Authorities: Boy, 4, dead after accidental shooting

A 4-year-old boy died after he took a gun to his room and it accidentally discharged, hitting him in the head in Merrillville, Ind. police said.

It happened at 8:11 a.m. in the 6400 block of Cleveland Street, when the child took a gun from the bedroom of his parents and went back to his room with the gun, which discharged and hit him in the head, police said in a statement.

The child, Cash Irby, Jr. was pronounced dead at 8:47 a.m. at Methodist Hospitals Southlake Campus after authorities responded to his home at the Cleveland Street address, according to the Lake County, Ind. coroner's office.

Cash suffered a gunshot wound to the head during an accidental shooting, according to the coroner's office.

Both parents were home at the time as well as two siblings – a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old, police said.

An investigation is under way by police and Child Protective Services.

rsobol@tribune.com

Twitter:@RosemarySobol1

Spankings tied to likelihood of child protective service visits

Parents who spank their babies are at greater risk of eventually having Child Protective Services called in to protect their kids than parents who do not spank, according to a new study.

"A few other studies have shown that parents that spank their children are also more likely to engage in harsh physical punishment and abusive parenting behaviors," said lead author Shawna J. Lee from the University of Michigan School of Social Work in Ann Arbor.

It seems plausible that discipline that starts out as spanking may, in some cases, escalate to abuse over time, Lee told Reuters Health in an email.

Research has shown that spanking doesn't result in kids listening to their parents' directions any more closely. It has been linked to more aggressive behavior and more acting out as the child grows up.

The American Academy of Pediatrics does not endorse spanking for any reason, and suggests time-outs as an alternative.

"The collective research over the past 20 years on spanking and physical punishment clearly indicates that hitting your child is related to a wide range of negative outcomes and hasn't shown any benefit to the child," said Tracie O. Afifi, who studies physical punishment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

In the new study, Lee and her colleagues analyzed data from a previous study that had followed 2,800 families with a newborn baby in 20 U.S. cities for five years. In three-quarters of the families, the child's parents were not married.

For their report, the researchers considered interviews conducted with the mothers when the child was first born, and again at ages one and five.

At one year, mothers were asked if they or their partner had spanked the child for misbehaving in the past month.

When kids were five, mothers reported whether Child Protective Services (CPS) had ever contacted them about any child in the household.

According to the results published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, 30 percent of the one-year-olds had been spanked by their mother, their father or their mother's current partner in the past month. Ten percent of families were contacted by CPS when children were between age one and five.

Spanking was more common in the group that was ultimately contacted by CPS.

Among the families with no CPS calls, 29 percent of kids had been spanked, compared to 38 percent of kids in families with CPS involvement.

Families with CPS involvement were also more likely to have lower household incomes. Mothers in those families tended to have lower education levels and higher rates of depression than mothers in families without CPS calls.

Many parents don't know that spanking is harmful, or they try not to spank but then become frustrated and do it anyway, Lee said.

"For many parents who use corporal punishment, they continue with the same practice although it is not effective in changing the child's behavior in the long-term," said Deborah D. Sendek, from the Gundersen National Child Protection Training Center at Winona State University in Minnesota. Sendek was not involved in the new study.

"As the child gets older, the parents tend to use more force and hit more frequently, which can cause an injury bringing them to the attention of CPS," she said. Plus, older children who have been spanked may develop problems concentrating, trouble with schoolwork, bullying behavior or conflict with authority, which can lead to a CPS referral as well, she said.

But spanking may be only one factor that contributes to CPS involvement, in addition to poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, parental stress and depression, Lee said.

"Child behaviors that are frustrating or annoying to parents often reflect the normal development of a young child who is curious and in the process of learning about the world (and) is 'testing out' theories about how things work," Lee said. "When parents are frustrated, I advocate for trying to redirect their child to other activities or giving them something else to do."

"Parents should not spank their children - in particular, babies and very young children," Lee said. She encourages parents to discuss the issue with their pediatricians, ask for resources and consult the American Academy of Pediatrics "Connected Kids" initiative (http://bit.ly/1gHgmqj).

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1fXdeqm Child Abuse & Neglect, online March 3, 2014.

The Public Eye: Sacramento 2-year-old’s death underscores longstanding problems at Child Protective Services Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/06/6299300/sacramento-2-year-olds-death-underscores.html#storylink=cpy

The Public Eye: Sacramento 2-year-old’s death underscores longstanding problems at Child Protective Services

Alive for just two years, William Philyaw was the subject of 10 reports of abuse and neglect filed with Sacramento County Child Protective Services.

The agency was told about an abusive father with a lengthy criminal record and a history ofdrug abuse, a filthy home and a mother unable to protect her children, among other problems.

But in its risk assessments of the toddler’s home, CPS repeatedly recorded inaccurate information, failed to include domestic-abuse reports against the father and omitted the mother’s own history of childhood abuse, The Bee found in a review of William’s 257-page case file.

Even with those omissions, CPS’ risk-assessment system triggered recommendations on four different occasions that social workers take action to stabilize the family situation or to place William in foster care.

Each time, the recommendation was overridden by a social worker and his or her supervisor, and William and his older brother were kept in their Arden Arcade home, according to records obtained through the Public Records Act.

On Nov. 5, two months after the last assessment, 2-year-old William was killed. According to the Sheriff’s Department, William died as a result of blunt-force trauma inflicted by a baby sitter while William’s mother was away for the weekend. Samuel Crutchor is being held in the county jail on a murder charge, along with William’s mother, Tiphanie Williams, who faces a charge of child endangerment.

The case is a textbook example of poor social work because social workers failed to assess the pattern of complaints against William’s parents, according to William Grimm, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law in Oakland.

His remarks echo a report released in February by the county’s Child Protective Systems Oversight Committee, an independent body of child-welfare and law-enforcement professionals.

In its report for the last fiscal year, the committee reviewed nine cases in which children were killed or nearly killed and found “the mistakes of the past have been repeated” by the county’s long-troubled child welfare agency.

CPS Deputy Director Michelle Callejas said Williams, the mother, was working with a social worker and receiving services in an attempt to make her home safer for her family.

CPS was not aware that Crutchor was acting as a baby sitter, she said.

Crutchor has a criminal record in Monterey County, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

CPS should have removed William from the home at least a year before the boy’s death, said Grimm, who reviewed the case file.

The trigger, he said, should have been when sheriff’s deputies responded to a domestic-abuse call at the family apartment and a deputy noted that William’s father, Thaddeus Philyaw, had a record of arrests for more than a dozen charges, including attempted murder, rape, robbery and child cruelty.

Williams repeatedly allowed Philyaw into her life, despite his history of violence toward her and others, reports to CPS said.

In one report to a sheriff’s deputy, Williams suggested that she did not want to pursue charges against Philyaw because it would have been a third strike that would send him to prison for life.

In October 2012, a sheriff’s deputy responding to a domestic-abuse complaint noted that both Williams’ children were dirty, with blackened feet and a sticky substance on their bodies, and that the apartment smelled strongly of garbage.

“I would have seriously recommended removing the child from the home at that time,” Grimm said.

“CPS needed to say, ‘Prove to me you’re going to keep these men out of your life and protect your children.’ ”

In January 2013, only three months later, Williams told a sheriff’s deputy that Philyaw had attacked her.

She was not injured, but she said she was “tired of him putting his hands on me,” according to the deputy’s report.

Despite the two domestic-abuse reports, a CPS risk assessment that month said “No” to the question of whether there were two or more incidents of domestic abuse in the past year.

Other errors made in the risk assessments included repeated statements that the primary caregiver – Williams – was not a victim of childhood abuse. That was in conflict with CPS records indicating that she had an extensive history of abuse.

Such questions are part of the risk-assessment system, which is used to score a child’s exposure to risk. Four times those assessments showed the risk to be high. Four times the recommendations that social workers act to better protect the children were overridden.

Two of those times, a social worker said the family already was receiving sufficient services to address the risks, although it’s not clear what those services were.

On the other two occasions, the social worker said he or she could not find evidence to support the recommendations that emerged from the risk assessments.

To override such recommendations, a social worker must offer a rationale and have it approved by a supervisor, Callejas said.

Callejas said the Williams case and others have reinforced “the importance of social workers reviewing prior history and taking that into account as they conduct their investigations and complete (risk assessments).”

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/06/6299300/sacramento-2-year-olds-death-underscores.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/06/6299300/sacramento-2-year-olds-death-underscores.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/06/6299300/sacramento-2-year-olds-death-underscores.html#storylink=cpy

PR: Panel finds lapses by Sacramento County social workers

Sacramento County Child Protective Services continues to make mistakes in cases that end up in death or near death, according to an independent report presented to supervisors Tuesday.

In one case, parents left a child with an unsafe caregiver, but a social worker decided that the allegation was unfounded because she didn’t want to punish the parents. Later, the child was murdered after being left with a different but still unsafe caregiver, according to the report by the Child Protective System Oversight Committee, an independent body of child-welfare and law-enforcement professionals.

Since 1996, when the county created the committee following the beating death of 3-year-old Adrian Conway, such cases have been a staple of the committee’s annual reports to the Board of Supervisors. In its report for the last fiscal year, the committee reviewed nine cases in which children were killed or nearly killed and found “the mistakes of the past have been repeated.”

Those mistakes included a failure to exercise proper judgment, follow procedure and communicate with other agencies involved in troubled families’ lives, the report found.

Tuesday’s findings come after Health and Human Services Director Sherri Heller assured the board in October that CPS had made great improvements. “I think it’s accurate to say that CPS is no longer an agency in crisis,” she said at the time.

On Tuesday, Heller and CPS Deputy Director Michelle Callejas did not dispute the oversight report and said it had helped the agency better understand how to improve. However, they added that the agency has made important strides and is “no longer in crisis mode,” in the words of Heller.

Gina Roberson, a commission co-chair, said CPS has been open to the commission’s recommendations and made efforts to implement them. Yet CPS continues to make fundamental mistakes, she said.

“The gap that we have seen over and over is in the critical thinking skills of the social workers,” said Roberson, who works at the Child Abuse Prevention Center.

Supervisors expressed frustration over how some cases have been handled, particularly the one in which parents were found not responsible for a safety violation for leaving their child with an unsafe caregiver. The cases in the report do not include names, dates or other identifying information.

“There’s a contradiction here – the allegation was true but it was unfounded,” said Supervisor Don Nottoli. “What am I missing here?”

Callejas said it’s not unusual for social workers to decide that a case is unfounded even when an investigation shows it should be upheld. Social workers are generally trying to keep the families intact and worry that a founded complaint might lead to the removal of a child from the home, she said.

Still, Callejas called the practice inappropriate, including when it was done in the case reported by the oversight committee. “It was an error,” she said.

Supervisor Phil Serna said the practice suggests that CPS has systemic problems. “I want to know if we have instituted the wrong questions,” he said.

The committee report criticizes the decision not to cite the parents for leaving their child with an unsafe caregiver, saying a “substantiated disposition on the first referral would have provided the young parents with services that might have been beneficial.”

In several cases, the committee found problems with CPS policies and procedures, a shortcoming the committee and other reviewers have repeatedly raised about the agency. The committee report tells the story of an infant who nearly died because policies failed to explain how a social worker should have handled the child’s “mentally unstable and homicidal parent who had made previous attempts to harm the child.”

Callejas conceded that the agency has been unsuccessful in trying to improve its policies and plans to contract with an outside organization to help write new ones to guide the agency’s work.

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/25/6189616/panel-finds-lapses-by-sacramento.html

If you have any concerns regarding Family Law in California, please contact us.

Law Offices of Vincent W Davis and Associates

(626) 446-6442

mazer@vincentwdavis.com

www.vincentwdavis.com

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/25/6189616/panel-finds-lapses-by-sacramento.html#storylink=cpy

PR: Memorial service planned for abandoned infant

Earlier this summer, the body of a newborn baby was found in a Roseville park, clearly abandoned by it's caretakers. The public is being welcomed to attend a brief burial services on September 18th.

The service will be held at 10 a.m. at the new Auburn Public Cemetery, 1040 Collins Drive, Auburn.

The baby girl has not yet been identified, her umbilical cord still intact attached to her body. She was found on July 8th by park workers, thrown in a bush at Saugstad Park.

The baby was wrapped in a blanket and plastic bagged before being placed in a box, possibly dead before placement. Police say that there were no signs of injury and that she may have been stillborn.

Press awaits a final autopsy report, and the cause of death is still unknown. No one has come forward to identify.

(Information gathered from http://www.sacbee.com/2013/09/04/5705411/memorial-service-planned-for-abandoned.html)

If you have any questions or concerns about Family Law in California, please give us a call.

Vincent W Davis and Associates

mazer@vincentwdavis.com

(626) 446-6442

www.vincentwdavis.com

Letters: On toddlers found wandering in South L.A.

Re "Boys' plight raises red flag," March 12

The article reports that two children, ages 2 and 3, were found on a busy South L.A. street after wandering into a liquor store asking for bread. Their mother was enrolled in a program to help her keep her children while learning to become a better parent.

The article revealed tragic results of a history of generational poverty and deprivation.

In the same paper, we read of rich kids who document their lifestyles on Instagram. They record spending thousands of dollars on lunches and bottles of champagne, projecting an image of cavalier privilege.

I was outraged after reading both articles. Could there be a better depiction of the disparity between the 1% and the 99%?

Donna Wilkinson

Los Angeles

One could not help but pause and compare the recent columns in The Times of the lost and subsequently rescued dog and this piece on the two young boys looking for food.

The previous owners of the dog lost custody after an animal rescue group deemed them unfit and placed the pup in a more responsible household. In contrast, these children were already under direct supervision of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. Apparently, the fact that the mother had already lost six older children to foster care had no bearing.

Perhaps an animal welfare group should be assigned to some of these children, as the rescue organizations seem to be better at evaluating homes. And since many of these evaluators are volunteers, the county could save money.

Susan Fredericks-Ploussard

Woodland Hills

Come on. Two toddlers wander the streets looking for food because they can't find any in their filthy house where there's nothing but rotten food in the fridge? This happened because the DCFS doesn't have a computer program to tell them the mother's care is inadequate? Was the human case manager deaf, dumb and blind?

As a licensed clinical social worker I've visited homes like this, and it doesn't take an algorithm to detect neglect. The case manager involved here should be fired for incompetence, period.

Wayne April

Pasadena

How is a mother who lost six other children placed in a program for low-risk families? Adults should only be given so many chances to prove themselves, and six is just too many children lost.

At some point, a child's entitlement to a good quality of life must trump the parents' entitlement to reunification.

Fixing child protection means fixing L.A. County government

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/apr/08/news/la-ol-child-protection-20140408

In August, as the newly formed Blue Ribbon Commission on Child Protection convened for the first time and members spoke aloud about the kinds of issues they expected they’d have to deal with, appointee Andrea Richnoted that there are certain problems inherent in “running big, awful bureaucracies.” And she ought to know, because as the former president and CEO of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, she once had a front row seat watching county government -- the biggest, most awful bureaucracy around.

But museums are in many respects insulated from that bureaucracy, unlike the Department of Children and Family Services and other offices and agencies that are meant to keep abused and neglected children from needlessly dying. So Rich and her colleagues were in for a sustained jolt over the last eight months as they drilled through the layers of the child welfare system and discovered a directionless and risk-averse government that has lost sight of its mission.

Little of the panel’s work has made the news so far, so few people heard the thunderclap of criticism delivered March 28 at its second-to-last meeting and directed at a Los Angeles County government, its culture, its leaders, its bureaucrats and especially its lawyers. Especially its lawyers.

On paper, Rich’s words seem measured and somewhat academic. It’s necessary to watch or listen to the recording – to Rich’s incredulity, her indignation, perhaps even a hint of anger – to fully appreciate just how blistering her assessment is of the county’s bureaucracy .

“Bureaucracies not carefully managed and consistently improved have characteristics that are destructive to client-oriented services, impede innovation, stifle efforts at self-improvement,” she said. “This sort of narrow span of control and bureaucratic risk-aversion typical of the bureaucratic process constantly thwarts efforts toward meaningful reform. And we’ve seen it over and over in our studies here and in testimony.”

Commission Chairman David Sanders also headed an L.A. County department – the often-criticized Department of Children and Family Services – but he said Monday that he was surprised at the extent of the dysfunction he saw from his new perspective compared with what he saw at DCFS.

Translation: The county is messed up. Efforts to reform the child protection system are doomed without a thorough overhaul – not of DCFS but of the entire county governmental edifice, the way it thinks and the way it works.

So how can that kind of overhaul happen? There are two ways to answer the question. One way is to look at the list of 734 recommendations for improving the child protection system offered to the Board of Supervisors and various county departments over the years that the commission found gathering dust on shelves or at best stalled in some early stage of implementation, and conclude that county government is hopeless.

The other is to look at the looming change in county leadership, with two of the five supervisors leaving office this year – the first time there has been that sweeping a change since Michael D. Antonovich ousted Baxter Ward and Deane Dana booted Yvonne Burke a generation ago, in 1980 – and candidates vying to replace them. Antonovich, still serving on the Board of Supervisors 34 years later, and Don Knabe, who succeeded his boss and mentor Dana, will likewise be replaced in two years.

Los Angeles County can have the exact same government and culture with slightly different faces, or it can embrace an opportunity for new thinking.

It’s fine for candidates to talk about how they would hire more child social workers,  although the county is already on track to do that. Or how they would change deployment, although those kinds of changes are constantly discussed and always seem to be in the works.

In the view of the commission – this is preliminary, because the final report is yet to be adopted – there is an even more global mandate, and while members of the panel may insist that their recommendations are all about ensuring child safety, a closer look suggests that they go to the heart of numerous challenges that this big, awful bureaucracy faces in order to accomplish anything: Explicitly define its mission; put someone in charge of executing it; measure success and failure.

Sitting supervisors may well protest that these things are already being done, and candidates may be puzzled at marching orders that sound more like a homework assignment in an MBA student’s organization behavior class than social work.

But that’s the point. The county has grown and segmented itself so quickly that it has lost its sense of priorities; or rather, its sense of priorities is set by news headlines, scandals, outrages and political campaigns.

In Rich’s words:

“In the absence of a clear vision and strong leadership, all of us who have ever worked in government know that bureaucracies emerge as the default method of solving complex problems and delivering services to large numbers of people. Bureaucracies by their nature tend to be reactive. They solve problems one at a time, seriatim, over time, and they create administrative structures, they start programs and they allocate resources one at a time with no overall perspective. As these reactive solutions multiply, initial problems become obscured and workable solutions difficult if not impossible to identify within the resulting bureaucratic maze.”

The commission’s final meeting is Thursday. Members are expected to consider and adopt final recommendations to the Board of Supervisors.