Social Services

A pilot program intended to help Maryland's most vulnerable children by reducing social workers' caseloads and intensifying services will include part of Baltimore City with Caroline and Allegany counties, state human resources officials say.The state also plans another, parallel effort to upgrade social services in Howard, Montgomery, Prince George's, Washington and Garrett counties by seeking professional accreditation of their agencies, a state official...

SNOW HILL -- State and county social service officials unveiled yesterday a series of procedural changes they say will ensure better oversight of child abuse investigations.The recommendations came in response to criticism that the department failed to heed warnings that might have prevented the beating death in March 1998 of an 8-year-old Worcester County boy at the hands of his adoptive mother.But for anguished teachers and school administrators who reported nearly two dozens cases of suspected abuse of Shamir Hudson and his two siblings in the 18 months before the child died, the moves announced at a briefing yesterday did little to soothe bitterness about the way the case was handled.

Cathryne Elizabeth Phifer, a retired social worker and foster care advocate, died of undetermined causes Monday at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The North Bentalou Street resident was 77.During a 30-year career with the city's Department of Social Services, Mrs. Phifer worked with generations of children and their foster parents.Dressed for work in tailored clothes, she stood 4 feet, 8 inches tall, but her energy and firmness made her seem taller."She always had a beaming smile," said Ernest Terry, a Pikeville resident and former city social worker.

Dogged by complaints that its program is run "like a prison," the operators of an Owings Mills-based job training center for homeless women yesterday told its residents that it is shutting down in two weeks.The taxpayer-funded Elan Vital Center is closing because challenges to its policies have spawned an "unruly and uncontrollable situation" where residents defy rules, said Kathleen McDonald, president of the nonprofit corporation that operates the program."It's just falling apart," said McDonald, whose Community Building Group Ltd. will continue to operate an emergency shelter in Reisterstown.

Taneytown's social services center will be named Taneytown Human Services Center, the City Council decided at its Monday night meeting.The center, a renovated former bank building at 24 E. Baltimore St., serves the northwest area of Carroll County.The Department of Social Services, Carroll County Youth Services Bureau, Human Services Programs of Carroll County Inc. and Taneytown Caring and Sharing Ministries have offices in the building.The agencies provide counseling, Medicaid assistance, food stamps and help with job searches to needy residents.

A restored 19th-century building will be dedicated today as the Taneytown Job Center, where needy residents can go for counseling, food stamps, Medicaid or job assistance.The multiagency facility is intended to make it easier for northwest Carroll residents to obtain social services without having to travel to Westminster, where most of the county's agencies are located."The concept is to be where we're needed," said Peggie J. Roland, coordinator of the center and an employee service adviser for the Carroll County Department of Social Services.

Dad comes home and drinks, and mom is gone for days on drug binges while their disturbed, truant, teen-age son threatens himself and others. Throughout the daily chaos, the family's toddler watches and learns.But what might seem like a hopeless slide to ruin is the focus of a little-known, intensive Baltimore County social services program that is set to expand soon if the County Council, as expected, approves the transfer of new state money."This is it -- the last stop before foster care," says Debra Linsenmeyer, child placement services administrator in the Social Services Department.

Early retirement of social services chief is shockingMembers of our association were deeply saddened and shocked to learn of the early retirement of Camille B. Wheeler, Baltimore County's director of social services.We would be most concerned if it was because of her position that her department should be staffed by graduate social workersMrs. Wheeler's position has been vindicated by numerous studies on child-welfare staffing, including a study on salaries and qualifications of personnel in the Maryland Department of Human Resources.

TAKE a ticket and get in line if you want a chunk of the excess funds flowing into the Maryland treasury. More dollars from Washington. Growing tax revenue.Now that Gov. Parris Glendening has won a smashing re-election, there's a temptation to spend, spend, spend. Special-interest groups have plenty of suggestions.But conservative lawmakers who dominate legislative budget panels dislike big program expansions that could put the state deep in red ink in a recession.Still, the governor wants to leave a legacy.

WHEN BALTIMORE COUNTY Director of Social Services Camille B. Wheeler was forced to resign last week after 19 years, her many supporters protested that she had been made a scapegoat for the starvation death in June of 9-year-old Rita Fisher. But County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger, who wanted her gone, has been careful not to blame her for the department's oversight of the tragic Fisher case.Her fall likely has more to do with her fervent independence clashing with the executive's preference for teamwork and his desire to exercise his own personality and beliefs in the social services realm.

WASHINGTON - -The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it would be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District of Columbia if the city won't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care. Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings.

Ken Watts had a restless night and an eventful morning. He awoke about 4:30 a.m. to the sound of a motor running, looked out his window and saw a police vehicle outside his house on Wilke Avenue. "I knew something in my neighborhood was going on," he said. Watts returned to bed, got up at his usual time and walked to his car about 7:15 a.m. He saw yellow police tape draped around the front yard of a house three doors up the street in his Northeast Baltimore neighborhood. "I knew something really bad was going on," he said.

As Gov. Martin O'Malley prepares to announce $470 million in budget cuts this week, he has rejected proposals to severely slash funding for the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore and the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. The Democratic governor and former Baltimore mayor has been weighing recommendations for closing a projected shortfall in the fiscal year that began last month. In recent days, he and administration officials have been poring over options for line-item reductions to balance the $13 billion state operating budget.

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.

Molly McGrath had been chief operating officer of the Baltimore Department of Social Services for about nine months when she was promoted to the position of director in September. Since then, McGrath, 41, has been working to reform the huge agency. A career social worker, she says it takes simple things - like turning up the ringer volume on the phones - combined with the more ambitious statewide strategy of keeping children with their families, to make a difference. McGrath acknowledges that she has her work cut out for her. Earlier this year, the agency came under fire over the 2007 death of a 2-year-old who was found to have ingested methadone.

Citing her efficiency and management experience, Department of Human Resources Secretary Brenda Donald and Mayor Sheila Dixon yesterday elevated Molly McGrath to be the director of the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. "She's no nonsense," Dixon said at a City Council luncheon yesterday. "She's got a strong background in child advocacy. She understands what my mission is in strengthening the family and really working on creating an environment to put people back in society and become functional and responsible citizens."

While adoptions increased across the state last year, placements dropped in Howard County, but not enough to trouble social services officials. The findings, as well as news of increases in delinquent child-support payments, come from state social service officials, who recently released data for the fiscal year that ended June 30. Across Maryland, 617 children were adopted during the fiscal year that ended June 30, compared with 563 the year before....

The mother of Damaud Martin -- a 4-year-old boy who doctors say was severely shaken and is in a coma-like state -- was arrested on child abuse and other charges yesterday, Baltimore police reported. Tamekia A. Martin, 27, of Northeast Baltimore, was jailed and is expected to appear in court today, according to court documents. Attempts to reach Martin and her attorney were unsuccessful. Damaud's case was reported in The Sun last month as an example of the city Department of Social Services' inability to protect some of the most vulnerable children in Baltimore.

A city nurse kept tabs on Bryanna Harris for most of her short life, but during that time the nurse had little or no communication with the agency that protects vulnerable children, Baltimore's health commissioner disclosed yesterday. The nurse tried to keep contact with the family even after Bryanna's second birthday, at which time such visits are typically ended, according to Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein. But on eight occasions in the spring of 2007, the nurse could not find anyone at the Harris house.

Overburdened DSS can't stop tragedies It is the ultimate tragedy when a child dies at the hands of his or her mother. But it is disheartening that the immediate response is so often to blame the Department of Social Services for improper monitoring or for not providing an unfit mother with services ("Mother asked for help," Jan. 30). I don't think the public has a clue about how much responsibility and how many demands are placed on the caseworkers who make decisions about the welfare of abused and neglected children.