CONNECTICUT DCF ON TRIAL

Monitor: DCF Short Of Goals

State child-protection workers are finalizing adoptions faster, investigating complaints sooner and visiting children in foster care more often, according to a new report issued by the federal monitor overseeing the agency. 

Despite those gains, many children under the care or supervision of the Department of Children and Families lack complete treatment plans and their basic medical, dental and mental health needs are still unmet, the report said.

The agency recently achieved 10 of its 22 performance goals, according to federal monitor Raymond Mancuso's review of 569 cases on file between February and May of this year. Mancuso filed his report in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport Monday.

The department must meet all 22 goals by May 2006 and sustain them through at least November 2006 to free itself from the federal court oversight it has been under since 1991 as the result of a settlement in a class-action lawsuit. The federally ordered goals are part of a court-approved exit plan adopted in 2004.

"We see little or no chance DCF will achieve compliance with the exit plan in November 2006, much less in the next several years, if the state does not aggressively address these long-standing problems, " said Steven Frederick, a Stamford lawyer who is co-counsel in the class-action case along with Children's Rights Inc., a New York-based nonprofit advocacy organization.

The areas where DCF is doing well include opening and completing child abuse and neglect investigations promptly, reducing worker caseloads, making timely visits to children in foster care and putting children in stable foster care placements. The agency also is meeting its goals in reducing maltreatment of children in foster care and making timely transfers of guardianship.

DCF Chief of Staff Brian Mattiello said the improvements have allowed the agency to excel in other areas. For instance, the percentage of foster children adopted in 24 months or less nearly tripled in the third quarter of this year when compared with 2003, he said. Once only 12 percent of DCF's applicable cases resulted in adoptions within 24 months. That number jumped to 34 percent in the quarter ending September 30, well within the federal goal of 32 percent.

In addition, Mattiello said the number of children placed in permanent homes through either adoption or subsidized guardianships is currently five times the level it was in 1996. There were 786 new permanent homes found for children in the 2005 fiscal year that ended June 30.

The number of children in institutional care has dropped by 200, or 22 percent, since April 2004, Mattiello said. The number of children placed out of state for treatment is down 40 percent, with nearly 200 fewer youth currently out of state when compared with 10 months ago, state officials said.

But the agency continues to fail noticeably in larger categories such as drawing up treatment plans for children in state care and meeting their basic needs, the report said. Only 7 percent of the 569 cases reviewed showed complete treatment plans in the third quarter of 2005, down from 17 percent in the last quarter of 2004, according to the report. The agency's goal is 90 percent. In the 39 cases in which treatment plans existed, only 21 children - out of 569 cases overall - had both complete treatment plans and all their medical, dental and mental health needs met, the report said.

"The reviewers found a significant number of cases where a clearly identifiable need was documented ... but not incorporated into the treatment plan," the monitor's report said. "The current inadequacy of treatment plans seriously undermines determining whether children and families' needs are met."

Colin Poitras
November 8, 2005

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