"Murder conviction in 2008 South Boston arson upheld" by John R. Ellement | Globe staff, January 04, 2014
Nicole Chuminski was convicted of setting the April 6, 2008, fire that killed 14-year-old Acia Johnson and her 2-year-old sister, Sophia. In its ruling Friday, the court wrote that Boston firefighters “found Acia and Sophia’s bodies huddled together in a closet on the third floor….
In its ruling, the court said Chuminski, now 31, was angry at the mother of the two children, Anna Reisopoulos, with whom she had a tumultuous relationship. The two feuded at a wedding reception for a Chuminski relative on April 5, 2008, in Weymouth, where Reisopoulos was accused of stealing a wallet and was ordered to leave the reception….
The Globe, which chronicled the short life of Acia in 2008, reported then that Acia Johnson was devoted to her younger sister and was forced by her parents’ inability to stay out of prison and off drugs to assume the role of mother to Sophia.
The Globe also reported that the Department of Social Services, now known as the Department of Children and Families, failed to properly protect the three children from the environment they were being raised in….
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Not much changes in this state:
"DCF found to have missed many visits" by Michael Levenson and Patricia Wen | Globe staff, January 24, 2014
Social workers at the state Department of Children and Families apparently failed to make nearly 1 in 5 of their required monthly home visits in 2013, says a report released Thursday that highlights a lapse central to the case of a missing 5-year-old Fitchburg boy who is feared dead.
Related: Massachusetts' Deplorable DCF
Also see: Missing boy’s family erupts in court
The report — by the Office of the Child Advocate, an independent agency that investigated the department’s mishandling of the case of Jeremiah Oliver — suggested that the failure to regularly check on families may be widespread, going beyond a few rogue workers who failed for seven months to ensure that visits were made to Jeremiah and his family....
The report also pointed out that the central office of the department, where Commissioner Olga I. Roche and her top deputies work, produces semimonthly reports documenting missed visits and the date of the last visit.
In Jeremiah’s case, the social worker who failed to visit his home had documented those skipped visits. That suggests Roche had access to information showing the boy had not been visited for months before law enforcement authorities realized he had disappeared.
At a hearing Thursday held by two legislative committees, lawmakers vented their outrage at the handling of the case....
Related: Rehabilitating Roche
Didn't take.
After being grilled for nearly four hours at the hearing Thursday, Roche refused to respond when a Globe reporter asked whether she routinely examines the monthly reports on missed home visits. As she left the building, she also declined to speak when asked if she would commit to reviewing missed monthly visitation reports in the future.
In an e-mail sent after the hearing, Roche’s spokeswoman, Cayenne Isaksen, said: “These reports are designed for supervisors and managers, and it is their responsibility to flag issues to higher levels of management if problems become severe.
Isaksen also said the Child Advocate’s finding that, on average, only 82.5 percent of monthly home visits are completed “requires some context and is not reflective of all the times and places children are seen by child-welfare partners.”
She said social workers have up to 30 days to log home visits into a computer system, creating a delay in timely reporting of the visits. In addition, there are legitimate reasons why children may not be seen by a social worker in a given month, Isaksen said. For example, a youngster might have been at school or been visited in a department office, which would not be logged as a home visit....
They can do a strip search at the school!
As the department’s lapses have come under scrutiny, its budget has become a focal point. In the five years prior to Jeremiah’s disappearance, the department sustained deep cuts.
But this government cares about kids!
This week, Governor Deval Patrick proposed restoring some of that funding, but even his proposal would leave the agency with less than it had in 2008, child advocates said.
Meanwhile, more kids were at risk! Thank God we have compa$$ionate Democrats and not heartle$$ Repuglicans running this state.
“We have a choice: to continue to ignore the needs of our most vulnerable kids until we suffer the shock of another missing or murdered child or to begin investing now in a system that will ensure their safety,” said Erin G. Bradley, executive director of the Children’s League of Massachusetts, a nonprofit representing 75 public and private child welfare groups.
Lawmakers say the reductions were the inevitable and unfortunate result of the recession, which decimated state budgets across the country and took more than $2 billion out of Massachusetts revenues.
I know $20 million isn't much, but....
Related: Time For Buffett
Some folks keep getting phat! I guess it's all in the $tate's priorities.
“Everybody raised alarms, but everybody understood that when you lose billions of dollars in revenue, there’s going to be cuts,” said former senator Steven C. Panagiotakos, who was chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee from 2007 to 2010. “Unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to keep state government running as it was previously because we don’t have the money to do it.”
Of course, Panag and the rest will get their fully-funded, taxpayer-financed pensions and health benefits while never knowing a budget cut.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Savage toll of abuse for children in DCF care; More than 95 have died since ’01, state reports say" by Jenifer McKim | New England Center for Investigative Reporting, February 02, 2014
Kadyn Hancock’s aunt said she repeatedly tried to warn state officials that the 13-month-old’s mother might hurt him. But no one heeded her pleas, and Kadyn’s mother killed her baby in 2010.
See: The Woburn Witch
Last summer, child advocates questioned why social workers did not remove 3-month-old Chase Gideika from his troubled home before he was brutally killed, allegedly by his mother’s boyfriend.
See: Maury Povich Murder in Massachusetts
Now the disappearance of 5-year-old Jeremiah Oliver — missing and feared dead after social workers allegedly failed to check on him for months — is once again raising alarms that the state is unable to protect some of Massachusetts’ most vulnerable residents.
Though Governor Deval Patrick last week described Oliver’s disappearance as a unique tragedy in which state officials failed to do their jobs, state records show that children under the watch of the Department of Children and Families actually die with alarming regularity.
For Patrick to minimize it in such a way is not only insulting and offensive, it is also going to be his legacy.
Governor
Deval Patrick with Dr. Candace Sloane and her husband, Century Bank
President and CEO Barry Sloane of Needham (Bill Brett for The Boston Globe).
Yeah, he looks real concern about little wanderers.
Since 2001, more than 95 Massachusetts children whose cases were overseen by state social workers have died directly or indirectly because of abuse or neglect, according to state statistics. The death toll probably is considerably higher because state officials have not revealed how many died from 2011 to 2013.
Some of the deaths make headlines, but many more children die anonymously, half of them before they celebrate their first birthday, according to state reports.
(Blog editor can not describe the dejection when reading that sentence)
Over all, children who received services from social workers at DCF in 2010 were about six times as likely as the general population of Bay State children to die from maltreatment, according to the state’s own calculations.
And while the state provided mortality data only through 2010, there is evidence that the death rate among children under DCF supervision has not declined from the average of 9 or 10 a year for the past decade. The number of “critical incident reports” that DCF workers must file when children are killed, injured, or otherwise traumatized has increased since 2010.
State officials say it should come as no surprise that children in families under DCF supervision are at higher risk to die from abuse and neglect because the agency looks after Massachusetts’ most troubled households. The vast majority of children receiving state services come from homes plagued by dysfunction that is often exacerbated by poverty, domestic violence, mental illness, and substance abuse.
Moreover, there is no accurate state-by-state comparison of deaths among children receiving social services, making it difficult to compare Massachusetts with other places. Over all, Massachusetts children die from maltreatment far less frequently than the national average, state records show.
But child advocates have long said that DCF leaves too many children with caregivers who could hurt them, sometimes with lethal results.
“We know that the situation in Massachusetts is dangerous for at-risk children,’’ said Marcia Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights, a New York-based watchdog group that filed a federal lawsuit alleging that DCF “routinely” places children in “dangerous and unstable situations.’’ The lawsuit was recently dismissed, though group is appealing the ruling.
The agency’s defenders say that DCF social workers agonize over every death, doing their best to protect children in dangerous situations even as they endure budget cuts....
Hey, look! Tax dollars had to be handed over to profitable corporations and debt-enslaving banks, so shaddup!!!!!!
I'm so sick of these people whining about children when the 1% and their comfort and concerns are the only thing that matters!!!!!!
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