directing the referral. You can't see a lawyer guessing at his client's position, rather than knowing it, because the lawyer hasn't met with the client since the previous court hearing. You can't sit in the back of a courtroom and shake your head in frustration and disgust at a judge who openly flouts the law, refusing to let a child live with her beloved aunt, simply because it is that judge's "personal policy" not to allow children to live with relatives unless [the Child and Family Services Administration (CFSA), D.C.'s child welfare agency] agrees. You can't know what's going on, and you can't do anything about it.

Operating behind an impenetrable iron curtain that is anathema to American governance, the Family Court deprives children of the checks and balances they need for health, safety, and stability.

I am here to testify that sunshine is good for children.

D.C. IS OUT OF STEP

The District of Columbia is out of step with a growing national trend by guarding the walls that, in turn, guard adults' secrets and their errors of commission and omission:

• Judges say open courts are good for children: The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges issued a public Resolution in 2005, attached to my testimony, supporting open courts. The National Child Abuse Coalition, the Council of State Court Administrators and the Conference of Chief Justices all agree that states should have discretion to open their courts. …
  
• Seventeen states have opened child welfare proceedings …
  
  
• No state that has moved to transparency has ever shut down again. Many states opened child welfare hearings on a "pilot project" basis, and none retreated to the darkness of secrecy.
  
• Doubters are convinced:
  Even judges and children's advocates who initially were vigorously opposed to transparency become enthusiastic converts, convinced of the benefits to children. After Minnesota's courts had been open for a year, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune noted that "the greatest fear--that troubled children would be victimized and embarrassed by sensationalized new media coverage and community scorn--has yet to be realized."
  
• Open court proceedings empower children: According to Minnesota Judge Heidi Schellhas, "Open child protection proceedings may…assist the psychological recovery of the abused children…'victims of abuse often carry their burden alone, in secret' and closed proceedings simply 'continue the notion that something shameful has happened, and that no one should be told.'"…
  

We cannot be sure adults are serving children unless we can see them. If adults' actions are hidden behind a wall, we are literally in the position of having to take the adults' word that they're doing their job. …

A CASE IN POINT

One of my former child clients, now dead by gunshot, asked his group home not to house him with a roommate because, he admitted, he was disliked by some of the other children and felt uncomfortable with them. The group home ignored him, as well as my similar request on his behalf. Another resident of the group home – also now-deceased by gunshot -- came in and stabbed my client in the shoulder with a screwdriver. Bad enough, but the agency then proposed to bring both boys to the CFSA offices to put them in a room together to "mediate the dispute." No one knew this went on – no one has ever known until you, now, some six or more years later.

Same child: in addition to being stabbed, the child was victimized when his new roommate allowed other boys into the shared room. The other boys stole some of my child client's clothing. It was all he had, in two garbage bags and a battered suitcase. He'd been in foster care since he was nine years old, and had carted sneakers and clothing to the dozen or more homes he'd lived in. He was enraged by the theft, and broke some of the thief's property and kicked a hole in a wall. Arrested for the destruction of property, he was locked up overnight, for the first time ever, and charged as a juvenile. The CFSA worker was set to tell the delinquency judge that the child's best interests would be served by going to Oak Hill [D.C.'s juvenile jail] because it would "be therapeutic for him." I remonstrated with the worker in the courthouse hallway and burned up telephone lines for hours until I located a foster parent with an empty bed and persuaded CFSA that a foster home would be more appropriate for the child than Oak Hill.

Until now, no one has known about this.

No one has known until now that the boy became a loving, gentle, doting father. The baby's mother went off to finish her final semester of college, and the ward was the baby's only caretaker. No one has known that the adults working for CFSA refused to allow the young dad to live with his baby. CFSA had no teen-father placements, they said. They assigned him to programs and buildings that did not allow babies. So he "absconded" every night, meaning he went to his mother's home, or his mother-in-law's home, or to his grown sister, or to an aunt, or to a friend or anywhere he could keep his baby. Demerit after demerit after demerit from the adults at CFSA, harassing him, adding stress to an already-burdened life.

No one has ever known that the adults at CFSA later sought again and again to have this child's neglect case closed because he wasn't appreciative of the services they were offering.

No one has known until now, from this testimony, that when my child client became an adult and buckled under the stress and picked up minor adult criminal charges, the adult employees of CFSA and [the D.C. Office of Attorney General] OAG strenuously resisted my pleas and my client's to install an operating telephone in his residence. See, he was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet, and needed the telephone to be working to connect with the bracelet, so that he would not violate his conditions of release on the criminal charge. The adults working for CFSA and OAG said, again, that it would be better for the child to go to jail – the D.C. Jail, this time – than to reside in their care. So they refused to install the telephone to make sure he would be locked up. Then, they could close his case and get him off the rolls. Voila! Lower caseloads!

The postscript is, of course, my child client's death. CFSA finally having worn down the Family Court Magistrate Judge, the child's case was closed a few months before he turned 21. A bright, sensitive, sweet guy, he had lived in dozens of foster homes, group homes, with his mother and grandmother, with his sisters, and in at least one RTC, and had no ties to anyone but his wife and children. He had attended more than a dozen high schools without graduating. He had a marijuana habit, and maybe others, that seemed relatively low-level to me, but showed no signs of abating. He had been trying to hold down a job, and also had been stealing drug dealers' small stashes and selling those to support his two children.

He was shot at 1408 Girard Street on the day police were installing a crime camera around the corner. He made the paper for that. He made the paper again, though I'm the only one who knew it, because he wasn't identified, when Lafonte Lurie Carlton, his killer, was released a few years later from Oak Hill and killed again.

My child client would have wanted Carlton to be released, by the way. He knew children need lots of chances and lots of help. He also knew, painfully, that adults often fail children, even adults who mean well and certainly, adults who don't care or can't be bothered or who have other priorities. Would that dear child still be alive if the adults who hurt him and ignored him and despised him had been seen for what they'd done? Might they have straightened up a little and flown a little righter if they'd known that, like other adults, they could be held accountable for their actions?

SHIRKING RESPONSIBILITY

It's ironic that teaching our children "responsibility" is a major tenet of parenting. We want children to grow up to understand that that their actions have consequences. While parents try to teach this value to their charges, the adults surrounding children in the foster care system are not responsible for what they do and don't do. In our secret system, adults don't have to live the value, to practice what they preach.

Yes, we must ensure that the right adults have the right information to help children. It is equally important, however, to make sure we don't give adults a blank check to go along with that power. We have to make sure they use their power to help children. We are all responsible and we all must watch: family, friends, neighbors, the press. No one can be healthy in the dark: sunshine is good for children.

Mayor Fenty wins the “Arrogance Bowl”

I used to think Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty couldn't accomplish anything in child welfare. I was mistaken. This week, Fenty managed something I thought was impossible: He managed to "out-arrogant" the group that so arrogantly calls itself "Children's Rights." Indeed, were there a Super Bowl for arrogance, I'd always bet on Adrian Fenty.

    A quick recap:

CR has a longstanding consent decree in Washington. For many years, the decree was ignored, to the point where the system became the first in the nation taken over by a federal court. But under the administration of former Mayor Anthony Williams the District's Child and Family Services Administration (CFSA) earned its way out of receivership. It continued to make improvements –agonizingly slow improvements but improvements nonetheless.

Then along came Fenty. First he ignored warnings of serious problems ahead, warnings from the independent monitor named to oversee compliance with the consent decree. Then he plunged the agency into chaos with his demagogic response to child abuse tragedies. (For details see the press release and other materials issued by NCCPR at a news conference earlier this month.) Fenty's latest party line is that he deserves enormous credit for allegedly improving the agency. But to the extent that there has been any recent improvement it consists solely of undoing the damage he did in the first place. Thus, Fenty repeatedly cites eliminating a backlog of uncompleted investigations. But it was Fenty who caused the backlog.

And all along, some of us feared that the backlog was eliminated at the expense of CFSA's other responsibilities, including its most important, core responsibilities to children.

New data show that is exactly what happened.

The data come from the independent monitor, and they compare CFSA performance in April and November 2008.

In roughly half of the categories monitored, CFSA either was unable to provide data to show if performance improved, provided data the monitor believes are inaccurate, or actually performed more poorly in November than in April.

Areas where performance declined were among the most important, including:

● Percentage of cases where caseworkers made monthly visits to families receiving in-home services.

● Percentage of cases in which workers met with parents as often as they should.

● Percentage of children forced to move from home to home more than once.

● Percentage of children able to visit their own siblings at least twice a month.

In many cases the declines were small – but you don't reward an agency for going in the wrong direction (and I'll get to the reward Fenty is seeking below).

Even where there were improvements, often they weren't anything to brag about.

Nothing is more important to getting a separated family back together again than regular visits between parents and children. CFSA is supposed to be able to ensure that such visits take place weekly in at least 85 percent of cases. (Weekly, in fact, isn't nearly enough, especially since visits tend to be short and supervised – it's a bare minimum the agency must meet). But in April, CFSA managed this in only 33 percent of cases. Yes, it improved in November – to all of 36 percent.

That means that if CFSA were able to maintain this same rate of improvement – and who knows if that even could be done – CFSA would be in compliance with minimum requirements for visits - in about 9.3 years.

So the whole Fenty argument - look how wonderful we are, we eliminated the backlog – is a sham. Not only was it stunningly arrogant on its face, the "accomplishment" was achieved at the expense of children already trapped in the system.

Yet it is based on this claim and one other that Fenty has outdone even the Fenty standard for arrogance.

As The Washington Post reported this morning, Fenty wants out of the consent decree completely.

The District was supposed to come up with the latest in a series of reform plans this week and get approval from the monitor. The monitor didn't think the plan was good enough. So, in violation of the terms of its agreement with CR, Fenty simply marched into court and asked that his plan be approved anyway. He also is demanding, again unilaterally, an exit plan to be released from the consent decree with which he has failed to comply. CR says it will seek to hold the District in contempt of court.

Fenty bases his demand on two arguments: The first is the one about undoing the damage he did in the first place. The other is to cite progress over the past eight years. In other words, Fenty is saying that because his reckless response to child abuse tragedies didn't undo everything CFSA accomplished before Fenty became mayor, Fenty should be trusted to run the agency without court supervision.

    Fenty goes on to accuse CR of trying to "micromanage" CFSA. It could be a potent charge, since CR is known for trying to do that sort of thing. But not this time.

    First of all, it's not CR that said the latest plan wasn't good enough, it was the court monitor.

    The monitor is a neutral arbiter who determines if terms of a settlement, agreed to by both sides, are being met. She is analogous not a prosecutor or a defense attorney, but to a judge.

Assuming you have a good monitor, the monitor's views should have greater weight than either plaintiffs or the District.

    And few people in child welfare are more knowledgeable, more respected – and more reasonable – than Judy Meltzer, the court monitor overseeing this case. Her reports have been rigorous – and measured.

    So it is, in every sense of the word, contemptible, for Fenty to throw a tantrum and simply refuse to implement reform plans to get CFSA where successive D.C. administrations have pledged it will go.

    As for that micromanaging charge, the only example Fenty could come up with is a claim that the monitor and CR want to approve the selection of a new permanent director for CFSA. I don't know if that's true – but I certainly hope so. The only hope for CFSA is getting a director with enough backbone to stand up to Fenty. And whatever else you may call this, it is certainly not micromanaging. Choosing the leader of the agency is the ultimate broad-scope, big picture decision.

    D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles told the Post that "It's important for everyone to realize we are not a bunch of washed-up government servants that need to be monitored."

    Actually, when it comes to child welfare, Fenty and Nickles need more than monitoring. They need adult supervision.

Dog bites man

Yesterday morning, I noted that Washington D.C.'s Child and Family Services Administration actually had responded to a child welfare tragedy by not firing the caseworker. I said the agency even seemed to be rushing out a statement in order to stop Mayor Adrian Fenty from wielding his ax. In short, it looked like CFSA Director Sharlynn Bobo was standing up for her workers and standing up to the mayor. By yesterday afternoon, WAMU, Washington's public radio station, reported that the mayor was equivocating just a bit in his previously unequivocal support for Bobo. Last night, the mayor announced that he had accepted Bobo's resignation.

Man bites dog!

…or the equivalent in Washington, D.C. The headline on a story in today's Washington Post could have been: "Child Dies; Caseworker Not Scapegoated!" Yes, it really happened. D.C.'s Child and Family Services Administration rushed out a statement defending the caseworker in the most recent tragedy, in which a five-month-old infant died while sleeping on a sofa with his 15-year-old mother. According to one public official, the mother may have accidentally rolled over on the infant while they slept.

CFSA acted so quickly to defend the worker that I have to wonder if they were trying to get the word out before Mayor Adrian Fenty could fire her. Yes, according to the agency, the worker did everything right, but remember, according to Fenty, that doesn't matter. If a child dies, and CFSA knew about the child, the mayor says, "there can be no excuses."

And, indeed, had anyone wanted to fire the worker it would have been easy. To borrow a phrase from Maine foster parent Mary Callahan, who applied it to how workers often treat birth parents, there were plenty of "gotcha moments" in this case if the mayor wanted to take advantage of them. According to the Post:

A report came April 29 that "an infant was not getting regular checkups." CFSA gave this account: The social worker visited the home the next day and the following day, May 1, and left information on the door about contacting her, because no one was home. That Sunday, [two days later] the boy's maternal grandfather called the social worker on her cellphone, and the social worker saw the family [another two days later] May 5.

Now, think back to the Banita Jacks case. The caseworker there did even more. Responding to a report from a school social worker, she went to the home, found no one home and left a note. Later, after the school social worker called in another report, a police officer went to the home and found nothing wrong. Nevertheless, the caseworker returned – with police – the following day, but no one answered. The next day the caseworker tried again.

So apparently the worker in the Jacks case tried even more than the caseworker in the most recent tragedy. Yet the worker in the Jacks case was raked over the coals in the media – and fired – for not doing more.

One could argue that the Jacks case was different because the allegations in the original reports to the child abuse hotline in that case were more serious. But that is counterbalanced by the fact that law enforcement investigated and found no problem - something the "gotcha gang" has almost willfully ignored since that case became public.

Indeed, had the child in this most recent case died on any day between May 1 and May 5, odds are the worker would have been fired this time as well. And no one would be saying she'd done enough because the allegation was less serious.

Here's what actually happened next, according to the Post:

[During the May 5 visit, the caseworker] found that the mother and her child had not received medical checkups since birth and that the mother and a sibling did not go to school regularly. The social worker also saw that the child had been sleeping in a car seat and got the mother to agree to place the infant on his back in a bassinet. She contacted a local program to get a crib and set up medical care for the infant, the mother and her sibling. This included a May 30 home visit from two registered nurses to talk about infant care. By June 2, the social worker found that the family had gotten a portable crib on its own.

Very good work, particularly in light of the enormous caseloads facing most CFSA workers. But did anyone keep checking to see if the mother was using the crib?
Gotcha!

And, of course, there's still another question: The worker apparently did everything she should have done – in this case. But how many other cases does she have? If she has more than 20 or 30, odds are there's some other case where she hasn't been able to do everything she should. What if the child who died had been from one of those cases? Gotcha!

We'll know the scapegoating has really ended and real reform can begin when there is a tragedy and CFSA puts out a statement like this:

"The worker in this case has an outstanding track record, repeatedly going the extra mile for children and families. But this time, she simply had so many cases that she couldn't get to the one where a child died. We refuse to respond by throwing her to the wolves."

The day that happens is the first day CFSA will move toward having fewer tragedies.

Nauseous or nauseating?

The single most important comment about the current crisis in Washington, D.C. child welfare came at a public hearing yesterday. Actually, it might be the most important comment about any child welfare system. It came from Judith Meltzer, the monitor appointed by a federal court to oversee a consent decree concerning child welfare in the District. Here's what she said:

"The District of Columbia will never have enough child protective services investigators if the only response to an overwhelmed family is a call to the Hotline and the removal or threatened removal of a child from his or her family."

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty should read that quote first thing every morning. So should every governor in states where child welfare is state run. So should every county executive where counties are in charge. And so should every leader of a child welfare system.

Meltzer also presented data at the hearing which make clear that the impact of the foster-care panic caused by the mayor in the wake of the discovery of the deaths of four children in January is even worse than I'd thought. What should scare the heck out of everyone is Table 1 in her written testimony, which looks at a few of what might best be called "canary in the mineshaft" indicators - things that are absolutely basic, easy to quantify, and vital to keeping children safe. Performance on these indicators hasn't just declined, it's plummeted.

So it should come as no surprise that still another child has died in a case "known to the system" in Washington.

But all we've seen in response is more posturing; particularly from the chair of the relevant committee of the D.C. Council, Tommy Wells, who said: "I feel like throwing up."

I know the feeling. But here's what makes me feel like throwing up: Self-indulgent, chest-thumping, grandstanding politicians who at best were AWOL as the D.C. Child and Family Services Administration descended into chaos and at worst threw gasoline on the fires of foster care panic.

Wells also called the latest tragedy (actually second-to-latest, this was before he knew about the case revealed late yesterday) "unfortunately a predictable result" of the current crisis.

No kidding. But if it's so predictable, why didn't Wells do anything to stop it?

Where was he before the bodies of the children of Banita Jacks were discovered in January, when he received report after report from the court monitor about the huge problems at CFSA – including those that required immediate action?

And where was he afterwards, when the entirely-predictable foster care panic began?

-- Why didn't he call on the mayor to reassure mandated reporters that, while they should call the hotline when they have reasonable cause to suspect maltreatment, they should not call in anything and everything just to protect themselves from censure, dismissal or prosecution?

-- Why didn't he call on the mayor to have CFSA create a rational system for screening calls to the hotline – one in which operators politely ask careful, open-ended questions. According to an annual federal survey, nationwide, more than 38 percent of all calls are screened out – even though typically the criteria for screening out a call are, in fact, far too strict. In D.C. ten only ten percent of calls are screened out, and, by some accounts the figure is even lower. (The federal data are available here: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/table2_1.htm )

Yes, if you do this, you may miss some cases in which children are in real danger. But you miss more cases now, by inundating workers with so many cases that some files just sit on workers' desks. There will always be screening in child welfare. The choice isn't screening vs. no screening, the choice is rational screening vs. irrational screening.

--Why didn't Wells tell the mayor to wield his ax, as needed, after investigating carefully and drawing distinctions, instead of simply firing anyone who came anywhere near the Jacks case. That led to the surge in needless removal of children from homes that were safe or could have been made safe, even as it also led to leaving more children in danger. That, more than anything else, led to the current crisis; and Tommy Wells did nothing to stop it.

--And Wells is still copping out – saying he's lost confidence in CFSA Director Sharlynn Bobo as though somehow she is relevant. Bobo is a figurehead. Mayor Fenty makes the firing decisions, Mayor Fenty accelerated the panic. But clearly, for Wells, Fenty is untouchable.

Of course some might argue Fenty was right this time, because in the case of Isiah Garcia, the worker handling that case had been suspended two years earlier. That's possible. I've said from day one that I don't know if the workers in this case and the Jacks case deserved to be fired – but neither does the mayor.

On the other hand, according to a good story in The Washington Post, backlog was an issue when the worker was suspended in 2006 as well. It's also possible that the worker could have done good work in some other part of CFSA had she been transferred. Or she might have been able to do her job better had she gotten good supervision – instead of no supervision. And, of course, it is not a great idea to take a worker you already know can't keep up with a backlog and hand her 50 cases.

Meltzer, the court-appointed monitor, said the mayor "cannot wish this problem away." He can't threaten it away either. The only way this problem will be solved is if CFSA somehow can be made a Fenty-free zone.

But until that happens, even the monitor's own short-term recommendations won't work. (Her long-term ideas are excellent).

The short term ideas revolve around bringing in more people to investigate all the cases that have piled up. Transfer people from other parts of CFSA, bring in retired caseworkers, have supervisors and administrators investigate cases, raise pay for people willing to work for CFSA, and so on.

But as long as every worker is terrified of being "Fentied" - made a scapegoat and being fired if something goes wrong regardless of actual fault - then there will be no other response. All the new workers will be chasing ever more new cases and all you'll wind up with is the same lousy system, only bigger. (This is, in fact, pretty much what has happened in Texas, for example, over the past four years).

--Imagine how much more morale is going to plummet if you start forcing people in other jobs to do these investigations - and then fire them whenever something goes wrong, regardless of actual fault. You could ask for volunteers, of course, but you're not likely to get many when they know they're putting their careers on the line.

--As for offering more pay: How much more money would you need to be paid to play Russian Roulette with your job?

The new hiring and transferring and temporary assignments will work only if they are accompanied by two things:

--That rational method to screen calls to the hotline mentioned above.

--Some mechanism to insulate the department from the mayor's serial grandstanding.

That would require one of three things to happen, each admittedly highly unlikely:

--Sharlynn Bobo would have to stand up to her boss, the mayor at which point she would, of course be fired. Her replacement then would have to stand up to the mayor as well, until firing successive CFSA chiefs became politically untenable. (Think of Watergate and Nixon's "Saturday night massacre.")

--The court could order the mayor out of the hiring and firing process. That would require plaintiffs in the current court case governing Washington child welfare to go to court and ask the court to insulate hiring and firing from the mayor. Given that the suit was brought by Children's Rights – a group which seems to have no problem with foster-care panics - that's unlikely to happen.

--The mayor needs to figure out that he was wrong, apologize and promise to stay out of hiring and firing decisions at CFSA. That's probably least likely of all.

Actually there is a fourth possibility - and maybe the only hope. The public has to change its mind about the mayor's Queen of Hearts approach to management. The mayor has essentially acknowledged that he is playing to the crowd. If the mayor's constituents decide that, having seen what happened the first time, having seen it backfire, they're not going to be fooled again, if they make clear they know the difference between accountability and scapegoating, then the mayor is likely to back off.

I'd like the mayor to do the right thing because it's right; but I'd gladly settle for having him do the right thing because it's become popular.

The definition of insanity…

…is, of course doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. By that definition, a story in today's Washington Post proves that the administration of Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is certifiable.

Let's review:

The decomposed bodies of four children, allegedly killed by a mother who apparently went mad, are found on January 9. The D.C. Child and Family Services Administration (CFSA), knew about the family. They had chances to save the children, though some of those chances are apparent only in hindsight. At the crucial turning point in the case, a social worker might have been lazy – or she might simply have had too many other cases that looked more urgent. At precisely the time when horror and fury needed to be channeled into real solutions, the mayor opts to yell "off with their heads!" instead, and fires anyone who came anywhere near the case. The head of CFSA, Sharlynn Bobo, stands with the mayor when she should be standing up to him. For details see: Return of the Queen of Hearts and The floggings will continue until morale improves.

The thought of a civil servant in D.C. actually getting fired sends such paroxysms of joy through the city's power elite that their feelings of vicarious revenge for anything that's ever happened to them at, say, the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles, overwhelms any other consideration – such as whether the mass firings of people without first finding out if they actually did anything wrong will plunge the agency into chaos. And sadly, CFSA is never all that far from chaos to begin with. (The war between the power elite and the civil service in D.C. is something I'll try to get to in a future post.) The Post offers up a vicious editorial suggesting that everyone who works for CFSA is lazy, incompetent or both. And the chair of the relevant City Council committee, Tommy Wells, proves that, to steal a line originally used about a certain U.S. Senator, the most dangerous space in D.C. is the distance between Tommy Wells and a television camera and/or reporter's notebook.

The mass firings do indeed plunge CFSA into chaos. CFSA is perhaps the only child welfare agency in America to require that every caseworker have an MSW degree. Workers who know that MSWs are very much in demand in child welfare and they can get jobs elsewhere leave to get jobs elsewhere. Social work graduates CFSA wants to recruit say "no, thanks." Meanwhile, every "mandated reporter" terrified of being blamed for the next horror story calls in anything and everything to D.C.'s child abuse hotline. So even as children are traumatized, sometimes, perhaps, for life, by needless foster care, and even as they are placed at considerable risk of abuse in foster care itself, average caseloads for CFSA workers soar from 12 to 20 – with many carrying more than 30 cases.

All of this was laid out on June 3 in this excellent story in the Post. The story virtually predicted what would happen next. And now it's confirmed:

Another caseworker tries to reach a family where abuse is suspected by phone two or three times. But once again, as in the case last January, the caseworker never makes face-to-face contact. Another child dies. It's all in the Post today.

So guess how Mayor Fenty responds? He fires the caseworker. The supervisor is merely placed on leave (perhaps the mayor's way of showing he's acquired a sense of nuance?)

As is true with the workers in the previous case, I can't tell you for sure that the mayor is wrong. Maybe in this instance the caseworker was lazy; sitting around with her or his feet up on the desk shooting the breeze, when s/he should have been knocking on the family's door. Or maybe s/he was simply too overwhelmed to get to every case. Support for the latter theory comes from the fact that this worker reportedly had a caseload of 50 – that's fifty – and had not made contact with the children in 17 of those 50 cases.

And here comes Tommy Wells, promising to hold a hearing on Monday and demanding to know "How did this happen…?"

How did it happen, Councilmember Wells? Read that Post story from June 3; it explains exactly how it happened. It happened because, while it can happen in any child welfare system at any time, you made it more likely to happen in D.C. now – you, and Sharlynn Bobo and, especially, the mayor.

And the mayor already has set in motion events which, if they're not stopped, make it even more likely to happen again.