January 28, 2008
Grim Picture of Youth Fatalities in the District
The Examiner has a disturbing story today citing a recent report by the Child Fatality Review Committee showing that 59 of the 157 young people who died in the District in 2006 were from families that were known to child welfare agencies.
The report comes on the heels of the murders of the four daughters of Banita Jacks, allegedly at the hands of their mother. After the discovery of their bodies, Mayor Fenty quickly fired six child welfare employees and vowed to reform the agency. A social worker from a school where two of the girls had attended had tried to get police and the city's Child and Family Services Agency to intervene on the girls' behalf when she suspected they were being abused, but the agency failed to help before the girls died.
While the report shows that the majority of youth deaths in 2006 can be blamed on natural causes, the Examiner is right to suggest that this report shows the Jacks case may be indicative of a much larger problem. More than a quarter of the deaths listed in the report were from families that had been accused of abuse or neglect multiple times.
It's heartbreaking to consider it took a crime of the magnitude of the Jacks case for the city to get serious about overhauling its child welfare agency -- let's hope Mayor Fenty, who was actually in charge of the committee that had authority over the city's health and child welfare agencies when we served as Ward 4's Council member, has now been shamed into making sure his planned reforms are meaningful and productive.
Photo of Mayor Adrian Fenty at the Jacks crime scene by the Associated Press
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Okay ... time to vent. There are people in this world who just shouldn't have children. Period.
Get out your "jump to conclusions" mats.
"Most of the children and young people who died in 2006 died from natural causes, but the child fatality report found that more than a quarter of the families had been accused of abuse or neglect multiple times."
If a cause of death is listed as natural causes, then by definition the death is not due to abuse or neglect. To me, without other evidence, it seems irrelevant that a quarter of the families had been accused of abuse/neglect. Also, accusations of abuse are not the same as confirmed instances of abuse.
I'm not saying there's no cause for concern, but the conclusions don't seem to follow logically from the data.
Not that I disagree that they should work on Child Services... they should... but two things to note in this article:
1) they use the death of a 2 mo old in a dirty apt as a heartwrenching case. Ok, but what do we expect child services to do inside of 8 weeks? Do we want them to have the ability to judge a family and remove a child in that short of a period of time?
2) This includes youth up to 22 yo. So full adults killed by other adults (albeit young adults of 18-22) are included in this. Child services does not have jurisdiction over 18-22 yo (I assume) but nowhere in the article does it clarify how many UNDER 18 children were lost. It might be a much smaller number. Or not. It'd be good to know.
Considering how right The Examiner is to call attention to this, better reporting might have been nice.
FOUR LITTLE GIRLS vs. D.C. GOVERNMENT:
JUST LIKE WARD 4 COUNCILMEMBER FENTY,
UNDER MAYOR FENTY MORE HORRORS WILL COME
The phony outrage and fake sense of urgency is almost as sickening as the death of four little girls. Have we forgotten mayor Adrian Fenty's oversight and handling of MRDDA and DMH? As head of the Committee on Human Services, chaired by then Ward 4 councilmember Fenty, there were ongoing horrors in the Departments of Mental Health (DMH) and the Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Administration (MRDDA).
Mayor Fenty needs to stop the predictable ambulance chasing for photo-ops to present the image of a mayor-in-charge and on the case. Remember, it has been one year since Fenty's election, with the "promise" of better governance. Brittany, Tatianna, N'Kiah and Aja suffered and died well within the Fenty Administration. Unfortunately, for D.C.'s innocent and vulnerable, the trail of neglect, injuries and deaths seem to follow wherever Adrian Fenty operates.
The bottom line point is that when District government takes our hard earned tax dollars and says that it will take full responsibility and accountability for our common public safety with various publicly funded services and legislation, then it's definitively the government's fault when they fail.
Surely, the District is overloaded with domestic cases and socioeconomic problems. Nevertheless, D.C. government's responsibility is to be proactive with best practices for operating public agencies effectively. So far, the Fenty Administration years are trending toward becoming some of our worst on numerous accounts.
Firing those directly responsible is one thing. However, if you don't pay attention to the details of correcting the systemic problems that caused the death of these four girls (and nearly 200 others), there will be more horrors to come. Having ADD (administrative deficit disorder) since his chairmanship of the Committee on Human Services, we may have to settle for more horrors resulting from the neglect and incompetence already in progress. Mayor Adrian Fenty needs to be effectively proactive and pay attention before the news cameras arrive.
District citizens and children will be more impressed by real results that keep them genuinely safe, rather than the pretense, hype and media spin of a public official appearing to be in charge.
Dennis Moore, Chairperson,
District of Columbia Independents for Citizen Control (DCICC) Political Party
http://www.DCIndependents.org
dennis@DCIndependents.org