Child Welfare

CONSIDERING ITS relative wealth, Maryland continues to do a lousy job of raising its children. Other states have more children living in poverty, yet Maryland fares worse in key areas of child welfare.It would be easier to celebrate the good news -- better prenatal care, lower infant mortality and fewer teens dying violently -- if Maryland did not have such a long way to go. In the Annie E. Casey Foundation's latest "Kids Count" survey last year, Maryland ranked 32nd in child welfare, although three-fifths of the states had a higher percentage of children living in poverty.

More than 1,600 state workers charged with investigating and preventing child abuse and neglect are being given a competency test to determine whether they can stay on the job.State officials said the multiple-choice test was designed to cover basics that all child welfare workers should know, but only 60 percent passed on their first tries early this year.The figure had improved to about 80 percent by last week, and Maryland Human Resources Secretary Lynda G. Fox said she expects "in excess of 90 percent" to pass by year's end. Any workers who do not pass by Dec. 31 will be assigned to other jobs that do not involve casework, Fox said.

TEHRAN, Iran -- On a shelf in Shirin Ebadi's office stands a black and white photograph of Arian Golshani.A black mourning sash is tacked to a corner of the photo.She didn't look so angelic when she died last year at age 9, a child beaten to death.Her hair had been hacked off, her face was swollen into a hideous mask, her body scarred from cigarette burns.She died in a Tehran hospital two days after the last beating.Her father, stepmother and 18-year-old stepbrother were convicted of the murder.

THE BUSINESS OF child welfare is cloaked in confidentiality for good reason. Ethically, people who seek or accept help in the most intimate areas of their lives have a right to expect that such matters will be private. This is as sacred a tenet in social work as in medicine and psychiatry.Practically, the ability of social service caseworkers to help children who reportedly have been mistreated hinges on trust. Caseworkers depend on people being willing to report a suspicion of abuse, trusting that their identities will be protected.

LAST MONTH, another Maryland child who had been under social services investigation died, allegedly beaten to death by his foster mother.It is too soon to know whether anything could have been done to save this child. But cases like this and the starvation death of 9-year-old Rita Fisher in Baltimore County last year have prompted action in Annapolis to make it harder for children to fall through cracks in the system designed to protect them.On Saturday, legislation passed in Maryland's House of Delegates that would help resolve the two biggest obstacles to an effective child welfare system: excessive caseloads and a transitory, inadequately trained staff.

LAST MONTH Maryland's second-highest court upheld a Montgomery County judge's decision to send a little boy back to the mother who killed his half-sister. The woman who has been taking care of 2-year-old Cornilous Pixley can't adopt him, the three-judge panel said, exhibiting the courts' longstanding and often excessive bias toward blood relationships.The Pixley case has rightly troubled many Marylanders and child welfare advocates, who know the presumption that a child is better off with a birth parent falls apart when that parent has committed a heinous crime against another child.

Rose C. Rumford, 85, child welfare activistRose C. Rumford, who was active for many years in child welfare and health care organizations, died of pneumonia Jan. 11 at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She was 85.Since 1985, the former Guilford resident had lived at Broadmead, the Cockeysville retirement community, where she was atrustee.The former Rose Clymer was a native of Rockwood, Tenn., who moved to Doylestown, Pa., in 1925. She graduated from the Dwight School in Englewood, N.J., in 1930 and from Wellesley College in 1934.

SNOW HILL -- A Berlin woman was sentenced to 30 years in prison yesterday in the fatal beating of her 8-year-old adopted son, a crime that Circuit Judge Theodore R. Eschenberg Sr. called "almost too heinous to comprehend."Catherine Marie Hudson, who pleaded guilty last month to manslaughter and child abuse, sat impassively through much of the hourlong hearing in the packed courtroom as faculty members from Buckingham Elementary School tearfully related their frustration with the Worcester County Department of Social Services.

In a Southwest Baltimore rowhouse 10 days ago, three children -- James Edward Ferguson, 5 months, Shaniqua Ferguson, 2, and Edward Ferguson, 3 -- died in a fire after being left home alone for only 10 minutes.Neighbors said they saw the mother, Karen Johnson, walk to a nearby store to pay a bill. Before leaving, she called the children's grandmother. "I was heading over there," said Clara Johnson. "The children were only left alone for five or 10 minutes."When the mother returned she found her house on fire and her children dead.

LAST MONDAY wasn't a hard day, as days go, for Kathleen Harrison, a child welfare worker with Baltimore County's Department of Social Services. A quick trip to court for a case involving a father who injured his baby, an unproductive trek through the east side to investigate one report of sexual abuse and another of neglect, an interview with the baby-sitter of a little boy who had been beaten.As the afternoon wound down. Ms. Harrison worried aloud about that sexual abuse report; she suspects she will find things you and I would rather not think about.

In recent days, a misguided and unfocused debate related to the closing of group homes serving foster children would have us believe providers' only interest is self preservation. This has obscured issues of far greater importance to the safety and well-being of abused and neglected children. For more than a decade, the state allowed unprecedented, unplanned and unguided growth in the number of group homes, concentrated in a handful of least resistant communities. This development did not result in the most beneficial array of services, nor did it ensure the development of services where they are needed.

Two days after a state senator said Maryland Human Resources Secretary Brenda Donald's signature child welfare program was "not working," Donald received a warm reception - even applause - when she appeared before another group of lawmakers Thursday. At a briefing for the Joint Committee on Children, Youth and Families, Donald summarized how she believes "Place Matters," which she launched two years ago, is working to improve outcomes for vulnerable children. Under this new approach, the department focuses on reuniting foster children with their own families or keeping them in family settings, which has reduced the state's reliance on group home beds by nearly half.

The stories were horrifying and heart-wrenching: a boy beaten bloody while in foster care; a 15-year-old girl tortured and starved to death by a mentally ill guardian; a 5-year-old fatally scalded by his mother after state officials removed him from a safe foster home. It's no wonder such egregious cases of abuse and neglect have helped drive a 25-year-old lawsuit over how the Maryland Department of Human Resources and the Baltimore Department of Social Services care for the state's most vulnerable children and adolescents.

For a quarter-century, lawyers for Baltimore foster children have been telling a judge horrific stories of abuse and neglect and indifference. The child welfare system itself, the attorneys said, failed these children time and again by shrugging off reforms it was ordered to make as a result of a federal lawsuit. That has changed, the lawyers said Tuesday. Convinced that the state Department of Human Resources, which oversees child welfare and the city's more than 5,000 foster children, has finally made enough progress on changes first ordered by a judge in 1988, the lawyers on Monday filed a motion that could eventually end federal court oversight.

Statistically, the most likely profile of a neglectful or abusive parent is a 30-year-old, college-educated white woman who has a job. Yet in Maryland, African-American children are far more likely than their white counterparts to be removed from their homes by child welfare officials because of maltreatment. A recent study by Advocates for Children and Youth, a group that lobbies for children's issues in Maryland, found that while African-Americans make up only a third of the state's children, they constitute nearly three-quarters of the children removed from their homes, and are five times more likely than white children to be placed in group or foster home care.

Connie Tolbert Public information officer Maryland Department of Human Resources, Baltimore Salary $48,000 Age 47 Years on the job 15 How she got started As a former welfare recipient, Tolbert was asked to serve on a welfare reform commission during the early 1990s put together by then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer. Tolbert was working then as an administrative assistant for a nonprofit organization, but she had been on and off welfare for a number of years. After her work on the volunteer commission, she got a job with the Department of Human Resources certifying nursing homes.

When it comes to releasing information about life-threatening child abuse and neglect cases, Maryland gets a failing grade in a national study by child advocates. Regrettably, it's well-deserved, since repeated efforts to shine more light on these cases have been rebuffed in the General Assembly. The advocates' sensible push for more public disclosure is meant to expose - and correct - child-welfare system failures that may contribute to whatever harm a child may suffer at home. Maryland's abysmal showing should finally spur the legislature to make changes, but state and local child welfare officials should voluntarily be more forthcoming whenever possible.

Baltimore's Department of Social Services continues to lurch from one crisis case to the next with caseworkers and supervisors who are undertrained and overworked. State and city officials are taking some sensible steps to attract more - and more-qualified - workers. But conditions also have to improve to make these jobs more desirable, and the state and city need to consider these improvements a more urgent financial priority. DSS is responsible for 60 percent of Maryland's 10,000 children in foster care, and some of the more sensational and tragic cases of abuse and neglect have occurred under its watch.

Reform of child welfare systems in Maryland and several other states is hampered by "misguided and secretive policies" that restrict disclosure of information about deaths and serious injuries resulting from abuse or neglect, according to a report to be released today by two national child advocacy groups. Maryland was among 10 states that received an "F" grade because they "place confidentiality above the welfare" of children. The report by the University of San Diego School of Law's Children's Advocacy Institute and Washington- based First Star argues for greater transparency so child welfare systems can be held accountable and future tragedies can be averted.

Four-year-old Damaud Martin rests in a coma-like state in a Baltimore hospital, his once-bright smile gone. Relatives who visit him at the Kennedy Krieger Institute say doctors have told them it's likely he will never run, jump or play again. He was a victim of shaken baby syndrome, the Baltimore City Department of Social Services said in a court filing. Police are still investigating what happened to Damaud, who has been hospitalized since Jan. 19, but one thing is clear. The injury occurred two months after the social services agency, with court approval, sent him home.