One of the better CPS articles..

Blame game in boy's death ignores difficult, thankless job facing Child Protective Services

07:46 AM CDT on Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Given his mother's woeful inadequacies, it probably would have taken a village to raise Darrell Singleton – capable relatives, watchful neighbors, family friends ready to step in and help out.

Darrell did not have a village. All he had was CPS, and that wasn't enough.

The toddler, a sunny-faced kid as cute as a Huggies ad, slowly roasted to death last month in his mother's truck. Unable to make day care arrangements, she had purposely stashed him there while she went to work.

Darrell's death was not exactly a shining hour for Texas Child Protective Services. Caseworkers knew the mother, Keashia Matthews, had a history of neglecting her children.

As our reporters have documented, CPS knew she had lost custody of two older children in another state and that she had left Darrell and his sisters unsupervised in the past. Their own records show they knew she had a history of violence and erratic behavior.

The agency is the safety net of last resort for Texas' most endangered children, and it failed Darrell – as it has at least three other children in recent months. Like Darrell, they died on CPS' watch, while caseworkers were supposed to be overseeing their safety.

The evidence strongly suggests that child-welfare workers could, and should, have done more to protect these children.

That said, I think those of us who are quick to blame Texas CPS workers for leaving kids in danger or, conversely, for callously "breaking up families," need to take a hard look at what we are asking the agency to do.

We are asking a corps of government social workers to address a cultural paradox. We want them to make sure no child is ever harmed, yet we don't want any interference with adult rights and liberties.

We want CPS to bird-dog the after-the-fact consequences of a culture in which perfect strangers may bawl you out for smoking, but where there's some sort of antiquated bigotry implied in suggesting out loud that immature, irresponsible people should not be parents.

We not only lack the political will to teach young people how to prevent pregnancy, we don't even bother telling them that having babies should be a serious and deliberate choice, not a biological function as inevitable as catching a cold.

Americans, to a large extent, are free to make their own mistakes. Men are free to have sex with as many willing partners as they can find and to casually opt in or out of the lives of the resulting children. Women are free to have babies without bothering to get married or to let men they don't really know very well move into their homes.

The children, of course, are not free. Some are cherished and well cared for, but others are as trapped and helpless as a goldfish in a scummy bowl.

Which leaves us with beleaguered CPS caseworkers, often young, overworked, poorly paid and (initially) idealistic – ripe candidates for burnout.

"I don't know what the answer is. I wish I did," said Paige McDaniel, president of Community Partners of Dallas, a nonprofit group that provides support and resources to Dallas County CPS caseworkers.

"The statistic is that 60 percent of new caseworkers leave within six months. It's that kind of job."

The bureaucracy's sense of being overwhelmed and under siege, of being constantly second-guessed by a critical public, has sometimes led to a circle-the-wagons defensiveness. For reporters, it can be tough prying information from CPS; the vague invocation of "confidentiality" often feels like a smoke screen for departmental screw-ups.

But we should keep in mind that caseworkers are taking on a job that most of us wouldn't do for a million dollars.

They're dealing with parents who often regard them as the enemy, who will sometimes lie, hide or leave town to keep CPS from "taking the kids away." They're trying, within a suffocating framework of legal rules and political imperatives, and before an ever-judgmental public, to make life-and-death predictions.

In Darrell's case, they got it wrong. That's not good, but it doesn't make them monsters.

"What we finally have to realize," McDaniel said, "is that the mother killed that child.

"It was not CPS.

obtained here through the Dallas Morning News