Another infant whose care was the subject a D.C. child welfare agency investigation died Monday, hours before the D.C. Council was to convene a hearing on the failings of the District’s tormented child protective services department.
The 4-month-old boy was found unconscious by emergency responders just before 8 a.m. in a residence in the 600 block of 46th Place SE, a police spokesman said. He was declared dead on the scene. An autopsy will determine the cause of death, a spokesman said.
The infant was the focus of a “current neglect investigation,” the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency said in a statement. The agency did not release details of the incident or the child’s name, but Ward 6 D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, chairman of the human services committee, said he was told the baby died when the mother rolled on top of him, suffocating him.
Wells learned of the most recent death as he closed a hearing Monday on child welfare’s growing backlog of abuse and neglect investigations, which hit a staggering 1,700 as of June 30. He scheduled the council review following the June 25 death of 6-month-old Isiah Garcia, whose care was also the subject of a CFSA investigation.
The death of a child is “unfortunately a predictable result” of an agency in crisis, where social workers are overwhelmed and supervisors aren’t managing their employees, Wells said. Judith Meltzer, the court-appointed CFSA monitor, said the agency’s failures “now threaten effective functioning.” Mayor Adrian Fenty, she said, “cannot wish this problem away.”
CFSA received a hot line call on Garcia in March, but the employee assigned to the case never saw him. That employee, who was working 50 cases, has since been fired. She is filing a grievance.
“I have a loss of confidence in the leadership of the agency,” Wells said of CFSA Director Sharlynn Bobo, “but I don’t believe there is a very deep bench at the agency and that there’s not a likely person to step up who’s been identified.”
Fenty expressed continued faith in Bobo, saying, “I would not keep anyone in a Cabinet position if I did not think that they were the best person to do the job.”
Bobo, meanwhile, said that CFSA continues to quickly initiate investigations, to visit families and to remove children when necessary despite “far too high” caseloads. The volume soared following the discovery of the bodies of Banita Jacks’ four daughters in January.
