Manager blows whistle on state agency
The state’s massive Children’s Administration has been admonished by attorneys, the court system and child advocates. Now, it is being assailed by one of its own employees.
First in a speech to a legislative committee last month, and then in an e-mail that has bounced across the agency, program manager Bob Partlow labeled the state’s oversight of its child welfare system “dysfunctional” and “disheartening,” and described its management as “schizophrenic.”
The agency’s “organizational culture … continues to keep the most vulnerable and fragile among us in harm’s way,” Partlow on Nov. 7 told a legislative committee that aims to reform the child-welfare system.
The speech – and the e-mail that followed – provides a rare public insight into the agency, which oversees a $460 million budget and serves about 10,000 children in state custody. The agency, a branch of the state’s Department of Social and Health Services, has prohibited some rank-and-file social workers and employees from commenting on sensitive issues.
Partlow, a 58-year-old former journalist and foster parent, depicted an agency in which cynicism, infighting and fear flourish, while morale “has never been worse.”
A program manager tasked with recruiting and retaining foster parents, Partlow said he received dozens of e-mails from social workers across the state.
“People are afraid to talk,” he said in an interview. “I think that’s why some of the (employees) responded so strongly. Some of the e-mails almost bring tears to your eyes. People are so desperate to help kids.”
The agency’s constant attempts to restructure – and often rename – programs won’t fix systemic problems, but “will just change the time and the speed at which Children’s Administration hits the next iceberg,” Partlow told the committee.
Partlow said he spoke out because “I just felt it was time to say it. When is a good time to speak truth to power?”
He urged the legislative committee to demand accountability, better communications within the agency and specific plans for improving the care of children.
“We’re very aware that we do have some problems with our foster-care system,” said Kathy Spears, an agency spokeswoman. “There will have to be a cultural change in how we recruit foster parents. It’s not a new revelation at all. We certainly have realized that that’s an issue.”
In the past year, the Children’s Administration has been beset by financial problems and a string of high-profile child deaths. Those issues led to the resignation last spring of Uma Ahluwalia, a respected child-welfare leader who held the job for just 19 months.
Partlow, a foster parent for eight years, praised many agency employees but said they dealt with a bureaucracy that made decisions in isolation and didn’t recognize the contributions of its best workers and foster parents.
“I respect him immensely,” said Dru Powers, a longtime Spokane foster parent who provides support services for other parents in Eastern Washington. “He is the most respected and loudest voice in Olympia for foster parents. He really has a better perspective than other people. He sees it from more than one angle.”
Partlow said the agency was partly to blame for the deaths of seven young children in the past 28 months, including 7-year-old Tyler DeLeon, an Eastern Washington boy who died of dehydration last January.
Spears disputed Partlow’s statement that the agency was complicit in the children’s deaths.
“We all would like to have a perfect child-welfare system, too,” Spears said. “We want one where nothing tragic ever happens to children, but that’s not a reality. We can do everything right, and bad things may still happen in the society we live in.”