Child welfare advocates are welcoming an independent investigation by a state watchdog agency into the decisions county child welfare agencies made that resulted in the repeated victimization of 14-year-old Grace Packer before her 2016 murder.
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| Grace Packer |
The Office of State Inspector General’s involvement comes weeks after the release of twin state and county reports that chronicled public and private child welfare agencies’ interactions with Grace starting when she was 6 months old. The reports were completed last year, but remained sealed until after the sentencing last month of her mother, Sara Packer, 44, and her mother’s boyfriend Jacob Sullivan, 46, who each pleaded guilty to planning and carrying out the rape, murder and dismemberment of the girl.
Child advocates have criticized the heavily redacted reports as being nearly unreadable, written by people with a vested interest in protecting the system, and promoting recommendations for change that aren’t new.
“Accountability and transparency are essential to improve the practice of all of us in the child welfare system,” said Frank Cervone, an attorney and executive director of the Support Center for Child Advocates in Philadelphia. “It remains an absurd statement to suggest no laws or regulations were violated, when there were significant compromises in that child’s right to due process and safety.”
According to the death reviews, county child welfare agencies received reports suggesting Grace was sexually, emotionally and physically abused in the home of Sara and David Packer, years before David Packer was arrested and convicted of sexually assaulting Grace and another underage foster child. Grace and her younger brother were placed with the Packers in 2004 and adopted by them in 2007.
Even after the state revoked the Packers’ foster child credentials in 2010, after David Packer went to jail, Sara Packer, a former child welfare worker, regained and kept custody of Grace and her brother despite being named as an indicated perpetrator of child abuse, and Lehigh County child welfare workers had knowledge that Sara Packer admitted to engaging in a sexual relationship with an 18-year-old foster child in her custody.
Advocates are hopeful the inspector general will provide more clear, unredacted information about the weaknesses within the system, which is something they complain the mandated death reviews typically don’t do.
Without the ability to follow the narrative of Grace’s life and its intersection with the child welfare system, it’s impossible to accurately assess the decision-making process in any useful context, said Cathleen Palm, founder and executive director of the Center for Children’s Justice in Berks County. Heavy redaction means policymakers and others reading it are forced to make “a lot of assumptions,” which could lead to a significant misunderstanding and misdirected policy decisions or legislation, she added.
“To date, all reviews have lacked independence, protected adults while further victimizing Grace and other youth, and in no way have given the public reason to have confidence in the systems we pay to protect children,” Palm added. “Grace is definitely a face of the reality of what can happen when the child welfare system is overwhelmed and not following the regulations and best practices that are already out there.”
The near exclusive involvement of private and public child welfare employees and officials on county and state review teams is essentially seen as the system investigating itself, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.
“That is exactly what happened here, and that explains the seeming contradiction of a document that appears to criticize and exonerate agencies at the same time,” Wexler said. “The recommendations themselves usually amount to little more than the equivalent of cutting and pasting from some manual somewhere about best practices.”
Haven Evans, director of training for the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance, which provides child abuse education and training, called the Department of Human Services and county-level recommendations in the Packer reviews thorough, but also repetitive.
“What I was left thinking was, ‘What are the next steps? How is this information moving forward going to be clearly explained to those working in the child welfare system and those working on cases?’” Evans said. “I kind of wish DHS would have taken their responses a step further. It’s not enough to say, ‘This is already best practices.’ It’s not enough to say, ‘This is already regulation.’”
Evans suggested DHS immediately issue a special bulletin to county child welfare agencies reviewing existing regulations and best practices that are expected to be followed when reviewing cases, while the momentum from the Packer case is still fresh in people’s memories.
In an interview before the inspector general’s announcement, Amy Grippi, the chief of staff for the DHS Office of Children, Youth and Families, said the department began implementing improvements the reports recommended before they were released to the public. She did not know if any county-level employees were disciplined as a result of mistakes the report pointed out, since the state is not notified or involved in county-level disciplinary actions.
“The bottom line is county child welfare workers and the regional office have one of the most difficult jobs known to man. These cases are difficult because hindsight is 20/20,” Grippi said. “At the time of assessment it is critical there is teaming, information sharing. ... Without those components it becomes even more difficult to do your job.”
Improving collaboration, communication and information-sharing among county child welfare agencies are key recommendations in the reports, but one that current state law makes difficult to undertake, Grippi said. Under current law, abuse reports and investigations that are unfounded or unsubstantiated must be destroyed within a year and 120 days after a case is closed.
The mandatory record expungement means a county agency may not have records of previous reports that could provide necessary context when assessing a case, Grippi said. Both the state and county reports noted the review teams could not obtain some expunged records involving Grace Packer that would have been useful in its review and determining the appropriateness of agency investigations.
Extending the expungement time frames for child welfare agencies would provide access to critical information needed for risk assessments, but extending unfounded record retention would require change to existing law, Grippi said.
DHS officials have undertaken a “massive effort” in recent years to refine how they redact information in death and near death reviews, so they remove only what is required under the federal health care privacy law and the state Child Protective Services Law, Grippi said. She also acknowledged criticism that redaction makes reading the documents difficult.
“I will admit that sometimes makes it a challenge to go through and understand what happened,” Grippi added.
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