EDITORIAL: Close Look Merited Into Child Deaths In DCF-Involved Cases

Kevin Rennie

6:26 p.m. EDT, June 6, 2014

The fatalities of children with a connection to the Department of Children and Families are occurring at a frightening rate. The facts surrounding these tragedies remain shrouded in secrecy. The Office of the Child Advocate announced last week that, between Jan. 1 and May 31, nine children died whose families were involved with DCF and whose deaths merit further review by the child advocate.

The child advocate's announcement included few details. Do not expect any this year, if the past is any indication of how these alarming cases are kept from public view. The child advocate has yet to release reports on the 2013 deaths of children whose families had some involvement with DCF before they died.

The report from the child advocate stated that none of the nine fatalities from the first five months of this year "have yet been determined as natural deaths." That's a bad sign. DCF, as is its long-standing bad habit, says very little about its casework gone fatally wrong. The public pours billions into child protection and is denied a look at how it has been spent in the most important cases.

The public and those who shape public policy cannot continue to be locked out of this process.

The death of a child with a connection to DCF from abuse or neglect often receives little public attention. When the death occurs, DCF does not volunteer its role in the dead child's life. It will issue a statement of concern and offer services to the family of the dead child. That, however, may be the end of the story for the public and influential policy-maker. The shroud that DCF wields so deftly then descends on the life of the dead child.

Their life and death disappear from public view. These children are often poor and live in disadvantaged areas of the state. Their ZIP code has become their destiny. It's not unusual for a parent or other member of their household to be implicated in the child's death. The circumstances of the lives and deaths of these children should not pass into secrecy.

We need a searching and public examination of DCF's role in each one of these failures to protect the most vulnerable children in our state. They must be conducted in a timely manner with appropriate resources. That does not happen now.

After considerable delay, the results of investigations of the children who had some involvement with DCF and died in 2013 will be released soon. It is too long to wait. As the broken little bodies accumulate, the resources devoted to the child advocate have diminished. There are six full-time staff members juggling a host of responsibilities. There are not enough of them to conduct timely and comprehensive investigations into child fatalities.

The Office of Child Advocate performs a critical function by exercising its right to obtain information from the secretive DCF. When the child advocate is able to perform her mission, she saves children's lives. The child advocate has a relationship with DCF that runs a spectrum from tense to hostile to adversarial. The Office of Child Advocate cannot carry out its critical function with six employees and some volunteers.

I have been writing this column in one form or another for 12 years. You will find few that argue for more state spending. The child advocate needs more money if secrecy and deception at DCF are going to be tamed. When the child advocate releases her report on 2013 fatalities, it will in many ways be limited.

A proper child advocacy office ought to possess the resources to investigate critical incidents that don't end in the death of a child but are nevertheless failures. The incident where a child is brutally abused, for example, and three calls from school officials to DCF brought no action. The child removed from a dangerous parent but is returned to her through the connivance of a foster parent relation.

In Connecticut, it's easy for a governor to give tens of millions in public funds to corporations that make billions each year. Funding an advocate with a few more critical employees who might save some infants and toddlers is outside his narrow vision of the good society.

Kevin Rennie is a lawyer and a former Republican state legislator. He can be reached at [log in to unmask]

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