An apparent overdose of prescription antidepressants has taken the life of a little girl, and D.C.’s teetering child welfare agency is once again trying to explain how it missed warning signs she was in danger.
The girl, identified only by her initials, DHB, swallowed a handful of pills prescribed to her father. She began wheezing and was rushed to a hospital last week, interim Attorney General Peter Nickles told The Examiner. She later died.
Two weeks before she died, someone called the city’s child welfare hot line and reported the family was having “a housing issue,” Nickles said.
D.C. police and a part-time, weekend city social worker walked into the family’s home in Northeast. No one was there, Nickles said. The family’s file was transferred to a regular weekday social worker, who apparently shelved it, Nickles said.
“It’s not good,” Nickles told The Examiner. “The Number One rule is — you’ve got to see the kid.”
The death is under investigation and no charges have filed. Child and Family Services, however, has removed DHB’s 3-year-old and 18-month-old siblings from the home.
The weekday social worker has been suspended and might be fired, Nickles said.
She isn’t the only casualty in D.C.’s bleeding child welfare bureaucracy. Mayor Adrian Fenty has fired a number of social workers since January, when the badly decomposing bodies of four girls were discovered in a Southeast squatters’ home. Child welfare bureaucrats ignored desperate calls for help for Banita Jacks’ four daughters. Jacks has since been charged with the girls’ killings.
Since then, the child welfare agency has been overwhelmed with cases. Its backlog of open files jumped to nearly 2,000 in six months. The agency was already under a federal court monitor, and experts have warned the Fenty administration that the agency is at a tipping point.
Last month, after two babies died under the city’s eyes, Fenty demanded the resignation of Child and Family Services Agency Director Sharlynn Bobo. The person Fenty tabbed to replace her, Roque Gerald, was sued in the late 1980s after he had sex with a suicidal patient.
As a D.C. councilman, Fenty was charged with monitoring the child welfare agencies. Some, such as child welfare expert and University of the District of Columbia law professor Matt Fraidin, aren’t impressed with Fenty’s regime.
“What’s needed is a thoughtful, systematic change in the agency’s orientation,” Fraidin told The Examiner. “They need to have social workers in the neighborhoods like cops on the beat. They need to be out in the community where people can get to know them and get to trust them. And their goal should be keeping children safe in their homes.”
Got a tip on child welfare? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or send him an e-mail, [email protected]
