By thew way, did you know that 88% of children in foster care are abused? (I was fortunate that when I was in the care of DHS, I was not abused. However, my younger brother and sister were not so fortunate.)

Can you give us a link for that, because it is a pretty shocking number?

I'm glad you wrote on this horrible incident, chuck, I was planning to post myself but am glad you beat me to it.

I think its awful and shockingly, disgustingly horrible the number of adults whose exact job was to protect children like Danieal Kelly and who failed, who opted for covering their asses while intentionally flaunting the procedures and rules designed to force them to simply do their jobs. I think the horror of Danieal's death - starving to death in her own excrement with bedsores that went to her bones and were infected with maggots – the DHS caseworker supposedly checking up on her never even once looking at her filthy, stench-ridden room even on the one the one ocassion they visited Danieal's mother is frankly overwhelming.

But because of the horror people are throwing suggestions willy nilly and they cut to the bone of what we make of government and how to force it to do the desperately important, literally life-saving job it is entrusted to do - that the market will never, ever, ever do on its own, taking care of those literally the most vulnerable in our society - abused children. Lynn Abraham suggests a state takeover - I think that's a recipe for disaster and exactly the worst solution. On another forum Chuck has suggested more privatzation of the business of doing social work - which I also think is also exactly what went so disastrously wrong in this case. So it does matter and it does warrant serious discussion.

DHS has contracted out case work to a private contractor named Multi-Ethnic Services and in Danieal Kelly's case, every single person in Multi-Ethnic Services lied and cheated on the paper work that was designed to force them to follow through on actually checking up on kids like Danieal, that they were actually being cared for. Its come out that it was common practice in Multi-Ethnic for all the case workers to get 6 months at time's owrth of visit paperwork signed by the parents they were supposed ot be observing on blank forms to avoid their contractual due diligence. Its come out that case worker's on Danieal's cas threw her paperwork in the bottom of ahuge box full of trash and candy wrappers, in fact and that after Danieal died people at every level inside of Multi-Ethnic systematically forged back-dated paperwork to pretend they had been doing the work they hadn't beed doing after the fact.

Considering those circumstances to me its absurd to reflexively suggest the solution is more privatization or a state takeover which would mean that state legislature appoints a Commission to hire the next Multi-Ethnic Services, in all likelihood the one that makes the most political contributions to state legislators whose districts are hundred miles from Philadelphia. Its lack oversight and accountability to locally elected officials by a private contractor that is the core of the problem. As we have seen with the school takeover, the more removed responsibility is from accountability to the voters affected, the more likely we are going see exactly these same kinds of problems. The difference is that lack of accountability at DHS literally kills children.

Thats not to say DHS is in anyway off the hook. They were not concerned with why their own procedures to keep track of Multi-Ethnic failed, they were not concerned why when neighbors complained to DHS why those complaints got ignored or more likely intentionally buried to protect Multi-Ethnic and surpress political "noise". And that to me is some of the most sickening stuff to come out about this whole incident - DHS at the highest levels was not concerned about how this child tragically died, they were concerned with covering their asses politically.

To quote the article most dealing with the coverups and false reports:

The 258-page report brims with outrage and fierce criticism of the people involved in Kelly's case - not just of the nine people who were charged, but also the people who ran DHS, the investigators who responded to the death, and even a Public Health Department official who tried to squelch her employees from talking about the case.

The findings in the report echoed, in part, the findings of a DHS review panel that found deep problems at DHS and suggested sweeping reforms.

"What I can tell you is: The internal accountability was weak, and the demand for external accountability from providers was equally weak," said Carol Spigner, the head of the panel.

"When that happens, there are a lot of risks in the system."

The grand-jury report found that the management failures began years ago, before Danieal Kelly even arrived in Philadelphia.

DHS workers complained that MultiEthnic was not visiting families as required and was falsifying records to cover it up.

An investigator for DHS found that the fraud charges were likely true. But the agency wasn't fired. Cheryl Ransom-Garner, who later became DHS director, summoned Mickal Kamuvaka and the other directors of the agency and "read them the riot act," the report said.

Later, a DHS evaluation lauded MultiEthnic for its "energetic" performance, calling it "remarkable." When called before the grand jury, Ransom-Garner said she didn't remember hearing any complaints about the agency - a response the grand jury called "incredible."

These missed chances to check up on MultiEthnic would be repeated again and again, the report found.

The agency's caseworker assigned to the Kelly family, Julius Murray, allegedly visited the home only a few times, and the investigation found no evidence he ever met the child.

In previous cases, Murray and other caseworkers allegedly would have families sign batches of blank forms, attesting to visits that never happened. Murray is charged with doing the same thing in the Kelly case.

The fraud was no aberration - "it was MultiEthnic's modus operandi," the report said.

After the girl's death, the grand jury found, the cover-up kicked into high gear.

A secretary, Vanessa Jackson, was told to come in on her day off on orders from Kamuvaka, "Dr. K." The problem: DHS was coming over for the Kelly family file at 4 p.m., and "Dr. K didn't have much of a file."

She was put to work fabricating notes for home visits that never happened, while another employee sat forging quarterly reports.

"I don't want them to test the notes for the ink to see if they had been written earlier," Jackson quoted Kamuvaka as saying.

They kept a courier from DHS waiting for 20 minutes while they assembled the file.

Like Poindexter, the next DHS worker to get the case, Laura Sommerer, didn't find anything wrong with MultiEthnic's performance. She visited the home June 29 and allegedly saw nothing amiss. She later said she didn't try to speak to the girl.

After the girl died, Sommerer's boss asked her for her report on the June visit; she gave it a day or two later.

But after investigators analyzed her computer, Sommerer admitted she didn't write the report until after the girl died. The grand jury called that "an obvious attempt to cover up her negligence."

During the investigation, the top official in the Health Department also tried to squelch information about the case, the grand jury said.

The doctor who performed the autopsy, Edwin Lieberman, said he was told to keep quiet about the case by Carmen Paris, then the department's acting commissioner.

Edward McCann, who heads the homicide unit for the District Attorney's Office, said that Paris told him it was a miscommunication.

Donald Schwarz, deputy mayor for health, said Paris was suspended pending a hearing today.

All Multi-Ethnic cared about was making it look like they were doing their job to DHS and all DHS cared about was making it look like they wre doing their job following up on Multi-Ethnic. Noone at any point considered actually looking after the welfare of the kids. It was all CYA. Which is why I would argue the solution is to ramp up direct political accountability not remove it to a commission indirectly appointed state reps from Altoona.

This is a perfect example of why the solution lies with an Inspector General's office with real teeth digging up dirt that would prod the Mayor (current and future) and City Council to excercise the oversight they should have been, all along.

Speaking of one of the things that turns my stomach most is the degree to which top level DHS officials only cared for trying to kill the story to protect themselves poltically, not fix problems and Mayor Street, better late then never did in fact make heads roll - again an argument for more local accountability to the voters, not less.

In October 2006, after The Inquirer published reports on deaths of other children under DHS supervision, Ransom-Garner at first prepared a counteroffensive - an opinion piece attacking the paper's findings.

She admitted that she didn't bother telling Mayor John F. Street much about the Kelly case "because it wasn't in the press."

But then someone showed Street the photographs of Danieal Kelly. The next morning, on Oct. 20, she was called into the office of Managing Director Pedro Ramos.

"This is the case that is going to take the mayor down," Ransom-Garner quoted him as saying.

There would be no opinion column. Instead, Street fired Ransom-Garner and her top deputy.

-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.

If I wasn't perfectly clear, there are conflicting ideas of what this case calls out for in response. Lynn Abraham thinks its a state takeover, other suggest privitization. I think its tougher internal oversight with a number firings likely and a beefed up IG's office empowered to precisely examine DHS. What are other folks response in terms of the response they think is warranted?

-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.

The reason I haven't spoken about it is because I am not sure what there is to say, and the whole thing is pretty tough to wrap your head around. Yes, obviously DHS needs deep reforms.

I will say that while this story rightfully gets headlines, and there needs to be deep, serious examinations of how DHS works, there are going to continue to be vulnerable children who are abused or worse because we don't come close to meeting the needs of the population. That isn't to say it would have made a difference here, because besides the cover up, there appears to have been all kinds of negligent acts. But it is to say that because of the priorities we as a society place generally, we are continually failing tens of thousands of children every day in Philadelphia, in all facets of life.

As an example, for the overwhelming majority of social workers in this city, who work there because they want to help kids, what is the ratio of kid to social worker? We should be clear that even with the best, most professional, well meaning people in our schools, or in DHS, we fail the children of our society. Most cases, and most poor kids in the City, do not end up with such overwhelmingly brutal outcomes as this one did, and so we don't have a picture of a dying, abused child staring us in the face.

But, until we start investing in the kids of our city (on all levels, and from all levels), there will be more horror stories, even if we don't hear about them. They will not be as obviously bad as this one- especially if reforms lead to real oversight in DHS. But make no mistake, they are happening every day. It is where we are in 21st century America, and frankly, it is pretty damn scary.

that as counter-intuitive as it sounds, some people's gut level reaction to monumental failings of government is to say to cut the program, to privatize it, etc. Basically the people charged with protecting Danieal from her parents failed to do their job at its most basic level and lied and fabricated to cover up. There are serious indications that rather than the exception, that for some at DHS and virtually all at Multi-Ethnic Services that this approach was the norm. The solution should not be to eliminate people (some specific culpable people obviously should go) from doing that job of protecting kids in general or to even further take away oversight and accountability from the agency. I also do not have any professional insight into how to make an institution like DHS run well but its something that warrants the utmost of attention and concern.

-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.