Child advocates are raising concerns over what appears to be a surge in deaths among children whose families have a history with the state child protection agency.
Officials with the state Division of Family and Children Services acknowledged that 35 children with such a history died between Dec. 1 and Feb. 12. For all of 2011, there were 92 such deaths.
While advocates worry the agency is not properly investigating neglect and abuse allegations, consequently leaving children in dangerous households, officials said the apparent increase in deaths may be a spike that does not signal a problem.
Four of the deaths were attributable to abuse and 10 to medical problems, DFCS said. Officials noted that some of the children’s deaths may have been unrelated to abuse or neglect.
Georgia is under pressure to improve its child welfare system. Over the years, the Georgia DFCS system has been criticized for shortages in staffing, bouncing children from foster home to foster home and losing children’s records. The state settled a lawsuit in 2005 that demanded improvements in the state-run foster care systems in Fulton and DeKalb counties.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reviewed the numbers Friday with DFCS officials. Initially, DFCS Deputy Director Kathy Herren said it was too early to determine if the number since Dec. 1 was high. Later she said, “This is a mathematical number that is higher.”
The statistics came to light through an joint inquiry by the AJC and Channel 2 Action News. The children who died include those whose families have had interactions within the past five years with DFCS, the state agency that investigates child abuse and neglect. Those interactions may have involved the child who later died, or another sibling. The children may not have been in the custody of the agency or had an open DFCS case at the time of their death.
In addition to abuse and medical problems, other causes listed were house fire, bathtub incidents, car accidents, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome incidents in which a sleeping parent rolls over and smothers a child, abduction by a non-family member and accidental gunshot by another child. Some are listed as “unknown” with no evidence of abuse.
The total over a 10-week period “is an outrageous figure,” said Don Keenan, an Atlanta attorney and frequent critic of the state child welfare system. “That’s a schoolbus full of kids.”
The agency’s handling of one case, involving the Feb. 6 death of a 4-year-old Fulton County boy, resulted in the firing of three DFCS workers, said DFCS section director Peggy Woodard. The boy died after an alleged incident of abuse. The child had an open case with DFCS, but a caseworker had not visited the family in about two months. Caseworkers are supposed to visit a child once a month, she said.
None of the other instances of children’s deaths resulted in any disciplinary action to DFCS staff, officials said.
Asked if the agency had enough caseworkers, Herren, an agency veteran elevated to her post late last year, would not answer with a direct yes or no.
Gov. Nathan Deal’s office has been briefed on the 35 deaths, a spokesman said.
State Child Advocate Tonya Boga, responding to an AJC inquiry, said she is looking into the recent deaths, as is standard practice. She noted that a “significant number of the deaths involve issues with safe sleep practices.” DFCS said six of the 35 deaths related to people sleeping in the same bed with children and rolling on top of them.
Similar concerns about sleep-related deaths were raised by former state Child Advocate Tom Rawlings, who said, “Was there a DFCS history of drug or alcohol abuse among those families such that drugs or alcohol may have contributed to the caretakers rolling over on the child and smothering him or her?”
Rawlings also raised concerns that four of the deaths were attributable to abuse, though DFCS officials pointed out that in one case DFCS took custody shortly before the child died in the hospital. Rawlings said usually about 10 children die each year in Georgia of abuse or neglect who have a history with DFCS.
“So you already had 40 percent of your annual expected outcomes in a short period,” he said. “That makes sense?”
DFCS officials said they will spend the weekend comparing the number of incidents in the 2½-month period in question against that same period in prior years, to determine whether similar spikes have occurred.
DFCS has seen an increase in the number of children taken into state custody and investigations into child abuse and neglect in the past year, meaning that the agency is interacting with more children and families. Some advocates raised concerns that the increasing workload could be overwhelming some caseworkers who work with families, leading to poor decision-making.
Herren of DFCS said there are vacancies among the caseworker staff but said she did not know how many.
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