RELEASE: October 30, 2003

Previous Screen

The court-appointed Child Welfare Panel has given its support to deal with the issues raised by a recent high-profile child abuse case in Collingswood as well as other critical issues facing the state’s child welfare system.

The court-appointed Child Welfare Panel charged with overseeing changes at the state’s child welfare system has given its support to the state’s planned actions to deal with the issues raised by a recent high-profile child abuse case in Collingswood as well as other critical issues facing the state’s child welfare system.

In the wake of the Collingswood case, in which four adopted boys were found starving in a DYFS-approved foster/adoptive home, the department has begun to put together a consortium of independent, non-DYFS professionals to re-do nearly half of the safety assessments just completed of 14,000 youths in out-of-home placement.

During a regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday, DHS Special Deputy Commissioner Colleen Maguire and Division of Youth and Family Services Director Edward Cotton met at length with members of the panel to discuss the department’s planned actions to improve the DYFS system in the short and long term.

In response to the recent case, the department will:

• Enlist qualified professionals from the law enforcement, child welfare, education and health care arenas to re-do about 1,000 safety assessments for children managed by the Southern Adoption Resource Center – SARC – which handled the Jackson family case and re-do about 5,000 safety assessments that occurred prior to August 18 throughout the state.

• Arm these independent evaluators with the safety assessment tool that was developed in conjunction with the panel – and for which the panel reiterated its support yesterday.

• Train all of these independent evaluators in the use of the safety assessment instrument prior to sending them out to conduct the assessments.

• Conduct case reviews on a random sample of cases handled by the SARC. These files will be checked for thoroughness and those that are deficient will trigger a complete review of that worker’s entire caseload.

• In addition, the department will enlist outside experts to research what kinds of caps other states place on the number of foster and adoptive children allowed in a given foster or adoptive home. Three years ago, DYFS reduced that number to eight but may now reduce the number of further.

These promised actions dovetail with several overarching issues that have been raised throughout the public process that ensued when the Child Welfare Panel was created as a result of the June settlement of a class action lawsuit brought against the state by Children’s Rights Incorporated on behalf children who are or had been in DYFS placement.

More than 150 individuals are participating in three workgroups convened by the Panel and the department to address these issues which include:

• Fragmentation of the child welfare system
• A lack of community supports and resources for children
• Scarcity of out-of-home placement resources
• Uneven case practice among child welfare workers

To address these overarching problems, the department will:

• Implement a 24-hour centralized call center for screening of child abuse allegations. Currently, such a system only exists during evenings and weekends. During normal business hours, when most abuse allegations are received, calls to the state’s child welfare hotline are routed directly to local offices without any central oversight.

• Require, by November 15, that all caseworkers use a recently developed web-based tracking system that requires case workers to input data on home visits so that management can track how closely caseworkers are working with families.

• Partner with New Jersey-based colleges and universities to create a state-of-the-art training academy and begin re-training managers by Dec. 1.

• Fill all of the remaining casework vacancies by Dec. 1.

• Change personnel regulations to permit the direct hiring of experienced social workers without requiring them to serve one year as a trainee.

• Direct resources to the creation of additional foster homes specifically for “boarder babies” and older children with behavioral issues.

The Panel also gave support to the Department’s above planned actions.

# # #