Walking a fine child care line

Walking a fine child care line

01:00 AM EST on Sunday, January 24, 2010

By Lynn Arditi

Journal Staff Writer

Alston
It’s been just 2½ years since Rhode Island’s child advocate sued the state alleging widespread abuse and neglect of the children in its care.

Fueled by public outrage over the beating death of a 3-year-old boy in an unlicensed foster home, the class action lawsuit, backed by the New York nonprofit Children’s Rights, portrayed Rhode Island’s child-welfare system as not only overburdened but grossly mismanaged, and called for a complete overhaul.

Now, the fate of the lawsuit is uncertain and the child advocate, Jametta O. Alston, may soon be out of a job.

Governor Carcieri, who has said repeatedly that the lawsuit is without merit, has convened a search committee to fill the $82,490-a year post when Alston’s five-year term expires Feb. 1.

Whomever the governor appoints will have to decide whether the lawsuit, which is pending before a federal appeals court in Boston, is worth pursuing.

“It’s a tough question,” said Andrew J. Johnson, a former finalist for the child advocate’s job who is now director of the Court Appointed Special Advocate’s office, which provides legal representation for children in state custody. “If you answer it, ‘No,’ ” he said, “for rest of your career, people say you got appointed because you were the only person who said you’d pull the lawsuit. If you say yes (to pursuing the lawsuit), would the governor appoint you?”

Whether the lawsuit is, as some describe it, a blunt instrument where a scalpel is needed, or, as others contend, the best strategy to ensure the safety of children in state care depends on whom you ask. The state’s data on its performance is mixed.

On one point, however, most agree: an effective child advocate is critical to protecting children in state care.

Though appointed by the governor, the child advocate operates independently, serving as a watchdog over the Department of Children, Youth and Family — including foster homes, group homes, shelters, and the training school — and monitoring complaints and reports of child abuse. State law requires the child advocate to “take all possible action” including filing lawsuits to ensure that the legal and civil rights of children are protected. .

Carcieri appointed Alston in June 2005, after she resigned as city solicitor in Cranston. A lawyer who had worked for 10 years in the state attorney general’s office, Alston, a single parent, offered a compelling, personal perspective to the job: she had adopted a 7-year-old foster child. (Her daughter is now 16.)

Alston replaced Laureen D’Ambra, who served for 15 years, spanning three governors. During Gov. Lincoln Almond’s first term, D’Ambra sued the state to increase the number of beds in group homes and recruit more foster parents. The day a federal consent degree was signed, Almond’s director of administration notified her that she would have to re-apply for her job.

A search committee, chaired by Family Court Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr., reviewed the applications of 10 candidates, and returned with one recommendation: Laureen D’Ambra. She remained in the job until May 2005, when she became a Family Court judge.

Alston was sworn into the office the same day Patricia Martinez, Carcieri’s director of community relations and the former head of the nonprofit Progreso Latino, became the new director of the DCYF. Both were under intense public pressure. Eight months earlier, a 3-year-old boy named Thomas “T.J.” Wright had been beaten to death in an unlicensed foster home. And the DCYF had just received poor marks on a federal evaluation.

The child advocate’s office convened a panel of experts to investigate; it concluded that DCYF workers had missed or ignored several warning signs that might have prevented the boy’s death, and delivered 16 recommended improvements.

Under Martinez, the DCYF revamped its licensing of foster homes, purchased fingerprinting equipment and conducted its own criminal background checks to reduce the time lag in evaluating prospective foster parents.

By the second anniversary of T.J. Wright’s death, however, Alston had grown impatient. She charged that the DCYF had failed to make some of the most important changes called for by the review panel, including reducing DCYF worker’s case loads, then as high as 20.4 families per caseworker.Within a week, 21 DCYF casework supervisors signed a letter to Martinez stating that the state needed to reduce “unmanageable” caseloads to ensure the safety of children in state custody or supervision.

Frustrated with the pace of change at the agency, and encouraged by the Children’s Rights group, Alston filed a federal class action lawsuit in June 2007 against the state, naming Carcieri, Martinez and Jane E. Hayward, then secretary of health and human services, as defendants.

The child welfare system is “beyond broken,” Alston told a reporter . “It’s demolished. It doesn’t work.”

The plaintiffs included 10 children –– identified only by their first names and initials –– who, the lawsuit alleges, suffered years of abuse and neglect in foster homes, in some cases only to be returned to live with parents who were unwilling or unable to properly care for them. Rhode Island had the highest rate in the country of children abused or neglected in state foster care in five of the previous six years (from 2000 to 2006), according to federal data cited in the lawsuit.

In the 2½ years since the suit was filed, the DCYF reports that caseloads have fallen to an average of 14 families per caseworker, the recommended level, with the exception of one region, where the average is about 15 families.

The rate of abuse and/or neglect of all children under state supervision fell in fiscal 2008 to 9.5 percent, down from 13.3 percent the previous year, after the DCYF discovered “significant coding issues” in the 2007 data which resulted in misclassifications and data entry errors, said the agency’s deputy director, Jorge E. Garcia.

Meanwhile, the rate of children reentering foster care within 12 months of returning home climbed in 2008 to 24.5 percent, nearly three times the national standard of 8.6 percent, according to the data. The rate from April 1, 2008, through the first three months of 2009 was 23.5 percent. The lowest rate during the last five years was in 2006, when it was 13.4 percent.

“It’s an extraordinarily high number,” said Susan Lambiase, a lawyer representing Children’s Rights in the class action lawsuit. “The danger in that number is perhaps children are returning home without the proper supports in their families or they’re rushing them home before their parents are ready to have them.”

Last May, a federal court judge in Providence dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that Alston and the other plaintiffs had no standing. Alston appealed to the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which heard arguments earlier this month; a decision is pending.

“The kinds of reforms taking place in other states … are not taking place here,” said Lenette Azzi-Lessing, an assistant professor at Wheelock College School of Social Work, in Boston, who worked for years in child welfare in Rhode Island. Azzi-Lessing is prepared to testify as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which she called “one of the best hopes in bringing that system along.”

Lambiase, of Children’s Rights, says the group will pursue the lawsuit with or without the backing of the child advocate.

But even within Rhode Island’s child welfare community, support for the lawsuit is far from unanimous.

“Whether (Jametta Alston) stays or someone new comes in, the child advocate…needs to work hand in hand with the state to better develop a system to provide services for children,” said Philip Keefe, president of the social workers’ union and a member of the search committee. “I think if it’s a less confrontational (approach) it might be more beneficial. Because ultimately, I think we all have the same goal…”

Since Alston filed the lawsuit, public protests over the DCYF have quieted. There are no more embarrassing State House hearings about the agency’s performance. And after years of running over budget, the DCYF has managed to win favor among lawmakers by keeping its spending under the state allocation for two years in a row.

“There’s been improvement at the agency,” said state Sen. Rhoda E. Perry, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services. “The length of time in licensing home care, the ratio of case workers to case loads, the transition period for teenagers and young adults (to get) out of the system, and other child outcome measures” show the agency is moving in the right direction.

The DCYF, which hasn’t had a federal performance review since 2005, is scheduled to begin one this spring.

Meanwhile, the governor’s office has received about 25 applicants for the child advocate position. . One of them is from Jametta Alston.

larditi@projo.com
http://www.projo.com/news/content/PROTECTING_CHILDREN_01-24-10_ODH6NQ7_v292.3987a27.html