I”m still reading through the new report “Out of the shadows” from the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (a joint project of BU and WGBH). It’s a wretched story, and a real indictment of our entire political culture’s inability and unwillingness to protect the most vulnerable. Dead children. Kids that ought to be alive today, growing up and learning and enjoying life. And we didn’t help them. We didn’t do enough, simple as that.
William is one of at least 110 children 17 and younger whose deaths were linked to abuse and neglect between 2009 and 2013 in Massachusetts, a third of whom had at some point been under the watch of the state Department of Children and Families. Many others were likely known to the state but never subject to DCF supervision. The rest died without ever having a chance at state protection.
Records obtained by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting show that the vast majority of the dead were under the age of three, beaten, drowned, smothered or otherwise abused or neglected by caretakers. And their numbers have steadily increased, records show, from 14 reported abuse and neglect deaths in 2009 to 38 in 2013 – and state officials say numbers will likely remain elevated when the 2014 death toll is made public.
Now, if you look at some of the stories, it’s not clear that you could have expected DCF intervention to save them. But the story of low-prioritization — from the state’s management of DCF, to funding, and now to the Baker administration’s staffing cuts — is pretty damned devastating:
The state keeps shoddy data on child deaths and its child fatality review system is crippled by lack of funds and resources. The New England Center found 10 children who were not included in state data even though their deaths were ruled to be homicide and, in most cases, parents or other caretakers were implicated.
The number that jumps out at me is the 92,000 abuse complaints that DCF handled in 2014. That’s astonishing, isn’t it?
With the results we’ve been getting, it’s time for a complete rethink of how we support vulnerable families and the children who inevitably catch the absolute worst of a bad situation. Data, management, staffing, mental health and addiction support — and inevitably, funding — all need to be rethought. Children being killed is unacceptable, and avoidable.
bob-gardner says
prospective adoptive and foster parents?
I’ve seen the claim that CORI’s for biological parents are scrutinized much more comprehensively than the CORI’s for adoptive and foster parents. I tried confirming this by looking up the statutes, but I found the language totally confusing.
Has anyone else heard of this discrepancy? If it does exist, it would explain, at least partly, why children in foster care seem to do so poorly.