Massachusetts Gets a ‘C’ for Transparency in Child Deaths

That is an improvement from their ‘D’ status in 2008. 

“The report, which was released on Tuesday in Washington by The Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law and First Star, gave Massachusetts a grade of “C” putting the state among the bottom 20 in the country.

Although the state’s score improved from 2008, the report docked the state for having a “vague and unclear” law regarding the scope of information authorized for public release in child death and near death cases, and for closing child abuse and neglect hearings, except those relating to court orders to not resuscitate or withdraw life support for children in state custody.

The report gave Massachusetts a score of 75 out of 100, up from 60 in 2008 when the state was given a grade of “D” by the same organizations. Since then legislature adopted changes to the law in 2008 creating the Office of the Child Advocate, which reviews fatalities and near fatalities of children receiving service from executive agencies and opens some dependency proceedings in limited circumstances.

The leading sponsor of that bill, Rep. Cheryl A. Coakley-Rivera, D-Springfield, said the abuse case of Haleigh Poutre, of Westfield, horrified people and motivated legislators to approve the legislation to protect children in the custody of the state. Poutre, then 11, was hospitalized on Sept. 11, 2005, in a comatose state with a severe brain injury. In 2008, Poutre’s step-father, Jason D. Strickland, was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in state prison, after a jury convicted him of charges in the child abuse case including assault and battery on a child with serious bodily injury. The girl began improving in 2006, and was moved to a rehabilitation hospital in Boston.

The state received full credit both for having a policy regarding disclosure, and for having it codified in law, as well as for making in mandatory for the fatality review team to provide the public with annual written reports.

“The death of an abused or neglected child is not only an unspeakable tragedy, it is also a red flag that something has gone terribly wrong with the child welfare system responsible for that child,” said Robert Fellmeth, the executive director of CAI, in a statement. “Yet, too often these cases are shrouded in secrecy and, as a result, literally fatal flaws in state systems go undetected and opportunities to fix them are missed.”

According to the last report filed in 2011 by the Office of the Child Advocate, there were 24 reports of fatalities of child and youth involved with Massachusetts executive office agencies, and 17 reports of near death. Among the causes of the deaths were car crashes, homicides, medical conditions and sudden infant death syndrome, including the deaths of four boys, aged six weeks to two years, who died from “abusive head trauma and other traumatic injuries while in the care of their families.”

Despite many states making progress to address the issue of public disclosure of fatal child abuse since 2008, the report’s authors suggest that much more needs to be done to stem child abuse-related fatalities and near fatalities, estimated to be at least 1,700 a year.

The report describes a “culture of secrecy” in many states that prevents valuable information from being made public that could prevent future tragedies. Though states are required under the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act to publicly disclose information on child deaths or near deaths, advocates called the law “vague” and said it gives states “too much wiggle room.”

At a Tuesday press conference, the advocates planned to call on Congress to pass the Protect Our Kids Act, which would establish a commission to study state, federal and private child welfare systems and recommendations for a national strategy to prevent child abuse, reduce abuse and neglect fatalities, and develop a national standard for reporting child abuse fatalities.

The bill has been sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Maine was one of the states to make significant progress since the publication of the first report in 2008, joining a list of six other states that went from receiving D’s and F’s to A’s and B’s. New Hampshire also received an A or A-, according to summary of the report that did not include state-by-state scores.

Massachusetts joined the 20 states receiving “mediocre to poor” grades of C+ or lower, including California, Texas, New York and New Jersey, which are all among the most populous.

Arizona, Indiana, Nevada and Pennsylvania received perfect scores, while Montana received the only “F” and Colorado, Delaware and New Mexico received “D”s.”

Report: Massachusetts gets a ‘C’ for transparency on child deaths, near fatalities

[Mass Live.com 4/17/12 by State House News Service]

 

REFORM Puzzle Piece