By Jim McElhatton
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 19, 2006

LINK

The District's Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) and public school system don't know how many foster children receive special education, according to a government audit released yesterday.

The CFSA listed 359 foster children who were receiving special education, but the school system identified 701 foster children as special-education students.

What's more, the names of only 82 students appeared on both the CFSA's and the school system's lists, according to a report by the D.C. Office of the Inspector General.

Auditors had sought to determine whether foster children were getting the required amount of special education during the 2004-05 school year. They concluded that shoddy record keeping by the CFSA and the school system made the task nearly impossible.

"The unreliability of CFSA's special education records ... affected our ability to fully accomplish our audit objective of accounting for children under CFSA's custody who received special education services," the auditors said in the report.

An upcoming inspector general report is expected to focus on whether the CFSA can account for all the foster children in its custody.

The auditors also noted that they "could not rely on or use records supplied" by the school system.

Among other findings of the report released by D.C. Inspector General Charles J. Willoughby, the auditors said the school system had included on its list several foster children who no longer were wards of the city and one who had died years earlier.

In addition, the inspector general sent 57 letters to residential-treatment facilities where the school system said students were receiving services. In 19 cases, children were not residing at the facilities, according to the audit.

Overall, more than 10,000 students receive special-education services at a cost of more than $100 million in the District, according to city records.

The audit concluded that school system and CFSA officials failed to execute written contracts for special-education services provided to foster children.

"CFSA and [the school system] did not effectively carry out their joint responsibility of accounting for children under CFSA's custody who were in special education programs," the auditors said.

The school system failed to maintain accurate information about CFSA children or where they were schooled, the audit reported.

The CFSA has failed to prepare a required annual report about the number of foster children in its care every year since a city law requiring the document went into effect in 2001.

"CFSA failed to comply with this legal reporting requirement for a number of reasons, including an apparent lack of regard for complying with District law," the audit stated. Only after the Office of the Inspector General sought the document did the CFSA provide a copy of its 2005 report.

Uma S. Ahluwalia, CFSA's interim director, who earns $122,117 a year, told Mr. Willoughby in a letter last month that her agency agreed with most of his findings and "is eager to use them to refocus its ongoing work with DC public schools."

The CFSA's letter also said the agency is improving its data monitoring and accounting.

Schools Superintendent Clifford B. Janey, who earns $250,000 a year, disagreed with the inspector general's finding that the public school system and the CFSA share a "joint responsibility" in accounting for foster children.

"Inaccurate data from CFSA impacts the ability of [the school system] to efficiently complete annual enrollment and residency verification," said Mr. Janey in a letter to Mr. Willoughby last month.

The superintendent acknowledged that the school system has had problems in collecting and maintaining accurate data about foster children receiving special education, but he said more staff will be hired to "remedy its data-collection process."

He also said the school system plans to revise its agreement with the CFSA to share enrollment and contract information.
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Problems at the agency are not new:


CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
2157 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC 20515-6143

REPRESENTATIVE TOM DAVIS
CHAIRMAN, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
OPENING STATEMENT
MAY 5, 2000

OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA'S CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICE AGENCY

Good afternoon and welcome. Today's hearing in the first of a series of hearings to examine the status of the District of Columbia's agencies overseen by Court-appointed receivers. Across the nation there have been 5 public agencies that have, at one time or another, been placed under the supervision of a court-appointed receiver. However, each of these receiverships was short-lived and quickly reformed and returned as a functioning agency of the government. There has never been a jurisdiction in the United States with more than one agency in receivership except for the District of Columbia. Presently, there are three outstanding Agency receiverships in the District: the Child and Family Services; the Commission on Mental Health Services, and the Corrections Medical Receiver for the District of Columbia Jail. Each of these agencies has languished in receivership for a substantial period of time and has continued to be plagued by systemic problems in the delivery of services. Each agency's inadequacies have been resistant towards the comprehensive reforms needed for them to return to the District's jurisdiction.

The District of Columbia Housing Authority, which is also under a receivership, is an exception to this situation. The Housing Authority had been faced with similar mismanagement problems; however, the appointed receiver has been successful in overhauling the District's public housing system. The Housing Authority is currently the only agency on track to be successfully returned to the District government.

These three troubled agencies have demonstrated extreme deficiencies in the delivery of their expected services. Children placed under the care of the Child and Family Services are often juggled from an abusive or neglectful home into an equally dangerous foster home, and are left forever emotionally and psychologically scarred. The Commission on Mental Health Services's operations have actually become worse since becoming a receivership. There are currently more mentally ill homeless people on the streets than ever before, group homes for the mentally ill are poorly run and neglected, and treatment is difficult to come by. The lack of improvement in their services has recently led the receiver to resign. The D.C. Jail Medical Services receivership's financial management is in dire straits. For example, the receiver recently issued a contract to a private entity, which had the D.C. contract as its only contract, and had never before been in business - at a cost of three times the national average. This year alone these three ailing . agencies combined will cost the District of Columbia's taxpayers $352 million in court-controlled spending.

While these agencies are in the jurisdictional hands of the court system, the District of Columbia government is powerless to provide any direction in their operations, yet is left to foot the bill. Therefore, Delegate Norton and I have joined together to introduce H.R. 3995, the District of Columbia Receivership Accountability Act of 2000, to induce substantial reforms within the Receiverships. H.R. 3995 will provide management guidance to these receiverships and make them more accountable to the District of Columbia government. There is a strong need for immediate legislative corrective action to force reform and we will be marking up this vital piece of legislation at the conclusion of this hearing.

Our hearing today is focused on the Child and Family Service Agency receivership, which was recently brought under the glare of the public spotlight with the tragic death of young Brianna Blackmond. While Brianna was under the care of the Child and Family Services Agency, her life was tragically cut short at 23 months by a blunt force trauma injury to the head. As the proud father of three children myself, I can say that stories such as Brianna's stab you in the heart and leaves you wondering in amazement, "How could this have happened?" Unfortunately, Brianna's death is not a story of a one time case slipping through the cracks of an otherwise well-functioning child welfare system. Brianna is just one example of many heart-wrenching stories of children adversely affected by the systemic problems of the District of Columbia's child welfare system.

The sordid history of the Child and Family Service Agency started over a decade ago with the LaShawn A v. Barry case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Plaintiff LaShawn A. was brought to the Child and Family Services Agency by her homeless mother when she was nearly 2 years old. At the time of the lawsuit, LaShawn A. was 7 and had developed severe emotional problems likely to last into her adulthood and may have suffered sexual abuse because of inappropriate placement and poor follow-up by District officials. Another shocking story is of Plaintiff Kevin, 11 at the time of the case, who had spent his entire life in foster care. At 8, he was so suicidal that he was admitted to a hospital, where he put himself in a trash can and asked to be discarded because he said he was worthless.

In 1991, the U.S. District Court Thomas F. Hogan ruled that the District's child welfare system failed to protect children from physical, psychological or emotional harm and that it violated federal law, district law, and the constitutional rights of children. Following the court's decision, the District of Columbia and the plaintiffs developed a comprehensive Remedial Order to correct the significant management and service delivery problems in the District's child protection, foster care and adoption services programs. After three years, the Child and Family Service Agency failed to comply with the Court Order and was placed under Court supervised receivership.

Five years later, under the leadership of Mrs. Ernestine Jones since 1997, the Child and Family Services Agency fails to meet the required reforms outlined by the Court Order. This was alarmingly evident in the Brianna case. Brianna and her seven siblings were placed under the care of the Child and Family Service Agency on May 5, 1998 when a neglect report was filed by neighbors who had seen the children digging through trash dumpsters scrounging for a morsel of food and dressed in soiled clothing. Four times during the children's stay in the legal and physical custody of the Child and Family Service agency from May 1998 to December 23, 1999 their mother, Charrisise Blackmond, petitioned for custody of her children. Each time the Court determined that Mrs. Blackmond was unable to meet the needs of her children and was only allowed supervised visitation with them. In November 1999, homeless, Mrs. Blackmond moved in with a friend, Angela O'Brien, as an illegal tenant in a subsidized housing unit. Angela O'Brien, herself, was no stranger to the child welfare system. In 1998 her four children were removed from her care because of allegations of abuse. The O'Brien children were later returned because of a lack of proof that O'Brien was the abuser.

On December 1, 1999 there was yet another custody hearing planned for Brianna. By law every social worker is to file a status report to the presiding judge before a hearing is scheduled to take place. As in Brianna's case, this practice is rarely followed. The day before the hearing was to take place Superior Court Judge Evelyn E.C. Queen canceled the hearing and rescheduled it for mid-January 2000. .However, when Mrs. Blackmond's attorney filed an emergency motion to return Brianna to her mother in time for Christmas, Judge Queen ruled to return Brianna and another sibling to her mother. Judge Queen made this ruling without holding a custody hearing, without seeing or speaking to Brianna's social worker, and without consulting the City's Corporation Counsel.

On December 23, 1999 Brianna and her siblings were taken by a new social worker not familiar with their case to their mother and dropped them off in front of the O'Brien house. She never took the time to examine the living conditions in the home or to even determine whether this was truly Mrs. Blackmond's legal residence. For two weeks, no one from the Child and Family Service Agency paid a follow-up visit to the family. No one from the Child and Family Service Agency investigated Brianna's welfare on January 3, 2000, when her mother called a neighborhood health clinic to report that her daughter was "shaking uncontrollably." Mrs. Blackmond brought her to the clinic, but never removed her from the car and canceled her scheduled appointment. No one paid attention to Brianna's well-being when her mother failed to bring her to the clinic the next day -for-her rescheduled appointment. A social worker finally visited the O'Brien home a day later and called the police. But it was too late. Brianna was taken to Children's Hospital barely breathing and unconscious from a blunt force trauma injury to the head. She died shortly thereafter.

Brianna's homicide is currently under investigation by the Metropolitan Police Department and is under a confidentiality ruling by Judge Queen. Therefore, many of the facts surrounding this case are not known. Fingers are being pointed in every direction by every agency involved to place blame for this tragic death. Seven agencies shared the responsibility of protecting Brianna Blackmond from harm, and yet seven agencies failed to help her. This case clearly reveals a breakdown not only within the Child and Family Service Agency, but with the inter-government agency relationship governing children who are innocent victims of abuse and neglect.

Today, we will be taking an in-depth view into impediments to reforming the Child and Family Service Agency Receivership. After five years dwindling as an agency separate from the District of Columbia's government, decisive action needs to be taken to enact progressive reform. Children in the District of Columbia need a functioning Child and Family Service Agency to look out for their well-being when their home environment is not safe. I look forward to hearing from our testifying witnesses to determine what immediate actions need to be taken to prevent further tragedies from occurring.