Accountability for Baby Braxton [opinion]

The Virginian-Pilot

© July 26, 2012

There's plenty of blame to go around for the short, sad life of Braxton Taylor.

It starts with his parents, who, after the child was born in April 2009, walked out of the hospital without him, left no forwarding address and, contacted more than a week later, said they wouldn't be able to care for the child. His mother spent most of the next seven months in jail on drug charges.

It ends with Braxton's second foster mother, who kept Braxton for the last three months of his 10-month life. When the baby was admitted to the hospital just before his death in February 2010, he weighed less than he did at his six-month checkup. His testicles were crushed, and his groin, abdomen and ear were bruised.

The foster mother, Kathleen Ganiere, is serving a 10-year prison sentence for shaking Braxton to death.

In a letter to city officials this week, Braxton's grandmother correctly called Ganiere's time with the child a "calculated reign of terror."

But she noted, also correctly, that Virginia Beach - Braxton's legal guardian - was culpable for the errors and omissions that led to his placement with Ganiere and, ultimately, his death.

The people responsible for putting Braxton there, for ignoring signs nine days later that he was in trouble, for repeatedly failing to investigate his welfare or document his decline - even four days before his death - have no business being employed by the Virginia Beach Department of Human Services.

Two independent reports on the agency and its operations, released last week, detail page after page of the department's failures, in Braxton's case and systemically, to investigate reports, document allegations or actions, participate in training, follow state rules and engage children and families.

Although the department instituted some reforms after the child's death - including a ban on placing infants with people who have no parenting experience and training to teach all foster parents about the care of infants - the studies showed that two years after Braxton's death, major problems continue. It is, the Virginia Department of Social Services noted, "a division in crisis."

Virginia Beach has the highest number of children in the state in group facilities instead of private homes. As a whole, the department ranks at or near the bottom in every major category when compared to the other 120 human services agencies. The state study and the one by the Child Welfare League of America found widespread organizational problems and poor morale.

"A significant culture change is needed," the state report said.

Staff members interviewed by the state's review team described Human Services Director Bob Morin as "largely ineffective, distant and unresponsive" to the agency's needs and "completely out of touch with the work being done" in the division.

The director of the Adult and Family Services Division, they said, "is not effectively performing the duties required." And "the agency's perspective and focus is to minimize liability instead of practicing good social work."

City Manager Jim Spore is assembling a task force to recommend changes in the way Virginia Beach deals with its most vulnerable citizens.

Change is already too long in coming. So, too, are multiple personnel changes in the Virginia Beach Department of Human Services.

A cherubic Braxton Taylor is smiling in a picture taken on the only Halloween he ever knew - a photo that should haunt every city official, every administrator, every social worker who sees it. When the child died, every organ except his heart was given to others.

Abandoned by his parents, denied placement with his grandparents and siblings, Braxton's life was entrusted to the city.

In every way, it failed him. Maybe, as the Child Welfare League suggested, no single person is to blame. But so many times, someone could have intervened to protect him. No one did.