Six D.C. employees to be fired in slain kids case

[superconnected]

Source: CNN news

WASHINGTON (AP) -- At least six child welfare employees will be fired for improperly handling concerns about a woman's care for her four daughters, who were later found dead in their home, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said Monday.

Banita Jacks, shown in a 1999 booking photo in Maryland, is charged with four counts of murder.

1 of 3 The decomposing bodies of the girls -- ages 5 to 17 -- were found Wednesday when deputy U.S. marshals served an eviction notice at the apartment. Their mother has been charged with murder.

A social worker at the school where the oldest girl was a student, Kathy Lopes, tried twice in April to raise concerns about the family.

At a news conference Monday, Fenty played tapes of two calls Lopes made after the girl, Brittany Jacks, stopped going to school.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/01/14/bodies.found.ap/index.html

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Translation: Six underlings fired to protect a Neo-Con's ass

"The children! The children!" ... don't vote and won't need any more social services.

Plus we save on six salaries. It's a Republican win-win!

Mission Accomplished!

--p!

[superconnected]

2. I think they may have failed to do their job. We're having a big problem

with this in washington state - where our social workers should be fired for all the foster kids killed now in long reported abuses they didn't investigated over the last few years.

I'm not surprised to see DC has a case like this.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Some, maybe

I'm in Pennsylvania, which has one of the better social-services infrastructures. We still go through this at least twice a year, usually either in inner-city Philadelphia or in rural Appalachian areas.

But this pattern has been repeated nationally dozens of times in the past few years. Children die, and heads roll. One or two of those heads may be at least semi-complicit, but most of the firing is done for show. And even worse, the drones on the "food chain" that over-task and under-empower the social workers get to preen about how tight a ship they are running, when the opposite is true.

Social services need more funding, better morale, and better management. Then it will be easier to get the incompetents out before people pay with their lives.

--p!

[yardwork]

5. Social services is terribly understaffed everywhere.

Social workers have caseloads that are humanly impossible to handle. We're asking a few underpaid people to solve enormous problems with too few resources. Where is the mental health care that so many parents and children at risk need?

Firing people will just hurt morale even more and add to the caseloads of those left in the departments. There's a reason why social workers burn out.

[Javaman]

13. Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!!!

My neighbor works for the dept of social services here in Texas. Time and time again their budget is cut back and they are grossly understaffed. They are required to investigate 6 cases a week. Now that may not sound like much, but you have to take into account that 90% of the job is paper work and trying to find homes for the displaced children. They have to search high and low to find a suitable living environment for the kids and sometimes, just one case takes the whole week and as a result they get behind in their work.

On top of that, the investigators have to use their own cars. Okay, you are saying, "big deal" right? wrong. Most of these homes that they investigate have sociopaths as parents and take it as a personal offense that they are being investigated and as a result try to exact revenge on the investigator. So if the investigator is using their own car, it doesn't take a giant leap of intelligence to figure out that the nuts will track down the investigator and kill them or attack them.

Our child welfare system in the US is so completely underfunded and under budgeted, that it's a miracle that more of these types of stories aren't more common.

Before the other people on this thread accuse the social services of not doing their jobs, try walking a mile in one of the workers shoes.

more of the repuke legacy.

[yardwork]

15. Tell it, Javaman.

This case is a clear indication of the misplaced priorities in our nation. No health care for millions of people, no social safety net, schizophrenic people living on the streets, social workers who have to drive their own cars into war zones - but hey! we have hundreds of billions to spend on a war in Iraq.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

18. When my mom was working as a social worker in a psychiatric hospital...

her boss would periodically tell her that they needed bedspace. In other words, she was expected to cooperate with signing release papers for people who really had no business being released. :-(

Wouldn't St. RayGun be pleased?

[atreides1]

3. Care to Elaborate????

Last time I looked Fenty and the majority of the D.C. city council were Democrats, not Republicans!!!!

[spotbird]

6. Congress runs DC

They do not self govern. It's a mess.

[Mike Daniels]

7. Democrats control DC city's budget and government.

Sorry, but a city government run by Democrats is the fuck-up here.

[Mike Daniels]

10. So Fenty ( a Democrat ) is a neo-con?

Since the case reflects poorly on a service agency that serves under his local gov't I can only presume that you're implying he was saving his ass.

[bluestateguy]

8. Are these dullards going to endlessly appeal, appeal and appeal this common sense decision?

We shall see. Bureaucrats don't get fired very often.

[ohio2007]

9. what union do these six belong to ?

I suppose they will appeal through the layers of redundant bureaucracy set up

[Skittles]

11. as usual

they pick on the easiest targets while completely overlooking the overall problems

[Mike Daniels]

12. Well, incompetent employees should be fired

and everything that's come out of this shows pure incompetence or indifference from top to bottom.

[Javaman]

14. Read thread #13. nt

[yardwork]

16. Indifference at the very top is about right.

Maybe the folks who were fired were incompetent and indifferent. Maybe they're the only ones left at DSS in Washington, DC for a reason.

[Skittles]

17. you have no idea

how underpaid and overworked social workers are - especially when repukes are in charge.