DCF report reveals lack of oversight

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/10/dcf_report_reveals_lack_of_oversight



EMBATTLED AGENCY: DCF Commissioner Linda Spears, left, listens as state health secretary Marylou Sudders talks about DCF at the State House yesterday.

DCF report reveals lack of oversight
Friday, October 2, 2015
Erin Smith

After a slew of DCF missteps, Gov. Charlie Baker publicly pledged Monday morning that agency’s main duty now would be to keep kids safe, but within a 24-hour span of that announcement, two more children known to the embattled agency were dead.

Officials at the Department of Children and Families yesterday wouldn’t detail state social workers’ involvement with the children — a 2-year-old girl in Worcester and a 4-month-old baby boy at a Lynn homeless shelter.

“The bottom line is we don’t have a cause of death on either of those children,” DCF Commissioner Linda Spears said. “We don’t know ... that death was the result of abuse and neglect. Once we know that, we’ll be in a position to tell you whether we can share that information with you.”

DCF bosses reassigned a social worker and a supervisor to administrative duty and moved to discipline the pair after an internal investigation into an Auburn foster home released yesterday revealed what Baker called a “blatant lack of oversight” by DCF.