whateveryparentshouldknow

The Associated Press
Posted: 04/16/2009 11:10:51 AM PDT
Updated: 04/16/2009 11:13:00 AM PDT

SACRAMENTO—A grand jury is criticizing Sacramento County’s child welfare agency for persistent, systemic problems that have led to children’s deaths from abuse.

The panel says Child Protective Services has ignored the recommendations of six previous grand jury investigations.

Grand jury foreman Donald Prange Sr. says proposals for improvements have “fallen on deaf ears” since 1996.

County supervisors are promising to finally force improvements and require the agency to provide public reports on its progress.

The report released Wednesday follows an independent consultant’s finding that the agency missed chances to save children’s lives.

Health and Human Services Director Lynn Frank, who oversaw the agency, stepped down from her post on Tuesday.

Chris McKenna
By Chris Mckenna
Posted: April 18, 2009 - 2:00 AM

GOSHEN — A Middletown father was charged with endangering the welfare of his children after he left his 1- and 3-year-old sons strapped in his car while he drank inside a Goshen bar, police said.
Gregory Olsen, 41, had his 5-year-old daughter with him in Delancy’s but had left the boys outside when Orange County sheriff’s deputies found them there about 3:45 p.m. Thursday, said Capt. Dennis Barry of the sheriff’s office.
The deputies were helping someone who’d locked his keys in his car when a passerby alerted them to the two young boys, who had been left alone.
The boys were crying and looked disoriented but were otherwise OK, Barry said.
Olsen was not intoxicated, Barry said.
Deputies issued him a ticket to appear in court and notified county Child Protective Services.
cmckenna@th-record.com

By Angela Liddle
And Suzanne Yunghans
Lebanon Daily News
Updated: 04/17/2009 11:46:01 AM EDT

The recent not-guilty verdict in a Lebanon County case regarding a physician’s failure to report suspected child abuse generated strong opinions on both sides of the issue. Regardless of what you may think of the action or inaction of the physician, the fact remains that a young child died of child abuse.

As the executive directors of organizations charged with educating mandated reporters on their role and responsibility in reporting suspected child abuse or neglect, we seek this opportunity to share with the public what all of us can do to protect children.

A mandated reporter is someone required by law to report suspected abuse or neglect by virtue of employment that brings that person into regular contact with children — a doctor or nurse, a day-care provider, a health or social-service worker, a teacher or school employee, a law-enforcement officer or a member of the clergy, among others.

In general terms, Pennsylvania enacted the Child Protective Services Law in 1975 to protect children from abuse and neglect. It’s a hard thing to create a law that directly affects how a parent might choose to raise a child, but the sad truth is that too many children are abused and need county child-welfare intervention.

The law says people who come into contact with children (defined as those under age 18) in the course of employment or an official capacity must call the toll-free hotline called ChildLine (1-800-932-0313) whenever they suspect a child is being
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abused.

The key word here is suspicion. According to Webster, suspicion is “the act or instance of suspecting something wrong without proof.” A mandated reporter only has to suspect that a child is being abused.

It is up to a caseworker from a county children-and-youth agency to investigate and determine if the incident meets the definition of abuse or neglect under the law, not the mandated reporter.

One of the failings of the law as currently written is that mandated reporters are not themselves mandated to receive training! There is no legal requirement for these individuals to have any training on how to recognize potential abuse and neglect and their responsibility to report it.

Dr. David Turkewitz, president of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a pediatrician with focused expertise in the area of child abuse, enthusiastically supports required training.

“Mandated-reporter training clarifies responsibilities and helps assure that mandated reporters will report if the standard of a reasonable suspicion is met. The risk of not reporting is possible repeated abuse leading to long-term physical and emotional disability, and even death,” he said.

Free training is available to all mandated reporters through both the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance and the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Mandated reporters are not the only ones who can make a report to ChildLine. All residents of Pennsylvania are encouraged to voice their concern if they suspect that a child is being abused or neglected. Remember: You’re not making an accusation — you’re simply stating that a situation needs to be looked at more closely. Looking more closely is the duty of child protective services. All 67 counties in Pennsylvania have trained investigators to follow up on reports to ChildLine.

April is Child Abuse Prevention month in Pennsylvania.

“We can think of no better opportunity to reach out to everyone to be vigilant in protecting our children,” said Ruth Williams, president of the PFSA Board of Directors. “The children need our voices to speak for their safety and well-being.”

If you suspect a child is being abused, we urge you to make the call to ChildLine at 1-800-932-0313.

If you would like to receive training in recognizing and reporting child abuse and neglect, please contact either of our organizations at http://www.pa-fsa.org/ or http://www.pascan.org.

——————

Liddle is executive director of the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance. Yunghans is executive director of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Posted by Jennifer Sullivan

Washington is one step closer to increasing the role of private agencies in working with children and families involved in the state child welfare system.

On Thursday night the Senate approved an amendment to a Children’s Administration bill, House Bill 2106, that would establish a pilot project in which the state would hire private contractors to work with children and troubled families after verified complaints of abuse or neglect and the first dependency court hearing.

Contractors would be held to performance standards, which have not yet been developed. If an agency doesn’t make the grade it would lose its contract.

Under the proposal, the first pilot programs would be launched statewide July 2012. After 2 1/2 years the Washington State Institute for Public Policy would provide an evaluation of the pilot programs to the governor, who would then decide whether to expand or terminate the program.

The proposal ultimately could impact thousands of families and force hundreds of state workers out of jobs. The opposition has mainly been from the Washington Federation of State Employees, the union representing state workers.

Several states are using performance-based contracts to provide children and family services.

The measure passed the Senate 37-10. It will head back to the House for a vote on the amendment.

The legislation would not impact Child Protective Services.

By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: April 11, 2009

PHOENIX — Battered by the recession and the deepest and most widespread budget deficits in several decades, a large majority of states are slicing into their social safety nets — often crippling preventive efforts that officials say would save money over time.

President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package is helping to alleviate some of the pain, providing large amounts of money to pay for education and unemployment insurance, bolster food stamp programs and expand tax credits for low earners. But the money will offset only 40 percent of the losses in state revenues, and programs for vulnerable groups have been cut in at least 34 states, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a private research group in Washington.

Perhaps nowhere have the cuts been more disruptive than in Arizona, where more than 1,000 frail elderly people are struggling without home-care aides to help with bathing, housekeeping and trips to the doctor. Officials acknowledge that some are apt to become sicker or fall, ending up in nursing homes at a far higher cost.

Ohio and other states face large cutbacks in child welfare investigations, which may mean more injured children and more taken into foster care. Despite tax increases, California has ended dental coverage for adults on Medicaid, all but guaranteeing future medical problems.

“There’s no question that we’re getting short-term savings that will result in greater long-term human and financial costs,” said Linda J. Blessing, interim chief of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, expressing the concerns of officials and community agencies around the country. “There are no good options, just less bad options.”

Arizona has one of the nation’s highest deficits in relation to its budget. As revenues sank late last year, forcing across-the-board cuts this spring, the child protection agency stopped investigating every report of potential abuse or neglect, and sharply reduced counseling of families deemed at risk of violence. Some toddlers with disabilities like autism and Down syndrome are not getting therapies that can bring lifelong benefits. And here, as in other states, the drive to help disabled people live at home has been set back.

Mary Beth Thompson, 57, who lives in an apartment with two small dogs here, is on the growing waiting list for help. Seriously overweight, with chronic pain and weakness on her left side, she has trouble moving about and cannot step into the bathtub without falling, she said, displaying the cast on her broken wrist.

“I can’t even walk to do the laundry anymore,” she said from the chair where she spends most of her days playing with her dogs, one of which she has trained to knock the handset off the telephone so she can reach it when she falls.

Winona Conn, 75, who uses a wheelchair because of a paralyzed leg, has been on the waiting list for home aid for a year. “It feels like you’ve been shelved,” she said.

In Florida, recent modest cuts in home aid came on top of a growing backlog, while the number of people in need keeps climbing. State support for home and community services was reduced by $2 million in 2008, and the waiting list has grown to 50,000 from 30,000, said E. Douglas Beach, secretary of the Department of Elder Affairs.

Reluctantly endorsing another $1 million in cuts next year to salvage a different program, Mr. Beach told legislators, “It’s like trying to decide whether to give up your first-born boy or your first-born girl.”

Mary Lynn Kasunic, president of the Area Agency on Aging in Phoenix, described the potential consequences. “If you don’t give people a bath a couple times a week, change the linens and make sure they get their medicines, their health will decline much faster,” she said. “They end up in the emergency room in a crisis, and then in a nursing home.”

The Illinois governor’s budget proposal would scale back home visits to ill-equipped first-time mothers, who are given advice over 18 months that experts say is repaid many times over in reduced child abuse and better school preparation.

“We spend $1.2 billion a year on child welfare,” said Diana M. Rauner, director of the Ounce of Prevention Fund in Chicago, which channels government money to private agencies. “You’d think we’d spend a lot of money to keep people out of that system.”

Ohio’s proposed budget “will dramatically decrease our ability to investigate reports of abuse and neglect,” with some counties losing 75 percent of their investigators, said Joel Potts, director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors’ Association, which represents county officials.

New York State is using stimulus money and a tax increase to avoid most of the large cuts in child care, nurse visits to inexperienced mothers and other services that were originally proposed. But if revenues keep falling by the billions, “all bets are off,” said Karen Schimke, president of the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy in Albany, which studies child and family issues.

As in many states, Arizona’s crunch came on fast and hard. In January, the newly seated Republican governor, Jan Brewer, had to cut $1.6 billion from a $10 billion annual budget — squeezing all the reductions into the final five months of the fiscal year ending June 30.

Arizona expects a $3 billion shortfall in the next fiscal year. In a speech to legislators in March, Ms. Brewer proposed to fill the chasm with $1 billion in spending cuts, $1 billion in federal stimulus money and — in a risky idea she floated after emphasizing her conservative credentials — $1 billion raised through “a temporary tax increase.”

Some Republican legislators still argue that state expenses are too large, while officials say that carving another $2 billion from the budget will wreak havoc. Ms. Blessing, of the Department of Economic Security, said her agency had already laid off 800 workers, including 15 percent of its child protection investigators, and imposed furloughs amounting to a 10 percent pay cut.

In one bit of good news for the department and its clients, the state has secured $18 million from the stimulus package to save child care subsidies for the working poor.

But some efforts to prevent child abuse, like in-home counseling of troubled families, have been deeply cut. This presents investigators with a stark choice: either remove children and put them in foster care or, as one case worker put it, “wait for something bad to happen.”

Idolina Moreno, 36, and her five children are still together and happier, she says, because they have been visited weekly for the last several months by a counselor who defused a simmering crisis. One daughter was angry and violent, Ms. Moreno said, and badly bruised the infant boy; Ms. Moreno admits to throwing a plastic bat to stop her. A school nurse called Child Protective Services.

Instead of removing the children, the agency called in a counselor who meets with family members both individually and together. “She’s been wonderful,” Ms. Moreno said.

Officials said it appeared likely that the counseling will continue for now. But she has also been told that special therapies for her mentally retarded 6-year-old son may be eliminated. “I don’t know what I’ll do if that happens,” she said. “I’m really worried.”

By Marc Meneaud »

Two in-depth reviews of how Bradford Council and other agencies work to protect the district’s children have found services to be effective.

But areas identified in the reviews for further development include the need to embrace a ‘learning culture’ across safeguarding agencies and the introduction of more robust and rigorous child protection plans.

One of the studies was carried out by Bradford University, the other by Cordis Bright, an independent research consultancy.

Bradford Safeguarding Children Board, which is chaired by Kath Tunstall, Bradford Council’s strategic director for services to children and young people, commissioned the reviews last November.

This was before any Government steps to review child protection services nationally which led to the Lord Laming report into the Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report published in March this year.

The Bradford University review highlights strengths including: l A stable workforce in children’s social care.

l Considerable experience at the frontline and in first-tier management.

l A well-respected and well-organised Safeguarding Board.

l A well-organised training programme.

l Evidence of strong relationships between senior staff in key agencies.

Strengths in the Cordis Bright review include: l Quick action to safeguard children.

l A prompt response to child protection concerns raised by the police.

l Children seen on their own and their voices heard in the majority of cases.

l Evidence of good partnership working, particularly with health and education l Initial child protection conferences held on time.

These reviews have also given Bradford Council the chance to assess local arrangements ahead of the publication of the Government’s national action plan for child protection being published at the end of this month.

The implications of this action plan will be presented in a report to the Council’s executive on June 2.

At a meeting on April 21, the executive is being asked to allow Children’s Services to begin preparing for this action plan by addressing the points raised by these reviews.

Councillor Michael Kelly, executive member for services to children and young people, said: “It is reassuring to know that the external reviewers have looked at and examined the services we and our partners provide to protect children in the district.

“We can never be complacent and must constantly challenge ourselves about child protection.”

e-mail: marc.meneaud @telegraphandargus.co.uk

Sandy Rathbun reports
A forTestimony continues in the trial of Chris Payne, accused of starving, abusing and murdering his two children Ariana and Tyler.

Today in the courtroom, attorneys took jurors back to 2006 and a dispute over which parent had custody of Ariana and Tyler Payne.

Chris Payne says CPS told him he had custody because the agency was investigating the children’s mother Jamie Hallam.

But Hallam says CPS told her she had custody because the agency investigated her, cleared her and closed its case.

Ultimately the kids stayed with Payne, who is accused of murdering them.

Prosecutor Sue Eazer asked former CPS Supervisor Christy Tarpley what happened.

Tarpley says, “I don’t recall it. So you’re asking me to testify about stuff I don’t remember. I didn’t look at any of this. I don’t really care. And that’s the bottomline.”

Tarpley told jurors she’d been in her CPS supervisory job just one day when Ariana and Tyler’s custody became an issue.  She denies telling police to leave the kids with their dad.

Tonight Tarpley emailed KVOA about her comment insisting we’d taken it out of context. She wrote, “I never said I did not care about the children. I said I did not care to read the case notes.”

Prosecutor Eazer asked Tarpley, “Did anyone from CPS to your knowledge ever go out and check on those kids with Christopher Payne?”  Tarpley answered, “I don’t even know.”

Jamie Hallam’s former CPS caseworker Cindy Graupmann also took the stand briefly.

Prosecutor Eazer protested she’s been commenting on the Tucson Citizen Newspaper’s website throughout the trial, allegedly releasing confidential CPS information.

Eazer says, “She comes into this court with tremendous bias.  The fact is she has been signing on and saying these awful things about Miss Hallam and her family.”

Exerpts from two of Cindy Graupmann’s alleged comments state, “The saddest part is that Jamie Hallam is responsible just as much as Christopher Payne.”

“She was using meth.  Those children would be alive if she hadn’t chosen to get high.”

Jamie Hallam eventually sued and received a million dollar settlement from CPS over its handling of her children’s case.

Chris Payne’s murder case resumes tomorrow.  It could go to the jury early next week.

By Paul A. Anthony (Contact)
Sunday, April 12, 2009

Two attorneys tasked with managing the labyrinthine FLDS child-custody case severed their ties with the state after being overruled in their efforts to terminate the parental rights of Warren Jeffs and other residents of the polygamous YFZ Ranch, the Standard-Times has learned.

Charles G. Childress and Jeff Schmidt in separate interviews described frustration with the state’s Child Protective Services agency that led both men to leave the case - Childress, a consultant with CPS from Austin, doing so voluntarily, while Schmidt, a staff attorney from Corpus Christi, was removed and later resigned from the agency.

“It had already been established my opinion was not wanted,” Childress said. “I won’t lend my name and legal reputation pursuing a legal strategy I adamantly oppose.”

The attorneys worked together during the summer and fall, after a pair of state appellate courts ordered CPS to return the hundreds of children it had removed last April from members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

As the state’s investigation continued, both men said they saw evidence to warrant filing motions seeking termination of parental rights on a number of cases - at least 10 and perhaps more, the attorneys said.

Instead, they said, they were overruled by leaders of the Department of Family and Protective Services, which runs the agency.

“They wanted to hear the direction I thought the cases ought to go,” Schmidt said, and when he told them he would seek termination on several cases, “they basically told me I was relieved of my duties.”

CPS had every right to remove attorneys who did not agree with the methods it chose to implement, said CPS spokesman Patrick Crimmins, because “the role of the attorney is to represent the client’s position.”

Likewise, Crimmins said, the attorneys’ position was not supported by the CPS caseworkers involved with the families.

“It is true that after being assigned to assist in these cases, Mr. Childress and Mr. Schmidt urged that the pleadings in several cases be amended to include a request for termination of parental rights,” he said. “This recommendation was not supported by the conservatorship workers assigned to work with the children and families in these cases in the field, nor was it supported by their supervisors.”

In a news conference on the anniversary of the April 3 raid that led to the removal of the children, DFPS Commissioner Anne Heiligenstein acknowledged the disagreements but rejected allegations that political pressure following the court decisions led to the decision to begin dropping cases.

Ultimately, then-Commissioner Carey Cockerell, in consultation with Health and Human Services Commission Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins, made the decisions, she said.

“Anytime you have complex cases like this,” Heiligenstein said, “you’re going to have differences of opinion. We certainly had some who felt we should pursue termination of parental rights. Many (attorney) ad litems thought very strongly that was the wrong thing to do. … No one else made this decision but the agency.”

Winnowing cases

On May 29, the Texas Supreme Court, calling removal of the 439 children “not warranted,” ordered their return while noting its decision “does not conclude” the state’s investigation.

Less than a month later, CPS turned to Schmidt, a staff attorney in Corpus Christi, to take the lead in its court action.

Soon after that, it brought in Childress, an Austin attorney who has done consulting with the agency, to manage the heavy caseload and begin dropping cases for which no evidence existed of physical or sexual abuse.

Almost immediately, at Childress’ request, 51st District Judge Barbara Walther severed the massive case into more than 100 actions, organized by mother, and Childress began filing orders of nonsuit on cases he felt the agency could not pursue.

“The purpose of the nonsuits, at least from my perspective, was to winnow these cases down,” he said. “We moved at a very fast rate.”

By Oct. 1, nearly 300 children had been dropped from the case.

“The idea was to clean out the underbrush,” he said, “to decide what trees were left. … You could count them on both hands probably - or at least both hands and your toes.”

Schmidt, meanwhile, was in court, pushing for state custody in four cases involving eight children, including a 14-year-old girl, the daughter of ranch leader Merril Jessop, shown as a 12-year-old locked in a deep kiss with sect leader Warren Jeffs in photos seized during the raid.

A combination of settlements and Walther’s orders granted custody of six children to the state, but only the girl was removed from her parents’ care. She is the lone child remaining in the case.

Schmidt did not necessarily agree with Childress’ approach to the case, alarmed at the rate at which CPS was dropping cases - taking actions he said were inconsistent with its procedures in any other case.

“There were cases that needed to be nonsuited,” he said, “but they were nonsuiting left and right. … We did things in these cases we never do.”

But as October approached, Schmidt said, the attorneys agreed the agency should amend its initial filings on several cases and seek termination - in some cases as a threat to spur corrective action, in others because the safety of the children could not be guaranteed were they returned to their parents.

In any case, the attorneys said, leaving the children in foster care until they turned 18, the result if the state is awarded permanent custody but parental rights are not terminated, was the worst possible option - yet the only option the agency had yet put on the table.

“You always plead for reunification and then file an alternate pleading for termination,” Schmidt said. “They didn’t do that in any of the cases. That was one thing Charlie and I disagreed with.”

Termination would have been filed if CPS thought it appropriate, Crimmins said.

Cockerell and Hawkins “supported the recommendations of the conservatorship workers in the field and their supervisors,” he said. “They did not support Mr. Childress and Mr. Schmidt.”

‘Mountain of evidence’ on FLDS

Not only could CPS have done so, Schmidt said, the agency should have.

“There were a handful we wanted to take forward and terminate their parental rights,” he said. “There is a mountain of evidence against these people. … Some of the cases, absolutely we should have nonsuited - but not near the amount that we did.”

Childress felt that by September, enough cases had been cleared to begin working case by case to determine which children needed to be removed from their parents and placed for adoption.

Neither attorney was willing to provide an exact number or any details about the cases they had flagged, citing attorney-client privilege.

Also by that time, a Schleicher County grand jury had indicted 12 FLDS members on 26 charges relating to alleged sexual abuse - including Jeffs, Jessop and Jeffs’ second lieutenant, Wendell Nielsen.

“For sure, one person I would have filed termination on was Warren Jeffs and two or three or four of his top lieutenants,” Childress said. But, “It’s the client’s decision whether to pursue a particular legal recommendation. The decision was made to not do that.”

Ultimately, he said, the situation became untenable as pressure increased from Austin to shut down cases, even ones with significant concerns.

“What they wanted me to do was go forward and not nonsuit the cases and do basically what they’ve done since I left - which is what I refused to do,” Childress said. “I don’t understand why Warren Jeffs with 53 wives is still the legal father of however many hundred kids in any state.”

Childress resigned Oct. 23, exactly three months after CPS asked him to take charge of the case.

In his place, the agency turned to Schmidt, whose tenure as the managing attorney lasted, he said, just one meeting.

“I also thought at some point I might convince them otherwise,” he said. “I had a glimmer of hope.”

But when DFPS officials asked Schmidt what course he thought was appropriate, and he told them he planned to follow Childress’ approach, he said he was dismissed from the case.

Schmidt returned to Corpus Christi, then resigned from the agency entirely, effective last week.

“We had some serious differences of opinion based on applicable law and what was in the best interests of the children,” Schmidt said. “We completely failed to protect those children. That’s my opinion.”

Since then, the remainder of the cases but the one have been nonsuited, the children and parents free to return to the YFZ Ranch and resume their pre-raid lives as best they can.

In December, CPS said it found 12 girls who had been married underage, with five having given birth - but when asked about dropping 11 of those girls from the case, officials said they were confident they were no longer at risk for abuse.

Heiligenstein echoed those sentiments April 3, even while acknowledging that no one can know what happens behind the ranch gate.

“They’re taking pretty seriously the risk of the state of Texas intervening again,” she said, citing the sect’s public statement that it would no longer marry girls younger than the legal age of 16. “This organization knows that if they’re living in Texas, they’ll take the laws of Texas very seriously from now on.”