Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Ground Zero for Wrecking America's Youth and the Economy:

There are probably 10 times the needed DCF, Department of Children and Families workers. They are mostly unqualified, overpaid, and only have to work half as long as most out in the private sector.

DCF workers are like KGB. They put people under electronic and other surveillance and can abuse citizens and their families, enter property with police without warrants, and are encouraged to tamper with witnesses, suppress evidence, commit perjury, falsify documents, manufacture evidence, and to take as many kids away as is possible to defraud all Federal Taxpayers in all states of their hard earned, paid in, Federal Tax Dollars.

Retaliation against Whistleblowers and abuse of minorities and poorer residents can go on covertly without official criminals fearing arrests and prosecution. This official immorality has gone on far too long. Unchecked it will bring down America if it already has not done so.

It has been reported that $90k per kid and $150k or more is taken in by the State of Connecticut in Federal Tax Dollars to bolster a corrupt state run like an Organized Crime Syndicate.

There are probably more than 10 times more kids taken away than there should be. Children are devastated for life, might commit suicide, end up as dangerous inmates after committing horrific crimes, never be productive, and/or just be another taxpayer drain.

There are probably 10 times more inmates in prisons than there needs to be.

Those that are deemed "White Trash" and are minorities are kept out of most housing, "the good neighborhoods", and out of most jobs due to racism and the Separate and Unequal Policies of Connecticut, that are also infecting the rest of the nation.

Jim Crow is alive and well, just now a modern, "Dirty Little Secret".

This Official Child, Family, and Citizen Abuse has to stop.

What kind of economy or quality of life will we have as a nation if there are just "The Rich" and "The Locked Up"?


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CONNECTICUT NEWS
Riverview Still Lacks Order
December 20, 2006
By JOSH KOVNER, Hartford Courant Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN -- Staff members in the Passaic Unit at Riverview Hospital for Children and Youth have a nickname for their ward. They call it Animal House.

On Sunday, the unit, part of the state's only public psychiatric hospital for children, earned its name. Staff members hit the "blue light" - the panic button - as all of the seven deeply troubled teenaged boys in the unit started fighting. Workers from other parts of the 78-bed hospital rushed to respond to the call for "all available."

"One kid said something bad about another," said a veteran staff member. "That's all it takes. The unit was on lockdown after that."

It was one of three flare-ups in the unit between Saturday and Monday, the worker said. He said incidents such as these, and a disturbance at the Lakota Unit in January in which five boys were charged with trying to start a riot, feed into an undercurrent of unease and, at times, near chaos at a hospital that deals with Connecticut's most troubled and vulnerable children.

A new report by the state Department of Children and Families, which runs Riverview, has confirmed a host of fundamental problems and systemic breakdowns at the hospital, where the annual cost of caring for one child exceeds $500,000.

"The hospital remains challenged in effectively meeting the needs of the children it serves," the report says.

As for workers such as those in the Passaic Unit, the report says "the degree of both primary and secondary trauma experienced by staff at all levels appears to be high, and appears to have contributed to varying degrees of desensitization and helplessness."

Joyce Welch, interim superintendent at Riverview, acknowledged Tuesday that there is "a lot of pressure and stress on staff. We need to pay closer attention to staff injuries, and if staff are dealing with particularly hard or difficult cases, then the hospital has to make sure it's lending the proper support."

Welch and DCF's Fernando Muniz said Tuesday that they have been moving for months to implement top-to-bottom reforms, and pledged to have major improvements in place within a year. The officials pointed to statistics - 87 total injuries, assaults, restraints and seclusions for November compared with 149 in June - that they say show the beginnings of a turnaround.

But state Child Advocate Jeanne Milstein, whose office participated in the review, said Tuesday that the findings have an all too familiar ring.

She said concerns about "chaos" and "a disconnect" between treatment units and the administration at the hospital were brought to DCF's attention nearly four years ago.

"The problems at Riverview Hospital should have been obvious and alarming to DCF from the outset," she said in response to the report. She offered more than 20 recommendations to improve oversight, accountability and treatment, and she strongly urged DCF Commissioner Darlene Dunbar to appoint an independent monitor to watch over the reform efforts. DCF spokesman Gary Kleeblatt said Dunbar is considering a monitor.

"My concern," said state Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr., "is whether the hospital has the resources to treat children who are referred there from the juvenile justice system. If you overwhelm an institution with cases that are beyond its reach, you're going to have serious problems."

He said DCF would be well served to improve mental health services at the high-security Connecticut Juvenile Training School. The agency, however, has been concentrating on moving children out of the controversial CJTS.

Welch said the hospital isn't in the business of distinguishing between the children who come to the hospital from court or detention centers, and those who don't. She said that with improvements, the hospital should be able to treat them all.

She did acknowledge that problems with communication, treatment approaches and staff support are lengthening the stays of children at the hospital, when DCF's goal is to get them into settings that are less restrictive as soon as possible.

Muniz, executive assistant to Dunbar, said he expects that the planned reforms will ease labor-management tensions at the hospital.

Contact Josh Kovner at jkovner@courant.com.

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