DSS changes handling of child-death cases

Faced with a backlog of child-death cases, a state agency said Tuesday that it will handle high-profile fatalities faster to learn from mistakes and prevent future tragedies.

Cases with greater potential to show how problems can be fixed will be reviewed first, instead of doing investigations chronologically, according to Kevin Kelly, section chief for child welfare in the N.C. Division of Social Services.

"What we're doing is tweaking the policy to address high-profile cases," he said. "There's a thought that we can learn more from the high-profile cases."

Currently, the agency appoints a task force to review fatalities involving children who had contact with county social service departments in the year prior to the child's death. Sometimes the State Child Fatality Review Task Force, made up of state and local officials, finds a death that couldn't have been prevented — a child killed in a car accident, for example. But many reviews find systemic problems at the county level, from chronic lack of resources to a lack of communication between police and social workers.

"It's just so important that this be uniform across the state, because there are so many child deaths that are called something they're not," said Rhonda Morris, executive director of Kids First, a child-abuse prevention group based in Elizabeth City. "There are deaths from abuse that are called crib deaths."

The state has 38 cases currently awaiting a review, including some of North Carolina's most notorious. Among those:

• Shaniya Davis, a 5-year-old Fayetteville girl who disappeared from her home in November 2009. Mario McNeil faces charges of first-degree murder and rape in her death. The girl's mother also faces murder charges. Shortly after Shaniya was found, Fayetteville police and prosecutors asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look into whether county social workers had provided police with complete records on the girl's family.

• Zahra Baker, a 10-year-old disabled Australian girl who was reported missing from her Hickory home in October 2010. Parts of her dismembered body were found a short time later. Her stepmother, Elisa Baker, was convicted in September of second-degree murder and sentenced to up to 18 years in jail. Elisa Baker had a history of being reported for suspected child abuse, and county social workers had looked into similar reports about Zahra shortly before she was murdered.

• Aubrey Kina-Marie Littlejohn, a 1-year-old Eastern Band Cherokee girl who died a year ago Tuesday in Swain County. County social workers had received multiple reports of abuse and neglect at the home where she lived, and had removed an 11-year-old from the home two months before Aubrey's death. A Swain County sheriff's investigator found that social workers falsified reports to make it look as though they conducted a proper investigation of abuse allegations. No one has been charged in her death; the sheriff's office is still investigating.

Currently, DSS has two employees and one temporary worker devoted to child fatality reviews in North Carolina's 100 counties.

Kelly said they are beginning to pull county social service records to see which high-profile cases they should handle quickly.

"The purpose is to find any systemic issues that would prevent a similar fatality from occurring in the future," he said.

He said the fatality review process has been hindered because of high turnover in the agencies involved. But his agency, part of the state Department of Health and Human Services, knows it is a problem and might use employees from other departments to help.

"We're not looking at holding anybody criminally or professionally accountable for any actions or inactions that may have led to the death," Kelly said. "We're really looking at … what we can do to work better together, what policies need to be developed or enhanced to prevent similar deaths from happening in the future."

The criminal justice system is in a better position to hold people accountable, Kelly said.

"For the state to step in and usurp some agencies' authority would make things a very complicated mess. … Ultimately it's the criminal system that most people think about holding people responsible," he said.

A bill was introduced in the General Assembly last year that would have established a regional child-death special investigator who would have worked to set up standardized protocol across the state. It failed to make it out of the legislature.

"There's no consistency," Morris said. "That's why our statistics on abuse are so skewed, even from county to county. How one county will enforce versus how another county will is completely different."