Jacks Case, Rise in Reports Might Chip Away at Strides

"As the monitor of the District's child welfare system, it makes me profoundly sad that the problems our monitoring efforts have identified with the quality of child protective services in great detail for the past several years were not addressed prior to these deaths," Meltzer said in a hearing about the Jacks case last month.

In her November report, Meltzer said that weak supervision, an emphasis on timeliness rather than quality in the processing of cases and the unwelcoming attitude of some hotline call operators have been long-standing issues in the agency. Those turned out to be key problems in the Jacks case.

Even more disturbing is Meltzer's prediction: Fallout from the Jacks case and the fourfold increase in reports now flooding the agency could create a backslide after years of progress.

"It's very sad. I do believe the agency is a different agency than it was in 1992 and a different agency than it was in 2000," Meltzer said. "I'm very concerned now that this increase in cases will return us to the 1990s."

The agency spent much of that decade in federal receivership, when it was understaffed and overwhelmed by heavy caseloads, fallout from the District's decade-long drug epidemic.

Since the Jacks tragedy, the agency received 800 new reports of abuse last month, an unprecedented spike from the usual 300 for that period.

Social workers said they are overloaded. "I used to get two or three new cases a week. Now I get eight to 10 new cases a week. To say I am stressed out would be an understatement," said a social worker who asked to remain anonymous because the agency told employees not to speak to the media.

To pick up the extra work, the agency has called on social workers who have no cases, including managers and directors, to leave their desk jobs temporarily, Good said.

The increase in reports came primarily from schools, neighborhoods and mental health officials after they heard that the bodies of Brittany Jacks, 16, Tatianna Jacks, 11, N'Kiah Fogle, 6, and Aja Fogle, 5, were found at their home in the 4200 block of Sixth Street SE in early January. Investigators said the girls might have been dead since May.

This troubled family fell through many safety nets before they came to the attention of a city social worker in May. They had lived in a hypothermia shelter, collected food stamps, raised the concern of a hospital nurse, worried a school counselor and were reported to District Court.

When they landed at the doorstep of the Child and Family Services Agency, the organization was in its best shape in decades. The caseload for each worker was about 12, a dramatic change from a time when some social workers had 50 to 100 cases. The backlog of cases lingering past 30 days was less than 50, down from about 800 seven years ago. Scores of new social workers were hired, and the agency was almost fully staffed. And the child-abuse hotline was finally set up to receive messages.

Despite the advances, the agency is now wrangling with the Jacks tragedy.