State social services chief defends agency's workers It is impossible to stop all child abuse, he says

State social services chief defends agency's workers It is impossible
to stop all child abuse, he says
By Tom Pelton Sun Staff Originally published January 31, 2004
The head of the state's social services agency defended yesterday his
workers' performance in attempting to protect the children of Keisha
Carr, who was convicted of killing one infant son and breaking the
arms and legs of another.
"It is tragic every time a child dies, whether in our system or
outside of it, but we can no more prevent all child abuse than highly
competent police officers can prevent all homicides," Christopher J.
McCabe, secretary of the Maryland Department of Human Resources, wrote
in an e-mail to The Sun.
Carr, a 23-year-old former security guard from West Baltimore, was on
probation for breaking the arms and legs of her oldest son, James Carr
IV, when she killed her second child, David, on Feb. 12 last year, by
breaking his skull, ribs and leg, according to court records.
Keisha Carr pleaded guilty Wednesday to second-degree murder in
Baltimore Circuit Court and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In his agency's first public discussion of the case, McCabe wrote that
caseworkers objected to a juvenile court judge's decision to place
James Carr IV with his father, who lived with Keisha Carr. And McCabe
said his agency's caseworkers made numerous visits to the family's
home.
An article in The Sun on Jan. 25 pointed to David Carr's death as the
most recent in a series of child abuse cases that could have been
prevented if the Baltimore Department of Social Services and the
juvenile courts had acted more aggressively to remove children from
families with records of abuse.
Critics of social services have questioned why the agency never asked
the court to remove David from his parents' home based on Keisha
Carr's guilty plea June 28, 2002, to child abuse charges for breaking
her other son's arms and legs.
When Keisha Carr dropped out of a court-mandated psychiatric treatment
program, a health counselor telephoned social services, warning that
she might harm her children again. But neither that call in November
2002, nor Keisha Carr's record of mental illness or conviction for
child abuse, moved the system to put David Carr in foster care for his
protection, according to records and interviews.
In his e-mail to The Sun, McCabe criticized the accuracy and
thoroughness of the reporting on David Carr's death.
McCabe called the article, and earlier stories about the death of
15-year-old Ciara Jobes, "distortions that muddled the public's
understanding about social services."
McCabe said that Carr's family did not fully cooperate with his
agency's efforts to place James Carr IV in a safe environment and then
check up on him.
After Keisha Carr broke her older son's arms and legs, the juvenile
courts put that child in the custody of his father, James Alexander
Carr, who was living with his wife. As a condition of the custody, the
father was not supposed to leave the child with Keisha Carr
unsupervised.
"Our records show that caseworkers objected to placing Keisha Carr's
first child with the child's father twice - on Feb. 22, 2002, and on
Nov. 6, 2002 - after she was found to have severely abused the baby,"
McCabe wrote.
That objection was not heeded by Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan, who on Oct.
1, 2002, allowed James Carr IV to return to the home of his father and
mother in West Baltimore, according to records and interviews.
"At no time did any party, agency or judge advocate returning the
child to [the] mother," McCabe wrote in his e-mail, which was
submitted to The Sun unsolicited as a possible article to run in the
newspaper's opinion pages.
Jann K. Jackson, executive director of Advocates for Children and
Youth, said yesterday that it was "absurd" for the system to return
the child to the father, thinking this would protect the baby from his
mother, when the couple was married and living together.
"If the mother and father are sharing the same home, what have you
accomplished?" Jackson asked. "This is just another damning piece of
evidence of the dysfunction of the system."
McCabe also wrote that caseworkers made at least 30 visits to the
Carrs' home in West Baltimore in an attempt to check up on the child
between Feb. 8, 2002, and Feb. 5, last year.
"Sometimes family members did not answer the door when the caseworkers
arrived to visit, although workers saw signs that someone was home,"
McCabe wrote.
"Workers followed up diligently," he added.
Until McCabe's e-mail arrived yesterday, officials at the Department
of Human Resources refused to discuss the Carr family case.
The agency's spokesman, Norris West, said over four days before the
Jan. 25 article that his department could reveal nothing about the
Carr case because the agency was obligated to protect the privacy of
the family. Stephen Berry, manager of in-home services for the
department, which includes child protective services, said Jan. 23
that he and his fellow officials could go to jail if they discussed
cases like David Carr's.
But McCabe in his e-mail said that the law allows his agency to
release "confidential" information if a child has suffered a serious
injury, the abuser has been charged criminally, and he and other top
officials conclude that "disclosure is not contrary to the best
interest of the child."
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