When the North Carolina Division of Health and Human Services decided to do a deep dive into Guilford County’s Child Protective Services after the tragic death in December of three children in a house fire, it was to be expected that some infractions of policy would be discovered.
However, the extent of the wholesale disregard for rules, policies and law must have been a total shock to investigators who looked into 29 cases in which the county was supposed to be protecting children.
The state’s review found, for one, that the safety assessments conducted were not adequate to ensure the children’s safety in 52 percent of the cases, and also found that “supervisory oversight” was conducted according to policy just 55 percent of the time.
Investigators also found that ongoing contacts with the children were made according to policy in only 62 percent of the cases, and “Ongoing contacts with the parents were made according to policy in 69 percent of the cases.”
Guilford County officials were made aware of the violations on Thursday, March 16, 2023. However, it was a month later– when area television reporters got hold of the letter and began asking questions – that the violations came to light.
Before the news story spread, the county put out a pre-emptive statement that did not mention the extent and nature of the violations. It was confusing because the press release provided the understatement of the year – but no information about what state investigators found.
The press release said, “On May 16, 2023, Guilford County officials received notification from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services listing findings from a recent review of open child protection assessment and permanency planning files.”
The release didn’t even say that those findings were negative findings. The only clue was that a short-prepared statement from Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston noted that the county places the “highest level of importance” on the protection of the county’s children and added that there would be corrective action taken.
For those interested, here are some of the other problems state investigators found with Child Protective Services…
Required contacts were completed according to policy in just 70 percent of the cases. SDM tools – which stands for Structured Decision-Making – were completed correctly in just over half of the cases investigated.
Case decisions were “appropriate and supported by documentation” only 52 percent of the time.
Also, documentation showed discussions of ongoing safety and risk in just 69 percent of the cases.
It would be interesting to know the ethnicity of the families investigated VS the ethnicity of the social workers who conducted the “investigations.”
I happen to find that completely irrelevant because I personally know plenty of people of a variety of races who were totally miss treated by social workers who were of the same and different races. I’m not saying that there aren’t cases where it plays a role but I truly think it’s a problem with the system in general that gives these people too much power over our children, because they know parents are completely at their mercy since they can demand anything under the sun, using your children as leverage! I promise you that majority races are not given any special treatment by DSS either. I think all parents of every race should come together and vote for changes in the corrupt system that usually harms our children WAY worse than what they removed for instead of trying to cause more hate between parents of different races by turning stories like this into a racial issue. I just don’t want to distract our attention from the parental rights issues that we as a whole community need to fight to defend! My thoughts and prayers go out to those precious children and their families!
Other than speed contests, there is only one race.
More BS from Skip. When will they terminate these people? Any lawsuits headed the taxpayers way? Are the children any better protected now? My guess is no….this is Guilford County.
I am wondering what education and training these social workers had and if they had neen vetted properly when hired, or were these folks hired using DIE criteria and became employed because yhey “checked all the boxes”.
If the latter is the case, it goes to show that by not hiring onmmerit can have fatal consequences.
My question, when did giving 50% on the job become normal? When I was employed we were always told to go above and beyond. Our society has become slack in all types of job employment. An employer pays an honest wage for an honest days work. I suggest do an audit and find out the ones giving 50% and 70%. Cut their pay scale. Its obvious they do not care about protecting innocent children nor do they know the definition of the word integrity.
Why does someone have to die before government employees are taken to task? Low pay is not an excuse. Fringe benefits for government employees are better than private sector workers. Keep your head down, don’t do anything stupid (like these situations) and you can retire with a fat paycheck and great healthcare, paid for by the people you were supposed to be protecting.