Records on social worker's allegations are public, opinion says

Records on social worker's allegations are public, opinion says
BY DEBORAH YETTER • DYETTER@COURIER-JOURNAL.COM • AUGUST 23, 2010

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services violated state open records law when it refused to release records related to a social worker’s allegations that child abuse and neglect cases were mishandled in her Northern Kentucky office, according to an opinion by the state Attorney General’s office.



The opinion, dated Friday, said The Courier-Journal is entitled to records involving a grievance filed by Kindra Kilgore, a former top social service official, related to an allegation that she was retaliated against for expressing those concerns.

The cabinet refused to provide the grievance, citing in part a concern about Kilgore’s privacy because it was part of her evaluation.

But that wasn’t a basis for withholding the documents, said the opinion, written by Assistant Attorney General Amye L. Bensenhaver.

“This is especially true in view of the critical role her employer plays in providing family preservation services and combating domestic violence and abuse, neglect and exploitation of adult and child victims,” the opinion said.

However, Bensenhaver found that the cabinet was entitled to withhold the evaluation of Kilgore’s supervisor, which the newspaper also had sought.

Cabinet officials declined to comment on the opinion Monday, saying they are reviewing it, spokeswoman Vikki Franklin said.

Attorney General’s opinions on open records cases have the force of law unless overturned on appeal to the state court system.

Jon Fleischaker, a lawyer for The Courier-Journal, said he was pleased with the opinion, which he added should increase public access to information about how the state manages cases of child abuse and neglect.

“I think it’s the right decision,’’ he said.

But Fleischaker said he was surprised that the opinion denied the newspaper access to the personnel evaluation of Kilgore’s supervisor, Lisa Prewitt, the top administrator for the state’s Northern Kentucky regional office.

“I think we’re entitled to both of them,’’ he said. The newspaper hasn’t decided whether to appeal the portion of the opinion related to Prewitt’s evaluation, he said.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100823/NEWS01/308230081/1008/Records+on+social+worker+s+allegations+are+public++opinion+says

Man could face life in prison in sex assault of 2 foster girls

Man could face life in prison in sex assault of 2 foster girls
August 26, 2010 4:34 PM
A Rosemont man charged with the sexual assault of two young foster girls in his home could face life in prison as prosecutors sought to admit proof today of other alleged crimes.

Christopher Cooper, 28, has been held without bail since his arrest two years ago on charges that he repeatedly assaulted the girls beginning when they were 5-years-old, a prosecutor said.

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/08/man-could-face-life-in-prison-in-sex-assault-of-2-foster-girls.html

A foster mother goes on trial, and so does shaken baby syndrome

A foster mother goes on trial, and so does shaken baby syndrome

By Curtis Krueger, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Friday, August 27, 2010


LARGO — Over three days this week, prosecutors have systematically built a murder case against a former foster mother accused of shaking and killing a baby in her care.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/criminal/a-foster-mother-goes-on-trial-and-so-does-shaken-baby-syndrome/1117768

From bad to worse.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 2010

From bad to worse.
I love this kiddo so much. But we are this close to giving up. We feel like we're in way over our heads right now. I feel resentful at The Agency for putting a kid who needed a therapeutic foster home in with non-therapeutic first time foster parents. I am angry at the people who caused this beautiful little boy to have all these problems. I am sad that we have to worry that we can't do this any more. The bottom line is, we cannot keep missing this much work. This child requires two adults to keep him (and the house, and us) safe when he is having a tantrum, and we cannot provide that when we both go back to work. I am so terrified. I love him more than I've ever loved anyone, in a way I've never loved anything. I want the best for him, he deserves only good things in life. But this child's violent rages are so much beyond what we "signed up for" (a joke of a phrase in the foster world) and are putting our jobs, our home, and our bodies in danger. I called The Agency today and said they needed to find a way to provide more supports if they want this placement not to disrupt. I never dreamed I would even be saying the word "disrupt." But if we cannot keep him safe, then we are not the right foster family for him. We are not giving up - We are keeping trying. We are giving all the professionals and opportunity to put a better support system in place for us. I just don't know if they can.

http://ittakesashtetl.blogspot.com/2010/08/from-bad-to-worse.html

Edward Edwards admits killing his foster son

Edward Edwards admits killing his foster son but official guilty plea could not be made
Published: Thursday, August 26, 2010, 5:59 PM
Updated: Friday, August 27, 2010, 3:26 AM

View full sizeAssociated Press file
Edward Wayne Edwards has agreed to plead guilty in Summit County Court Friday to the 1977 murders of a Norton couple.
CHARDON, Ohio -- Edward Wayne Edwards tried to plead guilty Thursday to killing his foster son at their home in Burton in 1996.

The plea would have brought the number of victims to five he has been convicted of killing. But since Edwards is charged with a death penalty crime, the plea could not be accepted by Geauga County Common Pleas Judge Forrest Burt. It must be made before a three-judge panel or a jury, Prosecutor David Joyce said.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/08/edward_edward_admits_killing_h.html

Commonly prescribed medications and potential false-positive urine drug screens

American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, Vol. 67, Issue 16, 1344-1350
Copyright © 2010 by American Society of Health-System Pharmacists
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What's this?
Clinical Consultation
Commonly prescribed medications and potential false-positive urine drug screens
Nancy C. Brahm, Lynn L. Yeager, Mark D. Fox, Kevin C. Farmer and Tony A. Palmer
NANCY C. BRAHM, PHARM.D., M.S., is Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice: Clinical and Administrative Sciences, College of Pharmacy; LYNN L. YEAGER, M.L.I.S., is Assistant Professor, College of Medicine; MARK D. FOX, M.D., PH.D., M.P.H., is Associate Dean for Community Health and Research Development, School of Community Medicine, College of Medicine; KEVIN C. FARMER, PH.D., is Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice: Clinical and Administrative Sciences, College of Pharmacy; and TONY A. PALMER, B.S.PHARM., M.B.A., is Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice: Clinical and Administrative Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Oklahoma, Tulsa

Address correspondence to Dr. Brahm at the Department of Pharmacy Practice: Clinical and Administrative Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Oklahoma, 4502 East 41st Street, 2H17, Tulsa, OK 74135-2512 (nancy-brahm@ouhsc.edu).


Purpose. The implications of potential false-positive urine drug screen (UDS) results for patients receiving commonly prescribed medications were evaluated.
Summary. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to identify false-positive UDSs associated with all clinic formulary medications, as well as common nonprescription medications. The references of each report describing a medication whose use was associated with false-positive UDS results were also reviewed. If a class effect was suspected, additional agents in the category were searched. A total of 25 reports of false-positive UDS results were identified. Categories of medications included antihistamines, antidepressants, antibiotics, analgesics, antipsychotics, and nonprescription agents. Reports of false-positive results were found for the following formulary and nonprescription medications: brompheniramine, bupropion, chlorpromazine, clomipramine, dextromethorphan, diphenhydramine, doxylamine, ibuprofen, naproxen, promethazine, quetiapine, quinolones (ofloxacin and gatifloxacin), ranitidine, sertraline, thioridazine, trazodone, venlafaxine, verapamil, and a nonprescription nasal inhaler. False-positive results for amphetamine and methamphetamine were the most commonly reported. False-positive results for methadone, opioids, phencyclidine, barbiturates, cannabinoids, and benzodiazepines were also reported in patients taking commonly used medications. The most commonly used tests to screen urine for drugs of abuse are immunoassays, even though false-positive results for drugs of abuse have been reported with a number of these rapid-screening products. Results from such tests should be confirmed using additional analytical methods, including gas chromatography–mass spectrometry.

Conclusion. A number of routinely prescribed medications have been associated with triggering false-positive UDS results. Verification of the test results with a different screening test or additional analytical tests should be performed to avoid adverse consequences for the patients.

http://www.ajhp.org/cgi/content/abstract/67/16/1344

Parenting Under Scrutiny

August 26, 2010, 12:37 PM
Parenting Under Scrutiny
By LISA BELKIN
Chris Gottlieb defends parents for a living. She is with the Family Defense Clinic at New York University School of Law, which represents parents accused of child abuse and neglect and tries to keep families together. With that daily backdrop, she read our discussion here a few weeks ago — the one about parents judging other parents harshly — through a somewhat different lens.

She had recently published an article in the University of Baltimore Law Review:
http://law.ubalt.edu/downloads/law_downloads/Gottlieb_After_First_EIC_Edit%20(May%2026).pdf
about “how the tendency to judge mothering harshly plays out for the poor and minority women who come under the scrutiny of the child welfare system.” She has adapted that article as a guest blog today — describing how her own experiences as a mother (her children are four and one) help her understand how it feels to be judged, and give her some insight into the feelings of her accused clients.

Many of you will disagree with her conclusions. But you will agree that her vantage point is one that most of us don’t usually have.

JUDGING MOTHERING
By Chris Gottlieb

A woman approached on the subway to tell me that looking at newsprint up close could cause eyestrain. I quickly learned she was not worried about me; she was concerned about my baby’s eyes because I was carrying him face out, where he was about six inches from the newspaper I was reading. An elderly man chastised me because my baby’s legs were not covered. A saleswoman was more worried about his arms, but didn’t stop at commenting — she reached out to pull down his sleeves. Several strangers “tsked tsked” me when they learned I had my baby out of the house before he was six weeks old. I have been criticized for failing to have mittens on him, keeping him up too late and for drinking hot coffee while holding the little guy.

Maybe this onslaught should make me wonder about my mothering skills, but instead I marvel at how comfortable people feel telling complete strangers about their purported parenting flaws. I am certain that over the years, fellow subway riders have judged my fashion choices and found them wanting, or disapproved of what I was eating (or that I was eating on the train). Yet no one has ever voiced such opinions to me. But the discretion of strangers disappears as soon as you have a child, in fact, as soon as you are visibly pregnant. Heaven help you if you have a beer in public while expecting.

No infraction is too small or too strange to elicit comment. (The newspaper was too close to the baby’s eyes?) All my parent friends have experienced this no-win culture of judging parenting. Depending on their personalities, they have cowered, gotten angry or been demoralized by it. Yet as stinging as the comments and glares can be, for most of us they are limited to park benches and supermarket lines or, if we’re unlucky, to visits with the in-laws. Our culture of judging parenting by impossible standards hits some much harder.

Only after I had children did I truly begin to understand what I thought I already understood after years of standing beside my clients in family court: parenting is something we are inclined to judge harshly at the same time that it is impossible to do in anything but an extremely flawed way. You can’t get it right. We all know this. We all strive for greater excellence than we have hope of achieving. Yet we couple this knowledge with extreme intolerance for the shortcomings of other parents.

I represent parents accused of abusing or neglecting their children — few are more deeply despised in our society. If you know these parents through media coverage, you likely think we must do more to protect their children. The thing is, in the vast majority of cases, the ones these children most need to be protected from is not their parents. It is us. For we have empowered the government to judge parents and when the parenting is found wanting, to take children.

Certainly some children need to be separated from their parents and put in foster care. But only in rare situations is such a traumatic step justified. Yet over and over, I have seen caseworkers who investigate parents and judges who oversee intervention in family life hold parenting up for assessment and inevitably find that the parents fall short. Why? Because the standards imposed are as idiosyncratic and impossibly high as the standards of the people I hear from on the subway. The caseworkers and the judges, however, have the guns to back up their glares.

Contrary to the media images of severely abused children who have suffered and died at the hands of abusive parents, the vast majority of cases that clog the foster care system involve allegations of neglect, not abuse. And neglect is broadly construed. Parents are charged for refusing to give their children psychotropic medications, for using corporal punishment, for having a dirty home, for smoking marijuana. In other words, neglect includes many things that reasonable people have very different ideas about. Indeed, it includes many behaviors that my yuppie friends and I engage in without threat of government intervention.

Yet we allow, indeed encourage, government officials to be judgmental of the poor and minority parents who interact with the child welfare system. Despite clear constitutional law protecting the right of parents to raise their children as they see fit, one need only walk into family court to see this law routinely breached.

We have not sufficiently connected the phenomenon we observe in our own lives — of widespread willingness to impose perfectionist standards on parenting — with the explosion of inflammatory media coverage of child abuse and hyper-aggressive child protection policies. Legitimate efforts to protect children from serious abuse have morphed into second guessing decisions well within parental prerogative. Worse still, once government intervention in family life is authorized, the legal standard often becomes “best interests of the child.” How do courts and caseworkers determine what is in a child’s best interests? The same way the rest of us do: subjectively, inconsistently, and often erroneously. One judge wants more discipline; another wants less. I have heard caseworkers criticize mothers for everything from giving their children Chinese takeout food or Kool-Aid (the mother told me orange juice was too expensive for her) to having beer in the house to letting a child get wet under a sprinkler. A judge ordered one of my clients to take her child to the park every day. Every day! How can that level of micromanagement of parenting by the government make sense?

It is time to reevaluate our inclination to approach parenting with such unforgiving eyes — in our own lives and in our public policies. We would serve children far better if we viewed parenting by strangers as we view the parenting of our partners and friends when we are at our best: generously, with commiseration rather than a measuring stick. If we are going to interject, we might even consider offering support rather than judgment.

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/parenting-under-scrutiny/