Fenty Welcomes Deal on Child Welfare Reforms

A court agreement signed by the District's child welfare agency will help continue reforms and rebuild the damage suffered in one of the agency's most tumultuous years yet, city officials said today.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said the agreement "reflects hard work and constructive effort by both the District and Children's Rights Inc.," a national advocacy group that brought a motion of contempt last summer against Fenty (D) and the city's Child and Family Services Agency.

"The protection of the District's children is extremely important, and my administration is committed to stabilizing the child welfare agency and hastening reform efforts," Fenty said, adding that the agreement "will allow us to further advance our efforts to strengthen the Child and Family Services Agency." Fenty formally announced the agreement, which was signed yesterday, during a news conference today at the Wilson Building.

According to the agreement, the Child and Family Services Agency must reduce its swelling backlog of investigations open longer than 30 days, move dozens of children toward adoption and find replacements for this year's exodus of social workers.

By Oct. 15, the agency also must hire the Public Catalyst Group, the consultants credited with reforming the New Jersey child welfare system, under the stipulation order signed by U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan.

The court order puts the brakes on a motion of contempt brought in July by Children's Rights that could have returned the agency to federal receivership. Children's Rights may restart the contempt motion at any time.

"This is a solid, reasonable plan with the potential to improve outcomes for the children and families CFSA serves as well as the agency," said Roque Gerald, Interim Director of the Child and Family Services Agency.

The agency emerged from receivership about eight years ago. In less than a year, the agency has been thrust in the middle of two high-profile cases involving deaths of children known to the agency. In January, authorities found the bodies of four dead girls in their mother's home. Last week, Maryland officials found the bodies of two girls in the freezer of a woman who said had adopted the children from the District.

"With this agreement, the District has finally recognized its desperate need for help in putting its child welfare system back on track," said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children's Rights, which has been involved in a federal lawsuit against the agency for nearly 20 years. "Unfortunately, the District's recent history of allowing the system to deteriorate to this point does not inspire great confidence, and so we have reserved the right to return to court immediately on our open contempt motion if they cannot deliver on even the short-term commitments they have made."

D.C. Acting Attorney General Peter Nickles had a different take, saying Children's Rights finally "got much more realistic" about those short-term commitments.

Nickles had complained that Children's Rights wanted to set targets that the agency could not hit, given the increased volume of calls and the exodus of social workers this year. "I didn't want to commit the city to failure" and, ultimately, receivership, Nickles said.

After a weekend of negotiating, "we have an agreement that we can meet," he said. With the help of the Public Catalyst Group, "over the next eight, nine, 12 weeks, we can do it."