How Could You? Hall of Shame-Blancho Brumfield UPDATED
This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.
From Sacramento, California, former foster parent and CPS worker Blancho Brumfield was finally put on administrative leave in February 2012.
“In 2007, the state Department of Social Services revoked the foster care license of a Vallejo woman whom the agency accused of locking children in her garage “for hours without food or water” and taunting one foster boy with the words “faggot” and “queer.”
The state forbade Blancho Brumfield from ever working in a facility licensed by the department – except when it came to her job as a child abuse investigator for Sacramento County.
In fact, Sacramento County’s Child Protective Services hired Brumfield four months after the Department of Social Services launched its investigation into abuse allegations at Brumfield’s foster home in May 2004, records show.
Until Feb. 2, when she was placed on paid administrative leave from her $75,000-a-year job, Brumfield had been working in the emergency response unit at CPS, which is responsible for investigating the most pressing claims of abuse and neglect.
Laura McCasland, a CPS spokeswoman, said Brumfield was placed on leave a day after a county ombudsman received a complaint about her. McCasland would not disclose the nature of the complaint, but said the county is examining Brumfield’s background, including the cases she handled at CPS.
McCasland said the state notified “a low-level” CPS employee about the investigation into abuse allegations at Brumfield’s foster home. But it never informed the local agency about the outcome, she said.
Michael Weston, a spokesman for the state Department of Social Services, said his agency notified CPS on Sept. 27, 2004, about the investigation. That was three days after she started work for the county. He said his agency has no record of contacting CPS about the outcome of the investigation.
However, county officials should have been aware of the complaints because of a related 2006 lawsuit that was filed by the mother of a foster child allegedly abused in Brumfield’s home. Besides Brumfield, the lawsuit named CPS and the Department of Social Services among the defendants.
The probe into Brumfield’s background is the latest in a string of disclosures about Sacramento County’s child welfare agency. In recent months, it has come to light that CPS failed to keep track of a baby boy who now has been missing for a year and that the agency did not properly document its reasons for returning a baby girl to the home of her parents, where she later died of medical neglect.
Bill Grimm, senior counsel at the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland, sees a troubling pattern.
“The agency needs to be put back under the microscope,” he said. “People need to ask why these things are happening again.”
In the Brumfield case, the social worker and her husband, Gary, were licensed to have up to six foster children in their home from 1999 to 2007. The state Department of Social Services filed a complaint in 2006 leveling several accusations about the couple. Among them:
• The Brumfields verbally abused foster children, including calling one child “faggot” and “queer.”
• The Brumfields encouraged foster children to fight one another, and allowed a child who visited the home to physically and verbally abuse foster children.
• Blancho Brumfield locked foster children in her garage, which did not have air conditioning or heating.
The material provided by the state did not say who made the original allegations of abuse or how many children allegedly were involved. Before the Department of Social Services made its formal findings in the investigation, the agency reached a settlement with the couple that stripped them of their foster care license and prevents either of them from working in a facility licensed by the department.”
Sacramento child abuse investigator target of state foster-care probe
[Modesto Bee 4/25/12 by Brad Branan]
REFORM Puzzle Piece
$75,000 salary for a CPS worker whose foster care license was pulled? Great background checks, California!
Update: “Blancho Brumfield has been responsible for investigating and reporting child abuse in Sacramento County since 2004, but according to state documents, she’s accused of abusing some of our most vulnerable children herself.
Blancho and her husband Greg, had been foster parents in Vallejo since 1999. But in 2004, allegations were made she used gay slurs on her foster children, encouraged them to fight, and even locked them in her garage without air conditioning or heating.
The Brumfields were never charged. Instead they settled with the state. The couple surrendered their foster care license in 2007 and Blancho was allowed to keep her job with CPS.
Children’s Advocacy Institute’s Ed Howard says what makes this even more outrageous is CPS knew about the abuse allegations. They hired her after the allegations were made and kept her on the job even after the state reported the allegations to CPS.”
“[A] spokesperson for CPS told CBS13 over the phone that a “low-level” employee took the complaint and the state never followed up with its findings.
“It’s completely pathetic to throw a low-level employee under the bus like that,” Howard said.
“Everybody knows the problems of this agency are long-standing, stubborn, procedural and systemic.”
“We also reached out to the Vallejo Police Department to ask why it didn’t press charges against Brumfield for her actions as a foster parent. The department said it found wrongdoing, but not criminal wrongdoing”
CPS Worker Kept Job Despite State Investigation Into Foster Abuse
[CBS Sacramento 4/25/12 by Ben Sosenko]
Update 2: “Sacramento County has fired a Child Protective Services investigator because she allegedly abused children in her foster home, used a county car to commute to work each day and counted the commutes on her timecard, records show.
As The Bee reported earlier this year, the county hired Blancho Brumfield as an emergency response investigator in 2004, when she was under scrutiny by the California Department of Social Services for abuse reports at her Vallejo foster home.
In January of this year, one of Brumfield’s former foster children called the county to say she shouldn’t be working with children. The county placed Brumfield on administrative leave and launched an investigation.
The department interviewed five of Brumfield’s former foster children, and upheld allegations that she and her husband locked children in a garage without food or water for long periods, encouraged the children to fight and ridiculed them by saying things such as they were foster children because no one loved them, records state.
In its dismissal letter, the county cited its own investigation, which found that Blancho Brumfield stole public funds by using a county car to get to and from her CPS job each day and by including the commutes on her timecard. Her actions, both violations of county policy, cost the county about $35,000 in the two years reviewed, records state.
Brumfield did not return messages from The Bee. According to county records, she admitted using county vehicles to get to and from work and marking commutes as work time.
She denied at least some of the allegations and tried to submit an old psychological exam of a former foster child to try to discredit his story. The county said she violated privacy law and ethical standards by doing so, and noted that she didn’t dispute the state’s findings when she lost her foster care license.
Brumfield is “not taking responsibility for her actions and continues to blame the child,” a hearing officer wrote in a review of the case, adding that a request by her union representative to consider a child’s state of mind was “outrageous.”
Brumfield lost her first appeal of the decision, and will receive another hearing before an arbitrator next month.
The findings about her beg further investigation, child welfare advocates say.
“This casts a shadow over all the investigations she has done in her 7 1/2 years at the county,” said Bill Grimm, senior counsel at the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland.
Grimm estimates that Brumfield handled about 1,500 investigations at CPS, where she was assigned the most pressing cases of alleged abuse and neglect of children.
CPS Deputy Director Michelle Callejas said in an interview Thursday that the agency reviewed some of Brumfield’s work and found no problems.
Callejas said she did not know how many cases were reviewed or how the agency reviewed her work, but was satisfied with the review.
In its dismissal letter, the county accused Brumfield of increasing community distrust of CPS, which has faced repeated criticism for systemic problems that have contributed to the deaths of children under its responsibility.
In the investigative records, the county repeatedly said Brumfield, the state and Brumfield’s foster care agency failed to notify the county about her record of abuse.
But Grimm and Ed Howard, senior counsel at the Children’s Advocacy Institute in San Diego,said Sacramento County had a duty to find out about her background.
Callejas said she doesn’t know what the county did to check her references, but said employers are often limited about what they can say about a past employee.
A Department of Social Services spokesman said earlier this year that the department told the county about the investigation in 2004, after Brumfield was hired by the county.
But Callejas said the contact consisted of a state investigator wanting to talk to a social worker about the case and didn’t include any effort to notify CPS management about Brumfield’s involvement.
When a state official completed the abuse investigation in 2005, she summarized the findings and included a warning: “It should be noted that Blancho Brumfield is a Sacramento County Emergency Response Social Worker.”
Nevertheless, when the state agreed to settle the case with Brumfield two years later and banned her from working in state-licensed facilities, it specifically exempted her work as a Sacramento County social worker. In records, the county said it wasn’t informed about the agreement and would never have accepted it if asked.
At least one of Brumfield’s supervisors was aware of her past record, though.
In a statement given to the county, Mary Ingram, now retired, said Brumfield told her about the abuse investigation. Ingram said Brumfield told her that she was “accused of slapping a child … all she said was that she was accused and not found guilty and by her choice she would not have foster children again.”
Callejas said steps have been taken to prevent similar problems from happening in the future. The state Department of Social Services has agreed to notify the county about similar investigations involving CPS employees and will let the county search its licensing database to check on job candidates, she said.
The county also started using an FBI database to check for criminal records nationwide, she said.”
The Public Eye: Sacramento County fires Child Protective Services worker
[Sacramento Bee 12/9/12 by Brad Branan]
This woman should never have been allowed to work with this very vulnerable population. She has mentally, verbally and physically abused her own children. Thankfully, her true character has been exposed.
Blanco Brumfield has filed a discrimination lawsuit against SACRAMENTO County and the State of California as of September 2016. The whole thing makes me ILL!