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http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a ... /712070486
December 7, 2007
Child-Death Investigation
Social workers clashed over TaJanay’s case
Despite concerns, supervisor wouldn’t seek order to take girl from home
By Tim Evans and Jon Murray
[email protected]
On two occasions during the final eight days of TaJanay Bailey's life, social workers assigned to her child protection case raised serious concerns about the girl's well-being in her mother's home.
Both times, a state Department of Child Services supervisor declined to ask a judge to order the girl's removal, DCS case files released Thursday reveal.
That refusal so frustrated a counselor and a child advocate that they planned to plead directly to the judge for the removal of 3-year-old TaJanay and her 6-month-old brother from the home.
Before they could get to juvenile court, TaJanay was dead.
Her mother, Charity Bailey, and Bailey's live-in boyfriend, Lawrence Green, are facing murder and neglect charges.
"We sometimes tend to wait too long to make those tough calls," DCS Director James W. Payne said Thursday, in his first public comments about the specifics of TaJanay's case.
He said the flaws in the agency's handling appeared to amount to errors in judgment, not misconduct, and the agency must learn from missteps revealed in about 1,500 pages of documents released Thursday.
Cause for optimism
DCS had taken the bruised and sickly girl from her mother's care in May 2006 after a former foster mother took her to the emergency room. Unemployment, drug abuse and domestic abuse had given social workers involved in the case reason for pause during the next year.
By late summer 2007, the documents show that social workers all thought Bailey and Green were making inroads and trying to bond with the children. Green had completed a parenting course and was enrolled in drug education classes, and both had jobs.
They returned TaJanay and her brother, Lawrence Green Jr., home for a 30-day trial visit Oct. 31.
But after the children came home, the couple's failure to hold jobs, lack of a family support network and a failed drug test by Charity Bailey triggered a rift among the social workers, according to the newly released records and interviews this week.
The first sign of concern appears in a Nov. 9 e-mail in which case manager Tara Hayes documented a phone call the day before from guardian ad litem Carolyn Thurston, the court-appointed advocate for TaJanay. Thurston asked for a team meeting to discuss the children's placement.
The meeting was set for Nov. 21. A flurry of e-mails on Nov. 19 indicated that Thurston, Hayes and home-based counselor Kelly Kochell were concerned about the children's welfare, but Hayes' supervisor disagreed with their suggested solution.
Hayes wrote to the team: "I don't think this is working having the kids in the home. There are major concerns."
Hayes later wrote, after speaking with her supervisor, LaQuita Thomas-Trabue: "DCS has decided not to put in an affidavit for the court to remove the children as of yet."
Thurston replied: "I predict that if DCS does not step forward with removal our agency will petition the court to order DCS to do such."
It's not clear why Thomas-Trabue, the case supervisor who had joined the case in September, rebuffed others' efforts to seek the children's removal. She and Hayes have not been made available for comment by DCS officials. She has not returned telephone messages left at her home.
In discussing the case Thursday, Payne said the e-mails did not convey an "imminent danger," which would be necessary for DCS and police to remove the child without a court order. The normal course would be to raise those issues at the next court hearing, which was set for Nov. 27.
Missed call
No one in DCS knew until after TaJanay's death that police responded to a 911 call to the couple's apartment Nov. 13 on a report of a domestic dispute, Payne said. Police talked to the couple but made no arrests.
"If we had known that," Payne said, "that would have been one of the red flags. Given that law enforcement was there, that she had packed up (and was) ready to move out -- and did not do so -- that would have been a red flag to us at subsequent meetings."
Payne said no report of that police run can be found. He said he wasn't sure it would have justified immediate removal, but it may have changed the department's stance on leaving the children in the home.
But time was running out for TaJanay.
Without DCS support to ask a judge for a removal order, Thurston and Kochell decided after the Nov. 21 team meeting to ask the judge themselves.
Because the court would be closed for Thanksgiving, they would have to wait until the Nov. 27 hearing.
Green and Bailey were the only adults in the family's apartment when, police say, the final blows came just a few hours before that court hearing.
Prosecutor Carl Brizzi called the last week of the girl's life torturous. A probable cause affidavit says TaJanay suffered whippings from a belt, was hung on a coat hook by her T-shirt and was punched in the chest, sometimes because she wet her pants.
She died of blunt-force trauma to her head, neck, trunk and extremities, a coroner's report says, and was bleeding internally on the surface of her brain.
Test of a new concept
Payne says the caseworker and supervisor are devastated by TaJanay's death.
He said he anticipated the agency's internal investigation would be finished next week, and he would issue conclusions. Nothing he has seen calls for discipline of the DCS workers involved with the case, he said.
"I will defend my staff in their judgment, because it's our job then to figure out how we can improve that judgment," Payne said. "My review of this case does not cause me to conclude that there was either malfeasance or misfeasance, nor was there neglect."
What has become clear, Payne said, is that those involved in TaJanay's case should have more thoroughly addressed domestic violence between Green and Charity Bailey and communicated better with other partners at the table.
Payne said the agency will seek lessons from the handling of the case.
The team concept, which DCS initiated as part of reforms begun in 2005, stresses collaboration among caseworkers, the parents and other social workers. The model's intent is that no single voice should outweigh any other.
Cynthia Booth, executive director of Child Advocates, which employs Thurston, said that until mid-November, "the case had been a wonderful example of teaming and collaboration."
But as differences of opinion came into play that month, she said, the old mentality that DCS knows best and should make all of the decisions seemed to trump the new approach.
"I am a supporter of this reform, and I want it to work," Booth said. "But it has to be implemented in the spirit of inclusion.
"In this case, I don't think that was the situation -- and the worst thing that could have happened did."
SOCIAL WORKERS SPLIT ON THE BAILEY CASE
A rift developed among the four social workers overseeing the Child in Need of Services cases involving TaJanay Bailey and her half-brother Lawrence Green Jr. around Oct. 31, the time DCS returned the children to their mother, Charity Bailey, and Bailey's boyfriend, Lawrence Green.
Concerned by deteriorating conditions in the home and Bailey's and Green's lack of cooperation after the children were returned, two of the social workers began advocating for the children to be removed from the home. A third agreed with many of their concerns. However, DCS case supervisor LaQuita Thomas-Trabue ruled DCS would keep the family together:
Guardian Ad Litem, Supervisor of volunteers Carolyn Thurston
Thurston managed and supervised volunteer advocates and represented the child's best interest in court and at any other proceedings, including service provider meetings.
Stance: Recommended removal
Wanted the child removed from the home.
Home-based counselor Kelly B. Kochell
Assigned to the case by National Youth Advocate Program in December 2006, Kochell worked with the parents and TaJanay in the home setting to address any issues identified by DCS, the court and other counselors. She was to help the family prepare for reunification and monitor reunification. She visited the family two times a week in the month before and after reunification
Stance: Recommended removal
Kochell recommended the child be removed from home.
DCS case supervisor LaQuita Thomas-Trabue
Promoted to a case supervisor in August, Thomas-Trabue was assigned to the case in September. She oversaw case managers.
Stance: Denied removal
Thomas-Trabue did not back recommendations by Thurston and Kochell, and ordered TaJanay and her brother to remain in the care of Bailey and Green
DCS case manager Tara C. Hayes
As a rookie case manager, Hayes was assigned to the case July 14. She was responsible for overseeing management of Charity Bailey's Child in Need of Services Case.
Stance: Agreed with removal, but followed boss
Hayes agreed with Thurston and Kochell, but followed the lead of her supervisor.
Call Star reporter Tim Evans at (317) 444-6204.
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