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September 20th 03, 05:59 PM
DCF Vows To Fight Federal Receivership
September 13, 2003
By COLIN POITRAS, Courant Staff Writer

Department of Children and Families Commissioner Darlene Dunbar said
Friday her agency is going to fight a proposal to have the
federal government take control of operations.

Dunbar said Connecticut would do well to learn from the failures
experienced by Washington, D. C., which was placed under federal
receivership in 1995 with limited success.

"This department is really focusing on what we should do as a
department and not focusing on receivership because I don't feel it
would be helpful to Connecticut's children and families," Dunbar said.

On Thursday, lawyers representing thousands of abused and neglected
children in Connecticut submitted a formal request to a
federal court monitor to have DCF held in contempt and management of
the state's foster care system taken out of DCF's hands.

The lawyers said they were forced to take such a drastic step because
of the state's repeated failure to comply with numerous
court-ordered mandates to improve care over the past 12 years that
were contained in a federal consent decree. Those mandates
focused on such areas as timely investigations, child visits, reduced
caseloads and speedy adoptions.

The legal advocates for the children said they tried to reason with
the state over years of on-again, off-again negotiations, but the
final straw came several weeks ago when an independent court monitor
issued a new report. That report found that children already
traumatized by abuse and neglect in their homes actually were getting
worse emotionally and mentally because of DCF's inability to
care for them as their statutory parent.

"This kind of remedy, receivership, is a very serious and extreme
remedy," said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children's
Rights Inc. in New York and one of the attorneys for the children in a
1989 class-action suit. "But we think that it can be the most helpful
when there has been, as is the case in Connecticut, a complete failure
of management and leadership."

Dunbar said she intends to submit an alternative plan to the court
monitor within the next two weeks that she thinks will serve children
better than receivership.

"It is a plan that we believe will achieve results and be successful
over time," Dunbar said. She declined to discuss the specifics
Friday, but said she will talk about them after presenting them to the
monitor.

A federal judge could rule on whether the management of DCF should be
turned over to federal authorities by the end of next month.

If the judge opts for receivership, it would mark the first time in
modern Connecticut history that a state agency was turned over to
federal control, and it would be a striking blow to Gov. John G.
Rowland's administration.

The last child welfare agency to be in receivership nationally was in
Washington, D. C. In that jurisdiction, lawyers representing
thousands of abused and neglected children pushed for federal control,
claiming years of indifference, managerial shortcomings
and long-standing organizational divisiveness in the Child and Family
Service Agency was causing children to suffer.

An assessment of the receiver's success by the U. S. General
Accounting Office five years later in 2000 showed that management
and program changes introduced by the court-appointed receiver had
"fallen short of expected results." The report said the efforts to
recruit and train social workers, provide additional funding for
community services and develop a stronger organizational structure
have had a limited effect on the agency's ability to provide better
child welfare services.

For example, the report said, caseload standards remained above
permissible levels because of hiring problems with caseworkers
and difficulties retaining qualified staff.

Lustbader said Connecticut's situation is different from Washington's,
and receivership should work better here.

"The failure of the foster care system in Washington was a complete
collapse of municipal government and a huge failure of
resources," Lustbader said. "Here in Connecticut, we have a
well-funded government, and what is clearly going on is a failure of
leadership and management. We feel that is just the right situation
where a receiver can make improvements."

DCF spokesman Gary Kleeblatt defended the agency's performance Friday,
saying there have been significant improvements and
more are on the way.

Kleeblatt pointed out that in a report filed in April, the same
independent monitor praised DCF for meeting agreed-upon goals in key
areas such as reducing abuse of children in state custody, keeping
children removed from their homes near their homes and
keeping siblings together. Kleeblatt said the agency also had shown
improvements in doing faster investigations, reducing the
length of time children are in state care and providing families
services to prevent children being removed.

Dunbar said the previously agreed-upon goals that the agency failed to
meet as part of the consent decree were "too much, too
soon." Previously, she has said she would like to limit the demands to
focus on small bunches at a time in order to ensure the
agency's success.

"If someone gave me 28 objectives to try to be successful in in 18
months, I would probably not succeed in all of them," said Dunbar,
who became the DCF commissioner in February.
http://www.ctnow.com/news/yahoo/hc-dcfreceiver0913.artsep13.story