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There's been a lot more attention placed on the goings on at D.C.'s Child and Family Services Agency since the gruesome discovery of the murdered daughters of Banita Jacks, and rightly so. But two different stories in today's edition of the Examiner paint nearly opposite portraits of what might be going wrong inside the agency.
First is Bill Myers' story, about how the principal of Latin American Montessori Bilingual School called the city’s abuse hot line to report a child she suspected of being molested at home, only to be basically blown off by a child welfare worker on the other end. Cristina Encinas said she was told she didn’t have enough expertise to judge the situation and that the city would not investigate without more evidence. Encinas was eventually able to convince authorities to look in on the child, and relatives of the little girl are now being prosecuted for abuse.
But then there's Harry Jaffe's column, which chronicles the story of two parents wrongly accused of abusing their twin toddlers. Jaffe characterizes the city's child welfare agency as being "overzealous" and having "sunk its claws" into the Caplan family, who were recently exonerated of suspicions that they shook one of their children after an ER visit revealed retinal hemorrhage in one of them. The Caplans' children were briefly taken away from them during an investigation, and they remain on the city's child protection register. Jaffe is outraged that something like this could happen to a family he deems to exude innocence and light, and somewhat ridiculously chalks the whole thing up to "reverse discrimination", because the Caplans are wealthy.
Perhaps these two stories both reflect an agency struggling to cope under extreme pressure and heavy caseloads, but we're much more disturbed by the former story than the latter. It must have been awful for the Caplans to go through the ordeal of having their children removed from their home for two weeks, but isn't a zealous child welfare agency exactly what the city has been demanding since the Jacks murders?
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Why on earth would anyone want a "zealous" agency. You want dilligent, professional, and above all competant. Both cases are uniquely bad in their own ways, and little is gained from qualifying the degrees of ineptitude.
I'm guessing you have no kids?
I think that's right -- this isn't a choice between story A and story B. Neither is the exemplar for a child services organization, and we can be appalled by both.
The real story is: when family messes up there's little society can do as a correction.
Echoing Coro and DC1, these aren't conflicting stories, they're stories at two extremes of iccompentence.
incompetence. duh.
A few years back I put little Billy in "The Quiet Cage" after he interrupted my marathon Everquest session. Unfortunately, I forgot to check up on the rapscallion for a week or so, leading to some... difficulties.
The good news is that when Billy II came along, DC was kind enough to let him reuse Billy I's social security number. Child services can be so helpful!
Kids fall down and hurt themselves. We can't have people afraid to go to the hospital for fear their children will be taken. The little girls were probably terrified - an agency had better have good cause to do that to a family, not just the power to do it.
If I remember correctly from the Post story on this, the little girl that was taken away from the Caplans still suffers from separation anxiety as a result of the incident and that the DC government has adamantly refused to remove the Caplans' name from their 'child abuser database' despite the fact that a judge ruled that their daughter's injuries were the result of an accident. So not only did they have their kids taken away from them, an event which apparently resulted in a certain level of trauma to one of the girls, but now they have to wear a big scarlet 'A' for all eternity even though they did nothing wrong.
Marc Fisher also wrote a story about the Caplans' ordeal this past Sunday that is much better in explaining the details of the city's incompetence and--yes--reverse discrimination in connection with this case. Fisher quotes from a memo written by CFSA head Sharlynn Bobo, in which she wrote:
"This family is privileged and able to marshal significant resources to accomplish its goals and fight the allegations. I believe that we made the right decision [to take the girls away from their parents]."
Sommer, in view of this memo, do you still believe that it is "somewhat ridiculous" to raise the specter of reverse discrimination? Before writing about a sensitive subject like this, maybe you should do a little more diligence first. Also, this incident happened last September--before the Jacks incident came to light.
Additionally, I don't think that your seemingly flippant comment that it "must have been awful" for these parents to have their kids taken away from them for two weeks is appropriate. It shows a lack of sensitivity, especially in connection with your back-of-the-hand brush-off of the reverse discrimination issue where you're apparently unaware of additional reported facts. It also shows a lack of recognition of the issues; as one other poster commented, surely you don't have kids yourself. I know of several parents who will no longer take their kids to Children's Hospital because of this and other incidents. Which is too bad.
Ah, sweet Sommer. Are you really this naive?
The term the city workers used to describe the family was 'privileged'. Used as a term of suspicion.
What exactly do you think 'privileged' means in DC? It means white and not poor. This has long been a DC code word for 'not black enough and not poor enough.'
They used this family's 'privileged' status as a reason to pursue them so relentlessly.
The Post story also quotes the Caplan father as saying they understood the initial inquiry by DCCFS based on their daughter's injuries...it was what came after that, that they disagreed with (and have had to spend $75,000 in savings to fight).