Philly: The pique behind the scenes on DHS

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/15820730.htm

Posted on Sun, Oct. 22, 2006

The pique behind the scenes on DHS
Publicly silent, Mayor Street grew frustrated during days of meetings
over child deaths.
The result: Two officials gone.
By Marcia Gelbart, Ken Dilanian and John Sullivan Inquirer Staff
Writers

Last Sunday, Mayor Street sent an e-mail to his closest advisers.

He was disturbed, sources said, by The Inquirer's investigation into
how his Department of Human Services had handled the cases of children
who were later killed.

Day after day, Street said nothing publicly, even as lawmakers were
calling for hearings and state regulators were swooping in for a
review. Instead, as is his style, he hunkered down in meetings,
conducting a methodical examination of child-death cases.

That was where Street grew frustrated, city officials said. He kept
hearing that the rules were being followed - as he stared at files
detailing the brutal deaths of helpless children. He finally decided
he'd had enough.

There was a need, as he later put it, "for fresh eyes and a fresh
approach."

On Friday, Street broke his silence in dramatic fashion by announcing
the removal of two top officials at the department.

Commissioner Cheryl Ransom-Garner was asked to resign, and her deputy
in charge of abuse investigations, John McGee, was fired. Street named
Arthur C. Evans, Jr., who directs the city's mental health office, as
acting commissioner.

"We think we can do better," Street said at City Hall Friday, in a tone
more matter-of-fact than defensive.

Street, who lived with foster children as a boy on his family's
Montgomery County farm, may have seen his legacy at stake. Almost from
the moment he was elected, he has called children his first priority.
He very nearly hired his wife, a longtime children's activist, to lead
his social-services department.

As a step toward reform, the mayor promised that the state Department
of Public Welfare and the city together would review all child-abuse
fatalities from the last several years. Aides said the reviews would
include child advocates from outside the government.

Based on public records and interviews, The Inquirer article focused on
three cases in which relatives and neighbors told of danger signs that
DHS caseworkers either had missed or discounted.

In four other cases, the newspaper raised questions about what DHS did
before a child died of abuse or neglect.

All told, 20 children in families that had prior contact with the
agency died from abuse or neglect from 2003 through 2005. On Friday,
the city disclosed five such deaths in 2006.

The article also reported that after the 2003 death of toddler Porchia
Bennett, DHS hired consultants to devise plans for improving how it
assesses risk. But few of those recommendations have been implemented.

Ransom-Garner and McGee sat for two long interviews for the article.
But they said city lawyers had barred them from discussing DHS actions
in the case.

Yesterday, she spoke with a Fox29 news reporter. "I have a problem with
the reporting," she said of the Inquirer investigation. Some of the
cases in the report were closed long ago, she said.

Of her performance, Ransom-Garner said, "I've done everything he's
[Street] asked me to do and worked from sunup to sundown. I've served
26,000 children."

McGee could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Before the Inquirer article ran, Ransom-Garner defended her record at
the agency. "I think DHS is doing a great job," she said.

In the end, the mayor didn't agree.

Street has fired or asked top officials to resign before. But many of
those cases, including that of his former inspector general, involved
violations of the city's residency rule.

Ransom-Garner became the highest official dismissed over her
performance. The commissioner made $117,000 a year. McGee, who joined
the city in 1973, made $108,000.

Throughout the week, as politicians weighed in from all directions,
Street gave no public indication that he even had noticed The Inquirer
report.

On Monday, state lawmakers and the city controller called for public
hearings on DHS, while mayoral candidates weighed in. Street said
nothing.

On Wednesday, Gov. Rendell's administration said it would review the
actions of DHS. Again Street was silent.

That was in keeping with this mayor's close-to-the-vest style, and in
contrast to the actions of other mayors facing child-welfare crises.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, for example, led New York's response this
year to the beating death of a 7-year-old, a case that provoked a storm
of criticism because the child-welfare agency had mishandled it.

"We, as a city, have failed this child," Bloomberg said a day after the
killing.

But behind the scenes, Street's closest advisers knew he was unhappy.

On Tuesday, he held one of several meetings with Managing Director
Pedro Ramos, City Solicitor Romulo Diaz, Ransom-Garner, and other DHS
officials. Those meetings - about nine or 10 hours' worth, Street said
- continued all week, some as early as 7:30 a.m. and others occurring
as late as 9:30 p.m., including on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
evenings.

"He was trying to understand what the discrepancies were and what were
the areas in which we needed more scrutiny," Diaz said.

Street also met Thursday with Pennsylvania's welfare secretary, Estelle
B. Richman, a former Philadelphia managing director. He has not spoken
with Rendell about the agency troubles, Street spokesman Joe Grace
said.

Political insiders said it was no surprise Street that did not feel
compelled to share with the public what was happening behind closed
doors at City Hall.

"His style is his style, and I don't think he's ever going to change,"
State Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.) said.

Street has long demonstrated a resistance to knee-jerk responses, and a
penchant for being a slow decision-maker - a practice some call
deliberate and others stubborn. He has left half a dozen agency heads
in "acting" positions for months, unwilling to appoint them
permanently.

"His outright dismissal of someone is something that has been done
infrequently," former Managing Director Phil Goldsmith said.

"He obviously learned information that made him uncomfortable going
with the leadership in place, and he was going to take whatever action
he felt was necessary."

Frank Keel, a former Street spokesman, said, "I can only assume some of
the revelations in The Inquirer article surprised him to the point that
he and the managing director took a closer look, and came to the
unavoidable conclusion he had to shake things up."

Speaking from the podium in the ornate Mayor's Reception Room on
Friday, Street talked about his boyhood, and how the child-welfare
agency and its troubles had an emotional pull on him.

He said his mother had been a foster parent for several years when he
was a boy. He said 15 or 20 foster children had lived in his house over
those years, "and they became a part of our family."

As an 18-year-old student with little money at Oakwood College in
Alabama, far from his home, Street rented a room for $1 a day in the
state's only black orphanage, he said.

Recalling the dozens of orphaned children he saw every day, he said,
"People who get involved in the child-welfare system should be treating
these children like their family members, and not like they are a
paycheck."

A Street spokesman said yesterday that the mayor had not been referring
to DHS workers.

Street said he hoped the review would point the way toward real
improvements in DHS's performance.

Richard Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the
University of Pennsylvania, said he was glad to hear that Street
planned to include outsiders.

"The devil is in the details," he said.

Gelles also said Street should create an office for an independent
child advocate who could demand DHS records, review cases, and tell the
public what he or she found.

Frank Cervone, whose Philadelphia agency finds legal help for abused
children, said he chaired a commission in 2000 that made the same
proposal.

"We need to make the system transparent so that community trust can be
restored," he said. "And that's a structural change that will take a
change in style of leadership and some change in law."

Cervone said the new leadership must work to rebuild sagging morale at
the agency.

A DHS union leader agreed.

"The articles should force a review. We have had a lot of deaths, and
that should not have happened," said Rita Urwitz, vice president of the
DHS supervisors' union, Local 2186 of the American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees.

"I know there are systemic problems," Urwitz said, "but this throws the
entire agency into total chaos."

Not everyone is sympathetic with DHS workers.

"My hope is that they would walk out and just keep walking," Joseph
Rogers, president of chief executive of the Mental Health Association
of Southeastern Pennsylvania, said of DHS workers who left the building
Friday to protest the firings. "They do not seem to be meeting the
needs of children. I think we need some radical changes over there."

INSIDE

Team-building is among the new DHS boss' talents. A13.

Greegor wrote:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/15820730.htm

Posted on Sun, Oct. 22, 2006

The pique behind the scenes on DHS
Publicly silent, Mayor Street grew frustrated during days of meetings
over child deaths.
The result: Two officials gone.
By Marcia Gelbart, Ken Dilanian and John Sullivan Inquirer Staff
Writers

Last Sunday, Mayor Street sent an e-mail to his closest advisers.

He was disturbed, sources said, by The Inquirer's investigation into
how his Department of Human Services had handled the cases of children
who were later killed.

Day after day, Street said nothing publicly, even as lawmakers were
calling for hearings and state regulators were swooping in for a
review. Instead, as is his style, he hunkered down in meetings,
conducting a methodical examination of child-death cases.

That was where Street grew frustrated, city officials said. He kept
hearing that the rules were being followed - as he stared at files
detailing the brutal deaths of helpless children. He finally decided
he'd had enough.

There was a need, as he later put it, "for fresh eyes and a fresh
approach."

On Friday, Street broke his silence in dramatic fashion by announcing
the removal of two top officials at the department.

Commissioner Cheryl Ransom-Garner was asked to resign, and her deputy
in charge of abuse investigations, John McGee, was fired. Street named
Arthur C. Evans, Jr., who directs the city's mental health office, as
acting commissioner.

"We think we can do better," Street said at City Hall Friday, in a tone
more matter-of-fact than defensive.

Street, who lived with foster children as a boy on his family's
Montgomery County farm, may have seen his legacy at stake. Almost from
the moment he was elected, he has called children his first priority.
He very nearly hired his wife, a longtime children's activist, to lead
his social-services department.

As a step toward reform, the mayor promised that the state Department
of Public Welfare and the city together would review all child-abuse
fatalities from the last several years. Aides said the reviews would
include child advocates from outside the government.

Based on public records and interviews, The Inquirer article focused on
three cases in which relatives and neighbors told of danger signs that
DHS caseworkers either had missed or discounted.

In four other cases, the newspaper raised questions about what DHS did
before a child died of abuse or neglect.

All told, 20 children in families that had prior contact with the
agency died from abuse or neglect from 2003 through 2005. On Friday,
the city disclosed five such deaths in 2006.

The article also reported that after the 2003 death of toddler Porchia
Bennett, DHS hired consultants to devise plans for improving how it
assesses risk. But few of those recommendations have been implemented.

Ransom-Garner and McGee sat for two long interviews for the article.
But they said city lawyers had barred them from discussing DHS actions
in the case.

Yesterday, she spoke with a Fox29 news reporter. "I have a problem with
the reporting," she said of the Inquirer investigation. Some of the
cases in the report were closed long ago, she said.

Of her performance, Ransom-Garner said, "I've done everything he's
[Street] asked me to do and worked from sunup to sundown. I've served
26,000 children."

McGee could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Before the Inquirer article ran, Ransom-Garner defended her record at
the agency. "I think DHS is doing a great job," she said.

In the end, the mayor didn't agree.

Street has fired or asked top officials to resign before. But many of
those cases, including that of his former inspector general, involved
violations of the city's residency rule.

Ransom-Garner became the highest official dismissed over her
performance. The commissioner made $117,000 a year. McGee, who joined
the city in 1973, made $108,000.

Throughout the week, as politicians weighed in from all directions,
Street gave no public indication that he even had noticed The Inquirer
report.

On Monday, state lawmakers and the city controller called for public
hearings on DHS, while mayoral candidates weighed in. Street said
nothing.

On Wednesday, Gov. Rendell's administration said it would review the
actions of DHS. Again Street was silent.

That was in keeping with this mayor's close-to-the-vest style, and in
contrast to the actions of other mayors facing child-welfare crises.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, for example, led New York's response this
year to the beating death of a 7-year-old, a case that provoked a storm
of criticism because the child-welfare agency had mishandled it.

"We, as a city, have failed this child," Bloomberg said a day after the
killing.

But behind the scenes, Street's closest advisers knew he was unhappy.

On Tuesday, he held one of several meetings with Managing Director
Pedro Ramos, City Solicitor Romulo Diaz, Ransom-Garner, and other DHS
officials. Those meetings - about nine or 10 hours' worth, Street said
- continued all week, some as early as 7:30 a.m. and others occurring
as late as 9:30 p.m., including on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
evenings.

"He was trying to understand what the discrepancies were and what were
the areas in which we needed more scrutiny," Diaz said.

Street also met Thursday with Pennsylvania's welfare secretary, Estelle
B. Richman, a former Philadelphia managing director. He has not spoken
with Rendell about the agency troubles, Street spokesman Joe Grace
said.

Political insiders said it was no surprise Street that did not feel
compelled to share with the public what was happening behind closed
doors at City Hall.

"His style is his style, and I don't think he's ever going to change,"
State Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.) said.

Street has long demonstrated a resistance to knee-jerk responses, and a
penchant for being a slow decision-maker - a practice some call
deliberate and others stubborn. He has left half a dozen agency heads
in "acting" positions for months, unwilling to appoint them
permanently.

"His outright dismissal of someone is something that has been done
infrequently," former Managing Director Phil Goldsmith said.

"He obviously learned information that made him uncomfortable going
with the leadership in place, and he was going to take whatever action
he felt was necessary."

Frank Keel, a former Street spokesman, said, "I can only assume some of
the revelations in The Inquirer article surprised him to the point that
he and the managing director took a closer look, and came to the
unavoidable conclusion he had to shake things up."

Speaking from the podium in the ornate Mayor's Reception Room on
Friday, Street talked about his boyhood, and how the child-welfare
agency and its troubles had an emotional pull on him.

He said his mother had been a foster parent for several years when he
was a boy. He said 15 or 20 foster children had lived in his house over
those years, "and they became a part of our family."

As an 18-year-old student with little money at Oakwood College in
Alabama, far from his home, Street rented a room for $1 a day in the
state's only black orphanage, he said.

Recalling the dozens of orphaned children he saw every day, he said,
"People who get involved in the child-welfare system should be treating
these children like their family members, and not like they are a
paycheck."

A Street spokesman said yesterday that the mayor had not been referring
to DHS workers.

Street said he hoped the review would point the way toward real
improvements in DHS's performance.

Richard Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the
University of Pennsylvania, said he was glad to hear that Street
planned to include outsiders.

"The devil is in the details," he said.

Gelles also said Street should create an office for an independent
child advocate who could demand DHS records, review cases, and tell the
public what he or she found.

Frank Cervone, whose Philadelphia agency finds legal help for abused
children, said he chaired a commission in 2000 that made the same
proposal.

"We need to make the system transparent so that community trust can be
restored," he said. "And that's a structural change that will take a
change in style of leadership and some change in law."

Cervone said the new leadership must work to rebuild sagging morale at
the agency.

A DHS union leader agreed.

"The articles should force a review. We have had a lot of deaths, and
that should not have happened," said Rita Urwitz, vice president of the
DHS supervisors' union, Local 2186 of the American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees.

"I know there are systemic problems," Urwitz said, "but this throws the
entire agency into total chaos."

Not everyone is sympathetic with DHS workers.

"My hope is that they would walk out and just keep walking," Joseph
Rogers, president of chief executive of the Mental Health Association
of Southeastern Pennsylvania, said of DHS workers who left the building
Friday to protest the firings. "They do not seem to be meeting the
needs of children. I think we need some radical changes over there."

INSIDE

Team-building is among the new DHS boss' talents. A13.

Greegor wrote:
" WHY the Mayor fired the CPS bigshots"

So, what do you think, Greg?

Are CPS bigshots murderers by nature?

Do they create conditions deliberately for families on CPS caseloads
that cause the parents to kill their children?

If so, what is it they do, specifically to accomplish that?

Why didn't they remove all these 25 children that died at the hands of
their parents (apparently) during the four years including this one.

The issue was failure of assessment to uncover things that would have
triggered a removal or some other action that would have saved
children's lives.

What instrument or method would have accomplished that better than about
8 children a year being killed by parents?

Would you personally have been able to tell if someone was going to kill
their child in the future? What indicators would you use?

How would you apply them? That is how would you work around the parental
rights issues involved? How would you force the parent to do things like
go to evaluations, counseling, drug treatment, get a job, learn to
parent non-violently, classes on child development including
non-neglectful ways of parenting?

These things are known to have a dramatic effect...IF you can get the
person to attend. They do not have to.

Not unless you remove their children as a persuasion.

And if you don't have anything but "risk of harm" or less, how would you
remove?

Come on, Greg. Reform Philly.

Greegor wrote:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/15820730.htm

Posted on Sun, Oct. 22, 2006

The pique behind the scenes on DHS
Publicly silent, Mayor Street grew frustrated during days of meetings
over child deaths.
The result: Two officials gone.
By Marcia Gelbart, Ken Dilanian and John Sullivan Inquirer Staff
Writers

Last Sunday, Mayor Street sent an e-mail to his closest advisers.

He was disturbed, sources said, by The Inquirer's investigation into
how his Department of Human Services had handled the cases of children
who were later killed.

Day after day, Street said nothing publicly, even as lawmakers were
calling for hearings and state regulators were swooping in for a
review. Instead, as is his style, he hunkered down in meetings,
conducting a methodical examination of child-death cases.

That was where Street grew frustrated, city officials said. He kept
hearing that the rules were being followed - as he stared at files
detailing the brutal deaths of helpless children. He finally decided
he'd had enough.

There was a need, as he later put it, "for fresh eyes and a fresh
approach."

On Friday, Street broke his silence in dramatic fashion by announcing
the removal of two top officials at the department.

Commissioner Cheryl Ransom-Garner was asked to resign, and her deputy
in charge of abuse investigations, John McGee, was fired. Street named
Arthur C. Evans, Jr., who directs the city's mental health office, as
acting commissioner.

"We think we can do better," Street said at City Hall Friday, in a tone
more matter-of-fact than defensive.

Street, who lived with foster children as a boy on his family's
Montgomery County farm, may have seen his legacy at stake. Almost from
the moment he was elected, he has called children his first priority.
He very nearly hired his wife, a longtime children's activist, to lead
his social-services department.

As a step toward reform, the mayor promised that the state Department
of Public Welfare and the city together would review all child-abuse
fatalities from the last several years. Aides said the reviews would
include child advocates from outside the government.

Based on public records and interviews, The Inquirer article focused on
three cases in which relatives and neighbors told of danger signs that
DHS caseworkers either had missed or discounted.

In four other cases, the newspaper raised questions about what DHS did
before a child died of abuse or neglect.

All told, 20 children in families that had prior contact with the
agency died from abuse or neglect from 2003 through 2005. On Friday,
the city disclosed five such deaths in 2006.

The article also reported that after the 2003 death of toddler Porchia
Bennett, DHS hired consultants to devise plans for improving how it
assesses risk. But few of those recommendations have been implemented.

Ransom-Garner and McGee sat for two long interviews for the article.
But they said city lawyers had barred them from discussing DHS actions
in the case.

Yesterday, she spoke with a Fox29 news reporter. "I have a problem with
the reporting," she said of the Inquirer investigation. Some of the
cases in the report were closed long ago, she said.

Of her performance, Ransom-Garner said, "I've done everything he's
[Street] asked me to do and worked from sunup to sundown. I've served
26,000 children."

McGee could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Before the Inquirer article ran, Ransom-Garner defended her record at
the agency. "I think DHS is doing a great job," she said.

In the end, the mayor didn't agree.

Street has fired or asked top officials to resign before. But many of
those cases, including that of his former inspector general, involved
violations of the city's residency rule.

Ransom-Garner became the highest official dismissed over her
performance. The commissioner made $117,000 a year. McGee, who joined
the city in 1973, made $108,000.

Throughout the week, as politicians weighed in from all directions,
Street gave no public indication that he even had noticed The Inquirer
report.

On Monday, state lawmakers and the city controller called for public
hearings on DHS, while mayoral candidates weighed in. Street said
nothing.

On Wednesday, Gov. Rendell's administration said it would review the
actions of DHS. Again Street was silent.

That was in keeping with this mayor's close-to-the-vest style, and in
contrast to the actions of other mayors facing child-welfare crises.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, for example, led New York's response this
year to the beating death of a 7-year-old, a case that provoked a storm
of criticism because the child-welfare agency had mishandled it.

"We, as a city, have failed this child," Bloomberg said a day after the
killing.

But behind the scenes, Street's closest advisers knew he was unhappy.

On Tuesday, he held one of several meetings with Managing Director
Pedro Ramos, City Solicitor Romulo Diaz, Ransom-Garner, and other DHS
officials. Those meetings - about nine or 10 hours' worth, Street said
- continued all week, some as early as 7:30 a.m. and others occurring
as late as 9:30 p.m., including on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
evenings.

"He was trying to understand what the discrepancies were and what were
the areas in which we needed more scrutiny," Diaz said.

Street also met Thursday with Pennsylvania's welfare secretary, Estelle
B. Richman, a former Philadelphia managing director. He has not spoken
with Rendell about the agency troubles, Street spokesman Joe Grace
said.

Political insiders said it was no surprise Street that did not feel
compelled to share with the public what was happening behind closed
doors at City Hall.

"His style is his style, and I don't think he's ever going to change,"
State Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.) said.

Street has long demonstrated a resistance to knee-jerk responses, and a
penchant for being a slow decision-maker - a practice some call
deliberate and others stubborn. He has left half a dozen agency heads
in "acting" positions for months, unwilling to appoint them
permanently.

"His outright dismissal of someone is something that has been done
infrequently," former Managing Director Phil Goldsmith said.

"He obviously learned information that made him uncomfortable going
with the leadership in place, and he was going to take whatever action
he felt was necessary."

Frank Keel, a former Street spokesman, said, "I can only assume some of
the revelations in The Inquirer article surprised him to the point that
he and the managing director took a closer look, and came to the
unavoidable conclusion he had to shake things up."

Speaking from the podium in the ornate Mayor's Reception Room on
Friday, Street talked about his boyhood, and how the child-welfare
agency and its troubles had an emotional pull on him.

He said his mother had been a foster parent for several years when he
was a boy. He said 15 or 20 foster children had lived in his house over
those years, "and they became a part of our family."

As an 18-year-old student with little money at Oakwood College in
Alabama, far from his home, Street rented a room for $1 a day in the
state's only black orphanage, he said.

Recalling the dozens of orphaned children he saw every day, he said,
"People who get involved in the child-welfare system should be treating
these children like their family members, and not like they are a
paycheck."

A Street spokesman said yesterday that the mayor had not been referring
to DHS workers.

Street said he hoped the review would point the way toward real
improvements in DHS's performance.

Richard Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the
University of Pennsylvania, said he was glad to hear that Street
planned to include outsiders.

"The devil is in the details," he said.

Gelles also said Street should create an office for an independent
child advocate who could demand DHS records, review cases, and tell the
public what he or she found.

Frank Cervone, whose Philadelphia agency finds legal help for abused
children, said he chaired a commission in 2000 that made the same
proposal.

"We need to make the system transparent so that community trust can be
restored," he said. "And that's a structural change that will take a
change in style of leadership and some change in law."

Cervone said the new leadership must work to rebuild sagging morale at
the agency.

A DHS union leader agreed.

"The articles should force a review. We have had a lot of deaths, and
that should not have happened," said Rita Urwitz, vice president of the
DHS supervisors' union, Local 2186 of the American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees.

"I know there are systemic problems," Urwitz said, "but this throws the
entire agency into total chaos."

Not everyone is sympathetic with DHS workers.

"My hope is that they would walk out and just keep walking," Joseph
Rogers, president of chief executive of the Mental Health Association
of Southeastern Pennsylvania, said of DHS workers who left the building
Friday to protest the firings. "They do not seem to be meeting the
needs of children. I think we need some radical changes over there."

INSIDE

Team-building is among the new DHS boss' talents. A13.

....snip...previously responded to....

So, Greg. How you doing on reform of the Philly system?

Some experts, including one frequently quoted by your patrone, have
some ideas.

I'm on an academic researchers list for exchanges of inquiry and
information, and recieved an alert from:

David Finkelhor* Crimes against Children Research Center* Family
Research Laboratory* Department of Sociology* University of New
Hampshire* Durham, NH 03824* Tel 603 862-2761* Fax 603 862-1122*
email:


http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/
http://www.unh.edu/frl/David

[[[ Below is the actual site for the abstract, and if you have the
bucks and really want your questions answered, (fat chance that), you
might want to purchase the full article. I am considering it. ]]]

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi...0.2006.00483.x

Journal of Social Issues
Volume 62 Page 685 - December 2006
doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.2006.00483.x
Volume 62 Issue 4

Why Have Child Maltreatment and Child Victimization Declined?
David Finkelhor1* and Lisa Jones1

Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as
much as 40-70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical
abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and
larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same
period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in
poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations
for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization,
economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased
agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the
dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric
pharmacology. Multiple factors probably contributed. In particular,
economic prosperity, increasing agents of social intervention, and
psychiatric pharmacology have advantages over some of the other
explanations in accounting for the breadth and timing of the
improvements.

What does this have to do with WHY the mayor fired the CPS bigshots?
You on an academic researchers list?
Right under Josef Mengele?




0:- wrote:
...snip...previously responded to....

So, Greg. How you doing on reform of the Philly system?

Some experts, including one frequently quoted by your patrone, have
some ideas.

I'm on an academic researchers list for exchanges of inquiry and
information, and recieved an alert from:

David Finkelhor* Crimes against Children Research Center* Family
Research Laboratory* Department of Sociology* University of New
Hampshire* Durham, NH 03824* Tel 603 862-2761* Fax 603 862-1122*
email:


http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/
http://www.unh.edu/frl/David

[[[ Below is the actual site for the abstract, and if you have the
bucks and really want your questions answered, (fat chance that), you
might want to purchase the full article. I am considering it. ]]]

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi...0.2006.00483.x

Journal of Social Issues
Volume 62 Page 685 - December 2006
doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.2006.00483.x
Volume 62 Issue 4

Why Have Child Maltreatment and Child Victimization Declined?
David Finkelhor1* and Lisa Jones1

Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as
much as 40-70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical
abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and
larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same
period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in
poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations
for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization,
economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased
agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the
dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric
pharmacology. Multiple factors probably contributed. In particular,
economic prosperity, increasing agents of social intervention, and
psychiatric pharmacology have advantages over some of the other
explanations in accounting for the breadth and timing of the
improvements.

Greegor wrote:
What does this have to do with WHY the mayor fired the CPS bigshots?
You on an academic researchers list?
Right under Josef Mengele?

Gee Greg, NOW I understand why you abort the attributions.

You must have forgotten this time.

Below you will find, in my prior post, the line you ask about. I'll say
it again for you:

"So, Greg. How you doing on reform of the Philly system?
Some experts, including one frequently quoted by your patrone, have
some ideas."

In other words, stupid, I was inviting you to read the statement of the
person quoted, and apply what he said to the YOUR claim, of Why, as
well as taking a look at What might be done.

You don't wish to debate and issue, you wish to Doananate it, or
Douggrify it.

Now, look at the quoted material and see you if you can see what I saw
on the issue as might apply to YOUR post...."WHY the Mayor fired the
CPS big shots," or answer your own question implied in that statement.

Thanks, Kane








0:- wrote:
...snip...previously responded to....

So, Greg. How you doing on reform of the Philly system?

Some experts, including one frequently quoted by your patrone, have
some ideas.

I'm on an academic researchers list for exchanges of inquiry and
information, and recieved an alert from:

David Finkelhor* Crimes against Children Research Center* Family
Research Laboratory* Department of Sociology* University of New
Hampshire* Durham, NH 03824* Tel 603 862-2761* Fax 603 862-1122*
email:


http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/
http://www.unh.edu/frl/David

[[[ Below is the actual site for the abstract, and if you have the
bucks and really want your questions answered, (fat chance that), you
might want to purchase the full article. I am considering it. ]]]

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi...0.2006.00483.x

Journal of Social Issues
Volume 62 Page 685 - December 2006
doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.2006.00483.x
Volume 62 Issue 4

Why Have Child Maltreatment and Child Victimization Declined?
David Finkelhor1* and Lisa Jones1

Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as
much as 40-70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical
abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and
larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same
period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in
poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations
for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization,
economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased
agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the
dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric
pharmacology. Multiple factors probably contributed. In particular,
economic prosperity, increasing agents of social intervention, and
psychiatric pharmacology have advantages over some of the other
explanations in accounting for the breadth and timing of the
improvements.

Kane:
CPS agencies have had 30+ YEARS and lots of chatter
like yours about repairing their extreme dysfunction.

30+ years of finger pointing, excuses, fundraising and
even the most BASIC Constitutional protections that
were required from the beginning are still not in place.

It's too late for more debate and foot dragging.

It won't be long now.

Greegor wrote:
Kane:
CPS agencies have had 30+ YEARS and lots of chatter
like yours about repairing their extreme dysfunction.

And the constant shuffle of politicos to honor the wishes of the society
to NOT address the issue adequately.

30+ years of finger pointing, excuses, fundraising

Which has resulted in a cut by half in the major source of funding in
since 1970s, while still managing, year after year to hold the line on
abuse, or even lower it from previous years from time to time.

and
even the most BASIC Constitutional protections that
were required from the beginning are still not in place.

Sorry they are.

Now prove they are not by citing the constitutional issues and where in
the constitution the verbiage is that applies.

It's too late for more debate and foot dragging.

No it isn't.

It won't be long now.

You could be right. One of the judges that was picked to oversee the
federal take over of a CPS system made his FIRST order of business to
adequately fund improvements.

Guess what, it worked.

It may not be long until the public finally gets it that you cannot
blame a program for not operating properly if it is kneecapped funding
period after funding period for two to three decades, Greg.

Are you going to respond to the proof I showed that even that fabulous
example your buddy Patrone tried to use was a bogus lie? That they in
fact have not only NEVER BEEN OVER FUNDED, but still and always
seriously underfunded for decades?

You aren't going to respond to the truth though, are you Greg. Because
you are chicken****.

0:-

Kane wrote
Which has resulted in a cut by half in the major source of funding in
since 1970s, while still managing, year after year to hold the line on
abuse, or even lower it from previous years from time to time.

Can you prove causality?

Greegor wrote:
Kane wrote
Which has resulted in a cut by half in the major source of funding in
since 1970s, while still managing, year after year to hold the line on
abuse, or even lower it from previous years from time to time.

Can you prove causality?

Can you prove there is none?

What I'd like to know is how they managed, with all that loss of
revenue, the increase in the population, especially newcomers with very
different parenting styles, like female circumsicion, and child beating
as accepted practice, to continue to hold the line on abuse, and even
see it go downward.

I have NO answer to that, except it must take a hell of a lot of hard
work and dedication.

And no, I sure couldn't prove causality.

On the other hand, do you require of yourself that upon flipping the
lightswitch on all activity stops until you run a circuit check to
prove that there IS electric current in the line that turned the light
on over your head?

Think another reduction in funding will improve CPS?

How, given that you have nothing but complaints about how they operate
now?

0:-