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DCS Reorganizing, Will Offer Better Training

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By Travis Loller, Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Department of Children’s Services is reorganizing following problems that led to the recent resignation of Commissioner Kate O’Day.
One of the biggest changes includes teaming with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to better train child abuse investigators.
“The first responsibility of DCS, whatever happens, should be to make sure the child is safe,” Interim Commissioner Jim Henry said Monday at a news conference.
Henry said district attorneys sometimes are unwilling to prosecute a case because of problems with the investigation.
Investigations were formerly a part of Child Protective Services, a program that was under the same division as foster care and adoption. Those investigations will now be under a new division called Child Safety, which will have its own deputy commissioner in Scott Modell.

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History Repeating Itself at DCS?

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Former Gov. Phil Bredesen fired Michael Miller as commissioner of the Department of Children’s Services in 2003 and named another commissioner, Gina Lodge of the Department of Human Services, to serve as his interim successor.
About a decade later, we find Gov. Bill Haslam accepting the resignation of DCS Commissioner Kate O’Day and naming another commissioner, Jim Henry of the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, to serve as her interim successor.
A clear distinction, of course, is that Bredesen fired his first DCS commissioner, saying he had been unable to provide “the cultural change” that was needed and as illustrated by various critical reports with a lawsuit involved and media attention.
Haslam’s first DCS commissioner resigned on her own violation, acknowledging she had become a “distraction” because of various critical reports with a lawsuit involved and media attention.
Haslam says he did not ask for the resignation and thinks O’Day had done “a lot of good things” to improve the department. Well, maybe.
O’Day helped prepare a DCS budget for the coming fiscal year that executes what comes across as a turnaround from two prior Haslam budgets. Until the plan outlined in his Jan. 28 “state of the state” speech, DCS had been in cutback mode along with most other state agencies.
The new budget will add 62 caseworker positions — a contrast with continuing cutbacks elsewhere in state jobs — with higher pay for those already there and meeting some new qualification criteria. There is still some DCS cutting, but the department nets $6.7 million in new money and more workers, presumably where they are most needed.
After Lodge did her stint as interim DCS commissioner under Bredesen, the former governor brought in Viola Miller, who had run the equivalent of DCS in Kentucky, to take the job on a long-term basis. By most accounts, Miller was a hard-nosed administrator but got the department on track toward resolving its long-running problems.
In 2010, the last year of Bredesen’s reign, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for example, issued a report declaring DCS had “improved drastically” since a highly critical 2002 review. Some child advocacy groups said nice things, too, and a lawsuit was resolved with a condition that the department’s doings be monitored.
State Rep. Sherry Jones, D-Nashville, perhaps the Legislature’s best-known advocate on children’s issues, says she often clashed with Miller, “but at least she listened” and O’Day did not. Jones says DCS staffers told her that Miller considered Jones “our worst enemy” in the Legislature because of critical questioning and at the same time “our best friend” because of Jones’ willingness to support DCS in areas where she thought they were right.
Jones served on the Select Oversight Committee on Children and Youth, which focused on DCS and which was abolished by the Republican-controlled Legislature last year.
The monitor making reports in accord with the Bredesen-era lawsuit settlement reported last year that, after a period of significant improvements, reform efforts had lost momentum in 2011. Which, of course, was when the Haslam administration took over. In fairness, the report blamed many of the difficulties on the department’s new computer system, authorized under the Bredesen administration.
The department was also the target of a new lawsuit, brought by The Tennessean with other media outlets joining in, over access to records of children who died after DCS involvement.
The hope, of course, is that history will further repeat itself and DCS will be back on track toward improving things.
Henry, the interim commissioner, is respected as an advocate in the general area and as a man with very good people skills. Indeed, the governor might consider removing the “interim” from his title. He had a relatively warm reception at a Senate Health Committee hearing last week, appearing after O’Day resigned the day before she was to appear before the panel under what probably would have been considerably more hostile circumstances. Maybe Haslam will find his own new, improved second DCS commissioner.
Either way, it’s a shame that something wasn’t learned from DCS history to avoid all this.

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Senators Discuss DCS; Henry Says It’s Moving Ahead

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By Lucas Johnson, Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — State lawmakers told the interim commissioner of the embattled Department of Children’s Services on Wednesday that they want to be made aware of the agency’s challenges so they can help address its problems.
Jim Henry, who headed the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, spoke before the Senate Health and Welfare Committee. He replaces Kate O’Day, who resigned the day before under scrutiny of how her agency handled the cases of children who were investigated as possible victims of abuse and neglect, then later died.
Committee member Doug Overbey said lawmakers would like to have more meetings with agency officials.
“I think it would be very helpful that we meet again like this as we move forward, that we work … together to address the problems,” the Maryville Republican said.
Committee chairman Rusty Crowe said he wants to give Henry time to get situated in his new position, but he’d like to have him back before the committee as early as next month.

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Kate O’Day Out at DCS; Jim Henry In

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News release from the governor’s office:
NASHVILLE – Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam today announced that Department of Children’s Services (DCS) Commissioner Kate O’Day has resigned from her post.
“Kate has informed me that she felt the time was right to step down,” Haslam said. “She was concerned that she had become more of a focus than the children the department serves.
“I appreciate Kate’s service to this administration and to our state. She has done a lot of good work in identifying longstanding problems that have hampered the department, and we will build on those efforts as we move forward.”
O’Day joined the Haslam administration in January 2011. Prior to that, she served as president and chief executive officer of Child & Family Tennessee in Knoxville. She began her career as a youth counselor with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Florida and later served as vice president of program development and evaluation for Children’s Home Society of Florida and director of program services for Covenant House of Florida.
The governor has named Commissioner Jim Henry, who currently heads up the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (DIDD), to serve as interim commissioner of DCS.
“I am grateful to Jim for agreeing to take on this interim role,” Haslam continued. “He has significant experience both in the private and public sectors and has devoted the better part of his life to caring for some of our most vulnerable citizens.”
Henry is the first commissioner of DIDD, which was formerly a division of the Department of Finance and Administration before becoming a state department on January 15, 2011. Before joining the Haslam administration, Henry served as president and chief executive officer of Omni Visions, Inc, a company serving adults with developmental disabilities and children and families in crisis. A Vietnam veteran and former mayor of Kingston, Henry spent 12 years as a state representative and six of those years as minority leader.
Henry will continue to serve as commissioner of DIDD during his interim role of leading DCS. The governor will immediately begin a search for a new commissioner of DCS.

DCS Dodging Oversight?

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For nearly two decades, the Department of Children’s Services had to open its files to an independent team of 13 experts who would retrace every step taken to protect and care for children under the state’s watch, reports The Tennessean.
Last year, DCS Commissioner Kate O’Day abruptly ended the agency’s relationship with the Children’s Program Outcome Review Team despite the protests of children’s groups and lawmakers. Since 1994, that team’s work had been touted as the only unbiased, independent quality review of the cases of children in DCS care.
But DCS watchdogs have been disappearing. In the past two years, at least a half-dozen groups that once monitored DCS’ work have been eliminated — some by O’Day, who took over the department in early 2011. Others fell victim to reorganizations of the legislature or state government by Gov. Bill Haslam or Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey.
State Rep. Mike Turner, a Democrat from Old Hickory, called the department’s dismantling of oversight a “total disaster.”
…The diminishing level of oversight comes as O’Day and her department face increasing scrutiny for unreported child deaths. DCS was ordered by two separate courts last month to hand over details of its work with children who subsequently died since 2009.
O’Day declined to be interviewed for this story. Instead, DCS spokeswoman Molly Sudderth provided The Tennessean with a list of nine groups that are among a “number of external reviews which continue to provide extensive oversight and reviews of the department’s work.”
The list includes the Division of State Audit, which reviews the department’s financials; an accreditation body that reviews DCS’ detention centers for delinquent youth once every three years; and a state Sunset Audit performed by the Comptroller’s Office once every eight years.
Four of the oversight groups DCS cited have had their own difficulties with the department:
The Second Look Commission, which reviews DCS’ handling of child abuse, was given faulty data; DCS failed to respond to recommendations of the Citizen Review Panels for more than a year; members of another group on DCS’ list, the Children’s Justice Task Force, said O’Day had not met with them in two years. And outside evaluators appointed by a federal judge had to postpone their report on the department because they cannot get accurate data from DCS.

More Details Sought from DCS on Child Deaths

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The embattled Tennessee Department of Children’s Services is facing more scrutiny for not providing details about 31 children it had investigated that died during the first six months of this year.
In September, the agency released information that showed the numbers after repeated requests from a Democratic lawmaker and The Tennessean.
Now, the newspaper (http://tnne.ws/TCv8k7) said DCS has denied its requests to review the files involving the child fatalities.
The newspaper contends the information it has received provides limited details. Instead of providing the actual case files, the state has provided brief summaries, according to the newspaper.
Last week, The Tennessean and its counsel sent a letter to DCS calling its disclosures “woefully inadequate” and asking the agency to make records public by Dec. 18.
“The State has provided no investigative reports, fatality reviews, or task force reports, among other materials which are covered by The Tennessean’s requests,” noted the letter from the newspaper and Tennessean attorney Robb Harvey.

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DCS Commissioner’s Child Care Nonprofit Violated State Rules

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The Knoxville nonprofit that Department of Children’s Services Commissioner Kate O’Day led for 10 years amassed numerous state rule violations before she left the agency, according to records obtained by The Tennessean.
Some of the violations that occurred while O’Day was CEO of Child and Family Tennessee were minor – personnel files missing dates that reference checks were completed — but others were far more serious.
On March 15, 2010, just nine months before becoming Gov. Bill Haslam’s pick to lead the state’s child welfare agency, O’Day was put on notice that DCS had “concerns for the safety and well-being of custodial youths placed at Child and Family Tennessee.” The nonprofit was a contractor hired by DCS to care for kids in foster care or residential treatment facilities.
DCS suspended all admissions to Child and Family, a step taken only for the most serious agency violations. In the case of Child and Family, those included inappropriately doling out group punishments for the actions of a single youth, missing medication records and a failure to focus on youths’ “needs, strengths and permanence,” among the eight serious findings outlined in a letter from DCS.
O’Day’s agency was one of three statewide that year whose admissions were frozen in 2010, but records obtained by the newspaper outline serious violations at the agency for annual inspections from 2006 to 2009. Pre-2006 inspection reports were not available.