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Beneath mild exterior, child advocate is on a mission.
Beneath mild exterior, child advocate is on a mission
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 8, 2007 By Steve Peoples Journal State House Bureau http://www.projo.com/news/content/ch...4.2fa1d1d.html ALSTON CRANSTON — Jametta O. Alston is at peace despite the firestorm around her. The state child advocate works at a beat-up wooden desk in a dingy office across from the bathroom. The walls are bare. There are boxes everywhere. And the small window offers a view of the state prison complex. She is used to dealing with children who have been burned by cigarettes, abandoned by drug-addicted parents, molested by stepfathers. But the challenges have intensified in the 10 days since she sued the governor. There have been swarming packs of reporters. A flurry of new child-abuse allegations. And political challenges. The 50-year-old Philadelphia native is the face of a sweeping federal lawsuit against Governor Carcieri and two top state officials that alleges widespread physical and mental abuse of children in state care. Alston has sued the man who appointed her at a time the governor didn’t need any more bad news. The Carcieri administration has been reeling from an investigation into the Department of Transportation, the use of temporary staffing firms, a battle with the General Assembly over the state budget, and criticism of his plan to lay off 1,000 state workers. And the bold lawsuit comes from what may seem an unlikely source — a woman whom friends describe as so pleasant, so kind, that she is sometimes mistaken for being weak. Alston is a woman who offers to share her lunch with strangers. She is a foster parent. And she is known around the office for her habit of rescuing injured birds, feeding them worms with her bare hands. “If you were to walk into a room, she might be the last person you would pick out as someone who has held positions such as being the president of the Rhode Island Bar Association, or chair of the Rhode Island Legal Services board of directors, or the child advocate,” says Assistant Child Advocate Shelia High King, who met Alston in 1987 when they were the only African-American women taking the Rhode Island bar exam that day. “She’s so unassuming. She tends to be very casual in her approach. And she’s very approachable. So I think people probably mistake her as being someone who is weak and timid because she is so soft-spoken.” Alston, however, has quietly established herself as one of the more powerful women in state politics. She became the first black female city solicitor in Rhode Island in 2003, serving under former Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey during the now-infamous crossing-guard fight. She became the first black president of the state bar association in 2004. And she was appointed in 2005 by Carcieri to serve as the state child advocate — the head of an independent state agency with six employees charged with protecting the thousands of children in state custody. “She may appear to be sweet, but she’s pretty tough.” Laffey says. “Jametta has a different reason for being on this earth other than to please some people she might work for. She has a higher calling that she answers to, and I love that about her.” Alston knows she has put her career at risk. She knows she’ll probably never become a judge, like the former child advocate, Family Court Judge Laureen D’Ambra. She knows her every move until her term expires in 2010 may be scrutinized. But Alston says she had no choice but to file a sweeping civil-rights lawsuit against the governor, Department of Children, Youth and Families Director Patricia Martinez and Jane A. Hayward, secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. THE LAWSUIT alleges that the DCYF repeatedly placed children in dangerous situations, failed to remove them promptly after abuse was revealed, and later failed to offer proper counseling and treatment. Alston is aiming to overhaul Rhode Island’s child-welfare system, which the suit portrays as overburdened and mismanaged. Rhode Island was the worst in the nation in the rate of children abused and neglected while in state foster care in five of the six years from 2000 to 2005, according to federal data. Alston, raised as a Quaker, says she has faith that she will be fine no matter what. “If you walk with faith, you will be taken care of,” she says. “The state made choices and policies on how they would handle children. Those policies endanger children. So what should I do — allow them to stand? Could I sleep at night, could I call myself a person of faith if I allow this to continue?” Alston says she twice told Martinez that she was contemplating filing a lawsuit. And she says she requested several meetings with the governor to discuss her concerns, but that her requests were largely ignored. One meeting had been scheduled, but was later canceled by the governor’s office, she says. Carcieri says he was not aware of any attempts to schedule a meeting, though he says the information might not have been passed along by his staff. Martinez acknowledges a conversation with Alston about a suit months ago, but says she didn’t realize Alston planned to follow through, especially after the issue didn’t come up again. ALSTON SAYS she was pushed over the edge by the passage of the 2008 state budget, which knocked thousands of children off state-subsidized childcare and stripped hundreds of 18- to 21-year-olds of state Family Court protection. She filed a federal class-action lawsuit on June 28, backed by New York-based nonprofit Children’s Rights and the international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, which has an office in Providence. Children’s Rights has successfully filed six lawsuits against other states for systemic child-welfare failures. While the suit describes alleged abuse against 10 children, it was filed on behalf of all 3,000 children living in foster homes, group homes, shelters and institutions. It alleges that children in state care are being neglected, molested, beaten, burned with cigarettes and, in one high-profile case, killed. “This [lawsuit] is not about me. This is not about Jametta Alston or the child advocate, so much as here’s this issue we have where children are not safe,” she says. “We take them from their homes, where we say they’re in danger, and we put them in worse situations.” Alston isn’t used to dealing with the media. She doesn’t like being in the spotlight. After a recent State House meeting with the governor, she tried to sneak out a back door to avoid the throng of television cameras and reporters waiting outside. The group caught up with her outside and she politely brushed past, saying she had no comment. Reporters trailed toward Smith Street, peppering her with questions to no avail until a radio reporter accidentally stepped on her foot. Alston’s shoe popped off. With the cameras rolling, she was forced to stop and put it back on. She then stayed for a few minutes and answered questions. “My mom just drilled politeness into me. I thought it would be totally rude to walk away once they had me stopped,” she says. ALSTON IS THE only child of a stay-at-home mother and a welder. She came to Rhode Island two decades ago after graduating from Howard University School of Law. Attracted by New England’s beaches, she fell in love with the area and took a job at Rhode Island Legal Services in the late 1980s, representing low-income residents on matters ranging from Family Court issues to consumer disputes. It was work she had always wanted to do. “At Howard, they teach us that lawyers are social architects — what kind of world do you want to build? The world I wanted to build was that everyone would have equal access to justice,” she says. She later opened her own practice and sometimes served as a guardian ad litem — a court-appointed advocate for children in state care. In March 1993, Alston took a job handling civil litigation for the state attorney general’s office. In nearly 10 years, she helped create domestic-violence protocols and trained police departments on hate-crime prosecution. To prepare for a case involving foster children, she voluntarily went through a training program aimed at prospective foster parents. After the training she was asked to temporarily serve as a foster parent. She briefly cared for an 18-month-old whose mother had been found dead in a trash can, an experience that convinced her that being the single mother of a young child was not for her. But she soon got a call about a 7-year-old girl who needed a home. The girl had been living in a shelter for nine months. Alston fell in love with the little girl she would soon adopt. Theresa Alston is now 13. “Because I’ve experienced living with her, it gives me insight and an almost heightened sensitivity of what it means to be in [foster] care,” Alston says. Meanwhile, Alston doesn’t know exactly what will come out of the lawsuit. She hopes for widespread reforms that involve fewer caseloads for caseworkers and safe permanent placements for children, but she knows that success may take time. In the end, she says, the decision to sue the governor was not a difficult one. “All along I said I would only do this as a last resort. I know what litigation costs,” she says. “Yet there was nothing else in my mind you could do.” CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NSA / CIA WIRETAPPING PROGRAM.... CPS Does not protect children... It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even killed at the hands of Child Protective Services. every parent should read this .pdf from connecticut dcf watch... http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US These numbers come from The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN) Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS *Perpetrators of Maltreatment* Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59 Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13 Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241 Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12 Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5 Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per 100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a bunch of social workers. BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION... |
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