Agency Reopens Six Abuse Cases
Action Is Part of Departmental Overhaul

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 3, 2008

Vowing that city social workers will track down every child in peril, District officials said yesterday that they had to take quick action in six cases of child abuse or neglect that were closed and forgotten last year.

New standards are being applied to old cases as part of reforms announced by D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) yesterday, four months after the city's Child and Family Services Agency was rocked by the discovery of Banita Jacks's four dead children inside her home and the ensuing arrest of a troubled mother who had slipped through the agency's cracks.

"No cases would be closed until a child is located," said Fenty, adding that the agency will increase training of hotline workers and create a training system for city workers mandated to report signs of child abuse or neglect.

The Jacks case was a massive disappointment for an agency that had been on a steady, decade-long upswing after years of problems.

"There were some things that the Jacks case helped reveal about where we were," Fenty said. "Where we either needed to change the direction, add something or move even faster."

When the city learned that the Jacks case was closed by the agency without contact being made, Fenty fired six social workers connected to the case, and agency Director Sharlynn Bobo said she would make far-reaching changes to address the shortcomings that the case revealed.

The first big step was to reopen 306 cases closed last year without a resolution. With the assistance of Casey Family Programs and the Child Welfare League of America, the agency found a need to look further into 84 of the 306 cases and took immediate action in six situations where the children appeared to be in immediate danger, Bobo said.

Some of those cases might have been closed too quickly because of the city's 30-day timeline for closing a case.

The agency is considering changing that "too short" turnaround time, Bobo said. New York, for example, gives social workers 60 days to complete an investigation of an abuse complaint, she said.

But reforms are an ambitious prospect for an agency that is also facing a record-breaking caseload.

Since the Jacks family case shocked the nation in January, the city's child welfare agency has received 9,900 reports of neglect or abuse. About 500 of those reports are for educational neglect, which was the initial report called in for the Jacks family by a social worker at one of the daughter's schools, Bobo said.

The reports have led to about 2,000 investigations. "This is historic for the agency," Bobo said.

Last year, the agency averaged 400 open cases at any one time, according to agency documents.

Social workers have been working late nights and weekends to respond to the influx. Bobo temporarily detailed 30 social workers from other departments to Child Protective Services, the front line that investigates incoming calls.

A report filed last month by the court monitor assigned to follow the progress of the agency said 50 of the 84 social workers assigned to investigations are carrying more than 12 each, which had been the average caseload locally and is the nationwide standard.

Last month, 30 social workers each had more than 30 cases, according to court monitor Judith Meltzer's report.

Tragedies such as the Jacks case "have the potential to knock any system off balance and particularly a system still engaged in a rigorous change process," Meltzer wrote.

But D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), a former social worker, said ongoing reforms are necessary, even when the agency is swamped.

"I know it's hard to focus on reforms at the same time when you're dealing with a crisis. But I do feel the agency is dealing with the crisis. I don't think the agency should be viewed as in crisis," Wells said. "We currently do not have children sleeping at the agency like we used to."

Wells is proposing legislation to create a system to track every child, even ones who are home-schooled or in charter schools, not just children attending public schools, as is currently the case.

He also wants to implement a suggestion from the court monitor to create a category for children who are not clearly being abused or neglected but about whom a social worker is concerned, so that "we can increase the safety net."