![]() ![]() “Nonetheless, we are committed to utilizing these cases to learn and take every possible step to prevent future harm as well as improve the overall well-being of children and families. “No amount of retrospective review will change the grief, loss and anger that results from a caregiver murdering a child,” wrote Landry and DHHS Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew. DHHS also noted that many of the child welfare program’s dealings with the mother – going back to 2014 – predate more recent changes aimed at identifying and addressing families with high risk of abuse or neglect. But in a written response, the agency said that “it can often be challenging for staff to gather all the relevant information regarding a family” but that the department has made numerous changes in recent years to improve that process. ![]() ![]() The head of the Office of Child and Family Services, Todd Landry, is expected to respond to the latest OPEGA report during a future meeting of the Government Oversight Committee. ![]() "There are still three children who have lived in it sounds like a disorderly house, dangerous house over years of time with us, this state, intervening to attend to their safety but still falling through the cracks,” Duson said. Jill Duson, who says she lacks confidence that the current system has the ability to handle the reunification of children from troubled families or otherwise ensure they are adequately cared for. But that raised other concerns for committee members like Portland Sen. Meanwhile, Schleck said Jaden's mother told a court that she has lost custody of her three other children since Jaden's death. But DHHS has struggled to fill all of those positions. In response to high-profile child deaths, lawmakers have earmarked millions of dollars in recent years to hire additional staff within child protective service. In many instances, caseworkers said they often spent nights in hospitals and hotel rooms with children who had to be removed from their families. In emotional testimony reported by the Portland Press Herald, workers said they were often forced to go alone into situations where they felt unsafe and that they were threatened or even stalked by family members. Last week, caseworkers and other frontline DHHS staff told the same committee that they were overworked, understaffed and often unsupported by upper management. “And I would just highlight that to you as an area of exploration for this committee that, if that is what's going on, then the caseworkers have too many cases, they don't have the time to do the necessary work." And that is a segway to the conversations we had last week with frontline workers,” Schleck said. "You get later in this report the statement from the department that the caseworkers don't have time to do it. OPEGA also faulted the agency for eight “practice issues” that occurred during investigations of Hartley’s home before and after she told DHHS that she was pregnant with Jaden.īut Schleck said he was struck by the fact that as he was reading the case files for the first time, he kept writing in his notes that "case workers have not read the history." The man also had a lengthy criminal history that included domestic violence convictions. OPEGA's review found DHHS made several "unsound safety decisions." In one case, a DHHS caseworker failed to recognize that, because of a name change, a relative spending time in the home was the same person who had been accused of sexually assaulting two of the older children. But Schleck said there was "a literal parade of questionable people coming through the family home" in the years before Jaden was born. The infant's father, Ronald Harding, was found guilty of manslaughter earlier this year and sentenced to nearly 7 years in prison. "This case presents numerous examples in which there were errors on top of errors and an ongoing inability by the department to recognize the simple lack of protective capacity from the mother of Jaden Harding,” Peter Schleck, OPEGA’s director, told members of the Legislature's Government Oversight Committee on Wednesday. The Legislature’s Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability found there were plenty of potential warning signs that suggest DHHS should have taken additional steps to ensure all of the children were safe. ![]()
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