CPS Monroe County Disarray

Where To Begin? There are so many problems and they are systemic. So many problems that have been allowed to fester for such a long period that is hard to know where to being. This is an in depth report.

Despite reform effort, Child Protective Services remains mired in disarray - Short Video Included

More than a year before 3-year-old Brook Stagles was beaten to death by her father's girlfriend in November 2016, the frayed fabric of Monroe County's Child Protective Services unit was already apparent.

Beginning in 2015, the agency was on the state Office of Children and Family Services' radar for chronically overdue child safety assessments, incomplete investigations, poor recordkeeping, slipshod follow-up and chronic understaffing. Even now, the agency remains plagued by chronic staff shortages and high turnover, low morale and burdensome paperwork, and it is struggling to fulfill the basic function of shielding the most vulnerable of children from drug abuse, maltreatment or even death.

At the same time, the number of reports of abuse and neglect requiring investigation has skyrocketed.

A months-long Democrat and Chronicle investigation based on public records, internal documents exclusively obtained via Freedom of Information Law requests, interviews with two former child protective workers, union representatives, child advocates and county leaders reveals CPS as an agency in longstanding disarray. Portions of improvement plans filed with the state by the county dating back to 2015 show state audits repeatedly uncovered harrowing casework deficiencies in the agency that increased the risks for children like Brook. OCFS spokesman Craig Smith said the plans identify problems with the county's child welfare practices and spell out steps the agency intends to take to fix them. In many cases, the problems and the proposed solutions haven't changed in nearly three years.

AUDIT REPORTS

Safety assessments — an analysis of a child's risk of harm — weren't done within the required seven days more than a third of the time.

Other safety assessments that are required to be done before a case can be officially concluded were done only half the time.

Caseworkers dug deep enough into family histories and circumstances to analyze the likelihood of future maltreatment in only about one out of every three cases.

Roughly half the time, caseworkers weren't offering families access to various programs and services they needed.

In about half of caseswhere it was required, caseworkers failed to ensure families were assigned ongoing monitoring.

During new investigations, workers routinely neglected to check a family's previous CPS records to see if they had any bearing on the new case.

The audit reports also include specific actions the county said it would take to make fixes, including adding staff, retraining workers, and adding more coaching for existing investigators. The 23 pages of documents do not have a timetable for these things to be done, but do show continual performance reviews occurring through January 2018.

There have been some gains. Reviews done earlier this year show strong improvements in the timeliness of safety assessments, investigative work and risk analysis, but the agency still had 30 vacancies in late March. But overall lackluster progress was key in Deputy Commissioner of Child Welfare and Community Services Laura Velez informing the county in a curt note in February that the state would not approve its request to bring a child abuse hotline back in-house.

COST CUTTING TACTIC? What? Re-establishing that local-level hotline — scuttled as a cost-cutting move back in 2015 — was a cornerstone of Monroe County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo's "8-Point Plan" announced last November to reform CPS, and the state's refusal amounts to a vote of no confidence in the agency's current capacity.

BY THE NUMBERS

In 2016, there were more than 7,400 reports of child abuse or neglect in Monroe County.

In 2018, that number is expected to rise to more than 10,000.

BROOK STAGLES

Brook Stagles died on Nov. 14, 2016, of internal injuries related to a beating delivered days before by her father's live-in girlfriend Erica Bell. Bell and Michael Stagles failed to get the girl medical attention and took pains to hide the extent of the girl's injuries from other family members. Both are currently in prison.

Whether CPS caseworkers had any real power to intervene before Brook was killed is unknown. Testimony during Bell's trial revealed there had been two calls to the agency in the weeks before the child's death, alleging she was being abused.

Workers made in-home visits, talked to family members and even spoke with the girl, who workers reported was appropriately dressed, clean and appeared to be a happy, active child when observed. Ultimately, the agency took no action after those visits to remove the girl from her father's squalid Albemarle Street home.

Complete details of the CPS case file for Brook are shielded by state privacy laws, which prohibit disclosure of CPS records except in limited circumstances. Those same laws make it impossible to know how aggressively CPS may have intervened or whether the agency did everything it could to protect children who later wound up dead.

BY THE NUMBERS

An hour of contact time equates to approximately three hours of paperwork for case managers, national studies found.

Typically, more than 25 percent of reports are found to be true, but all have to be investigated.

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2018/05/04/cps-monroe-county-disarray-brook-stagles-child-protective-services-child-abuse/525508002/

PLEASE READ The Article for More Sad But True Crimes On Our Children and How CPS Failed Them.

COMING SOON PART II: I'm Terrified - Jessica Lucas Tells All About Her Job As Former Caseworker & More Statistics