Families expect that information about their children placed under state protective services should be confidential, but not at the risk of cloaking information about unexplained fatalities.
The Abercrombie administration’s policy against making information public about the death of a 9-year-old boy while in state custody is a departure from past administrations and should be swept aside. Further, the case has revealed troubling holes in the reporting and oversight of deaths of children under state custody.
Jayvid Waa-Ili died Aug. 26 at the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center but the boy’s grandparents, David and Sheila Deal of Punaluu, said they were not informed of the circumstances by the state Child Welfare Services (formerly Child Protective Services) and the Department of Human Services. The Deals said they had custody of Jayvid and two of his siblings but told the Star-Advertiser’s Dan Nakaso that they were turned over temporarily to, then left by the parents at an aunt’s house in Hauula, without advance word. David Deal said the aunt "got all mad and called CPS" after she awoke and the babies were crying. Autopsy results are reportedly pending toxicology tests.
Beyond the test results, other aspects of the case are murky: Who were Jayvid’s legal guardians? Where did Welfare Services place Jayvid? How did he end in the Waianae hospital — and why?
Past administrations rightly provided information after 1997 to a state Legislature-created Child Death Review Program to identify trends and reduce the number of children who died under state protective care. However, the reports have not been updated since 2006, a failing made even more galling since it seems few even bothered to notice.
Prior to that, Lillian Koller, the Lingle administration’s director of human services, disclosed about 2,000 pages of documents regarding Peter Boy Kema, a 6-year-old Big Island boy who has not been seen by family members since late 1996 or 1997. Last year, Koller posted online the case files of 19-year-old Erwin Viado Celes, who hanged himself after "aging out" of Hawaii’s foster care system. The public disclosures focused attention on workings within the child welfare system and spurred attempts at improvements.
Patricia McManaman, Koller’s successor, told legislators last week that she had put into force privacy rules after her appointment in December. She told legislators she had reviewed about 25 to 30 fatal cases involving children who died in custody since 2000 and found one of them was caused by child abuse.
However, the state attorney general’s office reported four days later that 29 children had died during that period while in the child welfare system, and three of them died of abuse. Its report said the three deaths were caused by "physical abuse and neglect," "injuries by unknown perpetrators" and "physical abuse by parents" but provided no further substantial information.
Any state system receiving federal funding "is required to release to the public information concerning a child abuse and neglect case when it resulted in the death or near death of a child," according to a 2009 report by the Congressional Research Service. The Hawaii policy should be put to that test.
The cruel reality is that not all children are safe in their own homes — and that even once entrusted in the state’s care, might not be saved. But the information provided by Hawaii thus far on child deaths has been sparse and incomplete. Alex Santiago, a former Child Welfare Services caseworker who as state representative helped create the Child Death Review Program, is rightly disappointed that the program’s reporting is lax and lacks specific information about children who died in state custody. "Protecting children is the bottom line," he said. "How can you do that if you don’t get good data?"
Good question — just one among many that continually must be asked to ensure that the quality of help to at-risk children is, indeed, helping.
