No Fixed Address

In local news, Washington DC is abuzz with a horrifying case in which police found a woman living with the skeletal remains of her four children, apparently killed by their mother who explains they were possessed by demons. Mayor Adrian Fenty revealed today that the city's social services agencies had been looking into intervening on behalf of the children when a nurse reported that the family was living in a van and one or both parents had substance abuse problems. At this point they decided to close the interview because . . . the family had no fixed address. Because that, of course, is always great news.

It's just terrible stuff; in a country with as many resources as this one, we really ought to be able to stop kids from falling through the crack like this. A banal sentiment, yes, but it's true nevertheless.

Comments

Something something nanny state something something.

*sigh*

Posted by dob | January 11, 2008 3:54 PM

Last year's atrocity.

Posted by Samuel Glover | January 11, 2008 4:01 PM

Oh come on, dob. Do you have to turn this into something political?
No one thinks it is a "nanny state" that prevents this type of thing from happening.

Posted by geesh | January 11, 2008 4:01 PM

Since it was a homeless person, it must be Reagan's fault.

Posted by anonguy | January 11, 2008 4:02 PM

Geesh -

Every time you hear a Republican say something along the lines of "government IS the problem", etc., THIS IS WHAT THEY"RE TALKING ABOUT.

This is government. This is the result of the kinds of budget cutbacks that (for example) California is looking at, because of the stupidity of Arnold and Howard Jarvis and Prop 13. These are the governmental services that dissappear to pay for W's tax cuts, and the tax cuts that Rudy and Thompson and Romney et al. trip over each other, promising to voters.

The political aspect to a story like this is there because Republicans put it there. And it is front and center right this moment in the presidential primaries. In no way is it 'out of line' to talk about that political aspect. It is the entire point of the exercise.

Posted by Robert Earle | January 11, 2008 4:11 PM

geesh, it's a fair bet that if the city's social services agencies were given funding appropriate to their needs, this case wouldn't have been closed.

Posted by dob | January 11, 2008 4:15 PM

geesh, it's a fair bet that if the city's social services agencies were given funding appropriate to their needs, this case wouldn't have been closed.

Maybe, although never underestimate the degree to which D.C. municipal government is corrupt and incompetent.

Posted by djs | January 11, 2008 4:27 PM

"...the family was living in a van and one or both parents had substance abuse problems."

I just hope the pun on "falling through the crack" wasn't intended.

Posted by Jared | January 11, 2008 4:28 PM

Sounds like you could just as easily blame people who advocate for civil liberties and have made it very difficult to commit people with serious mental problems to institutions even for relatively short times.

Blaming it on Republicans seems a bit rich, as DC has been controlled by Democrats just under forever. And even if you want to talk only about Congressional control of the District, Democrats have been in charge for a couple of years.

Posted by Sebastian | January 11, 2008 4:30 PM

I wonder why we haven't had breathless updates every five minutes about this case, Natalie Holloway-style.

Bueller? Bueller?

Posted by calipygian | January 11, 2008 4:37 PM

Remind me again which party it is that thinks government run services are helpful, and which party it is that has run Washington DC ever since Home Rule came about?

Posted by James Robertson | January 11, 2008 4:43 PM

Yeah, seriously, it's a ridiculous stretch to blame any failure of the DC metro government even remotely on the Republicans. Really, DC is what happens when an ethnic machine develops in the absence of a downtown business owner/real estate development counterweight. None of the civil services are operated with the intent of helping people, they're operated with the intent of hiring people.

Posted by Senescent | January 11, 2008 4:44 PM

Sounds like you could just as easily blame people who advocate for civil liberties and have made it very difficult to commit people with serious mental problems to institutions even for relatively short times.

Sounds like you could more appropriate blame the people who decided government shouldn't be in the business of running mental institutions and tossed the mentally ill out onto the streets. That would be the Reagan administration, in case you don't know your slashing social services history, which judging from your comment, you don't.

Posted by dob | January 11, 2008 4:59 PM

dob, do you agree with the ACLU when they protest (and sue) any city official that attempts to put people like this into shelters and/or institutions?

Posted by nah | January 11, 2008 5:17 PM

Nah, correct me if I'm wrong: I thought the Kennedy Administration was the one which dismantled the (admittedly pretty horrible) mid-century mental health infrastructure by demanding consent for committing a patient (consent from the patient, that is).

In other news, the great weakness of the Internets/Blogosphere is its utter imperviousness to moral scandal when political points need to be made. This is true of left and right. I think there are times, and tragedies, where getting into a political boxing match is pretty unseemly; especially since the pugilists seem so much more invested in their fighting than in the poor dead bastards their fighting over in the first place.

Maybe we should bring back face-to-face arguing, society, etc.....

Posted by Ben Cronin | January 11, 2008 5:23 PM

do you agree with the ACLU when they protest (and sue) any city official that attempts to put people like this into shelters and/or institutions?

It would depend on the individual circumstances. Can you point me towards any actual instances?

Posted by dob | January 11, 2008 5:23 PM

my question should have gone to dob, not Nah.

Mea culpa.

Posted by Ben Cronin | January 11, 2008 5:25 PM

"It's just terrible stuff; in a country with as many resources as this one, we really ought to be able to stop kids from falling through the crack like this. "
Unbelievable. You really are a schmuck Yglesias.
DC, like the federal government, has plenty of money. They just waste it so they can claim they are underfunded.
Were you born this dumb or did you have to work on it?

Posted by TMack | January 11, 2008 5:26 PM

This is just a horrible, heart-wrenching story. I live in the DC area as well and have heard several updates on this today. As a father of three, it is just a punch to the stomach to think of what happened to these kids.

Posted by Chunche | January 11, 2008 5:28 PM

Nah, correct me if I'm wrong: I thought the Kennedy Administration was the one which dismantled the (admittedly pretty horrible) mid-century mental health infrastructure by demanding consent for committing a patient (consent from the patient, that is).

Stricter involuntary consent regulations went into affect in the Kennedy administration, but it was under President Reagan that funding for mental health programs was slashed. Here is an article on the subject with links to more authoritative sources.

Posted by dob | January 11, 2008 5:31 PM

"Unbelievable. You really are a schmuck Yglesias."

No, Matthew. God Bless you, for you still have the ability to have compassion for these children and families, unlike cynical Mr. Shmuck-thrower.

It is a provable fact that there is NEVER enough money directed towards hiring the in-the-field person power in child protective service agencies. How much DC spends on Child Protective Services means nothing if there are not enough investigators to follow up on all reports-for most social workers I know in the system, it's a daily agonizing Sophie's Choice of who and who not to investigate. Those folks either get referred again later on in worse condition, or turn into a heartbreaking news story.

Posted by ella | January 11, 2008 5:59 PM

She thought her kids were possessed by demons? Sounds like too much religion...

Posted by CParis | January 11, 2008 6:15 PM

How long was this woman on welfare? I bet she was on before she had the kids.
Does a woman on welfare in DC get more money the more kids she has? That would be a factor.

Ella, you are really stupid. DC is the most corrupt city government in America. Give them more money and they will steal more money. They don't give a demand about the people they are supposed to serve.
You are such a schmuck.

Posted by Tmack | January 11, 2008 6:57 PM

These are the governmental services that dissappear to pay for W's tax cuts,

1. The Federal Government doesn't normally fund city bureaucracies and when it does, it rarely tells cities how to spend any money the feds do give (unless D.C. is an exception). You'll note many cities spent their 9/11-preparedness money on unrelated concerns.

2. Bush didn't cut anything to pay for his tax cuts. He took out a loan.

3. Even if Republicans were responsible for underfundings in DC, which is unlikely, this seems to be a story about a government worker who gave up on a situation because he or she couldn't complete a form. I'm not sure how funding applies.

4. This woman must have been deranged, but so seem a lot of people who function productively and without incident. Should the state take anyone it suspects could be dangerous at some point and subject that person to the de-facto Death Sentence of permanent institutionalization? That casts a pretty wide net for people who have yet to do exactly what it is we fear they might do.

We're getting into the realm of "pre-crime," and there are no good answers (or treatments). Which isn't to say I oppose easing restrictions on involuntary commital. Or even that I oppose increasing federal funding for mental institutions.

But it's useless, dishonest and beside the point to pretend the problem of mental illness would be easily solved if only Republicans would quit cutting taxes.

Posted by Shinyk | January 11, 2008 7:15 PM

It's just terrible stuff; in a country with as many resources as this one, we really ought to be able to stop kids from falling through the crack like this.

Sorry, I just disagree. I don't think it's possible to prevent things like this with any reasonable amount of certainty without massive, gross violations of property rights (such as making people pass tests to become parents). We're rich, but we're also free, which means sometimes people are going to be able to get away with fucked-up crazy things before we can stop them.

Posted by Mr. Noah | January 11, 2008 7:35 PM

The problem is not political, but cultural. The fact that Republicans take office does not cause services agencies to fail like this (incidentally, Florida Children's Services has had some high profile failures, as well). The problem is that we, as a country, do not take efficient and effective delivery of government services seriously, and this creates a fertile political ground to allow Republicans to get elected on the platforms they run on and allows characters like Marion Barry to be viewed positively not despite the fact that he stocked the civil service with unqualified constituents he wanted to hand out jobs to, but because of it.

Posted by Tyro | January 11, 2008 8:14 PM

the family was living in a van and one or both parents had substance abuse problems

But was the van down by the river? Why is noone asking that question?

Posted by matt foley | January 11, 2008 8:14 PM

I would say none of the above, as to which party is responsible for this situation. Having been a foster parent for the past four years, and having been part of the system, it all comes down to human nature, and greed.

Let me paint a picture of the latter: take a not-for-profit child services agency. The CEO draws a respectable, but not over-gaudy salary. He does, however, receive a company car (Cadillac) and SUV (same--for when he drives the children around). He is also reimbursed for his home office and other expenses, including travel cross country to "conferences" and "fund raising".

His agency serves around 60-80 children, and to handle this case load he has 6 child care workers. He also has 2 accountants, 3 other financial staff, 2-3 counselors, an executive assistant, 2 full time fund raisers (in addition to their hired fund raising company), general office which rounds out to 35 staff. He also has 40-60 foster families who provide direct foster care.

About 1/3 of his funding goes to the foster family as board payments. Another 1/6th covers the cost of his direct child care workers and counselors. The remainder has to cover the rest of his expenses. If a child is not considered special needs (physical or psychological), his monthly stipend drops about 80%; remarkably enough, almost ALL children who come into his agency are diagnosed with at least PTSD or ADHD within their first month, leading to an increase in his stipend. Almost no children are returned to family or adopted out (except to meet minimum performance standards), as the one-time bonus for adoption only covers about two months of standard payments, and there is no bonus for returning children to their family. The stated goal is to increase the amount of children in his system because, "the more money they take in, the more children they can help."

Or take a state child care agency. The caseworkers there normally have a caseload of about 15-20 children, including all home inspections, visitations, therapy sessions, and court sessions, all of which require reams of paperwork, as well as 24-hour call availability for emergencies. All services are rationed for greatest need (thanks to cuts in Medicaid funding), and to prove such need requires additional paperwork on top of the original mountain. If special needs are to be met (e.g. no regular address), the time to cover the situation comes out of the regular budget. Anti-fraud measures prevent P.O. boxes or drops for aid recipients. If the family is "out of district", however, it is no longer the agency's problem ("they must have moved.")

Throwing money at the system could allow for more resources on both sides of the social services coin, but usually result in more "administrative" personnel. Exact guidelines to avoid "private" solution sprawl allow them to game the system to meet the rules but still (not-for-) profit from the care. And don't get me started on the caregivers who are looking for income (since board payments are "reimbursements" and not taxable).

Who gets hurt? Those who need the aid. Who wins? Whoever gets the funding, public or private.

That's why my wife and I are leaving foster care. The straw was the discovery that the flurry of activity from our agency to provide counseling for a child in our care was not to help them or us, but to make sure they stayed in the home over 6 months so the agency would qualify for a $750 bonus program. That was the price of the child's and our emotional pain over a 4 month period.

This is not a privatized/public, liberal/conservative, Republican/Democrat issue (I have seen all of the above fail spectacularly in the past four years); this is about the need to design, implement, and follow a system that works, and which does not encourage the waste of lives of children for private or public profit.

Posted by Fraud Guy | January 11, 2008 11:41 PM

I cried out loud on the metro when I read about this story in the Post this morning. So horrible. What can you do but cry?

Posted by fnook | January 12, 2008 1:01 AM

The problem is not political, but cultural

Agree that the problem is not political. The problem, though, is not a cultural one. The problem is a human one. And, absent a wonderdrug that renders insanity sane, it may be an impossible one.

Posted by Shinyk | January 12, 2008 3:39 AM

The problem is a human one.

I think you missed what I was trying to address. The problem of the mother killing her child is a human one. The cultural shortcoming is this is this, mention by Fraud GUy:

this is about the need to design, implement, and follow a system that works,

It is not a "human problem" that we tolerate corruption and incompetence from our public services.

Posted by Tyro | January 12, 2008 1:01 PM

In a country of 300 million people, there will always be people who fall through the cracks, regardless of available resources. Maybe this particular tragedy could have been prevented with a well-funded, competent and effective social services agency, but there will always be some which are missed.

It's hard to see how this is the fault of any party or political philosophy. It's horrible, but the responsibility pretty clearly lies with the addict parents who killed their children. Beyond that, I guess you can assign some responsibility to the bureaucrat who made the decision to close the case file on the kids, but going farther than that is pretty absurd.

Posted by TW Andrews | January 12, 2008 1:17 PM