"Crimes Against Humanity in America"
....So I don’t get it, if you were at a hospital with an operation – with operating room not having the money to sterilize the scalpel and instrumentation –you would expect everyone with a license to report the problem to the state authorities –let alone the threat a huge legal suit.
So I don’t have to much faith in the staff members, the nurses, doctors, bureaucrats, CEO and board of directors, who knowingly sit back not reporting life threatening deficiencies in their faculties. I am a little tired with the- I am just trying to do my job -in an environment of life threatening resources squeeze –with nobody having the courage to raise hell.
I can say that across the board –I never seen a more unconscionable group of educated people, as in the human service industry –where they tolerate such inhuman treatment of their patients for the sake of their jobs.
We killed Dontel Jeffers
By Peter Pollard March 16, 2005
I AM RESPONSIBLE for the death of Dontel Jeffers. Not because of any act of violence I committed against the 4-year-old boy who died in foster care in Dorchester on March 6. I never met him or even heard his name until his death.
I am responsible for the death of Dontel Jeffers because of my silence.
After serving 14 years as a frontline social worker for the Department of Social Services, I know his death is the direct, predictable result of a system overburdened, underfunded, and largely ignored, except when a tragedy involving an abused or neglected child erupts in the headlines. Then, as a community, we look for somewhere to point a finger of blame.
I'll start with me.
For 14 years, I struggled with my colleagues at DSS, many of whom had dedicated their entire working lives, committed to the seemingly impossible task of protecting children from physical, emotional, and sexual violence and neglect. In most instances, by the time families came to our notice, the children were already seriously harmed. Our efforts to help were stymied by severely limited funding for therapy, nearly nonexistent pediatric psychiatric services, courts so clogged that trials to determine a child's future often stretched out for more than a year, and a foster-care crisis so dire that good homes are drowned in placements, and that the temptation to accept mediocre caregivers has become too great to resist.
DSS is so overwhelmed with casualties, it is reduced to operating like a field hospital, making triage decisions on small children's lives. But as a social worker, I felt we were the frontline defense, doing our best with what we'd been given. So I'll admit that when I had misgivings about a foster home or a residential placement or a hospital discharge, I often saw no choice but to accept quietly what I knew was inadequate. And though lack of alternatives was a factor, I'm embarrassed to admit that that calculation inevitably also included loyalty to the system, to my coworkers, and fear of the personal consequences of rocking the boat.
But I should have been shouting, openly declaring that those inadequacies threatened the very children we were trying to help.
I am responsible for Dontel Jeffers's death because of my silence. And so are thousands of social workers, agency managers, community mental health workers, foster parents, judges, police and probation officers, attorneys, and teachers who every day see firsthand the evidence of the gradual diminishment in these already victimized children's lives.
Each in his own way has accepted the limitations of the system, passing from anger to frustration to resignation to quiet defeat. They should be shouting too, declaring that our refusal to do more is in fact society's crime of neglect.
As adults, we pay lip service to our commitment to keep children safe. But we don't have the courage to really face the depth of their vulnerability or the enormity of our failure. If you want proof, try breaking the silence by bringing up child abuse at a social gathering. Collectively, we've handed that ugly topic over to someone else. We've horribly shirked our personal responsibility to protect Dontel Jeffers and thousands like him who are our neighbors.
For Dontel, it's too late. But as a community, we should be openly declaring our willingness to open our eyes and our hearts to provide the enormous resources required to save the others. Effective early intervention could ultimately bring huge benefits in the form of well-functioning families and curtailed cycles of violence, sexual abuse, homelessness, and substance abuse. But the investment has to be made because it's right, not just because it's cost effective.
I am responsible for Dontel Jeffers's death because of my silence. And so are you.
Peter Pollard, a social worker for 14 years at the Department of Social Services, is a graduate student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
GLOBE EDITORIAL
Questions on a tragedy
March 16, 2005
THE DEATH of Dontel Jeffers, a 4-year-old foster child, remains under investigation. One investigator has cited signs that the boy was beaten. Regardless of whether the March 6 death, in Dorchester, is ruled accidental or the result of a criminal act, it is fair to ask if the tragedy was the result of a system failure within the Department of Social Services and its orbit of private contractors or was an extraordinary occurrence.
Oversight did break down in at least one area. Normally, both a DSS social worker and a social worker associated with the private provider of specialized foster care services would visit the foster home within about a week of placement. DSS Commissioner Harry Spence says a DSS social worker had arranged such a meeting for March 2, but the foster mother canceled the visit. No visit had been conducted by the foster care contract agency Massachusetts Mentor, according to Spence.
Jeffers suffered from emotional disabilities and had been placed in so-called therapeutic foster care on Feb. 24 with a 24-year-old foster mother who also cared for her own toddler. Nothing about the foster mother raised red flags, according to Spence. Before taking Jeffers into her home, the foster mother had received training to deal with emotionally disturbed children from Massachusetts Mentor, the DSS contractor specializing in out-of-home and in-home care for the disabled. The foster mother passed a criminal background check and had cared for foster children on eight other occasions, according to Spence.
There is no way to know if a timely home visit might have revealed potential for danger. But the rationale for contracting out specialized home care to private providers like Massachusetts Mentor is based, largely, on the better staff-to-client ratios and administrative supports found in the private social service agencies. If private providers fail to perform up to par in areas like home visits, the Legislature should consider bringing the tougher foster care cases back under the roof of DSS.
While the Jeffers investigation continues, the governor and Legislature should also be thinking about how best to serve the state's 11,000 foster care children, including the roughly 3,000 emotionally disturbed youngsters who require specialized foster care in home settings. Right now, it is possible for a foster care parent who is found unfit by one contractor to affiliate with a new agency with little fear that the records will follow, although no evidence has surfaced that this applied to the Jeffers case. But access to records is a key area for reform.
Budget cuts in recent years also hurt efforts to recruit new foster parents, as do low per diem payments.
The investigation is ongoing, and so should the efforts to improve the quality of foster care in Massachusetts.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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