At least in the case of Rebecca, it was not DSS who committed the atrocity as it almost was with Haleigh. That little mishap keeps falling through the gaping hole of public attention.
The Boston Globe, Boston com reports
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The Department of Social Services commissioner, Harry Spence, is right: Rebecca Riley "did not fall through the cracks" of the state's child protection services. She fell through the gaping holes.
The 4-year-old girl died in December of an overdose of powerful drugs administered by deeply troubled parents under DSS supervision who now stand accused of first-degree murder.
Attention is rightly focused on them and on the child psychiatrist who placed the preschooler on high doses of three psychotropic drugs tested and approved only for use by adults. Of all the medical specialties, psychiatry is especially vulnerable to rogue practitioners who too often rely on trial and error to find effective treatments.
But it would be a mistake to let pass Spence's bold assertion that DSS is blameless because it lacks the expertise to question an at-risk child's treating physician. That is a stunning cop-out after all we learned from Haleigh Poutre , the now 12-year-old girl who was beaten into a coma in 2005 , allegedly by her adoptive mother and stepfather. In that case, a legislative investigation concluded that DSS had defied common sense and multiple warnings in deferring to doctors who claimed the girl's bruises were self-inflicted.
Why didn't Rebecca Riley benefit from the lessons of the Poutre case? Everyone from social workers to her preschool teachers raised the alarm about her overmedication. No action was taken, said Spence, because he has been unable to recruit physicians willing to review questionable treatment plans and, if necessary, criticize professional colleagues. "I will assure you that if we get additional medical personnel, our capacity to assess the medical quality of children will improve," Spence said at a press conference last week. "My hope would be that, as a result, lives that otherwise might be lost could be saved."
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