Panel blames child's DCF workers, caretakers for deception [Rilya Wilson case, FL] (AP)

AP ^ | May 27, 2002 | Catherine Wilson

[summer]

Panel blames child's DCF workers, caretakers for deception

Monday, May 27, 2002

By CATHERINE WILSON, Associated Press

MIAMI - The disappearance of a 5-year-old girl went unnoticed for 15 months because two low-level state workers and her caretakers deceived the state's child-welfare system, a review panel concluded Sunday.

A committee named by Gov. Jeb Bush accused the workers and the sisters caring for Rilya Wilson of malfeasance for submitting paperwork falsely indicating she was in their care and being visited regularly.

"There was fraud perpetrated here," Sara Herald, the child-welfare expert on the four-member panel, said as the group reviewed a 26-page draft of a report to be presented Tuesday to Bush.

Children & Families Secretary Kathleen Kearney and the agency's top Miami administrator should not be removed, but agency shortcomings need to be addressed both quickly and long term, the panel said.

"None of us felt the department was doing yet enough to make the possibilities of tragedy as slim as humanly possible," the report said. DCF flaws "are manifest, especially in the Rilya Wilson case."

The Miami girl was an infant when she was taken by the state from her homeless, crack-addicted mother. Rilya was placed in Geralyn Graham's home in April 2000, and she reported Rilya was taken from her home by a DCF worker in January 2001.

Rilya's caseworker Deborah Muskelly filed a court report August indicating she visited Rilya. Muskelly and her supervisor Willie Harris quit under pressure in March. Graham filed for food stamps on behalf of Rilya as recently as March.

Kearney, who has called the girl's disappearance an "isolated incident, said the agency made mistakes and conceded some changes will be hard to implement."

"This was a very unique situation that involved deficiencies on the part of the department," she said. "We acknowledge failures individually, we acknowledge failures collectively, and now we have to work together find solutions."

The draft report listed 21 short-term priorities and nine long-term objectives, and panel members added to them during a five-hour meeting focusing on an agency it said was "engulfed in scandal."

Some recommendations are intended to more quickly realize when children in state care are missing, including photographing children every three months and having them come to court every six months.

On mandatory monthly visits, the panel wrote, "The requirement was and is there. The enforcement was lamentably - and for Rilya perhaps tragically - absent."

Priorities were placed on naming independent guardians for all children in state care, reporting missing children to police immediately, raising the "woeful pay" for caseworkers and their supervisors, creating foster care case review panels and doing background checks on existing caregivers.

A national criminal records check would have excluded Graham, who claims to be Rilya's grandmother, as a caretaker because of a Tennessee food-stamp fraud conviction, the panel noted. The national checks started last July on new caregivers, but 62,000 existing ones have not been checked.

The department promised to get rudimentary information - names, addresses and last DCF visit dates - for all 44,000 children in state care into its $230 million computerized tracking system by Sept. 1.

More than 1,400 pages of Rilya's DCF file released by courts last week contained reports about Graham being diagnosed with dementia and memory loss before Rilya was placed in the custody of her sister, Pamela Graham.

Until the disclosure, DCF had said it was not aware of anything unusual in Geralyn Graham's past.

Kearney said Sunday that the department is barred by federal law from using Social Security and Medicaid information submitted by Geralyn Graham to another arm of DCF when making decisions about child safety.

Agency documents contained contradictory information on Rilya's caretaker. On two versions of the same form dated April 21, 2000, the caretaker is listed as both a relative and nonrelative.

The form marked "relative" carried a court clerk's stamp, but references to Rilya's caretakers being nonrelatives are scattered throughout DCF files. Relatives can get a state room-and-board subsidy.

[summer]

FYI.

[serinde]

...some changes will be hard to implement.

How about actually doing your job? That should not be too hard to implement!

[summer]

bttt

[summer]

FYI.

[Joan912]

Ho-hum, "mistakes were made..." nevermind that little child is dead because of corruption and bureaucratic idiocy.

[summer]

That little girl may still be alive, and going to school somewhere. Someone may still recognize her, even if her abductors gave her a different name. So -- you can not assume she is "dead."

Also, a lot more is happening that just "ho hum." See below:

Gov. Endorses Child Welfare Solution

By CATHERINE WILSON
Associated Press Writer

May 28, 2002, 6:10 PM EDT

MIAMI --Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed a low-cost approach Tuesday to solving some of the child-welfare problems cited by a panel examining the case of a 5-year-old girl in state care whose disappearance went unnoticed for 15 months.

Bush also promised to work with lawmakers on costlier, long-term issues.

"We know that we can do better and we have work to do," he said. "We have made significant progress in a very difficult, challenging, complicated area of public policy."

Bush was reacting to a 28-page report released Sunday by a committee he assigned to investigate the state's handling of Rilya Wilson, a 5-year-old girl who is still missing a month after her disappearance was noticed.

Bush called the wide-ranging report "a good solid blueprint" for change in the state Department of Children & Families and endorsed its leadership by Kathleen Kearney despite calls by others for her resignation.

But he said he was "wary" of the panel's call for a special legislative session to address the needs of Florida's abused and neglected children.

When asked if he supported raises for caseworkers and supervisors, Bush said the decision would be part of an overall review of employee retention, training and benefits.

The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform based in Alexandria, Va., on Monday called the report "nearly 100 percent useless," blaming Kearney's approach to child welfare in part for an increase in deaths under her tenure.

Democratic State Rep. Frederica Wilson of Miami, said she realistically expected "nothing" to happen in response to the report.

"There's a child missing who could possibly be dead," she said. "I don't even think that the community awareness has been heightened."

The review panel blamed two low-level state workers and Rilya's caretakers for the girl's long-unnoticed disappearance but also said DCF shortcomings were "manifest."

Bush said he hopes to see criminal charges come out of police investigations of allegedly fraudulent reports filed by state employees and the caretakers.

Some of the panel's short-term recommendations include conducting criminal background checks on new foster parents, photographing children every three months and having them come to court every six months; and ensuring caseworkers visit each of the 44,000 children in state care once a month so law enforcement can be notified immediately if a child is missing.

Key long-term, costlier recommendations include increasing pay for the agency workers and providing money for full criminal background checks.

Rilya was an infant when she was taken by the state from her homeless, crack-addicted mother and placed in caretaker Geralyn Graham's home in April 2000.

Graham filed for food stamps on behalf of Rilya as recently as March. But Graham now says Rilya was taken from her home in January 2001 by someone claiming to be a Department worker. The agency says it didn't learn of the disappearance until this spring.

Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

[dalebert]

bump

[summer]

Thanks, dalebert.

[summer]

FYI.

[MeekOneGOP]

A national criminal records check would have excluded Graham, who claims to be Rilya's grandmother, as a caretaker because of a Tennessee food-stamp fraud conviction, the panel noted. The national checks started last July on new caregivers, but 62,000 existing ones have not been checked.

Looks like they fixed one of the problems already, Summer!

[mafree]

bump- Hope this child is found and the problems within DFC cleaned up. I know Jeb will do his part- GO JEB!!

[summer]

FYI, and see my post #6.

[summer]

bttt

[summer]

bttt

[Joan912]

The panels recommendations seem very basic; hopefully, all of them will be implemented. Thanks for the article.

[summer]

My pleasure, Joan912. Thank you for taking the time to read and consider it.

[skr]

The bureaucracy has some blame to bear in respect to oversight, but the grandmother and the two social workers who deliberately covered their incompetence/laziness/total indifference should all be in jail. I don't care about the workers' supposed low pay, because it simply doesn't signify. The welfare of Rilya Wilson was their job, just as walking into the WTC was the firefighters' job. And those guys certainly weren't paid enough for what they were expected to do. Now just how onerous in comparison, is asking to speak to the child on the phone once a week? For all we know, the grandmother sold Rilya for some drugs.