WATCHDOG: CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES

BACKGROUND:

Last year’s Grand Jury recommended that CPS adopt a formal complaint process that would afford citizen’s an opportunity to register concerns through internal CPS channels. The plan also calls for an extra-departmental Standing Review Board to act as an appellant body. The appeal panel would be comprised of 10 members, including a non-voting Grand Juror, and would be charged with monitoring the integrity of the entire complaint process. It is necessary, the Grand Jury feels, to provide assurance in this way to those who have registered a fear of retribution from CPS if they were to complain openly.

One complaint received this year by the Grand Jury was investigated by the Law and the Health Education and Welfare Committees primarily through a review of CPS and public court records. Files reviewed spanned a time period in excess of a decade.

OBSERVATIONS:

          1) Early indications are that the formal review process will be helpful to citizens and to CPS in identifying and redressing concerns. The Grand Jury, with the consent of this year’s first complainant, monitored and tracked the grievance through the emerging system. Following a meeting with the CPS Director, the complainant reported that: 1) having an opportunity to air concerns and discuss them with CPS principals had been a healing process and 2) in this case, appeal would not be necessary.

          2) Last year’s Jury had proposed that the complaint review structure, including the impanelment of a Standing Review Board, be in place by August of 2003. While progress has been made, that structure remains incomplete.

          3) In response to a complaint, the Jury reviewed a single case record involving eight files, comprising an estimated two and one-half feet of material. That review led to the following observations:

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          A) Over the 10+ years of CPS relationship to this case, a series of social workers have been assigned principal responsibility. It was our impression that as the record grew, the sheer preponderance of the material may have had the effect of coloring perceptions of staff.

          B) This being the single instance of a review of a file of this magnitude, we cannot speak to other cases. We can unequivocally state that this particular file was extremely difficult to follow, there being no particular chronological or other order we could discern. That fact in itself would be daunting to a new worker assigned the file. We felt that it would be fairly easy to lose the essential facts of this case, if the entire file were not reviewed and outlined, as we attempted to do.

FINDINGS:

          1) With respect to the emerging formal review process and the initial case entering that system, we believe the new system will be a constructive one. We do also believe, however, that given the fear of retribution held by some potential complainants, the system will not work without a Standing Review Board in place, to function not only as an extra-departmental appeal panel, but as a watchdog over the grievance process as a whole.

          2) With respect to the single case record review, we find:

A) The essential facts of the case involve detention of the children by CPS sporadically for a period of a few days to most recently, a period exceeding a year and a half.

B) Early detentions in the period under review were the result of factors beyond CPS control. The record shows a series of arrests of the parent, based upon complaints from individuals engaged with the parent in a property dispute. The property controversy was eventually settled in the parent’s favor. In the meantime, however, a series of complaints resulted in arrest, and therefore the “absence of caretaker” requiring CPS intervention.

C) In a particularly egregious instance, the frustrated parent confronted a police officer

who, owing to the parent’s agitation and slurred speech (a physical impediment) presumed drunkenness. Further, in the process of the parent’s pulling over to park, the officer thought the accused was attempting to hit him. The parent was charged with drunkenness and assault on a police officer. The parent demanded a breath test; the officer refused, records indicate, because of the parent’s manifest aggression. Front page headlines and a four column spread in a local paper reported the arrest and related charges. The parent was declared a “threat to the community.” The parent was booked and the children remanded to CPS care. All criminal charges were subsequently dropped.

D) The “lore” regarding the parent is constructed of such events. Increasingly, the agitated behavior is seen as bizarre (but perhaps understandable, to those familiar with the apparently spiteful series of arrests, which account for the initial detention of the children). In support of the use of the word “spiteful,” it should be mentioned that neighbors supporting the parent, report evidence of blatant bigotry on the part of the complainants. For example, the chief complainants, within hearing of the children, referred to them by using racial slurs.

E) In the early period of frequent, short-term arrests, there are several notes from social workers visiting the home in response to various complaints. On these occasions, complaints were found to be unwarranted and according to reports reviewed by the Grand Jury were “probably” coming from a “disgruntled neighbor.”

F) In a reverse “halo effect,” the sheer burden and preponderance of these arrests seemed to snowball into an extremely negative perception of this parent, who rails against the penal and child protective system with some righteous anger and increasing rage.

G) Beyond the arrests, which CPS must address by assuring that the children are cared for in the absence of the parent, we could find in the record, no evidence of any physical or emotional harm at the hands of the parent. On the contrary, the preponderance of the

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opinions offered by the numerous expert consultants in file note the parent’s love for, and appropriate care of, the children. The file is also replete with statements and affidavits from neighbors, ministers, and others urging that the children be returned to their home.

H) Finally, and we feel of overriding importance, is the fact that after an extended period out of the home and in foster care, the children are suffering at the hands of the system, having been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, sleep disorders, and more, all of which are being treated with pharmaceuticals. The youngest has bowel and bladder incontinence, along with all of the above, and has had significant weight loss. There is no evidence in file that any of these conditions were present in their home, before detention.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS:

                    1) With respect to the case reviewed this year by the Grand Jury, we urge officials within CPS to continue to consider whether at some point the children can be returned to their home in the best interest of their health and welfare. We anticipate the need for counseling to help in the healing process of these children and their beleaguered parent.

                    2) With respect to the development of the Standing Review Board, we look forward to the installation of the Standing Review Panel and its ongoing oversight of the new grievance process.

Thomas Jefferson:  Thomas Jefferson said in 1802: I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.