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- Study Shows More Failings Of Child Safety In New Jersey
- Richard Lezin Jones. New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast); New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]04 June 2003: B.1.
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- In more than 230 instances in the past two years, the state found that abuse had occurred in one of its foster homes or other foster care institutions, but workers neglected for weeks and months to put together any kind of plan to rescue or otherwise protect the children from more abuse.
- Those were among the findings in a study released yesterday that further detailed the failings of New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services. The report, like several before it, was commissioned by Children's Rights Inc., a Manhattan-based advocacy group, as part of its lawsuit against New Jersey over the quality of its foster care system. The state is now discussing a settlement with Children's Rights.
- The report suggests that the state reduce the time required for adoptions, maintain closer contact with children placed in foster homes and other settings, and stop placing children in foster homes where workers have already found that neglect or abuse occurred.
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- Dozens of child welfare workers in South Jersey are responsible for the safety of 80 children each, more than three times the accepted national standard. In one case recently a single worker had to oversee the care of 156 children who had been abused or neglected or were deemed at risk of being harmed.
- More than 1,100 children that the state's child welfare agency decided no longer needed foster care were nonetheless back in the state's care within months. Workers often simply failed to determine whether the birth parents were able, or even wanted, to care for their children again.
- In more than 230 instances in the past two years, the state found that abuse had occurred in one of its foster homes or other foster care institutions, but workers neglected for weeks and months to put together any kind of plan to rescue or otherwise protect the children from more abuse.
- Those were among the findings in a study released yesterday that further detailed the failings of New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services. The report, like several before it, was commissioned by Children's Rights Inc., a Manhattan-based advocacy group, as part of its lawsuit against New Jersey over the quality of its foster care system. The state is now discussing a settlement with Children's Rights.
- The 80-page report, prepared by Ira Schwartz, the provost of Temple University in Philadelphia and an expert in child welfare issues, uses the state's statistics and the firsthand accounts of state workers and administrators to paint a damning portrait of what Mr. Schwartz concludes is a dysfunctional, mismanaged child welfare system.
- The agency, the report found, does not meet any of the six child welfare standards set by the Child and Family Service Review, a federal panel that routinely evaluates states on such issues as incidence of child abuse and the time required to complete adoptions.
- Rates of abuse and neglect among children in the state's custody are about three times the level that the federal panel says is cause for serious concern. For children awaiting adoption, the abuse rate is more than 12 times that threshold. In one child welfare office in the state, the report said, the abuse rate was 30 times the standard set by the federal panel.
- Joe Delmar, a spokesman for the agency, said that the federal panel would review New Jersey's compliance with the standards next year, and added that so far, none of the roughly three dozen states reviewed had met all the criteria.
- The report suggests that the state reduce the time required for adoptions, maintain closer contact with children placed in foster homes and other settings, and stop placing children in foster homes where workers have already found that neglect or abuse occurred.
- Mr. Delmar said the state welcomed many of those suggestions, including reducing caseloads for workers and speeding up adoptions.
- ''The report offers many excellent recommendations,'' Mr. Delmar said. He said many had already been adopted as part of Gov. James E. McGreevey's plan to transform the agency.
- ''As we have said before, the transformation will not happen overnight,'' Mr. Delmar added.
- The report's findings echo those uncovered by the state itself five years ago, when a special task force laid out the problems and possible solutions for the agency, which has more than 6,000 children in foster care and estimates that it serves more than 75,000 children and families each year.
- The report presented a grim statistical appreciation of the depths of the problems plaguing the agency.
- The report found that as late as last February, 40 caseworkers in South Jersey bore caseloads of 80 children or more. More than two-thirds of the children who were transferred from the agency's care to their homes were sent back to the state again. One agency official said their movement was like a Ping-Pong ball's.
- The report also found that there were 234 ''corrective action plans'' for foster homes or other institutions where abuse or neglect had occurred that had not yet been filed. Nearly a fifth of those dated back to 2001.
- ''If those plans are not timely implemented, children will languish in unsafe placements,'' the report said.
- In preparing the report, Mr. Schwartz also reviewed the depositions of several high-ranking staff members in the agency that have been filed in connection with the Children's Rights lawsuit.
- The report notes, for instance, the deposition of Elizabeth McGinnis, an agency official who is charged with ensuring that the agency act on reports of abuse and neglect in foster homes and state-run institutions.
- Yet, the report said, she indicated that she did not even know who within the agency had ultimate responsibility for the completion of those investigations or whether they were overseen at the state or local level.
- Mr. Schwartz also called on the division to do a better job placing children in permanent homes. Children who have been frequently moved stay in state custody, on average, for three years.
- The agency remains under a state of emergency declared by Gwendolyn L. Harris, the commissioner of the Department of Human Services, which oversees the agency. The declaration was issued in January after the body of 7-year-old Faheem Williams was found in the locked basement of a Newark home.
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- Copyright New York Times Company Jun 4, 2003
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