D.C.’s child welfare agency has become “unstable,” endangering not only children who may be neglected or abused, but harming countless others who rely on the city to help them find caring families, a federal court-appointed monitor has concluded.
“Since January, child welfare system performance has suffered across the board,” Judith Meltzer wrote in a Sept. 15 letter to federal Judge Thomas Hogan, who appointed Meltzer and the Center for the Study of Social Policy to monitor D.C.’s failing child protective services.
Worse, Meltzer concluded, “there was little evidence of decisive action by the District to stem the protective services crisis and ensure the safety of children.”
Meltzer’s letter, made public Wednesday, comes as the District fends off an effort to have it found in contempt for failing to protect the city’s children.
D.C. has been subject to a class-action lawsuit over its child welfare system for decades and only emerged from court receivership in the early 2000s after signing a consent decree promising to live up to its mandate to protect children from abuse and neglect.
The city appeared to be making progress toward that goal until January, when the bodies of four little girls were found in a squatters’ home in Southeast.
The girls’ mother, Banita Jacks, has since been charged with murder, but the public was horrified to discover that child welfare bureaucrats ignored desperate calls to help Jacks’ daughters.
Since then, the city has been besieged with legions of hotline calls and its backlog of open investigation has exploded.
As of Sept. 8, Meltzer reported in her letter to Hogan, child welfare officials had more than 3,000 investigations that were open beyond the 30-day statutory minimum.
Of those cases, at least 450 children who were the subject of abuse or neglect complaints hadn’t been seen by a social worker.
It’s not clear whether the city can respond to its crisis, Meltzer wrote.
Since the Jacks case became public, dozens of bureaucrats have left the city’s payroll, increasing the caseload for an already overworked staff.
Nearly one in every four social worker positions remains open, Meltzer wrote.
Meanwhile, the abuse and neglect crisis is also effecting the agency’s other missions, Meltzer wrote.
Adoptions in the city have been cut in half in two years, Meltzer’s letter states.
D.C.’s Attorney General-nominee Peter Nickles, who is defending the city, declined comment before Wednesday’s hearing.
