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Kids will suffer more if DFCS loses caseworkers

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Kids will suffer more if DFCS loses caseworkers

September 26, 2008

Maureen Downey

A 9-month-old baby in Jackson County dies after being left in a hot van by a distracted foster mother with four other children.

A 2-year-old Cobb County toddler clings to life after surgery for brain trauma and severe liver and pancreas damage that police blame on horrendous abuse.

One thread links these tragedies: the state’s Division of Family and Children Services, which was supposed to safeguard these babies. And while that agency has long had budget and manpower problems, state budget cuts threaten to reduce the number of caseworkers still further.

In most agencies, funding cuts mean training is scaled back and trips are canceled. Employees grumble, but nobody dies. That’s not the case with DFCS. If there are too many cuts, or the wrong cuts, children can die.

In the senseless death of Jessica Scovil, the state has to ask whether the 29-year-old foster mother had too many young children in her care.

Along with her own two daughters, Wendy Osborne had two foster children in addition to Jessica. She told police she had taken her daughters out of the van that hot Sept. 2 afternoon but forgot the baby in the car seat. Osborne fell asleep for two hours — a nap she attributed to medication for strep throat — before remembering the baby. By then it was too late.

The state’s child advocate says that if Osborne’s story holds up, he would not recommend criminal charges.

“I usually look at these kinds of situations as there but for the grace of God go I,” said advocate Tom Rawlings. While Jessica’s death may prove accidental, it ought to spark a DFCS debate about how many children should be in a foster home, especially when infants are in the mix. It also suggests that the state needs to recruit more “respite foster parents” to step in when a full-time foster parent is overworked or ill.

In the second case, the life-threatening injuries to toddler Adrianna Swain on Tuesday in Marietta were no accident. The little girl remains in critical condition, and police have charged her mother, Amanda Swain, and her mother’s boyfriend, Melvin Alexander Flores-Amador, with child cruelty.

As more facts have emerged, it has become apparent that DFCS made grave errors in its assessment of this family. Adrianna initially came under the state’s protection as an infant because of a broken arm. About two months ago, the child was returned to her mother, a decision that was opposed by the court-appointed special advocate assigned to the case and a citizens’ panel that reviews the welfare of children in DFCS custody. Despite their serious concerns, a Cobb County juvenile court judge followed the advice of a Cobb DFCS caseworker and gave the child to her mother.

B.J. Walker, the head of the Department of Human Resources, which runs DFCS, has pushed staff to preserve families and to use willing relatives as an alternative to placing kids in foster care. Those are worthy goals, but not if they return children to households where parents will not keep them safe.

“Cuts to the department that cares for so many of our most vulnerable is too big a risk for those who can afford it least …” the Georgia Association of Homes and Services for Children warned in a letter to Gov. Sonny Perdue. “Let’s not gamble with their lives. It is one thing to do all we can and a child dies; it is another when a child dies because we took from them the very protections that would make them safe.”

mdowney@ajc.com

www.ajc.com
2008 Sep 26