At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, there is much to be admired among the people here and the work that they do.
Recently, one story has especially tugged at my heartstrings and touched our readers as well. As I reported in a previous column, I started the child adoption process about two years ago. I have been working with a private agency to get a little girl out of the nation’s fragile foster care system.
So it is with particular interest that I have closely followed and admired the work of AJC reporter Alan Judd, who has written about Georgia’s child welfare system, including foster care and adoption.
Since last year, Alan’s coverage has at times brought me to tears. The stories of children dying in possibly preventable situations have been jaw-dropping. As I go through my personal experience with adoption, these stories also have, at times, made me angry with the system and those responsible for ensuring the safety of these children.
In addition to Alan’s coverage, the AJC’s legislative team this year closely monitored and reported on legislation to privatize much of the state system. That sweeping plan failed to pass in the final hours of the legislative session amid infighting over unrelated bills.
As negotiations stalled, Gov. Nathan Deal announced a commission to review the state’s child welfare system. Its members were named last week.
The question that the legislation sought to address was whether privatization of child welfare services was good public policy for Georgia’s children and families.
The proposal would have required that the Division of Family and Children Services bid out child welfare services statewide through contracts with community agencies. As with anything, there were supporters and non-supporters of the legislation.
It would be inappropriate to express my opinion on that debate, but it is fair to say that doing nothing is unacceptable. My hope is that Gov. Deal will push for a thorough review that leads to positive results for children in the system. What the state doesn’t need is a review with lots of research, but void of immediate results.
A quick personal adoption update here: Things are progressing and I’m hopeful that this will be the year I become a mom and that a little girl’s life will be forever changed for the better.
As I go through my own personal process, I’ll be watching to see how Georgia leaders respond to changes needed in the child welfare system.
A few Sundays ago, Alan wrote about the breakdown in a “review process that is supposed to dig deep into why a child died and search for ways to prevent more deaths.”
Alan told the story of Marnee Kay Downey, who was 8 months old when she died from an overdose of a painkiller. She also was malnourished. Alan’s research found that Georgia was the first state to create committees for each county to examine every death of a child. Today, all other states follow a similar practice. But Georgia’s review process has become an “empty exercise,” Alan wrote.
The AJC examined reports on 464 deaths that county committees submitted in 2012 to the state Child Fatality Review Panel, which oversees their work and found that in most cases, the county committees’ work was “superficial and slow.”
The point of this kind of investigative coverage is to hold government agencies accountable for correcting mistakes that may exist. You can count on Alan and others here at AJC to continue reporting on this topic.
I asked Alan what the most surprising discovery has been in his reporting.
“Most surprising is a tough one,” he said. “Probably the number of children who die simply because no one provides even basic care: the deaf girl who wandered into the road and was hit by a logging truck, a toddler who got caught behind furniture and asphyxiated while her father played video games. The vast majority of deaths could have been prevented without great effort.”
Alan said he has also been surprised by the extent to which a lot of people who work in the child welfare system (not all, but a lot) seem to view these children in the aggregate, rather than as distinct individuals. “They probably mean well, but many of the system’s leaders have become detached from the children they’re supposed to serve.”
I respectively submit that these areas would be a good place for those reviewing the system to begin their work. Let’s exchange superficial and slow for sensible and urgent.
I’ll be watching to see the results, as will our readers.
There are children counting on the state and its leaders to make a difference. We should not have another child die a preventable death. Georgia owes it to those children who have already died to make changes happen now, not later.
