DCYF counselor arraigned on drug charge
Counselor Arraigned
WARWICK, R.I. -- A Rhode Island state probation officer is being held without bail for allegedly selling heroin. 0 Ratings | 154 Video Views
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The Associated Press
Published: February 11, 2010
Updated: February 11, 2010
WARWICK, R.I.—A Rhode Island state probation officer for juveniles has been ordered held without bail on charges that he sold heroin to an undercover officer.
Michael Ayer, of Stoughton, Mass., was arraigned Thursday in Kent County District. Ayer is a probation officer for the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families.
State Police say he was using a state-registered vehicle and his state cell phone to do the sales.
It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.
He faces a bail hearing on Feb. 25.
http://www2.turnto10.com/jar/news/local/article/dcyf_counselor_arraigned_on_drug_charge/31294/
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Recession hikes state social services spending
Note from unhappygrammy-With so many children stolen from their parents in NH and placed in foster care, no wonder the state doesn't have enough money! Services to families before child removal would save a bundle. A real no-brainer, but trying telling that to the state. In order to save money, they need to fix the DCYF problem!
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 06:22AM
Recession hikes state social services spending
CONCORD MONITOR - The Department of Health and Human Services has serious money problems - and they won't go away until the department changes the way it does business, said HHS Commissioner Nicholas Toumpas.
"Short term, all we can do is cut," Toumpas told the Monitor editorial board. "Long term, we need to fundamentally change what we're doing."
The problem is that the number of people using the department's services is rising. And the department, already the state's largest, can't count on any extra money from the state.
"Our planning assumption is we won't get any additional funds," Toumpas said.
In fiscal year 2010, which ends in June, the department is predicting a $43.2 million deficit - $35.5 million due to program shortfalls and $7.7 million due to budget reductions made by the Legislature last June. In 2011, the department is predicting a $50 million deficit - $37.5 million from program shortfalls and $12.5 million from legislative budget reductions. (The department's total budget is about $2 billion.)
As a result of the budget crisis, Toumpas has started an ambitious process of restructuring the way the department delivers services. His goal, he said, is to create a system that focuses on the clients, not on the agencies providing the services.
What that could mean is that HHS would determine what batch of services it needs to provide to a group of people in a particular area - for example, to children in the North Country. The department would then contract with a single agency, and it would be up to that lead agency to work with other groups in the area to develop those services.
The lead agency could be a hospital, a Community Action Program, a county or any other entity. Ultimately, that would reduce some of the approximately 4,000 contracts that the department has with outside agencies.
Toumpas said he does not plan to go to individual agencies and force them to merge. But he does want to stop the situation where the department is paying hundreds of independent organizations - all with their own boards, directors and buildings - to perform similar services. Consolidating services through one agency, he said, could also help clients who will no longer have to visit different agencies for each service.
"It's like a contractor for a house," Toumpas said. Rather than hiring an individual plumber, builder and electrician, a person can hire a contractor who will then find the plumber, builder and electrician. Toumpas said the model would be different for each region. He hopes to discuss options with area agencies, providers, and local and county government.
Already he has met with groups in the Lakes Region, the North Country and Manchester, and he plans to begin talking to providers and governments throughout the state. He said he is still looking for people to analyze the department's data, facilitators who can work with the community organizations, and knowledgeable individuals who can find the weaknesses in his plans.
Ultimately, Toumpas said, he expects some resistance from institutions that will be affected. But he said he has little choice - only so many rate and benefit cuts can be made without threatening the system.
Demand outweighs supply
Toumpas said significant change is necessary because although the immediate crisis stems from the recession, the number of people requiring services is not expected to go down. According to an analysis done by University of New Hampshire economist Ross Gittell, Medicaid caseloads typically continue to rise for six months after a recession and then level off, but they do not drop.
According to data from HHS, the current program shortfalls are mostly due to the recession and high unemployment. The number of unemployed people in New Hampshire increased by 20,100 between December 2008 and December 2009. During that same time, the number of HHS clients increased by 15,900.
The growing number of clients came particularly in areas affected by the economy. The department saw an increase of more than 10,000 people, or 10 percent, getting Medicaid benefits - leaving a budget hole of $11.2 million in that area.
Most of the growth came as more people qualified for benefits because of poverty. The amount of financial assistance given jumped by 22.9 percent - leaving a $6.8 million hole in that budget. Again, more people qualified because of poverty. There was also 10 percent growth in child care services, leaving a $10.3 million gap.
"It's entirely due to the economic situation," Toumpas said.
So far, Toumpas has laid out plans for cutting $28 million this year. Those plans include lowering child-care subsidy rates so low-income parents have to contribute more, and reducing Medicaid reimbursement rates and capping services for a variety of medical services, which will take money from health care providers, particularly nursing homes and hospitals.
Within the department, there were 451 positions left vacant at the end of January, an amount equal to 13.5 percent of the its total authorized staff. Toumpas said the department has tried to stay away from cutting direct care personnel, which make up 65 percent of departmental jobs, so most of the vacancies are administrative.
Efficiency
Toumpas must still fill an additional $15 million hole in his budget, though he has asked the Legislature to give him until the end of 2011 to cut $8 million of that. And Gov. John Lynch recently asked all department heads to plan for an additional cut of 8 percent of their general fund money in fiscal year 2011. For HHS, that could mean close to $60 million.
Asked where that money would come from, Toumpas answered, "I don't know."
"We'll look at entire programs, entire business processes, entire functions within the department," he said.
Toumpas must submit a plan to Lynch by March 4.
Toumpas also pointed out that he has limited options of where to cut. During the budgeting process last year, the department determined that 35 percent of its budget went toward federally mandated services, such as Medicaid payments.
An additional 28 percent went toward optional federal entitlements and services - things like allowing people above a certain minimum income level to qualify for Medicaid. As long as the state is getting federal stimulus money, which is expected to be through December 2010, it cannot change the conditions for many of those programs.
The optional state services, which make up 17 percent of the budget, are often where the department looks to cut. That category includes programs like the children's health insurance program, contracts with the Brain Injury Association and screenings for newborns.
So with few good options for cutting spending, Toumpas said, he is trying to use the crisis to make the organization more efficient overall.
"It's fundamentally about how do we deliver services, what outcomes are we trying to achieve and how could we be more effective," Toumpas said.
By SHIRA SCHOENBERG
Monitor staff
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/620283-196/recession-hikes-state-social-services-spending.html
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 06:22AM
Recession hikes state social services spending
CONCORD MONITOR - The Department of Health and Human Services has serious money problems - and they won't go away until the department changes the way it does business, said HHS Commissioner Nicholas Toumpas.
"Short term, all we can do is cut," Toumpas told the Monitor editorial board. "Long term, we need to fundamentally change what we're doing."
The problem is that the number of people using the department's services is rising. And the department, already the state's largest, can't count on any extra money from the state.
"Our planning assumption is we won't get any additional funds," Toumpas said.
In fiscal year 2010, which ends in June, the department is predicting a $43.2 million deficit - $35.5 million due to program shortfalls and $7.7 million due to budget reductions made by the Legislature last June. In 2011, the department is predicting a $50 million deficit - $37.5 million from program shortfalls and $12.5 million from legislative budget reductions. (The department's total budget is about $2 billion.)
As a result of the budget crisis, Toumpas has started an ambitious process of restructuring the way the department delivers services. His goal, he said, is to create a system that focuses on the clients, not on the agencies providing the services.
What that could mean is that HHS would determine what batch of services it needs to provide to a group of people in a particular area - for example, to children in the North Country. The department would then contract with a single agency, and it would be up to that lead agency to work with other groups in the area to develop those services.
The lead agency could be a hospital, a Community Action Program, a county or any other entity. Ultimately, that would reduce some of the approximately 4,000 contracts that the department has with outside agencies.
Toumpas said he does not plan to go to individual agencies and force them to merge. But he does want to stop the situation where the department is paying hundreds of independent organizations - all with their own boards, directors and buildings - to perform similar services. Consolidating services through one agency, he said, could also help clients who will no longer have to visit different agencies for each service.
"It's like a contractor for a house," Toumpas said. Rather than hiring an individual plumber, builder and electrician, a person can hire a contractor who will then find the plumber, builder and electrician. Toumpas said the model would be different for each region. He hopes to discuss options with area agencies, providers, and local and county government.
Already he has met with groups in the Lakes Region, the North Country and Manchester, and he plans to begin talking to providers and governments throughout the state. He said he is still looking for people to analyze the department's data, facilitators who can work with the community organizations, and knowledgeable individuals who can find the weaknesses in his plans.
Ultimately, Toumpas said, he expects some resistance from institutions that will be affected. But he said he has little choice - only so many rate and benefit cuts can be made without threatening the system.
Demand outweighs supply
Toumpas said significant change is necessary because although the immediate crisis stems from the recession, the number of people requiring services is not expected to go down. According to an analysis done by University of New Hampshire economist Ross Gittell, Medicaid caseloads typically continue to rise for six months after a recession and then level off, but they do not drop.
According to data from HHS, the current program shortfalls are mostly due to the recession and high unemployment. The number of unemployed people in New Hampshire increased by 20,100 between December 2008 and December 2009. During that same time, the number of HHS clients increased by 15,900.
The growing number of clients came particularly in areas affected by the economy. The department saw an increase of more than 10,000 people, or 10 percent, getting Medicaid benefits - leaving a budget hole of $11.2 million in that area.
Most of the growth came as more people qualified for benefits because of poverty. The amount of financial assistance given jumped by 22.9 percent - leaving a $6.8 million hole in that budget. Again, more people qualified because of poverty. There was also 10 percent growth in child care services, leaving a $10.3 million gap.
"It's entirely due to the economic situation," Toumpas said.
So far, Toumpas has laid out plans for cutting $28 million this year. Those plans include lowering child-care subsidy rates so low-income parents have to contribute more, and reducing Medicaid reimbursement rates and capping services for a variety of medical services, which will take money from health care providers, particularly nursing homes and hospitals.
Within the department, there were 451 positions left vacant at the end of January, an amount equal to 13.5 percent of the its total authorized staff. Toumpas said the department has tried to stay away from cutting direct care personnel, which make up 65 percent of departmental jobs, so most of the vacancies are administrative.
Efficiency
Toumpas must still fill an additional $15 million hole in his budget, though he has asked the Legislature to give him until the end of 2011 to cut $8 million of that. And Gov. John Lynch recently asked all department heads to plan for an additional cut of 8 percent of their general fund money in fiscal year 2011. For HHS, that could mean close to $60 million.
Asked where that money would come from, Toumpas answered, "I don't know."
"We'll look at entire programs, entire business processes, entire functions within the department," he said.
Toumpas must submit a plan to Lynch by March 4.
Toumpas also pointed out that he has limited options of where to cut. During the budgeting process last year, the department determined that 35 percent of its budget went toward federally mandated services, such as Medicaid payments.
An additional 28 percent went toward optional federal entitlements and services - things like allowing people above a certain minimum income level to qualify for Medicaid. As long as the state is getting federal stimulus money, which is expected to be through December 2010, it cannot change the conditions for many of those programs.
The optional state services, which make up 17 percent of the budget, are often where the department looks to cut. That category includes programs like the children's health insurance program, contracts with the Brain Injury Association and screenings for newborns.
So with few good options for cutting spending, Toumpas said, he is trying to use the crisis to make the organization more efficient overall.
"It's fundamentally about how do we deliver services, what outcomes are we trying to achieve and how could we be more effective," Toumpas said.
By SHIRA SCHOENBERG
Monitor staff
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/620283-196/recession-hikes-state-social-services-spending.html
Synopsis of child welfare fraud
Synopsis of child welfare fraud
~author unknown~ (Maybe Nev Moore?)
When people read stories of children being snatched by SOSCF/CPS/DSS, etc. from parents who assert that they have never maltreated their children, I realize that their first question is always: "Why?" Why would a government agency that exists to protect children from abuse and neglect traumatize children by snatching them from their homes and families without good reason? There are two reasons. One is a sick, narcissistic mentality of social control and "re-structuring" by a faction of people who consider themselves god-like.
The other reason, that I will cover here, is money. Child "protection" is one of the biggest businesses in the country. We spend $12. billion a year on it. The money is made by tens of thousands of -
a) state employees: social workers and an amazing hierarchy of deadwood, (I'm sorry -administrators...) in the states Child Protective Service agencies,
b) collateral professionals: lawyers, court personnel, court investigators and evaluators, guardian ad litems, judges, and,
c) DSS contracted vendors (service providers) such as counselors, therapists, more "evaluators", junk psychologists, residential facilities (more dependent jobs), foster parents, adoptive parents, MSPCC, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, YMCA, etc.
This paper is not big enough to even list all of the people in this state alone who have a job, make a paycheck, or make their profits off of the kids in CPS custody. In this article I explain the financial infrastructure that provides the motivation for CPS to take peoples children. And not give them back.
In 1974 Mondale passed the Child Abuse and Prevention Act which began feeding massive amounts of federal funding to states to set up programs to combat child abuse and neglect. From that stemmed Child "Protective" Services, as we know it today.
After the bill passed, Mondale himself expressed concerns that it may be misused and lead states to create "business". In 1997 President Clinton passed the "Adoption and Safe Families Act". The PR campaign promoted it as a way to help abused and neglected children who languished in foster care for years, often being shuffled in-between dozens of foster homes, never having a real home and family to call their own. In a press release from U.S. Department of Health & Human Services dated November 24th, 1999, it refers to "President Clinton's initiative to double by 2002 the number of children in foster care who are adopted or otherwise permanently placed."
It all sounded so heartwarming. We, the American public, are so easily led. We love to buy stereotypes; we just eat them up, no questions asked. But, my mother, bless her heart, taught me from the time I was young to "consider the source". In the stereotype that we've been sold about kids in foster care we picture in our minds eye a forlorn, hollow-eyed child, thin and pale, looking up at us beseechingly through dirt streaked face.
Unconsciously, we pull up old pictures from Life magazine of children in Appalachia in the 1930's. We think of orphans and children abandoned by parents who look like Manson family members. We play a little movie in our heads of the little fellow shyly walking across an emerald green, manicured lawn to meet Ward and June Cleaver, his new adoptive parents, who lead him into their lovely suburban home. We imagine the little tyke's eyes growing as big as saucers as the Cleavers show him his very own room, full of toys and sports gear.
And we just feel so gosh darn good about ourselves.
Now it's time to wake up to the reality of the adoption business. Very few children who are being used to supply the adoption market are hollow-eyed tykes from Appalachia. Very few are crack babies from the projects. (Oh… you thought those were the children they were saving? Think again).
When you are marketing a product you have to provide a desirable product that sells. In the adoption business that would be nice kids with reasonably good genetics who clean up good. An interesting point is that, out of the 29 area DSS offices in Massachusetts, it is the Cape Cod & Islands office that leads the numbers in terms of processing kids into the system and having them adopted out. Over the inner city areas, over the projects, over Mission Hill, Brockton, Lynn. Interesting.
With the implementation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act President Clinton tried to make himself look like a humanitarian who is responsible for saving the abused and neglected children, so, perhaps that would distract us from his other unsavory shortcomings. The drive of this initiative is to offer cash "bonuses" to states for every child they have adopted out of foster care, with the goal of doubling their adoptions by 2002, and sustaining that for each subsequent year. They actually call them "adoption incentive bonuses", to promote the adoption of children.
A whole new industry was put into motion. A sweet marketing scheme that even Bill Gates could envy. Now, if you have a basket of apples, and people start giving you $100. per apple, what are you going to do? Make sure that you have an unlimited supply of apples, right?
The United States Department of Health & Human Services administers Child "Protective" Services CPS/DSS). Health & Human Services therefore is in charge of the foster care and adoption systems. To accompany the ASFA Act, the President requested, by executive memorandum, an initiative entitled Adoption 2002, to be implemented and managed by Health & Human Services. The initiative not only gives the cash adoption bonuses to the states, but also provides cash adoption subsidies to adoptive parents until the children turn 18.
Everybody makes money. If anyone really believed that these people were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, then I've got some bad news for you about the Easter bunny, too.
The fact that this program is run by HHS, ordered from the very top, explains why the citizens who are victims of DSS get no response from their legislators. It explains why no one in the Administration cares about the abuse and fatalities of children in the "care" of CPS, and no one wants to hear about the broken arms, verbal abuse, or rapes. They are just business casualties. It explains why the legislators I've talked to for the past three years look at me with pity – because I'm preaching to the already damned. The legislators have forgotten who pays their paychecks and who they need to account to – as has the Governor – because it isn't the President. It's us.
The way that the adoption bonuses work is that each state is given a baseline number of expected adoptions based on population. For every child that CPS can get adopted out there is a bonus of $4,000. to $6,000., but that is just the starting figure in a complex mathematical formula in which each bonus is multiplied by the percentage that the state has managed to exceed it's baseline adoption number. The states must maintain this increase in each successive year. (Like compounded interest). The bill reads: "$4,000. To $6,000. will be multiplied by the amount (if any) by which the number of foster child adoptions in the State exceeds the base number of foster child adoptions for the State for the fiscal year".
In the "technical assistance" section of the bill it states that, "the Secretary (of HHS) may, directly or through grants or contracts, provide technical assistance to assist States and local communities to reach their targets for increased numbers of adoptions for children in foster care." The technical assistance is to support "the goal of encouraging more adoptions out of the foster care system; the development of best practice guidelines for expediting the termination of parental rights; the development of special units and expertise in moving children toward adoption as a permanent goal; models to encourage the fast tracking of children who have not attained 1 year of age into pre-adoptive placements; and the development of programs that place children into pre-adoptive placements without waiting for termination of parental rights."
In the November press release from HHS it continues, " HHS awarded the first ever adoption bonuses to States for increases in the adoption of children from the public foster care system." Some of the other incentives offered are "innovative grants" to reduce barriers to adoption (parents, for instance), more State support for adoptive families, making adoption affordable for families by providing cash subsides and tax credits.
A report from the National Center for Policy Analysis reads: "The way the federal government reimburses States rewards growth in program size instead of the effective care of children." Another incentive being promoted is the use of the Internet to make adoption easier.
Clinton directed HHS to develop an Internet site to "link children in foster care with adoptive families". So we will be able to window shop for children on a government web site. If you don't find anything you like there, you can surf on over to the "AdoptShoppe". If you prefer to actually be able to kick tires instead of just looking at pictures you could attend one of DSS's quaint "Adoption Fairs", where live children are put on display and you can walk around and browse. Like a flea market to sell kids. If one of them begs you to take him home you can always say, "Sorry. Just looking."
The incentives for government child snatching are so good that I'm surprised we don't have government agents breaking down peoples doors and just shooting the parents in the heads and grabbing the kids, But then, if you need more apples you don't chop down your apple trees.
That covers the goodies the State gets, now let's have a look at how the Cleavers make out financially after the adoption is finalized.
After the adoption is finalized State and federal subsidies continue. The adoptive parents may collect cash subsidies until the child is 18. If the child stays in school, subsidies continue to the age of 22. There are State funded subsidies as well as federal funds through the Title IV-E section of the Social Security Act. The daily rate for State funds is the same as the foster care payments, which range from $410. - $486. per month per child. Unless the child can be designated "special needs", which, of course, they all can. According to the NAATRIN State Subsidy profile from DSS, "special needs" may be defined as: "Physical disability, mental disability, emotional disturbance; a significant emotional tie with the foster parents where the child has resided with the foster parents for one or more years and separation would adversely affect the child's development if not adopted by them; (but their significant emotional ties with their parents, since birth, never enter the equation).
Additional "special needs" designations are: a child twelve years of age or older; racial or ethnic factors; child having siblings or half-siblings." In their report on the State of the Children, Boston's Institute for Children says: "In part because the States can garner extra federal funds for special needs children the designation has been broadened so far as to become meaningless." "Special needs" children may also get an additional Social security check.
The adoptive parents also receive Medicaid for the child, a clothing allowance, and reimbursement for adoption costs such as adoption fees, court and attorney fees, cost of adoption home study, and "reasonable costs of food and lodging for the child and adoptive parents when necessary to complete the adoption process". Under Title XX of the Social Security Act adoptive parents are also entitled to post adoption services "that may be helpful in keeping the family intact", including "daycare, specialized daycare, respite care, in-house support services such as housekeeping, and personal care, counseling, and other child welfare services".
Wow! Everything short of being knighted by the Queen! The subsidy profile actually states that it does not include money to remodel the home to accommodate the child. But, as subsidies can be negotiated, remodeling could possibly be accomplished under the "innovative incentives to remove barriers to adoption" section.
The subsidy regulations read that "adoption assistance is based solely on the needs of the child without regard to the income of the family".
What an interesting government policy when compared to the welfare program that the same child's mother may have been on before losing her children, and in which she may not own anything, must prove that she has no money in the bank; no boats, real estate, stocks or bonds; and cannot even own a safe car to drive worth over $1000. – all so she can collect $539.per month for herself and two children.
The foster parent who gets her children gets $820. plus. We spit on the mother on welfare as a parasite who is bleeding the taxpayers, yet we hold the foster and adoptive parents (who are bleeding tens times as much from the taxpayers) up as saints.
The adoptive and foster parents aren't subjected to psychological evaluations, ink blot tests, MMPI's, drug & alcohol evaluations, or urine screens either – as the parents are.
Adoption subsidies may be negotiated on a case by case basis. (Anyone ever tried to "negotiate" with the Welfare Department?). There are many e-mail lists and books published to teach adoptive parents how to negotiate to maximize their subsidies. As one pro writes on an e-mail list: "We receive a subsidy for our kids of $1,900. per month plus another $500. from the State of Florida. We are trying to adopt three more teens and we will get subsidies for them, too. It sure helps out with the bills." I'll bet it does.
I can't help but wonder why we don't give this same level of support to the children's parents in the first place?
According to Cornell University, about 68% of all child protective cases "do not involve child maltreatment". The largest percentage of CPS/DSS cases are for "deprivation of necessities" due to poverty. So, if the parents were given "services that may be helpful in keeping the family intact", the incredible incentives and services listed above that are provided to the adoptive parents, wouldn't it stand to reason that the causes for removing children in the first place would be eliminated?
How many less children would enter foster care in the first place? The child protective budget would be reduced from $12. Billion to around $4. Billion.
Granted, tens of thousands of social workers, administrators, lawyers, juvenile court personnel, therapists, and foster parents would be out of business (I'm sure they could find another line of work - like clubbing baby seals to death or something), but we would have safe, healthy, intact families – the foundation of any society. (We could hand out buttons that said: "Out of work therapist – will work for food"). That's just a fantasy, of course. The reality is that maybe we will see Kathleen Crowleys children on the government home-shopping-for-children web site and some one out there can buy them.
May* is national adoption month. To support "Adoption 2002" the U.S. postal service is issuing special adoption stamps. Let us hope they don't feature pictures of kids who are for sale. I urge everyone to boycott these stamps and register complaints with the post office.
--anonymous (proudly forwarded by Susan Detlefsen, Director, Oregon Family Rights, November 2003)
This is a wonderfully well written truth about our sick child welfare system. I truly do not know who wrote it. I would like to thank him/her.
*November is now also “National Adoption Month”
~author unknown~ (Maybe Nev Moore?)
When people read stories of children being snatched by SOSCF/CPS/DSS, etc. from parents who assert that they have never maltreated their children, I realize that their first question is always: "Why?" Why would a government agency that exists to protect children from abuse and neglect traumatize children by snatching them from their homes and families without good reason? There are two reasons. One is a sick, narcissistic mentality of social control and "re-structuring" by a faction of people who consider themselves god-like.
The other reason, that I will cover here, is money. Child "protection" is one of the biggest businesses in the country. We spend $12. billion a year on it. The money is made by tens of thousands of -
a) state employees: social workers and an amazing hierarchy of deadwood, (I'm sorry -administrators...) in the states Child Protective Service agencies,
b) collateral professionals: lawyers, court personnel, court investigators and evaluators, guardian ad litems, judges, and,
c) DSS contracted vendors (service providers) such as counselors, therapists, more "evaluators", junk psychologists, residential facilities (more dependent jobs), foster parents, adoptive parents, MSPCC, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, YMCA, etc.
This paper is not big enough to even list all of the people in this state alone who have a job, make a paycheck, or make their profits off of the kids in CPS custody. In this article I explain the financial infrastructure that provides the motivation for CPS to take peoples children. And not give them back.
In 1974 Mondale passed the Child Abuse and Prevention Act which began feeding massive amounts of federal funding to states to set up programs to combat child abuse and neglect. From that stemmed Child "Protective" Services, as we know it today.
After the bill passed, Mondale himself expressed concerns that it may be misused and lead states to create "business". In 1997 President Clinton passed the "Adoption and Safe Families Act". The PR campaign promoted it as a way to help abused and neglected children who languished in foster care for years, often being shuffled in-between dozens of foster homes, never having a real home and family to call their own. In a press release from U.S. Department of Health & Human Services dated November 24th, 1999, it refers to "President Clinton's initiative to double by 2002 the number of children in foster care who are adopted or otherwise permanently placed."
It all sounded so heartwarming. We, the American public, are so easily led. We love to buy stereotypes; we just eat them up, no questions asked. But, my mother, bless her heart, taught me from the time I was young to "consider the source". In the stereotype that we've been sold about kids in foster care we picture in our minds eye a forlorn, hollow-eyed child, thin and pale, looking up at us beseechingly through dirt streaked face.
Unconsciously, we pull up old pictures from Life magazine of children in Appalachia in the 1930's. We think of orphans and children abandoned by parents who look like Manson family members. We play a little movie in our heads of the little fellow shyly walking across an emerald green, manicured lawn to meet Ward and June Cleaver, his new adoptive parents, who lead him into their lovely suburban home. We imagine the little tyke's eyes growing as big as saucers as the Cleavers show him his very own room, full of toys and sports gear.
And we just feel so gosh darn good about ourselves.
Now it's time to wake up to the reality of the adoption business. Very few children who are being used to supply the adoption market are hollow-eyed tykes from Appalachia. Very few are crack babies from the projects. (Oh… you thought those were the children they were saving? Think again).
When you are marketing a product you have to provide a desirable product that sells. In the adoption business that would be nice kids with reasonably good genetics who clean up good. An interesting point is that, out of the 29 area DSS offices in Massachusetts, it is the Cape Cod & Islands office that leads the numbers in terms of processing kids into the system and having them adopted out. Over the inner city areas, over the projects, over Mission Hill, Brockton, Lynn. Interesting.
With the implementation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act President Clinton tried to make himself look like a humanitarian who is responsible for saving the abused and neglected children, so, perhaps that would distract us from his other unsavory shortcomings. The drive of this initiative is to offer cash "bonuses" to states for every child they have adopted out of foster care, with the goal of doubling their adoptions by 2002, and sustaining that for each subsequent year. They actually call them "adoption incentive bonuses", to promote the adoption of children.
A whole new industry was put into motion. A sweet marketing scheme that even Bill Gates could envy. Now, if you have a basket of apples, and people start giving you $100. per apple, what are you going to do? Make sure that you have an unlimited supply of apples, right?
The United States Department of Health & Human Services administers Child "Protective" Services CPS/DSS). Health & Human Services therefore is in charge of the foster care and adoption systems. To accompany the ASFA Act, the President requested, by executive memorandum, an initiative entitled Adoption 2002, to be implemented and managed by Health & Human Services. The initiative not only gives the cash adoption bonuses to the states, but also provides cash adoption subsidies to adoptive parents until the children turn 18.
Everybody makes money. If anyone really believed that these people were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, then I've got some bad news for you about the Easter bunny, too.
The fact that this program is run by HHS, ordered from the very top, explains why the citizens who are victims of DSS get no response from their legislators. It explains why no one in the Administration cares about the abuse and fatalities of children in the "care" of CPS, and no one wants to hear about the broken arms, verbal abuse, or rapes. They are just business casualties. It explains why the legislators I've talked to for the past three years look at me with pity – because I'm preaching to the already damned. The legislators have forgotten who pays their paychecks and who they need to account to – as has the Governor – because it isn't the President. It's us.
The way that the adoption bonuses work is that each state is given a baseline number of expected adoptions based on population. For every child that CPS can get adopted out there is a bonus of $4,000. to $6,000., but that is just the starting figure in a complex mathematical formula in which each bonus is multiplied by the percentage that the state has managed to exceed it's baseline adoption number. The states must maintain this increase in each successive year. (Like compounded interest). The bill reads: "$4,000. To $6,000. will be multiplied by the amount (if any) by which the number of foster child adoptions in the State exceeds the base number of foster child adoptions for the State for the fiscal year".
In the "technical assistance" section of the bill it states that, "the Secretary (of HHS) may, directly or through grants or contracts, provide technical assistance to assist States and local communities to reach their targets for increased numbers of adoptions for children in foster care." The technical assistance is to support "the goal of encouraging more adoptions out of the foster care system; the development of best practice guidelines for expediting the termination of parental rights; the development of special units and expertise in moving children toward adoption as a permanent goal; models to encourage the fast tracking of children who have not attained 1 year of age into pre-adoptive placements; and the development of programs that place children into pre-adoptive placements without waiting for termination of parental rights."
In the November press release from HHS it continues, " HHS awarded the first ever adoption bonuses to States for increases in the adoption of children from the public foster care system." Some of the other incentives offered are "innovative grants" to reduce barriers to adoption (parents, for instance), more State support for adoptive families, making adoption affordable for families by providing cash subsides and tax credits.
A report from the National Center for Policy Analysis reads: "The way the federal government reimburses States rewards growth in program size instead of the effective care of children." Another incentive being promoted is the use of the Internet to make adoption easier.
Clinton directed HHS to develop an Internet site to "link children in foster care with adoptive families". So we will be able to window shop for children on a government web site. If you don't find anything you like there, you can surf on over to the "AdoptShoppe". If you prefer to actually be able to kick tires instead of just looking at pictures you could attend one of DSS's quaint "Adoption Fairs", where live children are put on display and you can walk around and browse. Like a flea market to sell kids. If one of them begs you to take him home you can always say, "Sorry. Just looking."
The incentives for government child snatching are so good that I'm surprised we don't have government agents breaking down peoples doors and just shooting the parents in the heads and grabbing the kids, But then, if you need more apples you don't chop down your apple trees.
That covers the goodies the State gets, now let's have a look at how the Cleavers make out financially after the adoption is finalized.
After the adoption is finalized State and federal subsidies continue. The adoptive parents may collect cash subsidies until the child is 18. If the child stays in school, subsidies continue to the age of 22. There are State funded subsidies as well as federal funds through the Title IV-E section of the Social Security Act. The daily rate for State funds is the same as the foster care payments, which range from $410. - $486. per month per child. Unless the child can be designated "special needs", which, of course, they all can. According to the NAATRIN State Subsidy profile from DSS, "special needs" may be defined as: "Physical disability, mental disability, emotional disturbance; a significant emotional tie with the foster parents where the child has resided with the foster parents for one or more years and separation would adversely affect the child's development if not adopted by them; (but their significant emotional ties with their parents, since birth, never enter the equation).
Additional "special needs" designations are: a child twelve years of age or older; racial or ethnic factors; child having siblings or half-siblings." In their report on the State of the Children, Boston's Institute for Children says: "In part because the States can garner extra federal funds for special needs children the designation has been broadened so far as to become meaningless." "Special needs" children may also get an additional Social security check.
The adoptive parents also receive Medicaid for the child, a clothing allowance, and reimbursement for adoption costs such as adoption fees, court and attorney fees, cost of adoption home study, and "reasonable costs of food and lodging for the child and adoptive parents when necessary to complete the adoption process". Under Title XX of the Social Security Act adoptive parents are also entitled to post adoption services "that may be helpful in keeping the family intact", including "daycare, specialized daycare, respite care, in-house support services such as housekeeping, and personal care, counseling, and other child welfare services".
Wow! Everything short of being knighted by the Queen! The subsidy profile actually states that it does not include money to remodel the home to accommodate the child. But, as subsidies can be negotiated, remodeling could possibly be accomplished under the "innovative incentives to remove barriers to adoption" section.
The subsidy regulations read that "adoption assistance is based solely on the needs of the child without regard to the income of the family".
What an interesting government policy when compared to the welfare program that the same child's mother may have been on before losing her children, and in which she may not own anything, must prove that she has no money in the bank; no boats, real estate, stocks or bonds; and cannot even own a safe car to drive worth over $1000. – all so she can collect $539.per month for herself and two children.
The foster parent who gets her children gets $820. plus. We spit on the mother on welfare as a parasite who is bleeding the taxpayers, yet we hold the foster and adoptive parents (who are bleeding tens times as much from the taxpayers) up as saints.
The adoptive and foster parents aren't subjected to psychological evaluations, ink blot tests, MMPI's, drug & alcohol evaluations, or urine screens either – as the parents are.
Adoption subsidies may be negotiated on a case by case basis. (Anyone ever tried to "negotiate" with the Welfare Department?). There are many e-mail lists and books published to teach adoptive parents how to negotiate to maximize their subsidies. As one pro writes on an e-mail list: "We receive a subsidy for our kids of $1,900. per month plus another $500. from the State of Florida. We are trying to adopt three more teens and we will get subsidies for them, too. It sure helps out with the bills." I'll bet it does.
I can't help but wonder why we don't give this same level of support to the children's parents in the first place?
According to Cornell University, about 68% of all child protective cases "do not involve child maltreatment". The largest percentage of CPS/DSS cases are for "deprivation of necessities" due to poverty. So, if the parents were given "services that may be helpful in keeping the family intact", the incredible incentives and services listed above that are provided to the adoptive parents, wouldn't it stand to reason that the causes for removing children in the first place would be eliminated?
How many less children would enter foster care in the first place? The child protective budget would be reduced from $12. Billion to around $4. Billion.
Granted, tens of thousands of social workers, administrators, lawyers, juvenile court personnel, therapists, and foster parents would be out of business (I'm sure they could find another line of work - like clubbing baby seals to death or something), but we would have safe, healthy, intact families – the foundation of any society. (We could hand out buttons that said: "Out of work therapist – will work for food"). That's just a fantasy, of course. The reality is that maybe we will see Kathleen Crowleys children on the government home-shopping-for-children web site and some one out there can buy them.
May* is national adoption month. To support "Adoption 2002" the U.S. postal service is issuing special adoption stamps. Let us hope they don't feature pictures of kids who are for sale. I urge everyone to boycott these stamps and register complaints with the post office.
--anonymous (proudly forwarded by Susan Detlefsen, Director, Oregon Family Rights, November 2003)
This is a wonderfully well written truth about our sick child welfare system. I truly do not know who wrote it. I would like to thank him/her.
*November is now also “National Adoption Month”
Monday, February 15, 2010
Jim Gottstein to host webinar on plans to curb the over-drugging of children
Jim Gottstein to host webinar on plans to curb the over-drugging of children
2010 February 8
by giannakali
Planned for February 24th.
ICSPP’s 2010 Distinguished Lecture Series will begin with Attorney Jim Gottstein’s webinar presentation on PsychRights‘ Medicaid Fraud Initiative Against Psychiatric Drugging of Children & Youth
Background:
The massive psychiatric drugging of America’s children, particularly poor, disadvantaged children and youth through Medicaid and in foster care is an unfolding public health catastrophe of massive proportions. This catastrophe is being caused by the fraudulent promotion of these harmful practices by pharmaceutical companies sacrificing children and youth’s health, futures and lives on the altar of corporate profits. In 2009, Eli Lilly agreed to pay $1.4 Billion in criminal and civil penalties for such off-label promotion of Zyprexa and Pfizer agreed to pay $2.3 Billion for the illegal off-label promotion of Geodon and other drugs, yet the practice has not stopped. It is merely a cost of doing business to these pharmaceutical Goliaths and, in fact, caps their liability for these crimes. Most importantly, these settlements have not stopped the practice of child psychiatrists and other prescribers giving these drugs to children and youth and Medicaid continuing to pay for these fraudulent claims.
Purpose:
PsychRights‘ Medicaid Fraud Initiative Against Psychiatric Drugging of Children and Youth is designed to address this problem by having lawsuits brought against the doctors prescribing these harmful, ineffective drugs, their employers, and the pharmacies filling these prescriptions and submitting them to Medicaid for reimbursement. Each offending prescription carries a penalty of between $5,500 and $11,000. This is why it is expected that once their financial exposure becomes known to them prescribers and pharmacies will curtail the practice. Anyone with knowledge of specific offending prescriptions can sue on behalf of the government to recover for such Medicaid Fraud, and receive a percentage of the recovery, if any.
This webinar will walk through the requirements of the Federal False Claims Act as it pertains to this type of Medicaid Fraud and is for people and lawyers who may be interested in bringing such suits.
A bio of Attorney Gottstein, Esq. can be found here.
http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/jim-gottstein-to-host-webinar-on-plans-to-curb-the-over-drugging-of-children/
2010 February 8
by giannakali
Planned for February 24th.
ICSPP’s 2010 Distinguished Lecture Series will begin with Attorney Jim Gottstein’s webinar presentation on PsychRights‘ Medicaid Fraud Initiative Against Psychiatric Drugging of Children & Youth
Background:
The massive psychiatric drugging of America’s children, particularly poor, disadvantaged children and youth through Medicaid and in foster care is an unfolding public health catastrophe of massive proportions. This catastrophe is being caused by the fraudulent promotion of these harmful practices by pharmaceutical companies sacrificing children and youth’s health, futures and lives on the altar of corporate profits. In 2009, Eli Lilly agreed to pay $1.4 Billion in criminal and civil penalties for such off-label promotion of Zyprexa and Pfizer agreed to pay $2.3 Billion for the illegal off-label promotion of Geodon and other drugs, yet the practice has not stopped. It is merely a cost of doing business to these pharmaceutical Goliaths and, in fact, caps their liability for these crimes. Most importantly, these settlements have not stopped the practice of child psychiatrists and other prescribers giving these drugs to children and youth and Medicaid continuing to pay for these fraudulent claims.
Purpose:
PsychRights‘ Medicaid Fraud Initiative Against Psychiatric Drugging of Children and Youth is designed to address this problem by having lawsuits brought against the doctors prescribing these harmful, ineffective drugs, their employers, and the pharmacies filling these prescriptions and submitting them to Medicaid for reimbursement. Each offending prescription carries a penalty of between $5,500 and $11,000. This is why it is expected that once their financial exposure becomes known to them prescribers and pharmacies will curtail the practice. Anyone with knowledge of specific offending prescriptions can sue on behalf of the government to recover for such Medicaid Fraud, and receive a percentage of the recovery, if any.
This webinar will walk through the requirements of the Federal False Claims Act as it pertains to this type of Medicaid Fraud and is for people and lawyers who may be interested in bringing such suits.
A bio of Attorney Gottstein, Esq. can be found here.
http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/jim-gottstein-to-host-webinar-on-plans-to-curb-the-over-drugging-of-children/
Government Ran Kidnapping Ring? NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND!
August 3, 2009...9:26 pm
Government Ran Kidnapping Ring? NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND!
Recently, I ran across the question on LegallyKidnapped.com ‘Is Child and Family services a Government ran Kidnapping Ring?’ I have to answer this question with a firm “yes”. I’m not the only one who has done investigations of CPS, DCFS, DFS, DHS, or whatever they call themselves in your area, there have been many.
As parents have access to the internet, and are asking the questions “why was MY child(ren) taken away?” they are discovering a bleak and traumatic truth.
There are hundreds of websites, if not thousands, that parents have created to get the message out to unsuspecting parents out there, with information they have discovered.
Parents have experienced that in these “Secret Courts” that are ran and administered by the same people that are taking the children, that it is in fact a “Tribunal Court”. There is virtually no possible way the parents can win. In these courts, parents are placed with Gag Orders, as to ‘not discuss the case’, this way, the social workers can conduct their business outside of scrutiny, and they can lie on the reports and to the Judges free to perjure themselves without question, after all who will complain?. Parents are often not even allowed in the court rooms while their cases are being discussed. All the people involved are playing the parents like a fiddle. Social Workers are very nice, claiming they are there to “help you” and they are sure ‘you’ll probably get your children back’, however each time you express any type of conflict with them or their decisions; something to either expose them, or to prove your innocents, they threaten that they will and can “put your child up for adoption”. This is not a false story,, this is a fact.
The children are being taken at an alarming rate, and although they are only investigating ONE child… they will take them all, regardless of the circumstances. They are stealing the children legally. Social Workers (SW) have no problems falsifying documents, lying about parents and extended family members, they threaten the parents into so called “services” which by parents taking these services is an automatic admission of guilt (even if they have done nothing); SW’s will do whatever it takes to ensure your child WILL be placed up for adoption.
Children are often placed into care and deemed “special needs” ensuring more Federal Funding and Non Profit Grants for these children. New Hampshire’s Social Services website states that one criterion to be deemed for a Special Needs child is simply to be of age 6 or more. It has been documented that babies as young as a few months old are deemed to have “mental issues” and are given strong psychotropic drugs. With each medial issue that can be found (or created) the state and Federal Government gets more money, not just from the demand for more taxes, but also from the Non Profit Grants that you so kindly donate to.
The Governments motto is “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” I don’t believe this is only meant to be a slogan for Educationm as most children are taken, from schools… “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” a slogan most likely used by Social Services.. a slogan for all government, after what I’ve seen, experienced, researched and learned I believe this to be true.
No Child Left Behind, means that the Social Workers, the State, and Federal Government including the Non Profit groups, Adoptions Agencies and all their agents and affiliates have a guaranteed income, and I can tell you the economics involved is one of the highest in America.
Just as Cancer will not be cured, due to the amount of job losses and business losses, government investments and Mental Health, too many doctors would be out of business, along with the countless Oncology Hospitals popping up, Child Stealing by the Government will also only increase.
I was told by a Government Official, during my investigation, that Social Services does in fact “have a quota, and are REQUIRED to increase their child intake each year” per County.
Does this scare you? If you have children or are thinking of having children, or even have grand children, this should scare you. I’ve had a few social workers tell me that “the majority of the children they take come from really good homes, and never go back”
I was also told “if you don’t make the claims against the parents, you lose your job”
I have spent approximately 3 years worth of time (in 1 ½ years time) looking into this, as I wanted to know why my own son was taken, and I was appalled at my discovery.
Please feel free to ask questions, I have many answers.. Though there are many more that still need to be discovered.
Sandra Ami
http://amiablyme.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/government-ran-kidnapping-ring-no-child-left-behind/
Government Ran Kidnapping Ring? NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND!
Recently, I ran across the question on LegallyKidnapped.com ‘Is Child and Family services a Government ran Kidnapping Ring?’ I have to answer this question with a firm “yes”. I’m not the only one who has done investigations of CPS, DCFS, DFS, DHS, or whatever they call themselves in your area, there have been many.
As parents have access to the internet, and are asking the questions “why was MY child(ren) taken away?” they are discovering a bleak and traumatic truth.
There are hundreds of websites, if not thousands, that parents have created to get the message out to unsuspecting parents out there, with information they have discovered.
Parents have experienced that in these “Secret Courts” that are ran and administered by the same people that are taking the children, that it is in fact a “Tribunal Court”. There is virtually no possible way the parents can win. In these courts, parents are placed with Gag Orders, as to ‘not discuss the case’, this way, the social workers can conduct their business outside of scrutiny, and they can lie on the reports and to the Judges free to perjure themselves without question, after all who will complain?. Parents are often not even allowed in the court rooms while their cases are being discussed. All the people involved are playing the parents like a fiddle. Social Workers are very nice, claiming they are there to “help you” and they are sure ‘you’ll probably get your children back’, however each time you express any type of conflict with them or their decisions; something to either expose them, or to prove your innocents, they threaten that they will and can “put your child up for adoption”. This is not a false story,, this is a fact.
The children are being taken at an alarming rate, and although they are only investigating ONE child… they will take them all, regardless of the circumstances. They are stealing the children legally. Social Workers (SW) have no problems falsifying documents, lying about parents and extended family members, they threaten the parents into so called “services” which by parents taking these services is an automatic admission of guilt (even if they have done nothing); SW’s will do whatever it takes to ensure your child WILL be placed up for adoption.
Children are often placed into care and deemed “special needs” ensuring more Federal Funding and Non Profit Grants for these children. New Hampshire’s Social Services website states that one criterion to be deemed for a Special Needs child is simply to be of age 6 or more. It has been documented that babies as young as a few months old are deemed to have “mental issues” and are given strong psychotropic drugs. With each medial issue that can be found (or created) the state and Federal Government gets more money, not just from the demand for more taxes, but also from the Non Profit Grants that you so kindly donate to.
The Governments motto is “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” I don’t believe this is only meant to be a slogan for Educationm as most children are taken, from schools… “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” a slogan most likely used by Social Services.. a slogan for all government, after what I’ve seen, experienced, researched and learned I believe this to be true.
No Child Left Behind, means that the Social Workers, the State, and Federal Government including the Non Profit groups, Adoptions Agencies and all their agents and affiliates have a guaranteed income, and I can tell you the economics involved is one of the highest in America.
Just as Cancer will not be cured, due to the amount of job losses and business losses, government investments and Mental Health, too many doctors would be out of business, along with the countless Oncology Hospitals popping up, Child Stealing by the Government will also only increase.
I was told by a Government Official, during my investigation, that Social Services does in fact “have a quota, and are REQUIRED to increase their child intake each year” per County.
Does this scare you? If you have children or are thinking of having children, or even have grand children, this should scare you. I’ve had a few social workers tell me that “the majority of the children they take come from really good homes, and never go back”
I was also told “if you don’t make the claims against the parents, you lose your job”
I have spent approximately 3 years worth of time (in 1 ½ years time) looking into this, as I wanted to know why my own son was taken, and I was appalled at my discovery.
Please feel free to ask questions, I have many answers.. Though there are many more that still need to be discovered.
Sandra Ami
http://amiablyme.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/government-ran-kidnapping-ring-no-child-left-behind/
State Care / CPS “Why Are These Children Dying?”
State Care / CPS “Why Are These Children Dying?”
Jump to Comments
San Francisco Chronicle
Persuasive Writing and Commentary
Entry: Why are these children dying?
A three-piece editorial package
Credit: Editorial Writer Caille Millner
Date: December 3, 2006
EDITORIAL
On Foster Care Reform
Why are these children dying?
THE STATE OF California cannot say how many foster children die each year, even though a state law that took effect in 2004 requires counties to release the names, dates of birth, and dates of death for these children. The new law is not being followed by all: The Children’s Advocacy Institute, a San Diego-based research and lobbying group that co-sponsored the 2004 law, requested the names for 2005 from all 58 counties. Nearly a year later, they’re still waiting for two counties to respond.
The names that they do have for 2005 — 48 so far — offer more questions than answers. What does it mean, for example, that nine of the deaths were children age 17 or older, five of whom were within six weeks of their 18th birthday? Are 17-year-olds simply more likely to get in car accidents? Suffer drug overdoses? Skateboard without helmets? Or does it mean the fulfillment of our worst fears — that some children, facing the harsh realities of homelessness and desperation when they “age out” of the system at 18, are taking their own lives instead?
“There’s no way to get more information without going to the courts,” said Christina Riehl, staff attorney for the Children’s Advocacy Institute.
There is absolutely no reason why an advocacy group, a newspaper, an elected official, or any other concerned member of the public should have to go to court to find out what happened when a foster youth dies.
But due to California’s baffling policies on disclosure, it’s extraordinarily difficult for the public to learn who in the system is dying and why. Nearly every bill that has come through the Legislature in the past several years has been stonewalled by the County Welfare Directors’ Association.
Take AB1817, a very modest bill sponsored by Assemblyman Bill Maze, R-Visalia, three years ago. Concerned about a wave of foster children’s deaths in his district, Maze simply wanted legislators to be allowed to review the case files of deceased children in the system. But he couldn’t get his bill out of the Judiciary Committee.
“They said that, as an elected official, I’d just use these cases as a political forum,” said Maze. “I think it’s just baloney. We need to know if there’s some kind of pattern or trend or lack of oversight in case management, because, until we know that, we won’t know how to fix the problem. But needless to say, I’ve been fought against on this issue tremendously by the welfare directors of this state.”
Maze is not the only one frustrated by the lack of information about child deaths from California’s social-services bureaucracies. Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services determined that the state was violating federal law by failing to file reports about the deaths and near-deaths of children due to abuse or neglect. Threatened with the loss of $60 million in child-welfare funds, this summer the state began requiring counties to file these reports. But — and here’s the rub — the Department of Social Services keeps all names confidential, even in the case of foster children.
Imagine — our state’s most vulnerable children, betrayed by a state system that was supposed to protect them — and we have no idea who they are. A look at the questionnaires the state started providing this July offer only haunting glimpses of their fates:
– On July 30, a 15-year-old foster child died after either jumping or being pushed from a moving car in a suspected sexual assault.
– On Aug. 17, a 2-year-old foster child drowned after her foster parents left her alone in a bath tub.
– On Aug. 24, a 16-year-old committed suicide by shooting himself in the head after telling his sibling that he couldn’t take their legal guardian’s abuse anymore.
Confidentiality is important, especially when it comes to protecting the identities of family members and abuse reporters. We understand, as well, that it’s important to protect the names of abused children who suffer near-fatalities but are expected to recover. But there are no good reasons why the full case files — including names, counties and histories — for dead foster children shouldn’t be open to all of us. There can’t be any accountability without transparency.
When we asked Sue Diedrich, assistant general counsel for the state Department of Social Services, why they couldn’t tell us more, she said that the state could risk its federal funding.
That’s simply not true, according to a federal official who tracks the issue.
“Federal law doesn’t require that a state release (those details), but it doesn’t prohibit those disclosures either,” said Susan Orr, associate commissioner of the children’s bureau in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Indeed, there are at least two states, Georgia and South Carolina, which offer up just the sort of connect-the-dots information that an informed public needs — and unlike California, they haven’t had any threats of a funding cut-off.
There is a solution to this, and this year Assembly members Sharon Runner and Karen Bass even tried to offer it. It was AB2938, which required the release of juvenile court records, and county and state files, in the case of a child death pertaining to abuse or neglect. AB2938 should be expanded to include the deaths of foster children, regardless of whether or not they died as a result of abuse or neglect.
Unfortunately, although the governor and Legislature worked together to pass many important pieces of child-welfare legislation this year, AB2938 wasn’t one of them. The county welfare directors’ association voiced its opposition again, and it didn’t go past its first committee.
For some reason, there are still people who seem to believe that if we don’t get the information, we won’t pay attention to the fact that our children are dying.
They’re wrong. It’s time to resurrect — and expand — AB2938. What we don’t know can hurt us. It’s unconscionable to let children pay the price.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/03/EDGRMLJJ091.DTL
Page E5
EDITORIAL
Foster Care Reform
These deaths drew news coverage.
But we need to know what happened
whenever a foster youth dies.
Conrad Morales
When Conrad Morales’ relatives sent him to live with his aunt and uncle in the mountainside town of Randle, Wash., they thought they were providing him with a better life.
After spending his first 11 years in Los Angeles motels with his mother or relatives’ homes in La Puente, the idea was that the boy might benefit from forests, meadows, fresh air, animals — from the concept of an innocent childhood that his parents, both of whom had spent time in jail on drug and assault charges, hadn’t been able to provide for him.
Two years later, the police pulled Conrad’s body out of a trash can.
The suspects in his murder case are the very same aunt and uncle who were supposed to shelter and protect him. The boy — a high-spirited, popular student and avid birdwatcher — told his best friend weeks before his death during the summer of 2005 that he was being sexually abused and beaten. Now that best friend — and the entire town of Randle — is still wondering how they could have failed to miss the warning signs: the filthy house, the erratic school attendance, Conrad’s requests for make-up to cover the bruises on his face and neck.
Months before his death, Conrad began making desperate calls to his older sister, Vanessa Gallardo, in the Los Angeles area. Gallardo, who had already fought unsuccessfully for custody with Los Angeles County Child Protective Services, was perhaps the only one who called social workers and asked that someone check on the boy. She never found out about that check, but the police estimate he was killed weeks before they received a missing person’s report.
Kayla Lorrain Wood
The life of Kayla Lorrain Wood has a made-for-after-school-TV-special quality to it: She was sexually abused, schizophrenic and depressed. She bounced around in Child Protective Services while her mother racked up drug charges. She was suspected of prostitution. And she died a terrible death — this September, the Moreno Valley police discovered her stabbed and abandoned body after firefighters came to put out a fire in a building where transients gathered.
But beneath this tale of woe lies a 16-year-old girl who loved art, music and animals. Tall and thin, she dreamed of becoming a model — an appropriate choice, perhaps, for a young woman who her mother describes as girly, pretty and frilly. In her foster-care placements, she ran away frequently — to find her family.
Eventually, the police found her body instead.
Could anyone have saved her? In 2005, after an evaluation showed that Kayla was suffering from a mental disorder, Child Protective Services recommended that she be committed to a secure psychiatric facility. She ran away from her group home four days later. Though she later returned, no one followed up on the recommendation.
Although Kayla went missing at least 10 times during her two years in the foster-care system, social services admitted to losing contact with her parents. They didn’t know she was missing until she was already dead.
Jerry Hulsey
The life and death of Jerry Hulsey shows how difficult it is for social workers to make the right calls when it comes to protecting children — and how important it is that they do.
Jerry’s biological mother and father were habitual drug users. His first brush with the Department of Social Services came at the age of nine months, when his biological mother passed out from a heroin overdose with him in the car. She was charged with child endangerment and ordered into drug treatment, where she met Vicki Lynn Hulsey, Jerry’s future foster mother.
Though his biological mother couldn’t stay out of trouble — she didn’t complete her treatment program and left her son in the care of anyone who would take him — she did notice that Hulsey treated the boy well. So when she went to prison in 1996, she asked that he be left in Hulsey’s care in Monterey.
Hulsey acted quickly to be certified as Jerry’s foster parent, and by the accounts of friends and neighbors, treated him with love. When she petitioned for adoption, social workers weighed that more heavily than Hulsey’s other problems — namely, her background as a child-abuse survivor, her struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, and her bipolar disorder. In the end, Hulsey’s past caught up with her — she beat 10-year-old Jerry to death this year. An autopsy showed that he had cocaine in his system and that, at 4 feet 9 inches, he weighed 60 pounds.
Hulsey’s deterioration and Jerry’s tragic death shows how difficult it is to predict what will happen in an adoption. But it also shows how important it is for the public to understand social workers’ choices.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/03/EDGRMLJJ0B1.DTL
Page E5
EDITORIAL
Foster Care Reform
It works in South Carolina
FOR MORE than 10 years, South Carolina has had one of the nation’s strongest policies about public disclosure for the deaths of foster children. South Carolina’s clear and succinct policies stand in stark contrast to California’s confusing and disjointed disclosure system.
“We review all the records and talk about what the agency did or didn’t do in a specific case — was there a failure to make a home visit? Did someone not follow a policy concerning documentation?” said Virginia Williamson, general counsel for South Carolina’s Department of Social Services. “The reports talk about agency activities instead of laying out the family’s dynamics or revealing information about siblings or other relatives.”
A public request yields plenty of information. They sent us a document containing summary information about the circumstances of death for children who died in 2004. The document included not just children who had died of suspected abuse or neglect while in active protection, but also children whose deaths were the result of accidents or natural causes and received no public attention. By listing this last group without names, their privacy is protected — but the public can still do comparisons.
Composed in a simple, clear format, each entry is easy to read and analyze. For example, we learned that in 2004, there were nine child deaths due to abuse and neglect while in active protection, one well-publicized child death due to homicide, and 28 accident- and natural cause-deaths. Of the nine abuse and neglect deaths, one was a foster child — Lakeysha Tharp, a 10-year-old in Richland County, of probable asphyxiation. We learn that the foster mother has been charged with homicide by child abuse, and that the foster mother’s son (unnamed, because he is a minor) has been charged with the murder as well.
It’s all there: the case, the lost child, and what’s being done to ensure that her death was not in vain. And the sky hasn’t fallen in South Carolina as a result of such disclosure. If they’re worried about “privacy,” or “liability” or “politics,” the excuses that certain authorities offer in California, it hasn’t stopped law enforcement from serving or social services from protecting. Nor has it stopped the public from carrying on with their private lives. The only difference is that the public also has the knowledge to ask questions and push for improvement.
“It’s always a delicate balance between being accountable to the public for how we do business, the privacy interests of families, and protecting the state from lawsuits,” said Williamson. “But ultimately we feel that transparency and accountability are important.”
So do we.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/03/EDGP8MNBBT1.DTL
About the series
California legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made progress this year by approving a series of measures to upgrade the level of consistency and oversight in the state’s troubled foster-care system — but there is much work to be done.
Today’s editorials were researched and written by editorial writer Caille Millner. You can e-mail her at cmillner@sfchronicle.com.
To read earlier editorials on this topic, go to SFGate.com
– John Diaz, editorial page editor jdiaz@sfchronicle.com
http://amiablyme.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/state-care-cps-why-are-these-children-dying/
Jump to Comments
San Francisco Chronicle
Persuasive Writing and Commentary
Entry: Why are these children dying?
A three-piece editorial package
Credit: Editorial Writer Caille Millner
Date: December 3, 2006
EDITORIAL
On Foster Care Reform
Why are these children dying?
THE STATE OF California cannot say how many foster children die each year, even though a state law that took effect in 2004 requires counties to release the names, dates of birth, and dates of death for these children. The new law is not being followed by all: The Children’s Advocacy Institute, a San Diego-based research and lobbying group that co-sponsored the 2004 law, requested the names for 2005 from all 58 counties. Nearly a year later, they’re still waiting for two counties to respond.
The names that they do have for 2005 — 48 so far — offer more questions than answers. What does it mean, for example, that nine of the deaths were children age 17 or older, five of whom were within six weeks of their 18th birthday? Are 17-year-olds simply more likely to get in car accidents? Suffer drug overdoses? Skateboard without helmets? Or does it mean the fulfillment of our worst fears — that some children, facing the harsh realities of homelessness and desperation when they “age out” of the system at 18, are taking their own lives instead?
“There’s no way to get more information without going to the courts,” said Christina Riehl, staff attorney for the Children’s Advocacy Institute.
There is absolutely no reason why an advocacy group, a newspaper, an elected official, or any other concerned member of the public should have to go to court to find out what happened when a foster youth dies.
But due to California’s baffling policies on disclosure, it’s extraordinarily difficult for the public to learn who in the system is dying and why. Nearly every bill that has come through the Legislature in the past several years has been stonewalled by the County Welfare Directors’ Association.
Take AB1817, a very modest bill sponsored by Assemblyman Bill Maze, R-Visalia, three years ago. Concerned about a wave of foster children’s deaths in his district, Maze simply wanted legislators to be allowed to review the case files of deceased children in the system. But he couldn’t get his bill out of the Judiciary Committee.
“They said that, as an elected official, I’d just use these cases as a political forum,” said Maze. “I think it’s just baloney. We need to know if there’s some kind of pattern or trend or lack of oversight in case management, because, until we know that, we won’t know how to fix the problem. But needless to say, I’ve been fought against on this issue tremendously by the welfare directors of this state.”
Maze is not the only one frustrated by the lack of information about child deaths from California’s social-services bureaucracies. Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services determined that the state was violating federal law by failing to file reports about the deaths and near-deaths of children due to abuse or neglect. Threatened with the loss of $60 million in child-welfare funds, this summer the state began requiring counties to file these reports. But — and here’s the rub — the Department of Social Services keeps all names confidential, even in the case of foster children.
Imagine — our state’s most vulnerable children, betrayed by a state system that was supposed to protect them — and we have no idea who they are. A look at the questionnaires the state started providing this July offer only haunting glimpses of their fates:
– On July 30, a 15-year-old foster child died after either jumping or being pushed from a moving car in a suspected sexual assault.
– On Aug. 17, a 2-year-old foster child drowned after her foster parents left her alone in a bath tub.
– On Aug. 24, a 16-year-old committed suicide by shooting himself in the head after telling his sibling that he couldn’t take their legal guardian’s abuse anymore.
Confidentiality is important, especially when it comes to protecting the identities of family members and abuse reporters. We understand, as well, that it’s important to protect the names of abused children who suffer near-fatalities but are expected to recover. But there are no good reasons why the full case files — including names, counties and histories — for dead foster children shouldn’t be open to all of us. There can’t be any accountability without transparency.
When we asked Sue Diedrich, assistant general counsel for the state Department of Social Services, why they couldn’t tell us more, she said that the state could risk its federal funding.
That’s simply not true, according to a federal official who tracks the issue.
“Federal law doesn’t require that a state release (those details), but it doesn’t prohibit those disclosures either,” said Susan Orr, associate commissioner of the children’s bureau in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Indeed, there are at least two states, Georgia and South Carolina, which offer up just the sort of connect-the-dots information that an informed public needs — and unlike California, they haven’t had any threats of a funding cut-off.
There is a solution to this, and this year Assembly members Sharon Runner and Karen Bass even tried to offer it. It was AB2938, which required the release of juvenile court records, and county and state files, in the case of a child death pertaining to abuse or neglect. AB2938 should be expanded to include the deaths of foster children, regardless of whether or not they died as a result of abuse or neglect.
Unfortunately, although the governor and Legislature worked together to pass many important pieces of child-welfare legislation this year, AB2938 wasn’t one of them. The county welfare directors’ association voiced its opposition again, and it didn’t go past its first committee.
For some reason, there are still people who seem to believe that if we don’t get the information, we won’t pay attention to the fact that our children are dying.
They’re wrong. It’s time to resurrect — and expand — AB2938. What we don’t know can hurt us. It’s unconscionable to let children pay the price.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/03/EDGRMLJJ091.DTL
Page E5
EDITORIAL
Foster Care Reform
These deaths drew news coverage.
But we need to know what happened
whenever a foster youth dies.
Conrad Morales
When Conrad Morales’ relatives sent him to live with his aunt and uncle in the mountainside town of Randle, Wash., they thought they were providing him with a better life.
After spending his first 11 years in Los Angeles motels with his mother or relatives’ homes in La Puente, the idea was that the boy might benefit from forests, meadows, fresh air, animals — from the concept of an innocent childhood that his parents, both of whom had spent time in jail on drug and assault charges, hadn’t been able to provide for him.
Two years later, the police pulled Conrad’s body out of a trash can.
The suspects in his murder case are the very same aunt and uncle who were supposed to shelter and protect him. The boy — a high-spirited, popular student and avid birdwatcher — told his best friend weeks before his death during the summer of 2005 that he was being sexually abused and beaten. Now that best friend — and the entire town of Randle — is still wondering how they could have failed to miss the warning signs: the filthy house, the erratic school attendance, Conrad’s requests for make-up to cover the bruises on his face and neck.
Months before his death, Conrad began making desperate calls to his older sister, Vanessa Gallardo, in the Los Angeles area. Gallardo, who had already fought unsuccessfully for custody with Los Angeles County Child Protective Services, was perhaps the only one who called social workers and asked that someone check on the boy. She never found out about that check, but the police estimate he was killed weeks before they received a missing person’s report.
Kayla Lorrain Wood
The life of Kayla Lorrain Wood has a made-for-after-school-TV-special quality to it: She was sexually abused, schizophrenic and depressed. She bounced around in Child Protective Services while her mother racked up drug charges. She was suspected of prostitution. And she died a terrible death — this September, the Moreno Valley police discovered her stabbed and abandoned body after firefighters came to put out a fire in a building where transients gathered.
But beneath this tale of woe lies a 16-year-old girl who loved art, music and animals. Tall and thin, she dreamed of becoming a model — an appropriate choice, perhaps, for a young woman who her mother describes as girly, pretty and frilly. In her foster-care placements, she ran away frequently — to find her family.
Eventually, the police found her body instead.
Could anyone have saved her? In 2005, after an evaluation showed that Kayla was suffering from a mental disorder, Child Protective Services recommended that she be committed to a secure psychiatric facility. She ran away from her group home four days later. Though she later returned, no one followed up on the recommendation.
Although Kayla went missing at least 10 times during her two years in the foster-care system, social services admitted to losing contact with her parents. They didn’t know she was missing until she was already dead.
Jerry Hulsey
The life and death of Jerry Hulsey shows how difficult it is for social workers to make the right calls when it comes to protecting children — and how important it is that they do.
Jerry’s biological mother and father were habitual drug users. His first brush with the Department of Social Services came at the age of nine months, when his biological mother passed out from a heroin overdose with him in the car. She was charged with child endangerment and ordered into drug treatment, where she met Vicki Lynn Hulsey, Jerry’s future foster mother.
Though his biological mother couldn’t stay out of trouble — she didn’t complete her treatment program and left her son in the care of anyone who would take him — she did notice that Hulsey treated the boy well. So when she went to prison in 1996, she asked that he be left in Hulsey’s care in Monterey.
Hulsey acted quickly to be certified as Jerry’s foster parent, and by the accounts of friends and neighbors, treated him with love. When she petitioned for adoption, social workers weighed that more heavily than Hulsey’s other problems — namely, her background as a child-abuse survivor, her struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, and her bipolar disorder. In the end, Hulsey’s past caught up with her — she beat 10-year-old Jerry to death this year. An autopsy showed that he had cocaine in his system and that, at 4 feet 9 inches, he weighed 60 pounds.
Hulsey’s deterioration and Jerry’s tragic death shows how difficult it is to predict what will happen in an adoption. But it also shows how important it is for the public to understand social workers’ choices.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/03/EDGRMLJJ0B1.DTL
Page E5
EDITORIAL
Foster Care Reform
It works in South Carolina
FOR MORE than 10 years, South Carolina has had one of the nation’s strongest policies about public disclosure for the deaths of foster children. South Carolina’s clear and succinct policies stand in stark contrast to California’s confusing and disjointed disclosure system.
“We review all the records and talk about what the agency did or didn’t do in a specific case — was there a failure to make a home visit? Did someone not follow a policy concerning documentation?” said Virginia Williamson, general counsel for South Carolina’s Department of Social Services. “The reports talk about agency activities instead of laying out the family’s dynamics or revealing information about siblings or other relatives.”
A public request yields plenty of information. They sent us a document containing summary information about the circumstances of death for children who died in 2004. The document included not just children who had died of suspected abuse or neglect while in active protection, but also children whose deaths were the result of accidents or natural causes and received no public attention. By listing this last group without names, their privacy is protected — but the public can still do comparisons.
Composed in a simple, clear format, each entry is easy to read and analyze. For example, we learned that in 2004, there were nine child deaths due to abuse and neglect while in active protection, one well-publicized child death due to homicide, and 28 accident- and natural cause-deaths. Of the nine abuse and neglect deaths, one was a foster child — Lakeysha Tharp, a 10-year-old in Richland County, of probable asphyxiation. We learn that the foster mother has been charged with homicide by child abuse, and that the foster mother’s son (unnamed, because he is a minor) has been charged with the murder as well.
It’s all there: the case, the lost child, and what’s being done to ensure that her death was not in vain. And the sky hasn’t fallen in South Carolina as a result of such disclosure. If they’re worried about “privacy,” or “liability” or “politics,” the excuses that certain authorities offer in California, it hasn’t stopped law enforcement from serving or social services from protecting. Nor has it stopped the public from carrying on with their private lives. The only difference is that the public also has the knowledge to ask questions and push for improvement.
“It’s always a delicate balance between being accountable to the public for how we do business, the privacy interests of families, and protecting the state from lawsuits,” said Williamson. “But ultimately we feel that transparency and accountability are important.”
So do we.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/12/03/EDGP8MNBBT1.DTL
About the series
California legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made progress this year by approving a series of measures to upgrade the level of consistency and oversight in the state’s troubled foster-care system — but there is much work to be done.
Today’s editorials were researched and written by editorial writer Caille Millner. You can e-mail her at cmillner@sfchronicle.com.
To read earlier editorials on this topic, go to SFGate.com
– John Diaz, editorial page editor jdiaz@sfchronicle.com
http://amiablyme.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/state-care-cps-why-are-these-children-dying/
Social Workers Doping up our Children
Social Workers Doping up our Children
Orlando Sentinel
August 31, 2009
The state’s Department of Children and Families is under fire again, and rightly so.
Recently, a task force issued its final report documenting how weak oversight and lax compliance with guidelines fostered a culture where officials often blindly doled out powerful drugs as chemical pacifiers to help caregivers manage difficult children.
These troubling concerns aren’t new to DCF. But in the wake of the withering report, DCF Secretary George Sheldon concedes lapses and vows to heed and fund task-force proposals.
Such accountability is encouraging. But we expected reform before. In 2003, the Statewide Advocacy Council report made similar findings, and concluded, “…unnecessary dispensing of psychotropic medication remains a threat to [foster children]. Until there is more information regarding the safety and efficiency of these drugs, Florida’s foster care children should be monitored closely.”
That report’s proposals were largely ignored. Now, six years later, only swift reforms and a strong mandate to comply with existing rules that govern psychotropic drugs will shelve suspicions that this is déjà vu all over again.
Gabriel Myers becomes the latest Florida foster child whose tragic end led to familiar calls for DCF reform. The boy was removed from his drug-addled mother and turned over to state custody on June 29, 2008. Gabriel hopscotched between a relative and a foster home over the next 10 months. While in state care, he received several psychotropic drugs without valid parental or court consent, as state law requires. One of the drugs, Symbyax, an adult antidepressant, can lead to suicidal thoughts or actions.
On April 16, Gabriel put a shower cord around his neck in the bathroom of his Margate foster home.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Sheldon convened the Gabriel Myers Work Group to investigate the tragedy. The group’s 26-page report outlined 148 systemic breakdowns in Gabriel’s death.
It notes the egregious disregard of safeguards for foster children that are well “articulated in statute, administrative rule, and operating procedures.” Breakdowns in communication, advocacy, supervision, monitoring and oversight only exacerbated matters.
Gabriel was repeatedly evaluated while in care, and often saw therapists, including one who noted, “It is clear that this child is overwhelmed with change and possibly re-experiencing trauma.” Somehow, though, caregivers missed the red flags.
And the report backs child advocates who long have insisted the state overmedicates kids: “Psychotropic medications are at times being used to help parents, teachers, and other caregivers calm and manage, rather than treat, children.”
In Florida, 15.2 percent of foster kids take at least one psychotropic drug, compared with a 5 percent rate among the general population.
DCF must junk the “fix-it with pharmaceuticals” mentality that, for the sake of expediency, often skirts safer avenues for taming disorderly behavior. Adopting the task force’s call for “a higher requirement for due diligence prior to seeking approval for administering these drugs” would be a step forward.
The task force outlines a raft of reforms that include beefing up therapeutic services, adding court-appointed guardians, and bringing on a medical director to direct the use of psychotropic drugs.
Mr. Sheldon says he’ll free up resources within DCF to act on the suggestions. And despite austere budgets, he vows to cajole the Legislature to fund such options as behavioral therapy as an alternative to drug therapy. But a will to change must follow words.
Mr. Sheldon told the Fort Myers News-Press that in the past, “Regrettably, I’m afraid people said, ‘We dodged a bullet’ and it [reforms] never got out into the field. That cannot be the case this time.”
It better not. Or DCF almost assuredly in the months to come will experience another tragic case of déjà vu.
Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel
Direct link: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edped-dcf-drugs-report-083109083109aug31,0,7590536.story
http://amiablyme.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/social-workers-doping-up-our-children/
Orlando Sentinel
August 31, 2009
The state’s Department of Children and Families is under fire again, and rightly so.
Recently, a task force issued its final report documenting how weak oversight and lax compliance with guidelines fostered a culture where officials often blindly doled out powerful drugs as chemical pacifiers to help caregivers manage difficult children.
These troubling concerns aren’t new to DCF. But in the wake of the withering report, DCF Secretary George Sheldon concedes lapses and vows to heed and fund task-force proposals.
Such accountability is encouraging. But we expected reform before. In 2003, the Statewide Advocacy Council report made similar findings, and concluded, “…unnecessary dispensing of psychotropic medication remains a threat to [foster children]. Until there is more information regarding the safety and efficiency of these drugs, Florida’s foster care children should be monitored closely.”
That report’s proposals were largely ignored. Now, six years later, only swift reforms and a strong mandate to comply with existing rules that govern psychotropic drugs will shelve suspicions that this is déjà vu all over again.
Gabriel Myers becomes the latest Florida foster child whose tragic end led to familiar calls for DCF reform. The boy was removed from his drug-addled mother and turned over to state custody on June 29, 2008. Gabriel hopscotched between a relative and a foster home over the next 10 months. While in state care, he received several psychotropic drugs without valid parental or court consent, as state law requires. One of the drugs, Symbyax, an adult antidepressant, can lead to suicidal thoughts or actions.
On April 16, Gabriel put a shower cord around his neck in the bathroom of his Margate foster home.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Sheldon convened the Gabriel Myers Work Group to investigate the tragedy. The group’s 26-page report outlined 148 systemic breakdowns in Gabriel’s death.
It notes the egregious disregard of safeguards for foster children that are well “articulated in statute, administrative rule, and operating procedures.” Breakdowns in communication, advocacy, supervision, monitoring and oversight only exacerbated matters.
Gabriel was repeatedly evaluated while in care, and often saw therapists, including one who noted, “It is clear that this child is overwhelmed with change and possibly re-experiencing trauma.” Somehow, though, caregivers missed the red flags.
And the report backs child advocates who long have insisted the state overmedicates kids: “Psychotropic medications are at times being used to help parents, teachers, and other caregivers calm and manage, rather than treat, children.”
In Florida, 15.2 percent of foster kids take at least one psychotropic drug, compared with a 5 percent rate among the general population.
DCF must junk the “fix-it with pharmaceuticals” mentality that, for the sake of expediency, often skirts safer avenues for taming disorderly behavior. Adopting the task force’s call for “a higher requirement for due diligence prior to seeking approval for administering these drugs” would be a step forward.
The task force outlines a raft of reforms that include beefing up therapeutic services, adding court-appointed guardians, and bringing on a medical director to direct the use of psychotropic drugs.
Mr. Sheldon says he’ll free up resources within DCF to act on the suggestions. And despite austere budgets, he vows to cajole the Legislature to fund such options as behavioral therapy as an alternative to drug therapy. But a will to change must follow words.
Mr. Sheldon told the Fort Myers News-Press that in the past, “Regrettably, I’m afraid people said, ‘We dodged a bullet’ and it [reforms] never got out into the field. That cannot be the case this time.”
It better not. Or DCF almost assuredly in the months to come will experience another tragic case of déjà vu.
Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel
Direct link: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edped-dcf-drugs-report-083109083109aug31,0,7590536.story
http://amiablyme.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/social-workers-doping-up-our-children/
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