Haley Barbour's Child-Welfare Debacle

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:




In 2004, Mississippi's newly elected governor, Haley Barbour, and a pair of top state officials were sued by children's rights groups on behalf of nearly 3,000 wards of the state. Mississippi was annually fielding more than 10,000 reports of abuse and neglect at the time. The child-welfare system was so broken, advocates said, that it all but ceased to exist. Barbour and the appointees overseeing the child-welfare system, the suit alleged, "knowingly allowed system to collapse, leaving Mississippi's most vulnerable children defenseless."

After a three-year legal battle, the state settled (PDF) the case (named after one such neglected child), Olivia Y. v. Barbour, agreeing to a sweeping set of reforms to Mississippi's child-welfare system. Advocates hailed the decision as a major turning point for the state's abused and neglected children. But here's the problem: The Division of Family and Children's Services, an executive agency controlled by the governor, has largely failed to keep its end of the bargain, raising questions about the leadership of Barbour, a jet-setting, high-profile Republican who's weighing a presidential run in 2012.

Now, the attorneys who sued Mississippi in 2004 want a federal court to hold Barbour and DFCS in contempt (PDF) for shirking their responsibility to abide by the settlement. "They're failing across the board," says Shirim Nothenberg, a staff attorney at the New York-based advocacy group Children's Rights who works on the case. "How can you expect him to manage the federal government if he can't manage a welfare agency for kids?" .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/haley-barbours-child-welfare-debacle

[indepat]

1. Holistically speaking, the whole of Haley Barbour's public service is a debacle

:patriot:

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. k&r