I got distracted!

Children's Rights:
http://www.childrensrights.org

http://www.childrensrights.org/site/...e=Goad_release

Michigan Child Welfare System Directly Responsible for Abuse, Neglect,
and Death of Foster Children, Says New Expert Report in Reform
Lawsuit

Failures throughout Department of Human Services' management and
investigations of abuse allegations make department "no safer" in many
cases than children's abusive homes

DETROIT, MI Likening the management of Michigan's Department of Human
Services to "blindfolded school bus drivers," unable to see and
respond to impending dangers to the children in its custody, a
scathing new report by an expert in Children's Rights' child welfare
reform lawsuit against the state of Michigan lays the blame for
several children's deaths squarely at the agency's feet.

The report, issued by an independent consultant with more than 30
years of experience working in child protective services, examines the
cases of five children who died in DHS custody--some from extreme
physical abuse--and provides a long and detailed list of failures
throughout the department's management and investigations of alleged
abuse and neglect in DHS foster care placements that, it says, render
DHS incapable of protecting the children in its care.

Today's report corroborates the findings of another released last week
that examined DHS's management in close detail (characterizing its
practices as a "formula for disaster") as well as findings from a
review of 460 individual cases of children in DHS custody--and
concludes that DHS has knowingly used misleading calculations to
obscure the rate at which children in its custody suffer
maltreatment. According to both last week's case review and today's
report, Michigan's rate of maltreatment in foster care is two and a
half times the standard deemed acceptable by the federal government.

"While the Michigan Department of Human Services has tried to distance
itself from the disastrous results of its dangerous practices,
children have been dying in its custody and on its watch," said Sara
Bartosz, senior staff attorney for Children's Rights. "Today's report
reveals the stories behind the statistics, and illustrates in no
uncertain terms what is at stake if DHS does not commit to real reform
immediately."

The children whose cases are highlighted in today's report include:

Elizabeth, whose family became known to DHS after she suffered a
brutal physical attack in her home when she was just 14 days old,
leaving her with a fractured skull, three fractured ribs, and a
fractured clavicle. Elizabeth was made a ward of DHS but was returned
to her home, leaving a child placing agency contracted by DHS in
charge of monitoring her. This agency failed to forward two reports
to DHS with additional evidence of Elizabeth's abuse--including severe
burns and two black eyes--until after Elizabeth was found beaten to
death in her home.
Heather, a 15-year-old girl whose serious psychiatric problems went
untreated by DHS while she was placed in a filthy, chaotic home with
an aunt and uncle unlicensed to provide foster care, where a total of
17 people crowded into a three-bedroom house with only one bathroom.
Heather eventually ran away to South Carolina, was abandoned there by
DHS, and hanged herself.
Brandon, a seven-week-old boy who was placed in an overcrowded DHS
foster home with five other children--three of whom had serious
behavioral and mental health problems--and died of apparent suffocation
when his foster mother left him unattended.
Isaac, murdered at the age of two in a foster home that had been the
subject of nine Child Protective Services (CPS) complaints before his
placement there. Less than two months after arriving in the home,
Isaac was found beaten to death, covered in burns and bruises and
having suffered multiple bone fractures. "An overloaded and
apparently incompetent caseworker placed Isaac in dangerous foster
homes, failed to visit him regularly, and overlooked evidence of
Isaac's maltreatment," says the report. "DHS's actions and inactions,
and those of its contractor, caused Isaac's death."
James, who died of blunt-force trauma to the head in a DHS foster home
just a few months shy of his fourth birthday. Despite the medical
examiner's finding that James's death was a homicide, DHS's vague
definition of the term "abuse" enabled the agency to conclude in its
own investigation that there was not a preponderance of evidence that
James had been abused.
The report cites widespread systemic problems throughout DHS that it
says created the conditions that contributed to these children's deaths
--and place the 19,000 children currently in DHS custody in similarly
grave danger. According to the report:

The structure of DHS is diffuse and inefficient. The department is
responsible for a very broad range of services--including Michigan's
welfare, disability assistance, Medicaid, juvenile justice, and child
support programs, among many others--but lacks a division devoted
specifically to child welfare. Components of the child welfare system
are scattered throughout the department, diluting accountability and
impeding the communication of critical information. DHS management is
structured, says the report, "as if to minimize expert focus on child
welfare and to all but preclude the effective protection of its foster
children."
DHS managers lack the education and experience necessary to run a
child welfare system. National standards for good practice call for
directors of child welfare agencies to hold graduate degrees in human
services and demonstrate competence in the delivery of child welfare
services. Relevant advanced degrees are the exception among top DHS
staff, and few have any child welfare experience at all.
DHS fails to adequately investigate allegations of abuse and neglect
in foster care placements. The department's investigations are
unstructured, superficial, and rarely gather sufficient information to
determine accurately whether maltreatment has occurred. Furthermore,
says the report, DHS investigators "often make determinations that are
not consistent with the facts."
DHS has no quality assurance program and is unable to produce reliable
data about its practices and outcomes. The statistical information
necessary to guide the operation of the agency at every level--and to
identify systemic problems--either does not exist or cannot be
trusted. When disturbing data does surface, little is done about it.
And the agency calculates some statistics--including its rate of
maltreatment in foster care--in a misleading manner that hides the
danger to which it subjects the children in its custody.
The report further notes that DHS's shortage of caseworkers would be
enough by itself to preclude the agency from adequately protecting the
children in its care--and echoes concerns raised by last week's case
review that the agency places children in unlicensed foster homes with
relatives as a means of maintaining a "second class" of placements
that receive neither appropriate safety and criminal background checks
nor adequate financial support.

"Combining the disturbing deficiencies in MDHS's performance in the
five cases reviewed with the many serious shortcomings found in the
agency's structure, regulation, practices, overall management, and--
especially--staff resources, it is clear that children are far too
likely to be no safer in foster care than they were with their abusive
and neglectful parents," the report concludes.

Today's report will be offered as evidence in the federal class action
known as Dwayne B. v. Granholm, brought against Michigan by the
national child welfare watchdog group Children's Rights, the
international law firm McDermott Will & Emery, and local counsel
Kienbaum Opperwall Hardy & Pelton. The lawsuit charges the state with
violating the constitutional rights of the approximately 19,000
children in its custody by failing to protect their safety and well-
being and find them permanent homes.


# # #

Children's Rights is a national watchdog organization advocating on
behalf of abused and neglected children in the United States. Since
1995, Children's Rights has used legal action and policy initiatives
to drive lasting reform in child protection, foster care, and
adoption.

McDermott Will & Emery is an international law firm numbering more
than 1,100 lawyers in offices in Boston, Brussels, Chicago,
Düsseldorf, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Munich, New York, Orange
County, Rome, San Diego, Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. Extending
its reach to Asia, McDermott has a strategic alliance with MWE China
Law Offices in Shanghai. A major part of McDermott's pro bono program
is its "Kids First Project."

Kienbaum Opperwall Hardy & Pelton is a law firm based in Birmingham,
Michigan, specializing in all aspects of employment and labor law. It
has been designated in Chambers USA's Client Guide to America's
Leading Business Lawyers as the top employment and labor law firm in
Michigan.




Read the Children's Research Center report:

http://www.childrensrights.org/pdfs/...R%202.5.08.pdf

Read review by Children's right expert:

http://www.childrensrights.org/pdfs/...08%20FINAL.pdf