Some DHS workers allowed to keep jobs after child deaths - Oklahoma

Agency audit discovered ‘substantial violations,' blatant irresponsibility by child-welfare workers in three deaths

BY NOLAN CLAY, RANDY ELLIS AND ROBBY TRAMMELL

DHS workers are not always fired over mistakes that contributed to children's deaths.

In 2008, a Craig County child-welfare specialist, Jamie L. Veysey, was suspended without pay for only five days after a 3-year-old boy died.

A supervisor, Debra L. Grace, was suspended without pay for 60 days.

A DHS audit after the death found “substantial violations” of DHS child-welfare policy.

DHS workers had returned the medically fragile boy to his mother from foster care in February 2007. The boy, Blake Ragsdale, died of natural causes less than a month later.

He was placed with his mother even though she did not have a job, a telephone or a car, records show. The mother had failed to take care of him properly a year before during a reunification attempt.

He was in foster care because he had tested positive for methamphetamine at birth.

DHS found the workers failed to notify a judge the boy was being reunited with his mother, failed to make a safety assessment of the mother's home beforehand and failed to put any services into place to help the mother with the boy's care.

DHS found Veysey failed to check on the boy enough times after the reunification. DHS also found both did not notify the proper DHS authorities of the death.

Veysey resigned in 2010, records show. Grace no longer handles child-welfare cases, a DHS spokeswoman said.

Beaten to death

A Beckham County child-welfare specialist, Liberty Michelle Carter, was suspended for 15 days without pay in 2009 after a young boy, Ryan Weeks, was beaten to death. Carter was disciplined for her “action/inaction” in the case.

Ryan, 3, died on Nov. 4, 2008, after DHS placed him back in his mother's Elk City home from foster care. The mother's live-in boyfriend eventually pleaded no contest to first-degree murder.

A foster mother had pleaded with the agency not to return Ryan to his mother's home because he had returned from visits there with bruises. The foster mother complained to a DHS county director that Carter would not listen to her. DHS found Carter had concluded in July 2008 that the foster mother likely was making false allegations.

DHS also found Carter failed to properly look into an injury to the boy in September 2008 and failed to address Ryan's mother's fear that her boyfriend was overwhelmed.

Carter resigned in December 2010, the DHS spokeswoman said.

Medically fragile

An Oklahoma County child-welfare specialist, Glen E. Marshall, was at first offered more training after a medically fragile baby died a few days after he failed to get the child help.

“Your failure to ensure the safety of this infant demonstrated a blatant disregard of your responsibilities as a child-welfare specialist, poor judgment and egregious lack of risk assessment skills,” he was told.

Marshall was fired in November 2009 — more than a year after the child's death — after he continued to mishandle cases and lied to a supervisor, an assistant district attorney and an Oklahoma City police detective, the disciplinary records show.

Source http://newsok.com/some-dhs-workers-allowed-to-keep-jobs-after-child-deaths/article/3634878

Panel won’t delve deeper into Arizona CPS woes

by Mary K. Reinhart on Oct. 21, 2011

An Arizona legislative committee, apparently satisfied that the state’s child-welfare agency has adequately responded to problems raised by three state audits since 2009, declined to delve deeper Thursday into broader troubles within the system.

Sen. Linda Gray, R-Glendale, co-chair of the committee, said after the hearing that she wanted to see what comes from a child-safety task force before deciding whether to hold additional hearings on Child Protective Services. Gov. Jan Brewer is expected to name members of the task force in the next few days. Brewer wants recommendations from the task force by Dec. 31.

But during public testimony, several people said critical problems within the CPS need urgent attention.

“I think the system is struggling greatly – all aspects of the system,” said Dana Wolfe Naimark, CEO of Children’s Action Alliance. “What we’ve heard today really doesn’t tell you the story of CPS.”

One of the audits, from September 2009, said the agency inconsistently reviewed relatives willing to take temporary custody of children and failed to properly document efforts to place children with relatives. The agency has since implemented specific guidelines for workers to assess the fitness of relatives and is still working on getting staff to better document efforts to find relatives.

About one-third of Arizona’s foster children live with relatives.

Clarence Carter, director of the Department of Economic Security, which oversees CPS, said in response to a question that grandparents and other relatives who take in foster children have access to all the services that unrelated foster families and shelter operators do.

“The fact that a child is placed with a relative doesn’t change the needs of that child,” Carter told Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor, D-Phoenix.

But Suzanne Schunk, director of family services for Southwest Human Development, told the committee that grandparents and other relatives don’t get the same support as foster parents. They aren’t paid to care for the kids, and they often can’t find services that the children need or can’t afford to pay for them, she said.

Landrum Taylor agreed.

“A lot of times they’re unable to do it, so it just doesn’t happen,” she said.

And Brenda Gloria of Phoenix, who cares for two grandchildren, said CPS caseworkers gave their parents too many chances. She said it was heartbreaking to have the children sent back home year after year, only to be removed and returned to her.

CPS supervisors also are reviewing a backlog of nearly 10,000 inactive abuse and neglect cases and trying out a streamlined investigation process that could shave weeks off the average case, which now takes five to six months to complete.

Source http://tucsoncitizen.com/arizona-news/2011/10/21/panel-wont-delve-deeper-into-cps-woes/

Nevada auditors fault Vegas foster home

By Geoff Dornan

Auditors reviewing Nevada's facilities for children in state care were so concerned about the mess they found in a Las Vegas foster home in March that they called Clark County Child Protective Services.

Deputy Legislative Auditor Sandra McGuirk wrote that, when they entered the home, they saw an empty insulin syringe on the floor, an empty prescription medicine bottle, unsecured flammable liquids, a hammer and sharp knives, pans full of grease on the stove, overflowing garbage cans and filthy bathroom sinks, as well as food remnants and soda cans on the carpet.

She said this is the first time conditions have been so bad in an inspection that they felt it necessary to call Child Protective Services.

“These conditions are unacceptable in any foster home,” said Sen. Sheila Leslie, D-Reno.

The foster home was one of more than 30 operated by Eagle Quest, which has homes in Las Vegas and Pahrump. Director of Operations Dave Doyle said the mess happened after the foster parent running the home suffered a medical issue and was taken to the hospital. He said the woman's husband was overwhelmed and he was not informed that she wasn't there.

Doyle apologized to the legislative audit subcommittee but added that the home was under a corrective action plan from Child Protective Services in Clark County and he was never told about that. He admitted that conditions in the house were “atrocious” when the audit team showed up and, and he said that's why he immediately moved the six foster children there to another home.

He said numerous changes have been made by the company since then to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again in one of its homes.

Foster home operators in his system must tell him immediately if they are being investigated by a government agency. He said that if a foster parent has a medical issue or another problem requiring their absence, his staff is to be informed within 24 hours so they can put someone in there. He said other changes have been made as well, including tightening controls over medications given to children in foster care — a perennial complaint by legislators.

“We now have multiple people signing off on the medication logs,” Doyle said.

Leslie, who chairs the audit subcommittee, said the medications issue is still showing up in every six-month audit of the child care system, yet she was unable to get a bill through this past session requiring training for foster care and group home workers so they keep accurate records.

Doyle said that standardized training is needed and that operators like himself need to hold their employees accountable.

The practice of investigating a sample of both governmental and private child-care facilities every six months was started about four years ago after serious charges were raised about conditions and treatment of those confined to the state's juvenile prison, the Nevada Youth Training Center in Elko.

Source http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20111018/NEWS/111019762/1070&ParentProfile=1058

LA, Alameda, Fresno & Sacramento County CPS Under Investigation

As usual, CPS feels that they are above the law. In the below article, CPS officials in Los Angeles county California are fighting to prevent a release of documents relating to 70 child deaths since 2008 to state officials wishing to audit the agencies. A subpeona for documents was issued but CPS defied it. It has now become a very adversarial situation. Read more at the link below:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-welfare-audit-20110801,0,2996347.story