Turning around D.C.’s child welfare agency will demand strong leadership, accountability and resources that the troubled department has long lacked, District officials said in the wake of the office director’s resignation.
The Child and Family Services Agency, which emerged from federal receivership in 2001 and is now under court-ordered monitoring, measurably improved during the 13-month tenure of its now former Director Sharlynn Bobo, said Ward 6 D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, who has legislative oversight of CFSA.
But Bobo was ineffective in crisis, Wells said, and she was unable to redeploy resources when the demand for child protective services exploded following the January discovery of four dead girls in a Southeast row home.
“There’s been improvement in different areas, but I think that having strong basic management, it hasn’t happened,” said Wells, chair of the Human Services Committee. “I think that it really requires some management focus and overhaul.”
Bobo resigned Wednesday in the wake of several deaths and a massive backlog of investigations. In a statement released upon her exit, Mayor Adrian Fenty, who two daysearlier had offered Bobo his support, pledged to “continue the work” she started. He named Dr. Roque Gerald as interim director and vowed to launch a national search for a permanent replacement.
On Thursday, Fenty told The Examiner that the city will “turn challenge into opportunity” through “sound management, high accountability and a lot of manpower.” CFSA is expected to round up social workers from across the government to start closing the investigation backlog.
Bobo’s directorship was rocked by one tragic breakdown after another.
CFSA social workers, child welfare hotline call-takers and their supervisors failed to heed warnings about Banita Jacks in the months before her four daughters were found dead, city officials say. The gruesome discovery spurred a tidal wave of calls to CFSA that nearly drowned case workers in claims of abuse and neglect.
Fenty quickly moved to fire six employees involved in the Jacks case, sparking a fight with the social workers’ union and collapsing staff morale. Supervisors stopped supervising and the agency accumulated a backlog of roughly 1,700 open investigations as of June 30, last week’s Human Services Committee hearing revealed.
Support for the director was already tenuous when 6-month-old Isiah Garcia, whose CFSA case worker never made contact, died June 25. Then last Monday, a 5-month-old boy who was the subject of an agency abuse case died while on a couch with his sleeping 15-year-old mother.
Bobo has not talked publicly since her exit, and she did not respond to requests to comment for this article.
Eric Roper contributed to this article.
