Massachusetts Review of 40,000 DCF cases ordered

Review of 40,000 DCF cases ordered

The state’s child welfare boss shifted into crisis mode yesterday, ordering a review of the agency’s 40,000 cases as 
her department continued to reel from the disappearance of 
a Fitchburg boy — and she 
abruptly ended a Herald interview, announcing a reporter’s time was up.

Olga Roche, head of the 
Department of Children and Families, continued to distance herself yesterday from two fired state workers, who, state 
officials say, sought to close the case of 5-year-old Jeremiah Oliver’s family in September — the very month he vanished from his Fitchburg home — because they thought they “didn’t require (the agency’s) services anymore.”

State workers still had intentions to cut the family from their rolls by November, just weeks before police learned his relatives hadn’t seen him since 
Sept. 14. His mother, Elsa Oliver, and her boyfriend, Alberto Sierra, are now facing criminal charges in connection with what police are calling a possible 
homicide.

“It’s about the social worker failing,” said Roche, who was whisked away from the interview after exactly the allotted 10 minutes, leaving it to a spokesman to answer everything else.

Her agency also has come 
under fire this week in the wake of a civil lawsuit claiming it didn’t protect a foster child 
from sexual abuse in Framingham by an accused child pred­ator, which the DCF spokesman, Alec Loftus, refused to com­ment on.

Before leaving, Roche blasted the now-fired worker and supervisor for missing “red flags” in Fitchburg, and state officials said that upon reviewing the worker’s 18 cases, they found in eight of them she wasn’t making the 
required visits. Roche dismissed union complaints that the pair’s failure could be tied to an overload of cases.

“This particular case is not an issue of caseload,” she said, saying an investigation is ongoing. “This is a particular case of a worker, despite knowing and receiving information that there were high-risk situations happening with the children and the family, failing to follow up, failing to verify.”

Roche said no state worker had seen little Jeremiah since May 20. Loftus called the department’s contact with the family afterward “sporadic,” noting one official spoke to his older siblings on Nov. 5 at their school and left a business card at the family’s home.

The case drew a heated response on Beacon Hill, where Gov. Deval Patrick, fresh from an Asia trade mission, told the Herald that Roche’s explanation up to yesterday was 
“not a good — or good enough” response.

He later added to reporters that when DCF workers mess up, “then the hammer’s going to have to come down.”

“My job is to get the facts, to control my outrage and direct it to where the responsibility lies,” Patrick said.

House Minority Leader Brad Jones (R-North Reading), in calling for a hearing to investigate DCF’s failings, blasted the Patrick administration for moving at a “glacial pace.”

“I just feel if you have this threat of re-election looming, the sense of urgency would be different,” he said of the lame-duck Patrick. “It seems to be 
every other week that someone is falling through the cracks.”

DCF is currently the focus of an audit being conducted by state Auditor Suzanne Bump 
to see if the agency is “achieving their mission,” said 
her spokesman, Christopher Thompson, though he declined to say what it’s specifically 
focused on.

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