Contempt Charge Leveled in CFSA Suit

Fenty Administration Blocking Reform, Says Child Advocacy Group

An attorney who has battled the District's child welfare agency for two decades asked a federal judge to hold the District in contempt of court last night, a move that could trigger another federal takeover of the troubled agency.

The contempt motion was filed by Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of the advocacy group Children's Rights. It charges the administration of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) with blocking reforms and being more interested in getting out from under court oversight than in protecting children.

"Mayor Fenty and his administration are simply refusing to make a commitment to repair the District's failing child welfare system and provide the protection and care that the city's abused and neglected kids deserve and desperately need," Lowry said.

If the court agrees, it could mean a full federal takeover of the city's Child and Family Services Agency. For now, the agency has a lower level of outside oversight: a court-appointed monitor who checks on the city's progress and files regular reports.

The latest legal maneuvering began earlier this week, when the city filed a reform plan to U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan without the approval of the court monitor. Fenty says he wants to end 20 years of court oversight by May.

Lowry's group says the city is not ready.

"The Fenty Administration has claimed that Children's rights has never been satisfied with the district's performance, and that is true because its performance never has been satisfactory," Lowry said in a news release. "What is truly astonishing is that Mayor Fenty would allow himself to be satisfied with a child welfare system that consistently performs so poorly."

Hogan probably will hear the contempt charge and decide whether to proceed with a federal takeover at the next scheduled hearing Feb. 6.

A recent report by court monitor Judith Meltzer said the agency had fallen behind in several areas of child welfare, including the rates at which children in foster care were able to visit siblings, the number of times caseworkers met with parents and foster families, and the frequency of moves foster children had to make into foster homes.

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles, who has fought to end the case since he joined the city administration, said that it is inappropriate "to have the court running city agencies," and that the agency has made tremendous strides since the case began in 1989.

The city filed a six-month bridge plan based largely on the work of Public Catalyst Group, a private consulting organization that praised the agency for its performance in the last few months of last year. Social workers cut a backlog of 1,750 cases that hadn't been closed in under 30 days to fewer than 100, and dozens of social workers were hired to fill a nearly 25 percent vacancy gap.

But Lowry said a few good months of work should not be enough to end court involvement of an agency that plunged into turmoil last year, when Banita Jacks was found living with the corpses of her four daughters.

Thousands of reports of child abuse and neglect flooded the agency after that case came to light. Social workers were smothered by workloads and almost 25 percent walked out.