Blogs by Deborah K. Frontiera
Fighting CPS
10/31/2011 11:40:51 AM
The purpose of this blog is to provide updates on some of the cases I reported in my book (Fighting CPS: Guilty Until Proven Innocent of Child Protective Services Charges ISBN 9-780-9800061-6-2) that had not been resolved when the book went to press, and to report other cases where CPS is not working up to par. I’d also like to hear about cases in which Child Protective Services did the right thing so those cases can serve as examples of what should be done. Occasionally, I will report helpful tips and web sites with advice on fighting CPS.
May all children out trick-or-treating this evening be safe in every way.
Today, a sad story on the extreme of not protecting at-risk children:
A friend in St. Petersburg, FL, recently sent me an article form the St. Petersburg Times (Sunday, Oct. 9, 2011front page and page 10A, John Barry, staff writer, jberry.sptimes.com, 813-226-3383) about serious problems in the Tampa/Hillsborough Co. area. The story reports that in the last two years, eight children have died while supposedly “supervised” by Hillsborough Kids, Inc. I haven’t checked the statistics lately in Harris Co. Texas, but I doubt child fatalities have been that high; but then Harris County’s “swoop and scoop” tactics of families who have never even been on CPS’s radar may bring my home county to the other end of the pendulum.
Among the little angles in the article:
Mario Exavier Lopez, Jr: one and a half months old when he died in Nov. 2010 of head trauma. Two siblings had previously been removed from the home and then returned to the parents.
Ulysses Franklin: eighteen months old when struck by a neighbor’s car after his mother started to put him in the car and then stepped 50 feet away to put trash in a dumpster. Another car in the apartment lot struck the child. The year before, the child had been found sleeping with a loaded gun during a drug raid. Charges were dropped and the child returned to his mother.
Taylor Jacobs: age twelve when she committed suicide while her mother was in another room. Mom, a prescription drug addict, was not supposed to have the child visit unsupervised. Grandmother had custody, but Family Services did not know the grandmother was letting the child visit Mom unsupervised.
Markela Thompson: age five months in Dec. 2010, when her father found her in her baby bed “not breathing.” She had several fractures in various stages of healing, scratch marks on her neck and a bruised forehead. Mother was charged with her murder.s
Emanuel Wesley Murray, Jr.: age four months in May 2009 when his teen-age mother’s ex-boyfriend tossed him out a car window. Caseworkers had visited the mother sixty times.
Ronderique Anderson: sixteen months old when fatally beaten in his father’s home in Feb. 2011. He had been taken away from the mother but placed with the father even though there was a history of domestic violence.
Ezekiel Mathis: age one year when he died in May 2011. Mom’s boyfriend was charged with beating him to death. A judge had barred him from the home, but he continued to live there.
Avelyn Gaston-Rodriguez: age two when she died of a blow to the head in Oct. 2009. Mom gave her up at birth. She was placed with the father whose girlfriend had three children of her own and they had a three-month-old baby together. Girlfriend, who became the caretaker, was “overwhelmed.”
According to the article, the Department of Children and Families in that area had begun “outsourcing” services to families back in 2001. They contract with private vendors (some of them apparently “for profit” social service agencies). Was this a “cost cutting” move? One wonders at the price of “cost cutting” if that was the case. The children named above had been under the supervision of one of those vendors, Hillsborough Kids, who in turn, had subcontracted with several other agencies. (Sounds like the right hand did not know what the left was doing.) Hillsborough Kids is now at risk of losing its $65.5 MILLION state contract.
To be fair and balanced, I should also mention that the article quotes that Hillsborough Kids “successfully” supervised 10,000 other children in the past five years. The agency admits its failures and is taking steps to correct problems with subcontractors and deficiencies in the future.
ONE WOULD CERTAINLY HOPE SO.
Next week: correctional steps being taken.
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