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DCF Vows To Fight Federal Receivership
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-d...artsep13.story |
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