Tennessee Releases 3 1/2 years of Child Death Records UPDATED

According to the DHS data released, “nearly one-third of the 151 children who died in those 3½ years were victims of abuse or neglect.”

“Just over half of the children who suffered “near-fatalities” — life-threatening injuries such as bone fractures, drug exposure, gunshot wounds, attempted suicides, near drownings — were abused or neglected, according to DCS data.”

“The Tennessean last month, when the newspaper first reported 31 deaths in the first six months of 2012 among children who had interacted with the agency at some point while they were alive.

The newspaper requested all available records for each child who had died or experienced a near fatality from 2009 to be able to answer questions about their lives and their deaths (or serious injuries), including how DCS and other officials responded to the children and their families.”

“The data revealed the children who died had been in DCS custody, been subject to an open investigation or subject to a prior investigation that had been closed within three years of their deaths.

Of those, the agency could substantiate abuse or neglect among 47 children.

And, 21 children who died during this time period were in DCS custody.”

 

DCS provides details on children’s injuries, deaths

[The Tennessean 10/17/12 by Anita Wadhwani]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

 The entire records were not provided.

Update: “The Tennessean, joined by a coalition of the state’s newspapers, television stations and other media organizations, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the state Department of Children’s Services, alleging the agency is violating the law by refusing to make public the records of children who died after being brought to the agency’s attention.

Filed in Davidson County Chancery Court, the lawsuit asks the court to order DCS to explain why the records were not provided. And it asks that the department immediately give those records to the court so a judge can review them and redact any confidential information, and for the records to then be opened to the public for review.”

“A dozen news organizations joined the suit, creating the largest coalition of Tennessee media organizations — in terms of number, geographic scope, readership and viewership — to ever file a public records lawsuit, according to Robb Harvey, an attorney with Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis who is representing The Tennessean.
DCS Commissioner Kate O’Day responded to the lawsuit in a written statement Wednesday afternoon.

“Child safety is our number one priority, and we must protect the rights of the children and families we work with. The department has made every effort to provide information, open access to meetings, and interviews with staff to what I believe is an unprecedented level while also protecting those rights,” O’Day wrote. “Our legal staff, together with the Attorney General’s Office, has recently reviewed the legal arguments made by The Tennessean and believes we have produced all the documents that we can consistent with the provisions of state and federal law. We support an open improvement process for the department, and we will continue to work to provide information, access and interviews to The Tennessean and other media outlets consistent with the law.”
A spokesman for Gov. Bill Haslam declined to comment.

The lawsuit describes the Tennessee Public Records Act as “among the broadest in the country,” and says the Tennessee Supreme Court has been vigilant in protecting the public’s right of access (view the lawsuit at Tennessean.com).

“We believe the records should be made public and have worked for months with DCS to try to get documents. Unfortunately, those efforts, and examples of similar documents made public in other states, did not sway Tennessee officials,” said Maria De Varenne, Tennessean executive editor and VP/News.

“The care and protection of these children is paramount. Making these records public would shine a light on the state’s programs and procedures — those that are exemplary and those that need improvement.’’
The lawsuit follows the latest DCS refusal to provide records, which arrived in a letter Tuesday in response to a deadline imposed by The Tennessean and a dozen news organizations who joined the newspaper’s request for records.

“A full consideration of the legal arguments and authorities, including those discussed in your letter of November 28, supports the Department’s determination that it has produced all the documents that it can consistent with the provisions of state and federal law,” Deputy Attorney General Janet Kleinfelter wrote in response to The Tennessean.

To date, DCS has provided brief summaries of the child deaths.

Instead of providing the actual case files or records that would show how casework was reviewed, the state created spreadsheets, with a single line for each child.

Those disclosures were described as “woefully inadequate” in a Nov. 28 letter from De Varenne and Harvey to DCS (view the letter).

The disclosures also contained factual errors. DCS acknowledged the information it released included incorrect numbers of children who died this year and incorrect dates of death for two of the children.

The records case has been assigned to Davidson County Chancellor Carol McCoy. The news organizations requested a Jan. 8 hearing.”

“DCS and its chief have come under fire in recent months for a series of problems and missteps. For example:

• The department’s chief lawyer acknowledged the agency had been violating the law by not reporting child deaths to lawmakers.

• A sheriff and child advocates in Dickson County said DCS wasn’t properly intervening in situations where children were experiencing severe abuse.

• The state’s child abuse hotline was leaving as many as a quarter of all calls unanswered.

• The DCS computer system failed to make proper payments to foster parents and private agencies, and accompanying data problems have meant the agency can’t provide accurate information on children in its care, which has hindered progress on a federal court settlement that requires the agency to take better care of foster children.”

Lawsuit demands DCS records on children who died

[The Tennessean 12/19/12 by Anita Wadhwani and Tony Gonzalez]

Update 2: “A Tennessee judge in the Davidson County Chancery Court heard arguments Tuesday over whether she should make public controversial child fatality records held by the state’s Department of Children’s Services.

A coalition of a dozen media organizations filed a lawsuit in December against the department after it denied the media organizations’ public records requests for details about more than 200 children under the department’s watch. The coalition began after The Tennessean filed a request for the records and department officials failed to respond, prompting other media organizations to file the same request. The media organizations then joined together in filing the suit.

According to the lawsuit, the department has not cited any provision of the Tennessee Public Records Act that would permit them to withhold the records, arguing only that the sensitive records regarding child fatalities require careful balancing between the privacy rights of children and families and the public’s right to know.

“When it’s not clear why a government agency is withholding information, in this case dealing with the deaths of several children that were in DCS custody, I think at some point it becomes necessary for the public to demand that information,” said Greg Sherrill, executive director of the Tennessee Press Association.

In the lawsuit, the news organizations demanded that the DCS turn over the requested records to the court so that the judge could redact any confidential information and release the records to the public. The department today brought reports on four deceased children for the judge to look through, said Robb Harvey, who represented The Tennessean in the hearing today.

“The judge has the opportunity and obligation to review those records, decide what, if anything, is confidential or not and issue a ruling letting us know what, if anything, we can look at,” Harvey said.

Once the ruling is issued, newspapers will have a better idea of which records they need access to.

“We want to see all the records on those four children because we don’t know whether they’re representative of the whole,” Harvey said. “Our reporters will make a decision if we need every deceased kid’s file, the entire file, or if there’s a particular report in the file that would accelerate the process.”

The Tennessean requested records relating to the fatalities and near fatalities of children who were in the custody of the DCS or about whom there has been a DCS file, Harvey said. Over 200 cases fall into that category since 2009, including the deaths of 31 children in the first six months of 2012.

The department has provided some “inadequate” summary information on the incidents, but no records, said Jack McElroy, editor of The Knoxville News-Sentinel. The information provided did not give any level of detail that allowed any kind of evaluation of what went wrong, he said.

Many states have amended their public records laws to comply with a federal act addressing child abuse, Harvey said, but how the states’ statutes should be interpreted is unclear. A recent decision in Kentucky allowed newspapers access to records regarding a juvenile sexual assault case under the Kentucky statute, but the DCS insists it does not have to release records due to the similar Tennessee statute.

“Tennessee has one of the broadest (open records) statutes in the country but the state refuses to provide any public records, instead just providing information they believe falls under the state statute,” Harvey said.

“I don’t know that there’s any responsibility that is more important than protecting children when the state takes responsibility or is called upon to act in defense of them,” McElroy said. “And they end up dead. I think that’s a real failure by our communities and our society, and examining how that has happened is the best way to prevent it from happening in the future.”

Tenn. court to review child death records withheld from public

[RCFP.org 1/8/13 by Lilly Chapa]

DCS Fires two top employees

“Alan Hall, the Executive Director of Performance and Quality Improvement, and Debbie Miller, the Executive Director of Family and Child Well-Being, no longer work at DCS.

“The departure of the Executive Director of Well-Being was a result of ongoing restructuring within the department, which integrated functions of that division into other program areas. The Executive Director of Performance and Quality Improvement was separated,” said DCS Director of Communications Molly Sudderth in a written statement.

 

The departures came on the same day that DCS was in court responding to a request filed by WSMV-TV and other media to review state records on child fatalities.

The department believes those documents should not be released.”

DCS fires 2 high-level executives

[WSMV.com 1/10/13 by Scott Sutton]

Update 3: A judge orders DCS to provide child death records.

“The state has identified nine more cases of children who died during the past two years while in the care of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services.    The nine additional cases were uncovered as officials prepared for a federal court hearing Friday.    Republican Gov. Bill Haslam said in a statement Thursday that some of the newly discovered cases were documented incorrectly, while others weren’t documented at all, a situation he called “not acceptable.”    A Nashville judge this week ordered the department to provide more detailed information about children who died or nearly died after the agency investigated reports of abuse or neglect.    The department initially produced a report containing only one line of information on the cases of 151 children who officials said had died since 2009.”

http://www.fox17.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wztv_vid_16101.shtml

[FOX 17 1/25/13 by Associated Press]

” The state agency charged with caring for abused and neglected children is facing a federal judge a day after revealing that it underestimated how many of the children it was supposed to protect had died.

This fall, the Department of Children’s Services said 151 children who had previous contact with the agency died between Jan. 2009 and mid-2012.

A statement from Gov. Bill Haslam issued late Thursday revealed nine additional deaths and announced that the governor was appointing a senior adviser in his office to conduct an analysis of DCS operations.

The agency is due in federal court on Friday afternoon to report on its progress toward getting out from under a consent order that requires independent monitoring of DCS. It was an independent monitor who discovered the additional deaths.”

DCS faces judge after child deaths revelation

[FOX 17 1/25/13 by Associated Press]

“Some of the newly discovered cases previously had been documented incorrectly, while others weren’t documented at all, a situation the Republican chief executive called “not acceptable.”

“While it is no secret that DCS has struggled with systemic problems since its inception, we have to get it right,” Haslam said in a statement.

The governor appointed Larry Martin, a senior adviser in his office, to conduct an analysis of the DCS operations, but said Commissioner Kate O’Day will remain in charge.

“To me this this really isn’t about data, or one employee, or even one case,” he said. “This is about getting it right for the children who need our help.”

The additional cases were uncovered as officials prepared for a federal court hearing Friday.

DCS has been under federal court oversight since 2001 after settling a class-action lawsuit over the high number of children it has placed in foster care.

The settlement limited the number of cases assigned to workers and required better training. It also led to the appointment of a monitor to report on whether the state was making progress to reduce the numbers of children living in institutions and place siblings in the same foster home, among other measures.

Haslam did not say in the statement what changes he expects to make at the department.

“The department’s work is critical,” he said. “My goal is not to get in the way of that work, but I believe we have to take a different approach than what has been taken before.”

A Nashville judge in a separate case this week ordered the department to provide more detailed information about children who died or nearly died after the agency investigated reports of abuse or neglect.

The department initially produced a report containing only one line of information on the cases of 151 children who officials said had died since 2009. Attorneys for the state had argued that DCS was prohibited by state law from releasing its records.

Chancellor Carol McCoy on Wednesday ruled that a child’s right to privacy is diminished after the child dies and the more important concern becomes what the state did or did not do to try to prevent the death.

She directed DCS to file with the court an estimate of how long it will take to redact the confidential information from the summaries of the more than 200 other requested files and the costs involved.

The records then must be turned over to 12 news media organizations that sued under Tennessee’s public records law. The media coalition was led by The Tennessean and included The Associated Press.

As part of the case, McCoy reviewed the files of four of the children whose records had been requested.

“The files do not appear to be in chronological order nor are they organized in any meaningful way; the individual pages are held together with large clips in plain folders,” McCoy said in her order.”

Tenn. shows more cases of child deaths in DCS care

[The Leaf Chronicle 1/25/13 by Eric Schelzig]

Update 4: “The commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services resigned  Tuesday amid scrutiny of how her agency was handling cases of children who died  after investigations of abuse and neglect.

Gov. Bill Haslam announced Kate O’Day’s resignation in a news release and  wasn’t immediately available to comment.

“She was concerned that she had become more of a focus than the children the  department serves,” Haslam said in the release.

The Republican governor last week defended O’Day’s leadership, even after the  agency told a federal judge it couldn’t say with any certainty how many children  died while in its custody.

DCS had been sued by The Tennessean, The Associated Press and 10 other news  organizations to obtain case records of 151 children who died between January  2009 and July 2012 and had been the subject of state investigations of abuse or  neglect.

Chancellor Carol McCoy ruled last month that DCS, which had claimed it was  keeping the records closed to protect the children’s privacy, had to release  hundreds of pages from four cases to the news organizations after identifying  information was redacted. A decision on whether more records were to be released  is pending.

DCS has been under federal court oversight for more than a decade over  problems in Tennessee’s foster care system.

Less than two weeks ago DCS told a federal judge that it couldn’t accurately  count how many children have died in its custody, saying its tracking system had  missed nine deaths in 2011 and 2012. The revelation and increasing calls for DCS  to improve its performance have threatened to derail more than 10 years of work  to resolve a long-running lawsuit over the agency’s handling of foster care.

Thus far, officials have not been able to explain how DCS overlooked the nine  deaths except to say that it was the result of human error.

Haslam named Commissioner Jim Henry, the head of the Department of  Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, to serve as interim commissioner of  DCS.

O’Day had been commissioner since January 2011, when she was appointed by  Haslam. Before that she was president and chief executive officer of Child &  Family Tennessee in Knoxville.”

Tennessee’s Children’s Services head resigns over handling of child death cases

[Fox News 2/5/13 by Associated Press]

“The Department of Children’s Services estimates it will cost $55,584 to turn over the records of children who have died after having some interaction with the agency.

State lawyers filed the estimates Monday in Davidson County Chancery Court in response to a lawsuit by The Tennessean and a dozen other media outlets around the state, including WBIR-TV.

The judge ordered DCS to provide redacted copies of the files of more than 200 children who died or nearly died since 2009 after having some contact with the $650 million child protective agency.

The filing Monday contains a “Schedule for Reasonable Charges” for retrieving, redacting, transporting and providing the files.”

DCS wants media to pay $55K for child death records

[WBIR 2/4/13 by Anita Wadhwani]

Update 5: “Someone at the Department of Children’s Services redacted numerous pages of information about child fatalities in meeting minutes that were provided to the media.

DCS spokeswoman Molly Sudderth told The Tennessean the department is still investigating who redacted the information and why.

Because the documents were redacted on a computer, it was impossible to tell that many sentences and paragraphs had been completely removed. These included potentially damaging information about caseworker actions.

The meeting minutes of the department’s internal Child Fatality Review Team were requested by The Tennessean and The Associated Press.

Last week, Sudderth said there had been a mistake with the redaction. She provided new copies of the minutes to The Tennessean. The Associated Press had not yet received the new copies today.”

Tennessee DCS deleted pages from child death records

[Times Free Press 2/12/13 by Associated Press]

Update 6: “A total of 802 children died in Tennessee in 2011, with a third of those deaths a result of abuse, murder, drowning, suicide, suffocation or other preventable causes, according to new data released Tuesday by the Department of Health.

State health officials note it is the fewest number of child deaths they have had to report in the past five years.

Still, the new data are unlikely to shake Tennessee’s grim foothold on the top 10 list for states in the country with the highest child death rates.

Children are more likely to die in Tennessee before they reach their 18th birthday than in most other states, surpassing the national average of 52 deaths for every 100,000 children. In Tennessee, the average was closer to 66 deaths per 100,000 children, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data for 2010, the most recent year that national comparison data are available. By 2011, child deaths claimed 60 of every 100,000 Tennessee children.”

One-third of 802 Tennessee child deaths were ‘probably preventable’

[Times Free Press 2/27/13]

Update 8: “The Tennessee Department of Children’s Service now says more children it had contact with died in both 2012 and 2011 than the agency earlier reported.

DCS officials said in January that 73 children who were brought to the department’s attention died in 2012. The agency has corrected the figure to 105 children.

Likewise, DCS said earlier that 47 children it had contact with died in 2011, but revised that figure to 91 children.

State Sen. Jim Summerville (R-Dickson) told The Tennessean counting children shouldn’t be that hard, but he hopes the latest numbers are reliable.

“Counting dead children is an awful thing, but the department must do it right,” Summerville said.

State Rep. Sherry Jones (D-Nashville) initially asked for the child death figures in July 2012. On Monday, Jones said she had not yet received an accurate accounting by DCS and asked that the figures be read to her over the telephone.

“This is unbelievable, unprofessional,” Jones said. “Unless the numbers are being manipulated and no one can keep track, they should know these numbers every day, and I’m surprised they don’t.”

Newly appointed DCS Deputy Director Scott Modell said the data have been cross-checked and are now accurate.

The deaths fall into three categories. One includes children who were in the department’s custody when they died. Another group was under an active investigation by DCS. The third category includes children who had been investigated by DCS sometime during the three years prior to the deaths.

The final category now includes previously unreported death of children in the department’s juvenile justice system who were on probation with DCS or were referred by courts.

The revised figures were included in a weekly newsletter emailed primarily to employees Friday evening. There were no further details about the ages, gender, county or circumstances in the deaths of these additional children.

DCS Interim Commissioner Jim Henry appointed two senior staff members to oversee a review of the child death records. He also is requiring DCS staff members to contact him by cellphone within one hour of learning of the death of a child.”

Tenn. DCS says more children died than it said earlier

[TirCities.com 3/19/13 by Associated Press]

Update 9: “Davidson County Chancellor Carol McCoy on Wednesday ordered the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services to provide media outlets redacted case files of the 50 most recent cases involving fatalities or near-fatalities of children under their watch.
McCoy said the state must pay the cost to redact those records, but media outlets should pay 50 cents per copy — more than three times the agency’s standard fee — for the files.
The state has until May 3 to turn the records over to the court. The 50 files — just a fourth of the total number of records sought by the media — will cost $1,067.50. The state originally claimed it would cost tens of thousands to provide the full 200-plus files.”

“[T]he state first priced at $55,584 and later reduced to $34,225, claiming that it would require hand delivery of certain records from throughout the state and hours of expensive whiting out of confidential information.

The coalition also is asking the judge to order the release of eight specific computerized forms that detail the investigative steps that go into child welfare investigations. Some of those documents would include information about contact the state had with the child prior to the death or near-death incident.

DCS has filed a response requesting the judge deny the motion, saying that the media isn’t entitled to any more records. The agency’s response also indicates it is unwilling to budge on requiring media outlets to pay thousands of dollars for the information.”

UPDATE: Judge orders release of child death and near-death files at greatly reduced cost

[The Tennessean 4/17/13 by Brian Haas and Bobby Allyn]

Update 10: “”There have been balls dropped by several individuals,” Davidson County Chancellor Carol McCoy said at a hearing where she released 42 records of cases of children who died or nearly died after being under the supervision of DCS at some point earlier. In all, the documents totaled about 1,600 pages. An attorney for media organizations that sought the information was in the process of making copies for each outlet, so the files were not immediately available. But the judge said they were difficult to read.

“If you have children it just gets to you,” she said of the records. The judge did not describe any of the circumstances in the files that she said disturbed her.

There were some cases where it took months to perform autopsies on the children, and she raised the question of whether there was any autopsy at all in other cases. If not, that would hinder prosecution.

Abuse or neglect did not cause all the child deaths. Some children had birth defects and died of natural causes or as a result of a traffic accident, McCoy said. She said DCS probably could not have done anything to save those children.

The release of the documents was the result of a lawsuit filed by a group of media organizations led by The Tennessean and including The Associated Press that sought access to records of children DCS was supposed to be helping. The records include children who died or nearly died from 2009 to mid-2012 who had either been placed in custody for protection, or we’re the subject of an active or closed investigation.

The agency was unable to provide additional records in cases involving eight children who died after some type of investigation by the department.

Janet Kleinfelter, a lawyer with the state attorney general’s office, told the judge that DCS didn’t have the records because the department was not notified after the children died. It wasn’t until the deaths were matched against the state Health Department’s death records that officials discovered what happened.

McCoy said the state had until May 31 to release records on 50 additional cases. Media outlets have sought information on 200 cases, and McCoy has said they will get them.

She said that after looking at the files, the media’s arguments for releasing the documents were “well taken.”

Robb Harvey, a Nashville attorney who is representing the media organizations, told McCoy that they would not stop pursuing the records, but they were not about to pay the exorbitant fees demanded by the state.

DCS originally said media outlets would have to pay more than $55,000 for the 200 records. The estimate included more than 7,000 miles of driving to hand-deliver documents from local offices and 600 hours for paralegals to redact the paperwork at a cost of $30 an hour. McCoy has said that DCS could charge the media to make copies but not for redacting the records. On Friday, the judge maintained that it would be reasonable for the media to pay 50 cents per page.

The state is appealing her decision.”

Judge Says DCS ‘Dropped Balls’ in Child Death Investigations

[Knox News .com 5/11/13 by Associated Press/Sheila Burke]

“A Spring Hill pediatrician says she has some sympathy as the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services tries to sort through claims about children’s welfare.

Dr. Shontae Buffington serves as the fellow-at-large representing Middle Tennessee for the Tennessee chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

But Buffington also told The Tennessean (http://tnne.ws/10PY0YX ) she is irritated that DCS caseworkers without apparent medical expertise sometimes challenged her medical opinions. Buffington said it isn’t unusual for a pediatrician to see two or three cases that could be medical maltreatment in a year’s time.

The newspaper cited a case in which the department said medical professionals’ belief that an East Tennessee infant with heart problems wasn’t being properly cared for were unfounded. Six days later, the baby died.”

Pediatrician says DCS sometimes challenges doctor’s opinions about maltreated children

[The Republic 5/20/13 by Associated Press]

Update 10:

“Newly released records from the Department of Children’s Services contain substantial redactions of information that prevent the public from learning in some cases how children died, a Tennessean review has found.

One DCS file describes a 17-month-old girl found not breathing and blue after her afternoon nap. Her family had a “vast history” of DCS interventions that stretched back eight years. But lengthy redactions conceal doctors’ conclusions about whether the toddler had suffered abuse or neglect before her death.

Those omissions from her file make it impossible to learn why an otherwise healthy child simply died. DCS notes say the agency closed the case without finding child abuse or neglect and before the agency had viewed the autopsy.

The girl’s records are among 44 newly released DCS case files of children who had been the subject of a child abuse or neglect report at some point before they died or suffered critical injuries in the latter half of 2011 and early 2012. The files were released under court order after The Tennessean led a coalition of media groups in filing a lawsuit to gain access to the records.

Many of the records contain rows of blacked-out sentences that conceal the cause and circumstance of a child’s death, the nature of injuries or illnesses, and the concerns of medical professionals. Many of the redactions appear random.

In some cases, DCS redacted autopsy results, which are routinely made public by the state’s medical examiners. In other cases, DCS redactions were contradictory, concealing cause of death on some pages, while leaving it unedited elsewhere in the same child’s file.

Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Carol McCoy, who ordered the records released and reviewed each one, said last week that at least 129 pages contained redactions that may have gone beyond what she ordered DCS to eliminate to protect the confidentiality of families. McCoy asked media groups to alert her to any other redactions that seemed unnecessary. The Tennessean’s review revealed dozens more pages.

Deputy Attorney General Janet Kleinfelter said in court that the redactions are required by the federal HIPAA law, which makes medical records private.

However, a DCS release of 42 children’s records last month did not have the same information blackouts.

DCS spokesman Rob Johnson said the agency could not answer the newspaper’s questions about the new redactions, saying state lawyers instead would communicate with the attorneys representing the media.

“Normally, we try to be as responsive as we can, but your questions are about matters that are currently before the court,” Johnson said.

Media attorney Lauran Sturm said the blacked-out information is not what the court ordered.

“In two orders, the court has specified the identifying information that has to be redacted from these forms, and these latest redactions go beyond that and, in some cases, make it more difficult to see what actually happened,” Sturm said.

More redactions

The judge had ordered DCS to release records in batches of 50. In its first release last month, there were no such redactions and case files contained detailed information that revealed details about children’s injuries and cause of death.

In the latest release, the redactions are much more extensive.

In the case of a 10-week-old boy – identified in DCS records as Case #102 – there are many paragraphs that contain more blackouts than words.

The infant’s autopsy results are blacked out, as is the cause of death in at least three places. But in another part of the file, DCS left unredacted that “shaken baby syndrome” may be his cause of death.

This is not the first controversy faced by DCS over redactions.

In February, DCS officials conceded they had wrongly deleted large portions of their child fatality review team meeting minutes before releasing them to the press.

In May, The Tennessean learned that three high-ranking employees had been disciplined for removing public information from dozens of pages of internal files released to the media.”

DCS blacks out parts of child death files, keeping public in dark

[WBIR 6/20/13]

Update 11: “A Nashville judge suggested on Wednesday that someone from the Department of Children’s Services should go to jail for making extensive redactions to the records of children who died.

Judge Carol McCoy earlier this year ruled that the department had to release to the media the records of children who died or nearly died after DCS was supposed to be helping them. She authorized some redactions, but a recent batch of 44 files blacked out a lot of other information as well.

The Tennessean (http://tnne.ws/14XXvRB) reports that at a court hearing on Wednesday, McCoy equated the redactions with contempt of court because they ignored her specific orders about what the agency was supposed to black out.

“You find this court a commissioner or assistant commissioner, someone big enough to tell me they are the ones who didn’t follow the order,” McCoy said. “I need the name of the person responsible … someone who needs to sit in the pokey.”

DCS attorney Doug Dimond defended the redactions as being done in good faith to protect extremely sensitive material.

“We’re not trying to play hide the ball here,” he said.

The state attorney general’s office had argued in court filings that the additional redactions were required to protect juvenile court records and medical information.

They argued that it was not enough to black out the names of people and places because The Tennessean newspaper was able to use other information in the files to determine the identities of some of the children.

The evidence given for that was that The Tennessean had written articles about some of the children and contacted some of their relatives. However, nothing in the filing from the attorney general’s office suggests that attorneys there had direct knowledge of how The Tennessean obtained the children’s identities.

McCoy ordered DCS to go back and restore the information that was not supposed to be removed from the original 44 files as well as another 50 files released on Wednesday. The revised records must be ready by July 5.”

Judge says DCS official responsible for redactions to child death records needs to go to jail

[The Republic 6/26/13 by Associated Press]

Update 12/September 24, 2013

“A year after a public records request by The Tennessean, attorneys for the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services on Friday handed over the final set of records detailing the deaths and near-deaths of children who have had brushes with the state child welfare system since 2009.

The 42 partially redacted cases handed over in Davidson County Chancery Court on Friday signal the newspaper’s ongoing public records lawsuit against the embattled agency could be coming to a close. Yet both sides indicated there are unresolved issues — mainly involving costs — still being negotiated.

The two sides appeared before Chancellor Carol McCoy, who has overseen the release of 296 case files detailing suspected abuse, neglect and deaths of the state’s most vulnerable children. DCS previously had fought the release of such records, arguing simultaneously that they were not public and that it would cost $55,000 for copies of those reports. The Tennessean led a coalition of media companies around the state in suing DCS in December to secure the case files’ release.

But the agency on Thursday announced it would voluntarily provide at no cost records of cases after July 1, 2012, and going forward.

“It’s going to be a part of their normal course of business,” Janet Kleinfelter, attorney for DCS, said at the hearing.

McCoy called the development a “fortuitous event.”

But still unresolved is what the state will do about its attempts to charge tens of thousands of dollars for the records originally requested by The Tennessean. DCS had reduced its estimates of those costs from $55,484 to $34,225, but McCoy ruled the agency could charge no more than 50 cents per page.

At Friday’s hearing, Kleinfelter said she planned to file paperwork detailing costs incurred by the agency, possibly as a first step toward an appeal of McCoy’s ruling.

The media coalition also could be seeking to recoup its costs in fighting the state agency in court. Robb Harvey, an attorney with the Nashville firm Waller, who represents media groups, said, “We are giving serious consideration” to demanding DCS pay attorney costs associated with the lawsuit.

McCoy held off on scheduling another hearing to give DCS and the media coalition time to resolve the cost issues outside court. The case will return to court if it isn’t resolved in the next few weeks.”
DCS turns over last of child-death files

[The Tennessean 9/21/13 by Brain Haas]