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Postcards from 'the dungeon'

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Editorial Board

The Oregonian

The Department of Human Services owes Oregonians a full accounting of its failure to protect Kaylie and Jordan Collins

It's hard to know what really happened to Kaylie and Jordan Collins. The facts are in dispute. And the state Department of Human Services, despite paying lip service to transparency and accountability, has thus far failed to make a full and public accounting of the twins' maltreatment in foster care.

What the public has, in lieu of a full report, are glimpses from a lawsuit filed on the twins' behalf. Glimpses, that is, from what one attorney in the case has called "a dungeon of sorts."

According to the lawsuit, this medically fragile sister and brother, born prematurely in 2002, were placed in makeshift cages in a darkened bedroom, while in state custody. The lawsuit alleges they often went without food, water or human touch.

Was chicken wire really duct-taped over Kaylie's and Jordan's cribs, as the lawsuit says? Or was it "mesh," to protect the babies from injuring themselves, as their former foster father contends? The twins spent three years in the foster home (they were removed in 2005), much of the time, apparently, in a garage converted into a bedroom. We don't know how much time they spent in the dark. Or how much the state's neglect contributed to their developmental delays.

The twins will likely never be able to tell us. Yet -- against all odds -- they are thriving today. Now 6 1/2 years old, they're living in a Michigan farmhouse with their adoptive family. But Kaylie has a very limited vocabulary, and the brain-damaged Jordan, still in a diaper, does not speak.

What the Department of Human Services has said is that the foster parents went to elaborate lengths to hide the babies' maltreatment, "including having a fake nursery on display to deceive visitors and DHS caseworkers," the state's Patty Wentz told The Oregonian's Aimee Green. As a result, caseworkers failed to inspect the garage.

One action by the state does speak volumes. Recently, the state agreed to pay $2 million toward the twins' future care -- the largest settlement of this sort ever reached by the Department of Human Services.

But the settlement doesn't begin to answer the questions raised by this case, including some basics. Should these high-need, high-risk babies have ever been placed with aging foster parents who had their own issues and who were, at times, apparently overwhelmed with four other children to oversee?

Was this case an aberration or did it involve a systemic failure? Did lack of supervision or the department's chronic underfunding contribute to the mistreatment of these twins?

The Department of Human Services has new leadership now, and this case has sparked changes, including new rules. Employees who monitor living conditions in foster homes are now required, for instance, to walk through "each and every" room twice each year -- including the garage. In other words, they must now perform more than a superficial inspection.

Unfortunately, you can keep making up new rules and never get a real grip on a problem, if caseworkers and their supervisors are too easily duped, wrongly hired, inadequately trained, overloaded or too burned out to do their jobs.

Every year, 100 children are neglected or abused in Oregon's foster care system. On a percentage basis, that's only a tiny fraction of the roughly 8,775 children in foster care on any given day. Still, in every case where taxpayers are financing abuse or neglect of a child, surely, the public needs and deserves a full account of what happened -- something better than postcards from the dungeon.

Thanks to Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who asked for federal help five years ago to illuminate problems in the foster care system, the state is now supposed to issue a public report when a child dies or is seriously harmed. But such a report wasn't issued for Kaylie and Jordan. That is appalling.

Wentz said Tuesday that the state is now considering how best to provide a full public report on this case. That's good to hear, though it's late in the day.

The twins, thank God, are no longer in the dark. The people of Oregon shouldn't be left there either.

2009 Apr 8