Martha Stone, CT DCF has the worst rating

See article in the Hartford Courant Below:

[Rowland doesn't care, his friends make money off of poor and sick
people in CT]

http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/northeast/hc-mstone.artnov23,0,6444882,print.story?coll=hc-utility-home

Our Home is Broken because our Governor could not be more currupt.

        "# The judicial branch needs to get serious about the problem
of disproportionate minority confinement. Even when
controlling for other factors, there are too many children of color in
our juvenile detention centers. ****We need to
acknowledge that Connecticut's top ranking in this regard should be
worn as a badge of shame. ****"


http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/northeast/hc-mstone.artnov23,0,5651492.story?coll=hc-utility-home";

"****The legislature passed an act two years ago to ensure that kids
like Malik wouldn't have to be committed to DCF's
care and be removed from their home to get mental health
treatment.****"


[The DCF has the worst rating, because their lawyers lie their faces
off, and THAT's what the CT DCF is most Infamous for.

I reported the Judges Driscoll and Jongbloed to the Judicial Review
Board, Ray Sirry, the Federal Court Monitor, the CHOR,
AG Richard Blumenthal,  and the USDOJ.  

I reported Jessica Gauvin to the same, plus the Statewide Bar Counsel
*** and I named *RICHARD BLUMENTHAL* as a
witness,*** since he entered an appearance on behalf of the DCF to the
CHRO,
as well as this Marnie Hambrecht or whatever her name is.  She signed
the affidavit which said, I get services for myself
and not my kids, while at the same time, the Stonington Schools are
trying to have me arrested over the Principal's
LymeRage and the Schoolsystem's refusal to get 504 help for my
daughter.
Meanwhile I have a new report from the Yale Child Study Center (the
same place as this evaluator Leebens is from) which
says my Lyme kid daughter scores in the *TEENS* in some domains of
cognition, and all this time, the Stonington schools
never did *a thing* for her, except send home notes about her poor
performance, the  VERY THINGS written into her 504
plan.  4 YEARS now, they never helped that kid...  And made her feel
terrible, and YELLED at her, for her forgetfulness.

This is Connecticut.

Connecticut argues that I am too insane to be a parent because I get
no services for my Lyme kids, and because I can get
no services for my Lyme kids, and file a RICO complaint in order to do
that, that that is a sign of my insanity, while
that same evidence of Insanity, sent to the CHRO by Sarah Gibson, DCF
New Haven's Principal Attorney, is now legitimate,
in the same report, by Patricia Leebens (or maybe Gauvin)-->BRIAN
FALLON
http://www.columbia-lyme.org
The SAME DATA was sent to the CHRO, as evidence of my insanity, by
Sarah Gibson, Principal Attorney for the DCF in New
Haven.

The Order to remove my kids said, specifically, "ALTHOUGH WE HAVE NO
EVIDENCE OF MS DICKSON'S INTENT TO HARM THE CHILDREN.
..."  and Judge Driscoll signed such an order.

I sent all of that, and all of the complaints to the CHRO, to the
above named entities.

Marnie whatever her name was, says because they could not get at the
children, they had to take them away.  The kids were
assigned an Ad Litem, Priscilla Hammond, who said they were okay, to
the DCF, and this is recorded in their notes from
their September visit to the home, and subsequently.  The REASON they
were assigned an Ad Litem, was because the DCF lies
their faces off, and I would not let them near my kids.

The DCF lies their faces off and the people who suffer are my kids,
contrary to whatever went on in the minds of the DCF,
clearly in order to harm me.  I do not *think* like DCF "social"
"workers".  The DCF did not harm me.  I am an activist.
My testimony at the FDA about  the Lyme vaccine said, "This vaccine
should not be approved for Children, until we know
what is going on."  The DCF invented that I would kill these kids, so
because they invented that I would kill them, they
took them away.

Kathleen
==========================================


NORTHEAST COVER STORY

Our Broken Home
Everyone likes to blame the DCF. But the rest of us have failed the
children, too.
ADVERTISERS

By MARTHA STONE

November 23 2003

Everyone agrees that Connecticut's child welfare system is imperfect.
But repair lies beyond the Department of Children
and Families, reaching the juvenile justice and mental health systems,
the legislature and the community as a whole.

The names of the children in this story have been changed to respect
the confidential nature of their circumstances. Their
words remain their own.

• • •


"But I promise if you let me stay here, I will eat all my ice cream at
dinner."

Luis was in his third foster home in as many days. He is only 5 years
old, and for the last three nights he had awakened
in a new bed in yet another strange home. This placement he told me he
liked. Within a few days, he was calling the foster
parent "mom," and he especially liked the dogs and the other boy his
age. In fact, he liked it so much that his foster
parent told me he promised to eat all his ice cream at dinner if she
let him stay there.

But after two weeks, the foster parent told the state Department of
Children and Families she had to "give him back." Like
a shirt you buy at the store and you don't want anymore. Like a dog
you take home from the pound on a trial basis. But
this is a little boy, with a past, and memories and feelings and
emotions and hopefully a future ... sometimes we wonder.

So Luis moved yet again, this time to one of DCF's "Safe Homes" - set
up as a temporary home to take care of first-time
placements for abused and neglected children for only 30 to 45 days.
Never mind that Luis had been in foster care before.
Never mind that Luis has been there for six months, watching the
summer come and go, watching the leaves come and go. This
home is "safe" in that he won't be moved every night. It's "safe" from
foster parents who might harm him. But is it "safe"
for his emotional well-being? Is it "safe" to let a 5-year-old grow up
in an institution waiting months for a "forever"
family?

"Nobody cares about us. Nobody listens to us. I am losing my
self-esteem in here."

The night Kenesha told us this, she had been locked up in the New
Haven Juvenile Detention Center for two-and-a-half
months. Her placement history reminded us of a pingpong ball: from
detention to home to a hospital to detention to home
and back to detention, waiting to go to a hospital once again. But she
was only 13 and she hadn't committed any crime. She
was a "status offender" who had ended up in detention for violating a
curfew and running away. When the judicial branch
closed down the community detention center for girls in Hamden last
summer because of poor conditions, all the girls were
transferred to the virtually all-male facility in New Haven.

Most of the kids there, like Kenesha, are kids of color. Most of the
kids, like Kenesha, have been there before. Most of
the kids, like Kenesha, have families who haven't been able to take
care of them. Kenesha is no different from the 67
other kids waiting in detention for somewhere to go. There is no
dispute that she doesn't need to be in a locked secure
juvenile detention facility, but no residential placement is available
for her, no community placements exist for her, and
she can't go home.

"I haven't seen my lawyer, haven't talked to him. I don't even know
what he looks like."

Joey volunteered to be in the video we were making on this subject,
titled "Who Will Speak for Me?" He thought by speaking
out it would make it better for other kids. He was frustrated, and
rightfully so. The person who is supposed to be there
for him, his lawyer, hadn't spoken to him in months. He couldn't even
tell us what he looked like.

The video was made two years ago, with the hope that the legislature
would listen and make improvements in the system.
Joey is not unlike hundreds of other kids today whose court-appointed
attorneys don't take the time to come see them.
Because of the ridiculously low pay and lack of training, many
attorneys don't come to see their child clients or get to
know what they want or what they need.

The juvenile court is supposed to be there to protect them, and yet it
is treated like the stepchild of the Superior
Court. It makes some of the most important decisions that affect the
most vulnerable among us, yet the court lacks a
sufficient number of trained judges to hear the cases in a timely
manner, forcing children who need either to be returned
home or adopted to languish for months in limbo before a judicial
hearing can be scheduled.

"What did I do wrong that I have to stay in this place?"

"No, Edwin, it wasn't you who did anything wrong," I kept trying to
reassure him that night that I had driven from
Hartford, his hometown, to take him out of his residential facility
some 45 miles away to celebrate his birthday. It was
your mother who abused you and neglected you and made you be the
father figure in this family where no one was ever
present to help you through your 13 years. It's not your fault that
when your mother went to prison, no one in your family
stepped up to the plate to take care of you and your sisters. And it's
not your fault that there weren't any foster homes
that would take all three of you, and so you ended up in two foster
homes split apart from them, and then eventually at
the Safe Home where all the other kids were four to 10 years younger
than you.

It isn't your "fault" that you had to go to a community hospital and
then a shelter, then to Connecticut Children's Place,
the residential treatment center in East Windsor, and then to a
facility so far away that you felt like you were being
banished from the only community you have ever known.

Instead of getting better at this "treatment" facility, Edwin's
behavior deteriorated. Instead of just being a victim of
abuse and neglect, which is the way he started in his placement, he
picked up juvenile justice charges for fighting with
the other kids there, out of frustration, anger, alienation. It was on
our watch that this troubled child so transparently
slipped into being a youth in the juvenile justice system. Are we on
our way to watching him become a 16-year-old criminal
in the adult system? Now, as I write this, Edwin has been moved back
to Connecticut Children's Place. Is it your fault,
Edwin, that you have been in nine different places in a little over a
year when all you really wanted was to be in a home?

"Why can't I go home? I'm not doing very well."

I wasn't going to add another story. I had already finished a draft of
this article and was doing the final editing. But
it is now 6 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 14, and I am angry. My 12-year-old
client, Malik, who needs mental health treatment, just
got removed from his home two hours ago, and I am calling him at the
DCF office where he sits and waits because they have
no place to put him and he has nowhere to go. I see Malik every day.
He lives across the street from my office and we have
been working over the last week to try to get him some help from DCF
and from the school system.

****The legislature passed an act two years ago to ensure that kids
like Malik wouldn't have to be committed to DCF's care
and be removed from their home to get mental health treatment.****So
why does Malik now find himself sitting in a
bureaucratic office 2 miles away while his mother is calling me on one
phone line saying all she did was call DCF for help
for him and Malik is on the other, voicing his despair?

These are the stories of our kids. There are thousands of them going
through the system at any one time, some in DCF's
child welfare system, some in the juvenile justice system, many in
both. They have lived through lives that we can't even
imagine. They have a resiliency that is inspirational to the toughest
among us. They have looked to the foster care system
and the mental health system and the court system for protection. And
yet as they speak to us, are we listening to them?
And if we hear them, are we taking any action - now - before their
childhood or adolescence is gone and they lose hope for
their future?

I have represented the plaintiff class of children in the DCF lawsuit
filed more than 14 years ago that resulted in a
court agreement overhauling the child welfare system, so I am familiar
with the complexities of the system. I have dealt
with five DCF commissioners, five training academy directors, six
foster care directors and over a decade of motions
alleging DCF's noncompliance in this case, so I have learned systemic
reform does not come without a lot of patience and
perseverance.

I have represented the youth in the class-action lawsuit involving the
conditions of confinement within the juvenile
detention centers and the inability of these kids to get mental health
treatment. I have seen firsthand the fragmentation
of our state systems for kids. And having represented the individual
kids themselves in juvenile court, I have witnessed
the emotional pain we are inflicting upon them and their families.

The recent developments regarding the DCF court agreement are
certainly encouraging. We can legitimately pin a lot of our
hopes on the virtual takeover of the system by the federal court, and
there is no question in my mind that the federal
court monitor, Dr. D. Ray Sirry, will make a tremendous difference in
improving the DCF system. He is thoughtful and
insightful and has unique knowledge about how to make major
improvements to a multifaceted system.

But the challenge to give these children what they need cannot turn on
one person. The reforms that are needed go deeper
than we have been willing to acknowledge and call for a commitment
from all of us. My blueprint for change could be
endless. Instead, I offer a few concrete suggestions to try to alter
the landscape. What is most important for children in
the child abuse, mental health and juvenile justice systems is that
the state develop a comprehensive vision and plan,
whose underpinnings are grounded in a visceral understanding of the
interdependence of all three.

Challenge No. 1: The courts

The judicial branch must allocate enough juvenile court judges to hear
the cases in a timely way. These judges must get
appropriate training and stop rotating every year. They need to comply
with the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act
passed by Congress in 1997 to expedite permanency planning for
children and allocate enough time to have meaningful
hearings. They must appoint trained attorneys, pay them sufficiently,
and establish a rigorous monitoring system to ensure
competent representation. They need to try a unified family court
model like those established in Colorado, Indiana or
Kentucky, where one judge hears all the cases related to a particular
family.

# The judicial branch needs to get serious about the problem of
disproportionate minority confinement. Even when
controlling for other factors, there are too many children of color in
our juvenile detention centers. ****We need to
acknowledge that Connecticut's top ranking in this regard should be
worn as a badge of shame. ****

Others have addressed this problem: By using objective criteria to
assess children in need, Multnomah County, Ore., has
reduced the number of children mistakenly incarcerated in the juvenile
justice system. A program in Santa Cruz, Calif.,
studies individual neighborhoods to see when and where resources might
be applied to reduce crime and keep kids out of
trouble. Service providers in both programs more often speak the
language and understand the culture of their clients.

The state's own Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparity recently
released similar recommendations for use of "objective
criteria" and "decision-point mapping," which analyzes, by race and
ethnicity, how police, judges, probation officers and
others make their decisions affecting children in the system.

Build a new Bridgeport juvenile court but dramatically downsize the
planned Bridgeport detention center and save those
dollars for a wider array of programs and services that might help
keep more kids in their own communities, instead of in
residential programs or jail. They can look to Pennsylvania,
Minnesota, Florida and California for restorative justice
models that focus on healing and accountability rather than
retribution and punishment. Or to Florida and New York, which
have implemented culturally sensitive mental health services
especially to meet the needs of Latino families.

# They need to subject their contracted facilities to as rigorous a
review as DCF licensed facilities get and institute a
much more sophisticated quality assurance system to monitor their
contracted providers.

Challenge No. 2: Department of Children and Families

Caseworkers and administrators must finally decide that child abuse
does not fit neatly into a Monday-through-Friday,
9-to-5 schedule and change the work week. The agency must stop putting
parents and children on waiting lists for services
and then expect that they can reunite in a short period of time.

They must pay more than lip service to developing a behavioral health
system that looks at the whole family, understands
its culture, assesses its strengths and its needs, and determines what
community resources are available. Follow the lead
of Milwaukee's "wrap-around" programs that build creative services
around the kids rather than trying to match the kids to
already existing service "slots" that don't necessarily address their
needs.

To rectify the shortage of foster homes, what about learning from
other states, such as Washington or California, where
they have successfully recruited police officers and teachers to be
foster parents? DCF can easily loosen its rigid and
unrealistic foster care licensing requirements that severely limit the
pool of appropriate and willing foster parents in
the community.

And they must follow the lead of Missouri, which developed a triage
system to handle serious child protection cases
differently from cases in which community-based resources might be
able to address a child's situation. This has resulted
in a child protection system that is more responsive and more
respected in the community. It would go a long way toward
improving the relationship between DCF and the minority community.

Most importantly, they can embrace wholeheartedly the court monitor's
new plan, which should be a visionary and innovative
blueprint for DCF to follow, if they have any hope of exiting from
federal court jurisdiction.

For the juvenile justice population, they must finally adopt a joint
plan with the court support services division of the
judicial branch. Don't have both agencies weigh in with primarily
residential options when the kids need to return to
their communities. They must finally develop specialized foster care,
like in Oregon, that is tailored for youthful
offenders who can't go home, or small facilities, like in Florida,
that use intensive behavior management rather than
locked cells and transfers to adult court.

If they truly understood the interdependencies of their juvenile
justice, child abuse and mental health mandates, they
would open up their voluntary mental health services program and
expand their existing KidCare program for the juvenile
justice youth.

Challenge No. 3: Department of Social Services, Department of Mental
Health and Addiction Services, Department of Mental
Retardation, Department of Education

The answer isn't to dismantle DCF and create more bureaucracies. We
need pooled funding, a "Children's Cabinet"
representing relevant agencies, a coordinated plan among the agencies.
They have fancy memoranda of agreement signed by
the agency heads at the top, but not enough cooperation and compliance
at the bottom.

36 percent of foster care children do not get timely, federally
mandated health screens, while 25 percent go without
timely medical or mental health treatment. When we know these children
have a high incidence of poor health and a
desperate need for mental health care, then DCF and the Department of
Social Services must jointly develop a quality
assurance plan to reduce those numbers.

When we know there is a correlation between children with special
education needs and those in the juvenile justice system
- where has the Department of Education been? They need to
dramatically increase their presence at the table and develop
joint initiatives with DCF and the court support services division to
provide truancy and special education services that
could prevent children from ending up in the juvenile justice system.

When we know that 50 percent of the child welfare cases involve
parents with substance abuse problems, we need DCF and the
Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to develop a
seamless system so these parents can gain immediate access
to gender-specific and culturally competent assessment, treatment and,
most especially, relapse services. When we know
that some parents have serious cognitive limitations, we need DMR to
exhibit some flexibility.

Challenge No. 4: The Legislature

The legislature has to put more resources into Connecticut Community
KidCare, the community mental health system they
committed to two years ago, but from which they cut funds this last
legislative session. Legislators need to demand
culturally competent and gender-specific services from DCF and the
court support services division and then impose an
independent accountability mechanism to ensure that the millions of
dollars they are pouring into these agencies are
actually achieving the outcomes and quality for the children and
families they purport to serve.

Legislators need to give the Connecticut Juvenile Training School in
Middletown to the Correction Department for use by
adult inmates, and follow the lead of Louisiana, which just decided to
close its maximum security prison for kids and
shift the money to community-based alternatives. Or emulate Missouri,
which boasts one of the lowest juvenile recidivism
rates in the country as a result of turning its back on large-scale
training schools in favor of small residential
settings housing groups no larger than 12. They need to make juvenile
detention overcrowding as high a legislative
priority as prison overcrowding.

Create a Children's Cabinet. Mandate a Children's Budget, like
Louisiana and San Diego, to highlight that the allocations
to child abuse prevention are so meager as to be negligible, and
demand from the appropriate state agencies a coordinated
prevention plan.

Maybe, more radically, we need to be like at least 16 other states in
this country and in some circumstances open up the
child protection side of the juvenile court to the public, so everyone
can really see what is going on.

Challenge No. 5: The Community

Each one of us must decide how we can contribute to this effort. It is
not enough to look at the cute pictures of the
children that appeared in this magazine ["The Heart Gallery" on Nov.
2] and say we wish we could take them home. If we
can't take them home permanently, can we be a foster parent, or
provide respite care and take one child one weekend a
month? What about being a mentor to one of these kids? Can we support,
rather than fight, the zoning efforts when a group
home of five or six kids wants to move into our neighborhood? Even a
clothes, toy or suitcase collection during the
off-season can ensure that these children will get at least one new
shirt or toy on a day other than Christmas, and they
won't have to move their belongings in garbage bags as they travel
from one strange placement to another.

Perhaps the community's greatest legacy can be its ability to
influence how the legislature prioritizes these issues. Just
like with the UConn stadium or the recent smoke-free environmental
initiatives, one call or one e-mail to one legislator
can help to ensure that child abuse, mental health and juvenile
justice are given the highest rank on the legislative
radar screen.

"You have to speak out. If you don't speak out, no one will know
anything is wrong."

In addition to "Who Will Speak for Me?" we just completed a second
video. This time we titled it, "I Will Speak Up for
Myself." It shows children in the foster care system teaching other
similar children what their legal rights are. It is
meant to have the children feel empowered. At the end of the video,
Michael, quoted above, urges his fellow youth in
foster care to speak up for themselves.

But if we teach these children to speak out, will we actually do
anything for them now? My litmus test when providing
legal representation and advocacy to these children is whether I would
tolerate the delays or gaps in services or
egregious failings if it affected my own two children. If the answer
is no, then my passion and my outrage easily fuel my
unrelenting efforts.

Connecticut doesn't need to reinvent the wheel in terms of what works.
There are plenty of models across the country
begging for scrutiny. We just need to stop being so parochial and give
up our image as "the land of steady habits." We
need to stop creating task forces whose pages fill up drawers with
empty promises. These children deserve creative and
consistent efforts - and some immediate relief.

Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant

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