Westword July 29, 2010 : Page 17
spokeswoman Liz McDonough wouldn’t say whether the department was pleased or displeased with the decision to table the restructuring recommendation. “The only thing I can say for certain is this group is not going to deal with it,” she says. Some advocates, however,are frustrated. “I’m very disappointed,” says Mary Lewis, a former foster mother from Aurora and a member of both committees. But Lewis says she understands that the deadline to vet the plan was just too tight — and she feels like the message that the system needs to change has been heard, regardless. “My feeling is we’ve gotten the counties’ attention,” she says. “And we’ve gotten the state’s attention as to what their oversight role is. I think the discussion served a useful purpose — and I think it’ll come back at some point.” So does Becky Miller Updike,the director of strategic initiatives for the Tennyson Center for Children in Denver,which serves abused and neglected kids. “I don’t think it’sgoing to go away,” she says. “Whoever the governor is after November, I hope this issue continues to be pushed on.” Anyone who needs convincing that reform is necessary need look no further than the stories of children involved with the system who die each year, advocates say. Stories like that of Ashaquae Foster. Of the nine times teachers and passersby called the El Paso County Department of Human Services over ten years to report that Ashaquae was being abused, none resulted in caseworkers opening an ongoing investiga-tion into the alleged abuse, according to a fatality report released bythe state in March after Ashaquae died last year. Not the time it was reported that two-year-old Ashaquae was grinding on the fl oor in a sexual manner and inserting objects into her vagina. Not the time that caseworkers were told Ashaquae’s parents chained her to her bed at night so she wouldn’t steal food. Not when someone called to say they’dseen seven-year-old Ashaquae digging in the trash and eating raw meat. Not when it was reported that the child slept on a soiled mattress, wore dirty clothes and was prone to pulling her hair out. Not when eleven-year-old Ashaquae told school staff that her stepmother often called her a “bitch” and an “asshole” and hit her until her nose bled. A few times, the reports were “screened out,” meaning social workers didn’t consider the allegations serious enough to investigate. Moreoften, a caseworker talked to Ashaquae and her parents, but then closed the investiga-tion as “inconclusive for abuse.” Shirley Rhodus, the child protective ser-vices administrator for El Paso County, says that in general, the decision to investigate is a judgment call. Social workers must weigh a child’s safety against the intrusiveness of the government intervening in a family’slife. “There’s no formula that says ‘If this, then that,’” she says. “There’s no way wecan add all these things up and know that it results in a [particular] response.” She also says that there’s often no way to predict when a child’s situation will turn fatal. “Hindsight is really 20/20,” she says. “Cases that wedescribe as generalized neglect or not a good home life, wemight get one hundred of those and only one will result in a child being injured or dying.” In August 2009, one month before her thirteenth birthday, Ashaquae was found bleeding on a urine-soaked mattress in the small bedroom she shared with her devel-opmentally delayed aunt. Her father and stepmother waited six hours before seeking medical attention because they wereworried they’dget in trouble for locking Ashaquae in her room, where she’d gone to sleep the night before with a bloody nose. The coroner found that she’d choked to death. The state Department of Human Ser-vices, which issues fatality reports on every child who dies after having been involved in the child-welfare system, found that El Paso County erred several times in handling Ashaquae’s case. The department criti-cized the county for not responding quickly enough to reports of abuse over the years and not following up in instances where Ashaquae’s parents were uncooperative. It also questioned why referrals in 2006 and 2007 were screened out when they reported a similar pattern of abuse and why a subsequent report alleging the same pat-tern was not reassigned when the original caseworker left the agency. The state required El Paso County to take several corrective actions. It mandated that supervisors go over certain rules with their caseworkers and meet monthly with them to review their entire caseload, a practice Rhodus says most supervisors were already doing. The county also implemented reforms on its own, she says, including adopting a group triage model to review child-abuse referrals and hiring two fi eld investigators to gather background documents on individual cases so caseworkers are free to interview children and parents. The Colorado Springs police have an open investigation into Ashaquae’s death, says spokesman Sergeant Steve Noblitt. But Rhodus argues that even if Colorado switched to a state-run child-welfare system, it wouldn’t prevent child deaths like Ashaquae’s — a stance the El Paso County commissioners officially endorsed with a vote earlier this month. “We really believe that at a local level, weare more responsive to our community,” Rhodus says. “It just seems like there will be more layers of bureaucracy in a statewide system.” Layers that some say could catch kids who would otherwise fall through the cracks. Contact the author at melanie.asmar@westword.com. BE MORE THAN A TEACHER. 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