At this September news conference, Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, center, is flanked by Peter Nickles, the District's acting attorney general, right, and Roque Gerald, the District's interim director of the Child and Family Services Agency, after children adopted from the District were found encased in ice.

By Dorothy Rowley
AFRO Staff Writer

(December 23, 2008) - Given the choice of cleaning up its backlog of cases earmarked for investigation or face coming under federal control, the District of Columbia’s Children and Family Services Agency has apparently fallen in line with the former.

An embarrassed Fenty administration was at the center of widespread consternation last summer which left child reform officials and D.C. residents alike wondering how the city could allow the agency to come into such a state of seeming apathy and mismanagement.

Mayor Adrian Fenty, however, announced during a visit last week to the CFSA --which had come under intense scrutiny this year surrounding the deaths and mistreatment of several children who were previously under its care -- that the agency had made a significant turnaround, reducing the backlog of cases under investigation while finding more foster homes, improving retention and recruitment among social workers and endeavoring to craft a quality leadership team.

“This is an outstanding accomplishment in the District to strengthen our child welfare system. We all want bright futures for the young people in our community. Those in foster care especially need our collective help and support,” said Fenty. “I commend CFSA for stepping up with innovative approaches on behalf of these youngsters.”

Minnet Cecilia Bowman and Jasmine Nicole Brown Girls’ Deaths Ruled Asphyxiation The deaths of two little girls found in a chest freezer this fall in a Calvert County home have been attributed to asphyxiation, according to the State Medical Examiner’s office. The bodies of Jasmine Nicole Brown, 9, and her adoptive sister Minnet Cecila Bowman, 11, were discovered in September in the freezer which had been stored in the home’s basement. The gruesome discovery followed an investigation of a child abuse case in which a younger sibling had been taken into protective care after she was found wandering in the neighborhood and covered with severe bruises along a dirt road in the county. The girl reportedly told authorities that she had been beaten by her mother, Renee Bowman. Bowman, 43, had been cleared by District of Columbia officials to adopt the children after serving as their foster parent. According to court records, Bowman, who remains jailed on attempted murder and child abuse charges, has lived in Montgomery, Prince Georges and Calvert counties as well as Washington, D.C.

But Richard Wexler, a staunch Fenty critic who serves as executive director of the Alexandria, Va.-based National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, says that almost everything in CFSA’s court agreement involves undoing damage leveled at the agency by Fenty as a result of the mayor’s grandstanding after the Banita Jacks case. Wexler said the case threatened to make Fenty look bad.

Jacks was accused of murder after her four daughters were found dead in January in the family’s southeast D.C. rowhouse.

"For instance, [a Fenty press release during that time] brags about reducing – not eliminating – a giant backlog of cases,” said Wexler. “But it was Fenty’s grandstanding that caused the backlog. Similarly, the press release brags about hiring new caseworkers to replace the ones who quit in droves after Fenty scapegoated anyone who came anywhere near the Jacks case.”

In October, the troubled agency -- slapped with nearly a dozen mandates -- was given an ultimatum by the U. S. District Court to bring its house in order by Dec. 31.

Since that time, the agency has come into compliance with nine of the requirements, indicating that the other two would fall into place before year’s end.

As of late last week, CFSA had reduced its backlog of cases slated for investigation to 92 -- more than 1,600 cases down from the 1,750 officials said remained opened in June. The agency promised to further reduce its cases to just 100 by the end of this month. The agency has since hired 40 social workers and moved 70 others into community-based offices. It has also contracted with an outside agency to locate homes for at least 25 children.