Dss

The former director of an innovative Anne Arundel County social services project was charged yesterday with stealing $368,000 from the program, including money that was supposed to go toward child support. Prosecutors said the 91-count criminal information unsealed yesterday was the start of a wave of nearly 800 charges expected to be lodged against Brent Millard Johnson, 61, of Annapolis. Because court computers cannot handle more than 99 counts per multiple-count document, the additional charges will be filed in coming days, prosecutors said.

Lisa and Jeffrey Bodick always wanted a large family. Now the foster parents are fighting to hold on to the 2-year-old girl they've raised almost since birth. The Bodicks, of Catonsville, have accused Baltimore's Department of Social Services of reneging on a promise to allow them to adopt the tiny, bashful child with blonde curls and striking blue-green eyes who joined them at their home when she was 13 days old. The agency wants to place the child with a Howard County family that adopted her two older siblings.

Three bills that Del. Donald B. Elliott designed to protect people unfairly accused of child abuse died in the House Judiciary Committee late Thursday.The delegate, a Republican from New Windsor, said he wasn't surprised. "It takes a few years to speak to the concerns of all the members of the committee," Mr. Elliott said, adding that he would reintroduce the bills next year."It took me three years to get my other bill passed," Mr. Elliott said, referring to legislation approved in 1993 that created a hearing process for people who say they are unfairly accused of abuse.

A member of the Board of Education and the president of the County Council of PTAs are calling for an independent probe into how well the Anne Arundel County Department of Social Services has handled child abuse complaints, now that a fourth teacher has been charged with child sex abuse."

The Carroll County Department of Social Services Advisory Board yesterday recommended distributing free condoms at the department's offices in the Barrel House in Westminster.Board members suggested that DSS Director M. Alexander Jones should prepare a formal proposal for state approval.The proposal will be submitted to the state Department of Human Resources, which would have final say and would pay for the program if it is approved."I have struggled with it," said Mr. Jones, who brought the condom issue before the board yesterday.

About 44 frail, elderly Carroll County people will have nowhere to go if the state changes the Medicaid regulations that now pay for nursing home care, say a group of social service officials."

Abusing a child is the worst act an adult can commit.Erroneously labeling a parent a child abuser is one of the worst acts a state government agency can commit.Carroll County's Department of Social Services has received a black eye recently for mistakes that have been made in recording child abuse cases on its computerized data systern and keeping files on cases that should have been expunged. As a result two lawsuits have been flied recently against officials in the department, and DSS has been receiving a heavy dose of bad publicity.

The Carroll County Department of Social Services violated a Taylorsville couple's constitutional rights by keeping an open file in a statewide data bank that falsely accused them of sexually abusing their infant son, a federal judge has ruled.Senior U.S. District Judge Herbert F. Murray said the actions of DSS "deprived the [couple] of their protected interest in familial privacy without due process of law."Judge Murray, in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, granted summary judgment in favor of David and Marsha Hodge in their $1.5 million lawsuit against the social services agency.

A Baltimore man who is more than $17,000 behind in child support payments owes the money to the same state agency that has been his only means of support for the past 12 years.Since 1980, Calvin Thornton, a 39-year-old man whose only income is a welfare check, has failed to pay any child support to the Westminster woman who is his former wife and the mother of his 12-year-old child.But, court records show, the rights to the child were transferred from the mother to the Department of Social Services, which means that Thornton no longer owes the money to his former wife, but to the same agency that sends him a welfare check every month.