by: RANDY ELLIS, NOLAN CLAY & ROBBY TRAMMELL
Sunday, October 16, 2011
10/16/2011 7:17:13 AM
DHS officials greatly misrepresented to the public and their governing commission the number of children abused and neglected in out-of-home state custody, documents reveal.
Last December, the Oklahoma Department of Human Services issued a news release stating "99.8 percent of children in out-of-home care did not experience maltreatment while in care" during 2009.
The agency proclaimed Oklahoma was one of 24 states that met a national standard of having at least 99.68 percent of children in custody not experience confirmed abuse or neglect in out-of-home care.
The claims were false.
Source http://www.tulsaworld.com/site/printerfriendlystory.aspx?articleid=20111016_12_A1_DHSoff80925
More on this subject http://newsok.com/dhs-misrepresents-number-of-children-abused-and-neglected-in-state-custody/article/3613772?custom_click=pod_headline_usnational-news
CPS corruption hurts and destroys families worldwide. Please use caution posting about CPS here or anyplace on the internet. For your protection, using your full, real name and precise location is not advised. CPS has eyes everywhere and CPS is notorious for taking what people say, twisting it, embellishing on it and then using it against them in CPS "investigations" and at court proceedings.
Showing posts with label child neglect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child neglect. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Saturday, October 8, 2011
State agrees to pay $4.6 million to victims in Carnation starvation case
Blog authors note:
How can CPS possibly be this incompetent and grossly negligent that this kind of thing happens, let alone happens frequently across the US? Aren't they supposed to be trained professionals?
-----
Posted by Matt Kreamer
The Department of Social and Health Services has agreed to pay $4.6 million to two children who were abused by their father and stepmother three years ago in their Carnation home.
A girl, who was so emaciated she wore a size 2 shoe and weighed 48 pounds at age 14, had begged a social worker to put her in foster care more than three years before her father and stepmother were arrested in 2008, according to a King County Superior Court lawsuit filed against the state.
The civil suit claimed the girl's "nightmare of abuse and torture" extended to her younger brother, who was forced to participate in the abuse of his sister and was "essentially her jailer."
Because the plaintiffs are minors, the settlement will not be final until approved by the court, according to a DSHS news release.
"We deeply regret that these children had to suffer at the hands of the two adults they trusted to love them and keep them safe," said DSHS Children's Administration Assistant Secretary Denise Revels Robinson.
The case, and the subsequent arrest and guilty pleas of both parents of first and second degree criminal mistreatment in October 2008, received broad media attention at the time.
When law enforcement arrived at the children's home in August of 2008, they did not take the children into protective custody but referred the case to DSHS Child Protective Services, who went to the home the next day and directed the parents to seek immediate medical attention for the girl. She was subsequently transported to Children's Hospital by ambulance, where doctors found her to be suffering from extreme malnutrition and other abuse and neglect, according to the news release.
Child Protective Services received one previous referral on this family in March 2005 -- more than three years earlier -- in which the girl told a public school teacher she was frequently locked in her room and was given little to eat. Child Protective Services, working with local law enforcement, found that the stepmother's locking the child in her room constituted negligent treatment and maltreatment. The stepmother agreed to stop doing so. At the time, when interviewed by Child Protective Services, the girl indicated she was provided adequate food to eat every day, according to the release.
Source http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2016439296_state_agrees_to_pay_46_to_vict.html
How can CPS possibly be this incompetent and grossly negligent that this kind of thing happens, let alone happens frequently across the US? Aren't they supposed to be trained professionals?
-----
Posted by Matt Kreamer
The Department of Social and Health Services has agreed to pay $4.6 million to two children who were abused by their father and stepmother three years ago in their Carnation home.
A girl, who was so emaciated she wore a size 2 shoe and weighed 48 pounds at age 14, had begged a social worker to put her in foster care more than three years before her father and stepmother were arrested in 2008, according to a King County Superior Court lawsuit filed against the state.
The civil suit claimed the girl's "nightmare of abuse and torture" extended to her younger brother, who was forced to participate in the abuse of his sister and was "essentially her jailer."
Because the plaintiffs are minors, the settlement will not be final until approved by the court, according to a DSHS news release.
"We deeply regret that these children had to suffer at the hands of the two adults they trusted to love them and keep them safe," said DSHS Children's Administration Assistant Secretary Denise Revels Robinson.
The case, and the subsequent arrest and guilty pleas of both parents of first and second degree criminal mistreatment in October 2008, received broad media attention at the time.
When law enforcement arrived at the children's home in August of 2008, they did not take the children into protective custody but referred the case to DSHS Child Protective Services, who went to the home the next day and directed the parents to seek immediate medical attention for the girl. She was subsequently transported to Children's Hospital by ambulance, where doctors found her to be suffering from extreme malnutrition and other abuse and neglect, according to the news release.
Child Protective Services received one previous referral on this family in March 2005 -- more than three years earlier -- in which the girl told a public school teacher she was frequently locked in her room and was given little to eat. Child Protective Services, working with local law enforcement, found that the stepmother's locking the child in her room constituted negligent treatment and maltreatment. The stepmother agreed to stop doing so. At the time, when interviewed by Child Protective Services, the girl indicated she was provided adequate food to eat every day, according to the release.
Source http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2016439296_state_agrees_to_pay_46_to_vict.html
Thursday, October 6, 2011
D.C. child welfare agency often acts too quickly to remove children, study says
By Teresa Tomassoni, Published: October 5
The number of children removed from their homes by child abuse investigators in the District has fallen in the past year, but a recent review of some cases concluded that children are still regularly separated from their parents without adequate justification.
The study, conducted by a federally mandated panel of volunteer monitors, examined 27 cases involving 41 children over several years. In many of the instances examined by the panel, children who were placed briefly in foster care should have stayed with their families, the report concluded.
The Citizens Review Panel said the District’s Child and Family Services Agency has not done enough to keep families together and urged the agency to do better.
“CFSA’s child removal decisions must balance the need to protect children from serious abuse or neglect with the need to protect children from the significant emotional trauma that comes from the government separating them from their families,” the report, released last week, stated.
The review, released last week, is the latest examination of the challenges that CFSA, like other child welfare agencies, faces in balancing the inclination to remove children when neglect or abuse is suspected and the imperative to leave them in the home unless they are in imminent danger.
In more than half of the reviews conducted, panel members found that the case record did not justify removal.
In one case cited in the report, a social worker removed a child upon discovering suspicious marks on the child’s body, most likely from being whipped with a cord. The social worker placed him and his three siblings, who did not show signs of abuse, into foster care without obtaining a family court order.
After the removal, the social worker met with the mother to work out a strategy, known as a safety plan, for addressing the problems in the home. Less than a week later, the children were back at home. The report said that if this conversation had taken place before the children were taken, foster care would not have been necessary.
CFSA’s statistics show that even as the number of removals are on pace to be their lowest in years, the percentage of children who are being returned home within four months is at 35 percent, roughly the same rate as last year and a higher rate than in any of the previous three years.
Debra Porchia-Usher, the child welfare agency’s interim director, said how quickly children are removed from their families and how quickly they are returned is an issue the CFSA continues to monitor. “We all agree fewer removals are better,” she said. But she does not agree that the problem is as prevalent as the report suggests.
In an effort to make better decisions about removals, the agency recently launched a pilot program of a strategy known as differential response, which acknowledges that not every abuse or neglect report is an indicator of imminent danger.
Earlier this year, the agency also completed a policy manual on conducting investigations. All social workers, supervisors and program managers have been trained using this new resource, Porchia-Usher said.
Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-child-welfare-agency-often-acts-too-quickly-to-remove-children-study-says/2011/09/29/gIQAIGweOL_story.html
The number of children removed from their homes by child abuse investigators in the District has fallen in the past year, but a recent review of some cases concluded that children are still regularly separated from their parents without adequate justification.
The study, conducted by a federally mandated panel of volunteer monitors, examined 27 cases involving 41 children over several years. In many of the instances examined by the panel, children who were placed briefly in foster care should have stayed with their families, the report concluded.
The Citizens Review Panel said the District’s Child and Family Services Agency has not done enough to keep families together and urged the agency to do better.
“CFSA’s child removal decisions must balance the need to protect children from serious abuse or neglect with the need to protect children from the significant emotional trauma that comes from the government separating them from their families,” the report, released last week, stated.
The review, released last week, is the latest examination of the challenges that CFSA, like other child welfare agencies, faces in balancing the inclination to remove children when neglect or abuse is suspected and the imperative to leave them in the home unless they are in imminent danger.
In more than half of the reviews conducted, panel members found that the case record did not justify removal.
In one case cited in the report, a social worker removed a child upon discovering suspicious marks on the child’s body, most likely from being whipped with a cord. The social worker placed him and his three siblings, who did not show signs of abuse, into foster care without obtaining a family court order.
After the removal, the social worker met with the mother to work out a strategy, known as a safety plan, for addressing the problems in the home. Less than a week later, the children were back at home. The report said that if this conversation had taken place before the children were taken, foster care would not have been necessary.
CFSA’s statistics show that even as the number of removals are on pace to be their lowest in years, the percentage of children who are being returned home within four months is at 35 percent, roughly the same rate as last year and a higher rate than in any of the previous three years.
Debra Porchia-Usher, the child welfare agency’s interim director, said how quickly children are removed from their families and how quickly they are returned is an issue the CFSA continues to monitor. “We all agree fewer removals are better,” she said. But she does not agree that the problem is as prevalent as the report suggests.
In an effort to make better decisions about removals, the agency recently launched a pilot program of a strategy known as differential response, which acknowledges that not every abuse or neglect report is an indicator of imminent danger.
Earlier this year, the agency also completed a policy manual on conducting investigations. All social workers, supervisors and program managers have been trained using this new resource, Porchia-Usher said.
Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-child-welfare-agency-often-acts-too-quickly-to-remove-children-study-says/2011/09/29/gIQAIGweOL_story.html
New Md. Child Neglect Law Could Have Big Impact
By: Matt Bush // October 3, 2011
On October 1, Maryland became the last state in the country to make child neglect a crime -- in this case, a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to five years in prison.
At the Baltimore Child Abuse Center, painted butterflies decorate the walls. They're one of the many ways the center tries to be a bright place, because many of the stories told in here are anything but. Children suspected of being abused come here to be interviewed, as authorities believe it is easier for them to talk in a place like this than a police station.
"A child is able to be a child when they're here," says Adam Rosenberg, BCAC's executive director. "And they can go from being a victim back to being a child."
Each child who comes to the center gets to decorate a butterfly. Rosenberg says that, unfortunately, those butterflies cover all the walls of the four-story building -- as many as 887 just in 2010.
Many of those interviewed at the center were not abused, just neglected, and that's something Rosenberg says they couldn't do much worth before the signing of the new child neglect law. Previously their only recourse was to make a referral to child protective services.
"For years, Maryland has had a neglect statute for vulnerable adults and animals, but not children," says lieutenant governor Anthony Brown, saying that it was a major oversight that they were eager to correct.
The general assembly approved the law earlier this year, after bills seeking the measure were defeated the previous three years. One of many reasons for that was concern the law was too broad.
Brown says disagrees: "We're not intending to prosecute parents or guardians who are unable to sufficiently take care of their children due to an involuntary condition such as poverty or homelessness."
One of the hopes Adam Rosenberg has for the law is that people who see child neglect may feel more inclined to report it.
"We're only as successful as people who report abuse," says Rosenberg. "We're not going to find this on our own. And, this battle against child abuse and neglect is something that folks like me and you in our private lives need to be able to take a stand, and pick up a phone and report that they see something."
Last year, Maryland's child protective services received more than 14,000 reports of suspected child neglect, and confirmed more than 4,000 of them.
Source http://wamu.org/news/11/10/03/new_md_child_neglect_law_could_have_big_impact
On October 1, Maryland became the last state in the country to make child neglect a crime -- in this case, a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to five years in prison.
At the Baltimore Child Abuse Center, painted butterflies decorate the walls. They're one of the many ways the center tries to be a bright place, because many of the stories told in here are anything but. Children suspected of being abused come here to be interviewed, as authorities believe it is easier for them to talk in a place like this than a police station.
"A child is able to be a child when they're here," says Adam Rosenberg, BCAC's executive director. "And they can go from being a victim back to being a child."
Each child who comes to the center gets to decorate a butterfly. Rosenberg says that, unfortunately, those butterflies cover all the walls of the four-story building -- as many as 887 just in 2010.
Many of those interviewed at the center were not abused, just neglected, and that's something Rosenberg says they couldn't do much worth before the signing of the new child neglect law. Previously their only recourse was to make a referral to child protective services.
"For years, Maryland has had a neglect statute for vulnerable adults and animals, but not children," says lieutenant governor Anthony Brown, saying that it was a major oversight that they were eager to correct.
The general assembly approved the law earlier this year, after bills seeking the measure were defeated the previous three years. One of many reasons for that was concern the law was too broad.
Brown says disagrees: "We're not intending to prosecute parents or guardians who are unable to sufficiently take care of their children due to an involuntary condition such as poverty or homelessness."
One of the hopes Adam Rosenberg has for the law is that people who see child neglect may feel more inclined to report it.
"We're only as successful as people who report abuse," says Rosenberg. "We're not going to find this on our own. And, this battle against child abuse and neglect is something that folks like me and you in our private lives need to be able to take a stand, and pick up a phone and report that they see something."
Last year, Maryland's child protective services received more than 14,000 reports of suspected child neglect, and confirmed more than 4,000 of them.
Source http://wamu.org/news/11/10/03/new_md_child_neglect_law_could_have_big_impact
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