Report faults Oregon agency in child abuse
EUGENE, Ore. – A report has faulted the Oregon Department of Human Services for not investigating initial claims of child abuse against a couple sent to prison for mistreating their 9-year-old adopted son.
A team of experts assigned to investigate the history of contacts between the agency and Alona and Rodger Hartwig concluded that child protection workers and foster home certifiers developed relationships with the family that clouded their objectivity.
Even after learning of several incidents of suspected abuse in the home, state officials recertified the Hartwigs as foster parents four times, the Register-Guard newspaper reported.
DHS spokesman Gene Evans says the department is considering several changes to child welfare operations statewide as a result of recommendations included in the report released Tuesday.
The boy the Hartwigs later adopted had originally moved in with the family as a foster child.
Alona Hartwig, 46, is serving a mandatory sentence of nearly 11 years in prison, and Rodger Hartwig is serving a mandatory sentence of nearly six years for abusing the boy.
Between October 2003 and May 2009, state officials received nine reports of alleged abuse involving six children who lived in the Hartwigs’ home. None of the reports were adequately investigated, the report states.
In two of those cases, DHS call screeners who received initial reports from complainants decided against recommending formal investigations.
Officials said in the report that both allegations, which involved young children being physically abused, should have been probed by child welfare investigators.
Two more reports were assigned to investigators who did not subsequently contact the family regarding the allegations. Those, too, should have been scrutinized more closely, the report states.
The other five reports were investigated, but in each case, child welfare workers determined the allegations to be unfounded. More complete investigations should have been done in each instance, according to the report.
DHS officials launched a review shortly after being notified in March the boy had been hospitalized with severe injuries that included a third-degree burn to one foot and fractured ribs. Initially hospitalized in critical condition, the boy spent more than one month at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland before being released to his new foster family.
Evans said the DHS is considering several proposed improvements. They include creating a separate “unit” within the department to focus solely on child abuse allegations concerning foster homes; creating a process that improves the objectivity of DHS decisions to recertify or drop foster parents; and making permanent a temporary rule that includes a more stringent review of any adoptive home with a history of reported abuse.
Evans also said department officials “have taken the appropriate personnel or disciplinary actions” against employees who used questionable judgment with the Hartwigs.