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Serious questions about DHS care

SPECIAL REPORT: Private contractors that provide services to children get little oversight by the agency, a review finds.

For decades, Philadelphia's Department of Human Services paid private contractors tens of millions of dollars to check on vulnerable children but did little to make sure those checks were actually happening.

 

At DHS, all eyes are on change

New nurses. Quick response to the youngest clients. Phila. child-welfare officials say they are shaping up.

Arthur C. Evans offers the following story as evidence of how far the city agency responsible for abused and neglected children has come in just a few months.

 

Review faults inaction by DHS

Of 36 recommendations after child deaths, no progress was made on 17. Others were only discussed, the agency said.

When a child dies under the care of the city's Department of Human Services, a team of experts within the agency investigates, pinpointing failings in the system and suggesting improvements.

 

City won't release DHS data

The city solicitor denied an Inquirer request for internal reviews of child-abuse deaths.

Despite a recent promise of openness by Philadelphia's new child-welfare commissioner, the Street administration is refusing to make public the city's internal reviews of child-abuse deaths.

 

Mounting Failures Left Girl to Die

Danieal Kelly's family shunned stability. It says social workers dodged visits. And DHS missed chances.

Almost from the day she was born - three months premature, suffering from cerebral palsy, weighing just 1 pound, 4 ounces - the adults in her life kept letting Danieal Kelly down.

 

Firm with ties to DHS investigated

Authorities want to know if a social-service agency fraudulently got millions in federal cash.

A federal grand jury is investigating whether a social-services contractor defrauded taxpayers when it charged millions of dollars to monitor hundreds of vulnerable children - including a 14-year-old girl who died of neglect during an August heat wave.

 

Teen under DHS care: A fugitive

A caseworker told the agency she saw the youth regularly. Police said he was on the run part of that time, sought in two slayings.

Throughout the summer, a city-paid caseworker visited the home of a troubled 17-year-old named Braheem Burke to make sure he was OK. The worker's employer, MultiEthnic Behavioral Health, assured the city Department of Human Services that nothing unusual had happened to him. But police tell a different story: During part of the time MultiEthnic claimed to be checking on the teen, Burke was a fugitive, wanted in a double slaying.

 

DHS moves swiftly on review

The new leader said a probe in-house would review dozens of contractors being paid to monitor children.

In what he calls an effort to "begin to reestablish the credibility of this agency," Philadelphia's new child welfare commissioner has launched a plan to step up the monitoring of millions of dollars in contracts and revisit each child under the city's care.

 

Pa. aide demoted in fallout at DHS

Amid an inquiry into child deaths in Phila., the aide, in the job

The state official in charge of regulating Philadelphia's child-welfare system has been removed from his post amid questions about why the city agency received passing grades while child-abuse deaths were increasing.

 

Girl wasted away under DHS care

City review of teen's neglect was key to ouster of leadership.

Fourteen-year-old Danieal Kelly, bedridden and nearly paralyzed with cerebral palsy, wasted away in her stifling Mantua apartment, gaping bedsores exposing her bones. When she died, she weighed just 46 pounds.