As promised, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty held a news conference this morning to announce a series of actions designed to address what his office is calling “shortfalls” in the city’s Child and Family Services Agency. The new measures include immediate policy changes such as increased time and reporting spent on each case, a review of past cases and a series of firings of individuals who were involved in the Jacks’ case.

“A minimum of six people will be terminated from their positions. That number could rise to eight,” Fenty said. The names of the people he plans to fire were not released, but they include a division director and at least five other child welfare employees.

Fenty also played recordings of two phone calls made by a school social worker last April to police and the child welfare hotline. Kathy Lopes’ calls were to report a visit she paid to the Jacks home in which she observed Benita Jacks, who stands accused of murdering her four daughters, appearing to be suffering from serious mental illness and holding her eldest daughter, 16-year-old Brittany Jacks, hostage inside their Southeast D.C. home. The Washington Post has since made one of these telephone call recordings available on their web site. The frustration heard in Lopes’ voice and in her description of getting nowhere with CFSA and being transferred all over when trying to contact someone at the MPD who could help her is pretty tough to take.

D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), a former social worker who chairs the committee that oversees the District’s welfare agencies, has said he will have a public hearing this week on the case.

Photo of Mayor Adrian Fenty at last week’s crime scene by the Associated Press