The Bobster
Senior News Editor since 2004
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070128/NEWS06/701280605/1049/SPORTS01
How state's big system failed this little boy
January 28, 2007
BY RUBY L. BAILEY, JACK KRESNAK and TINA LAM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
http://www.newnation.co/
forums/Charlsie%20Adams-Rogers
In photos, Isaac Lethbridge looks like a mischievous, dimpled elf. He has a big grin and electric blue eyes in a cheery, heart-shaped face. It's hard to imagine that face toward the end, covered with green and blue bruises, both eyes blackened.
Isaac traveled a painful journey in his 2 1/2 years. He was neglected by his parents, moved through three troubled foster homes in less than a year and was dead by last Aug. 16, beaten and burned, his collarbone broken.
What happened to him under state supervision exposes a child welfare system so overwhelmed and lax in its oversight that, despite attempts at reform, children still are being placed in danger.
A Free Press examination of court records, trial testimony and state investigative reports shows that during his 11 months in foster care, there were many people who could have saved Isaac. No one did.
The Free Press found:
• Less than two weeks before he died, Isaac's social worker, a supervisor and two doctors saw dark bruises on the toddler. But no one tried to remove him from his foster home.
• The Lula Belle Stewart Center -- the Detroit-based agency overseeing Isaac's care -- should never have licensed the boy's second foster mother because the state had substantiated a claim of neglect against her.
• The state investigated more than a dozen complaints about the homes where Isaac lived. Critics of the Michigan Department of Human Services say the number of complaints should have raised alarms even if they weren't all substantiated.
• Isaac was put in foster homes crowded with older children, some with histories of sexual abuse, mental health problems or violent behavior. Troubled children were allowed to care for him unsupervised.
• The state renewed Lula Belle's license in July 2005, even though the agency had come under scrutiny in the 2004 beating death of another child and had failed to conduct regular home visits for all of its foster children or to assure regular physical exams.
• Attorneys assigned to monitor Isaac say they could not locate him on several occasions because Lula Belle didn't notify them when he was moved.
After Isaac's death, the state Department of Human Services suspended Lula Belle's license -- the first time in at least four years it had taken such action against one of the hundreds of agencies paid by the state to place kids in foster care. It was clear from the state's own investigation that the problems didn't happen overnight.
"There were a tremendous amount of lies" by Lula Belle officials, DHS director Marianne Udow told the Free Press.
But the state, too, had failed to detect problems in the foster homes and at Lula Belle, until after Isaac's death. Then, investigators found plenty.
Critics say Isaac's death demonstrates broader shortcomings in the state human services department, which often relies on inexperienced, overburdened workers and outdated methods to police itself. The department currently has just 12 licensing workers to oversee the 500 public and private agencies paid by the state to license 7,840 homes that provide care for 18,660 children.
Ken Merritt, an attorney representing Lula Belle, defended the center, saying it didn't know of any serious problems. "We're not responsible for Isaac's death," he said.
Merritt maintained that Lula Belle officials called Michigan's Child Protective Services on Aug. 4 -- 12 days before Isaac's death -- to notify investigators of his bruises. Merritt said a protective services worker rejected the complaint over the phone.
But a state DHS investigation concluded there was no record of any call from Lula Belle that day. Indeed, the state said, there were other instances in which bruises on Isaac and his 3-year-old sister, who was in foster care with him, weren't reported.
Elizabeth Carey, executive director of the Michigan Federation for Children and Families, which represents private nonprofit agencies, said DHS did not provide adequate oversight of Lula Belle.
"There used to be a lot more staff in contracting and licensing" at DHS, she said, "and they didn't just come out during a crisis. ... They used to find an Isaac before it happened."
Parents' record of neglect
Isaac was Matt and Jennifer Lethbridge's eighth child.
He was born at home on Nov. 7, 2003, in Pell Lake, Wis., where his parents had moved to avoid Child Protective Services in Michigan and Ohio. They'd fled Ohio a year earlier when Isaac's sister -- whom the Free Press is not naming because of her age -- was born at their home near Toledo. Her birth wasn't registered and the family went into hiding when, alerted by Michigan, Ohio Child Protective Services tried to investigate.
Six children had already been permanently removed for neglect from the Lethbridges in Michigan.
The couple met in 1989, when he was 15 and she was 13, and married in 1995, two years after their first child, a daughter, was born blind and with multiple medical problems. By 1997, they had four children under age 5, and were expecting a fifth. That year, Washtenaw County Child Protective Services received the first of many complaints that the couple was neglecting the children.
In April 1998, the state removed the four oldest children, a girl and three boys, from their home in Ann Arbor. The next month, the couple had a baby boy and he was removed.
The DHS and the Washtenaw County Family Court then began years of efforts, including counseling and financial help, to try to reunite the family, according to court records. The state even paid $1,500 in past-due utility bills. But well into the process, one caseworker noted: "The parents cannot acknowledge that there are any problems. The parents do not seem willing to change or rectify the conditions that brought these children to our attention."
Doctors told the court that Jennifer Lethbridge was bipolar and had a personality disorder that made it hard for her to take responsibility for her actions.
The Lethbridges -- he is now 33 and she is 30 -- admit they made mistakes, including hiding from DHS the fact that their disabled oldest child was hurt when she fell out of her wheelchair as her father pushed her down the front steps of their home. This was during a time when DHS was monitoring the family.
The couple say they were young and struggling and Matt Lethbridge had lost a good-paying job at a toner cartridge recycling company.
In April 2001, citing information the children's foster parents brought to the court's attention and a seeming lack of progress from the Lethbridges, a Washtenaw County judge terminated the couple's parental rights to their five children. The next year, the court ended their rights to a sixth child, a boy born in September 2001 who had been placed in foster care almost immediately. Other families later adopted all of them.
"We didn't understand completely what it takes to be good parents," Jennifer Lethbridge said.
Running from authorities
Isaac's birth was registered in Wisconsin. But soon, a complaint was filed there alleging their home was filthy and had no running water or heat. When Child Protective Services tried to check, the family pulled up stakes again.
Back in Michigan in 2005, money was tight. The family was living in a run-down rented home on Avondale Street in Westland and the Lethbridges weren't getting along. In April, Matt Lethbridge, who was working for a technology company in Troy, lost that job and the couple separated for several months.
"Every day I woke up and said, 'Is this the day? Is this the day that I have to walk my kids to the DHS office because I can't feed them?' " Jennifer Lethbridge said.
Alerted to problems, police knocked on the door on Sept. 19, 2005. Jennifer Lethbridge didn't want to let them in. Officers said more than a dozen birds were flying freely inside, their droppings everywhere. Maggots crawled on bags of trash and the stench of feces and garbage permeated the air.
Isaac, then almost 2, and his 3-year-old sister were playing with rotten food on the floor. Dirty diapers littered the house. Flies circled food on the kitchen counter. A few days after police removed the two children, the house was condemned.
The Lethbridges were charged with neglect. Jennifer -- then pregnant with her ninth child -- spent 45 days in jail. Matt received a suspended sentence.
Foster home No. 1
Isaac's first stop in foster care was at Martina Brown's tiny brick house on Troester Street on Detroit's east side. When he and his sister arrived on Sept. 19, 2005, the house was already brimming with children.
Brown, who was divorced and a high school dropout who'd earned a GED, had adopted five children during her tenure as a licensed foster parent with Orchards Children's Services of Southfield from 1991 to 1999. Foster parents receive $14.24 to $17.59 a day or more to care for kids, depending on their age and services required.
When Brown sought to renew her foster care license through Lula Belle in mid-2004, she told a worker she'd had complaints filed against her with Child Protective Services during her time with Orchards but none was substantiated. According to Brown's file, the Lula Belle worker asked Orchards for the records and was told they couldn't be found. The Lula Belle licensing went through.
Reached in North Carolina, where she now lives, Brown, 40, would not discuss details of the investigations. "In those reports, they will tell you when they investigated, it was unsubstantiated -- that it did not happen, and that was that," she said.
Some neighbors, however, were wary of the home. Robert Grimm said he wouldn't let his grandchildren play at Brown's house because there seemed to be little supervision.
"They would run up and down the street and often stay out late until 10 p.m.," Grimm said. "There were lots of grown-ups coming and going, too."
A few weeks after Isaac and his sister were placed with Brown, their court-appointed attorney, Lorena Jaquet, visited. She reported to Child Protective Services that Brown's home was dirty and that she was concerned about the number of children living there, but no action was taken.
Brown insists she was a good foster parent.
"I did what I had to do to take care of my children," she said.
Isaac and his sister's stay with Brown lasted about three months, cut short by her move to North Carolina.
Foster home No. 2
Isaac's next stop: The home of Patricia Kennedy.
Kennedy, a longtime foster mother who had nine adopted children, knew Brown and sometimes babysat for her. Kennedy had been licensed through Lula Belle in 2000, but had let the license expire in July 2005. At the time, she was behind in her foster parent training and had failed to schedule a required home visit for licensing.
But that November, she applied for a new license through Lula Belle.
Kennedy was living on Ohio Street on Detroit's west side. The agency's workers had previously noted that the home was in disrepair and Kennedy was slow to fix the problems. Still, the agency quickly gave her a new license on Dec. 20, 2005.
Isaac and his sister arrived two days later.
The children should never have been placed with her, the Free Press found, because a Child Protective Services investigation had substantiated a claim of neglect against her in March 2005 after her heat and electricity were shut off for nonpayment. Several of her adopted children were living with her at the time.
Kennedy's name should have been placed on the state's Central Registry, a confidential list of confirmed cases of abuse and neglect. And that would have barred her from regaining her foster care license. While it is unclear when her name was put on the registry, Kennedy told the Free Press that Lula Belle workers checked it when she applied for a new license in late 2005 and told her that her record was clear.
In January, Shirley Anderson-Titus, a new court-appointed lawyer assigned to monitor Isaac and his sister, was looking for them for a required home visit. She told supervisors later that Lula Belle hadn't told her the children had been moved from Brown's home and messages she left at the agency weren't returned. Anderson-Titus finally located the children at Kennedy's home and visited on Jan. 24, 2006. She didn't report any problems.
At the time, at least four of Kennedy's adopted children still were living at the home. Some had psychological problems and brushes with juvenile court.
One daughter, who'd been diagnosed with mental retardation and schizophrenia, had set the family basement on fire, destroying it, several years earlier. The girl once had also cut her sister with a knife and chased her with scissors. Her psychologist deemed her a "clear threat to others," court records show.
Kennedy's 16-year-old son had assaulted his brother in March 2005, punching him in the face. The charge landed him in juvenile court for a second time. A third son had a history of truancy.
Kennedy, 61, was battling health problems, including diabetes. Veda D. Thompkins, a friend and Detroit foster parent, said she told Kennedy to return Isaac and his sister to Lula Belle and concentrate on her health.
"She had good intentions," Thompkins said. "She was just overwhelmed."
Skipped visits to home
Soon after Isaac and his sister were placed with Kennedy, one of her daughters noticed while changing the little girl's diaper that her genital area was swollen.
"They called me and said, 'Mommy, come see this,' " Kennedy said.
How state's big system failed this little boy
January 28, 2007
BY RUBY L. BAILEY, JACK KRESNAK and TINA LAM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
http://www.newnation.co/
forums/Charlsie%20Adams-Rogers
In photos, Isaac Lethbridge looks like a mischievous, dimpled elf. He has a big grin and electric blue eyes in a cheery, heart-shaped face. It's hard to imagine that face toward the end, covered with green and blue bruises, both eyes blackened.
Isaac traveled a painful journey in his 2 1/2 years. He was neglected by his parents, moved through three troubled foster homes in less than a year and was dead by last Aug. 16, beaten and burned, his collarbone broken.
What happened to him under state supervision exposes a child welfare system so overwhelmed and lax in its oversight that, despite attempts at reform, children still are being placed in danger.
A Free Press examination of court records, trial testimony and state investigative reports shows that during his 11 months in foster care, there were many people who could have saved Isaac. No one did.
The Free Press found:
• Less than two weeks before he died, Isaac's social worker, a supervisor and two doctors saw dark bruises on the toddler. But no one tried to remove him from his foster home.
• The Lula Belle Stewart Center -- the Detroit-based agency overseeing Isaac's care -- should never have licensed the boy's second foster mother because the state had substantiated a claim of neglect against her.
• The state investigated more than a dozen complaints about the homes where Isaac lived. Critics of the Michigan Department of Human Services say the number of complaints should have raised alarms even if they weren't all substantiated.
• Isaac was put in foster homes crowded with older children, some with histories of sexual abuse, mental health problems or violent behavior. Troubled children were allowed to care for him unsupervised.
• The state renewed Lula Belle's license in July 2005, even though the agency had come under scrutiny in the 2004 beating death of another child and had failed to conduct regular home visits for all of its foster children or to assure regular physical exams.
• Attorneys assigned to monitor Isaac say they could not locate him on several occasions because Lula Belle didn't notify them when he was moved.
After Isaac's death, the state Department of Human Services suspended Lula Belle's license -- the first time in at least four years it had taken such action against one of the hundreds of agencies paid by the state to place kids in foster care. It was clear from the state's own investigation that the problems didn't happen overnight.
"There were a tremendous amount of lies" by Lula Belle officials, DHS director Marianne Udow told the Free Press.
But the state, too, had failed to detect problems in the foster homes and at Lula Belle, until after Isaac's death. Then, investigators found plenty.
Critics say Isaac's death demonstrates broader shortcomings in the state human services department, which often relies on inexperienced, overburdened workers and outdated methods to police itself. The department currently has just 12 licensing workers to oversee the 500 public and private agencies paid by the state to license 7,840 homes that provide care for 18,660 children.
Ken Merritt, an attorney representing Lula Belle, defended the center, saying it didn't know of any serious problems. "We're not responsible for Isaac's death," he said.
Merritt maintained that Lula Belle officials called Michigan's Child Protective Services on Aug. 4 -- 12 days before Isaac's death -- to notify investigators of his bruises. Merritt said a protective services worker rejected the complaint over the phone.
But a state DHS investigation concluded there was no record of any call from Lula Belle that day. Indeed, the state said, there were other instances in which bruises on Isaac and his 3-year-old sister, who was in foster care with him, weren't reported.
Elizabeth Carey, executive director of the Michigan Federation for Children and Families, which represents private nonprofit agencies, said DHS did not provide adequate oversight of Lula Belle.
"There used to be a lot more staff in contracting and licensing" at DHS, she said, "and they didn't just come out during a crisis. ... They used to find an Isaac before it happened."
Parents' record of neglect
Isaac was Matt and Jennifer Lethbridge's eighth child.
He was born at home on Nov. 7, 2003, in Pell Lake, Wis., where his parents had moved to avoid Child Protective Services in Michigan and Ohio. They'd fled Ohio a year earlier when Isaac's sister -- whom the Free Press is not naming because of her age -- was born at their home near Toledo. Her birth wasn't registered and the family went into hiding when, alerted by Michigan, Ohio Child Protective Services tried to investigate.
Six children had already been permanently removed for neglect from the Lethbridges in Michigan.
The couple met in 1989, when he was 15 and she was 13, and married in 1995, two years after their first child, a daughter, was born blind and with multiple medical problems. By 1997, they had four children under age 5, and were expecting a fifth. That year, Washtenaw County Child Protective Services received the first of many complaints that the couple was neglecting the children.
In April 1998, the state removed the four oldest children, a girl and three boys, from their home in Ann Arbor. The next month, the couple had a baby boy and he was removed.
The DHS and the Washtenaw County Family Court then began years of efforts, including counseling and financial help, to try to reunite the family, according to court records. The state even paid $1,500 in past-due utility bills. But well into the process, one caseworker noted: "The parents cannot acknowledge that there are any problems. The parents do not seem willing to change or rectify the conditions that brought these children to our attention."
Doctors told the court that Jennifer Lethbridge was bipolar and had a personality disorder that made it hard for her to take responsibility for her actions.
The Lethbridges -- he is now 33 and she is 30 -- admit they made mistakes, including hiding from DHS the fact that their disabled oldest child was hurt when she fell out of her wheelchair as her father pushed her down the front steps of their home. This was during a time when DHS was monitoring the family.
The couple say they were young and struggling and Matt Lethbridge had lost a good-paying job at a toner cartridge recycling company.
In April 2001, citing information the children's foster parents brought to the court's attention and a seeming lack of progress from the Lethbridges, a Washtenaw County judge terminated the couple's parental rights to their five children. The next year, the court ended their rights to a sixth child, a boy born in September 2001 who had been placed in foster care almost immediately. Other families later adopted all of them.
"We didn't understand completely what it takes to be good parents," Jennifer Lethbridge said.
Running from authorities
Isaac's birth was registered in Wisconsin. But soon, a complaint was filed there alleging their home was filthy and had no running water or heat. When Child Protective Services tried to check, the family pulled up stakes again.
Back in Michigan in 2005, money was tight. The family was living in a run-down rented home on Avondale Street in Westland and the Lethbridges weren't getting along. In April, Matt Lethbridge, who was working for a technology company in Troy, lost that job and the couple separated for several months.
"Every day I woke up and said, 'Is this the day? Is this the day that I have to walk my kids to the DHS office because I can't feed them?' " Jennifer Lethbridge said.
Alerted to problems, police knocked on the door on Sept. 19, 2005. Jennifer Lethbridge didn't want to let them in. Officers said more than a dozen birds were flying freely inside, their droppings everywhere. Maggots crawled on bags of trash and the stench of feces and garbage permeated the air.
Isaac, then almost 2, and his 3-year-old sister were playing with rotten food on the floor. Dirty diapers littered the house. Flies circled food on the kitchen counter. A few days after police removed the two children, the house was condemned.
The Lethbridges were charged with neglect. Jennifer -- then pregnant with her ninth child -- spent 45 days in jail. Matt received a suspended sentence.
Foster home No. 1
Isaac's first stop in foster care was at Martina Brown's tiny brick house on Troester Street on Detroit's east side. When he and his sister arrived on Sept. 19, 2005, the house was already brimming with children.
Brown, who was divorced and a high school dropout who'd earned a GED, had adopted five children during her tenure as a licensed foster parent with Orchards Children's Services of Southfield from 1991 to 1999. Foster parents receive $14.24 to $17.59 a day or more to care for kids, depending on their age and services required.
When Brown sought to renew her foster care license through Lula Belle in mid-2004, she told a worker she'd had complaints filed against her with Child Protective Services during her time with Orchards but none was substantiated. According to Brown's file, the Lula Belle worker asked Orchards for the records and was told they couldn't be found. The Lula Belle licensing went through.
Reached in North Carolina, where she now lives, Brown, 40, would not discuss details of the investigations. "In those reports, they will tell you when they investigated, it was unsubstantiated -- that it did not happen, and that was that," she said.
Some neighbors, however, were wary of the home. Robert Grimm said he wouldn't let his grandchildren play at Brown's house because there seemed to be little supervision.
"They would run up and down the street and often stay out late until 10 p.m.," Grimm said. "There were lots of grown-ups coming and going, too."
A few weeks after Isaac and his sister were placed with Brown, their court-appointed attorney, Lorena Jaquet, visited. She reported to Child Protective Services that Brown's home was dirty and that she was concerned about the number of children living there, but no action was taken.
Brown insists she was a good foster parent.
"I did what I had to do to take care of my children," she said.
Isaac and his sister's stay with Brown lasted about three months, cut short by her move to North Carolina.
Foster home No. 2
Isaac's next stop: The home of Patricia Kennedy.
Kennedy, a longtime foster mother who had nine adopted children, knew Brown and sometimes babysat for her. Kennedy had been licensed through Lula Belle in 2000, but had let the license expire in July 2005. At the time, she was behind in her foster parent training and had failed to schedule a required home visit for licensing.
But that November, she applied for a new license through Lula Belle.
Kennedy was living on Ohio Street on Detroit's west side. The agency's workers had previously noted that the home was in disrepair and Kennedy was slow to fix the problems. Still, the agency quickly gave her a new license on Dec. 20, 2005.
Isaac and his sister arrived two days later.
The children should never have been placed with her, the Free Press found, because a Child Protective Services investigation had substantiated a claim of neglect against her in March 2005 after her heat and electricity were shut off for nonpayment. Several of her adopted children were living with her at the time.
Kennedy's name should have been placed on the state's Central Registry, a confidential list of confirmed cases of abuse and neglect. And that would have barred her from regaining her foster care license. While it is unclear when her name was put on the registry, Kennedy told the Free Press that Lula Belle workers checked it when she applied for a new license in late 2005 and told her that her record was clear.
In January, Shirley Anderson-Titus, a new court-appointed lawyer assigned to monitor Isaac and his sister, was looking for them for a required home visit. She told supervisors later that Lula Belle hadn't told her the children had been moved from Brown's home and messages she left at the agency weren't returned. Anderson-Titus finally located the children at Kennedy's home and visited on Jan. 24, 2006. She didn't report any problems.
At the time, at least four of Kennedy's adopted children still were living at the home. Some had psychological problems and brushes with juvenile court.
One daughter, who'd been diagnosed with mental retardation and schizophrenia, had set the family basement on fire, destroying it, several years earlier. The girl once had also cut her sister with a knife and chased her with scissors. Her psychologist deemed her a "clear threat to others," court records show.
Kennedy's 16-year-old son had assaulted his brother in March 2005, punching him in the face. The charge landed him in juvenile court for a second time. A third son had a history of truancy.
Kennedy, 61, was battling health problems, including diabetes. Veda D. Thompkins, a friend and Detroit foster parent, said she told Kennedy to return Isaac and his sister to Lula Belle and concentrate on her health.
"She had good intentions," Thompkins said. "She was just overwhelmed."
Skipped visits to home
Soon after Isaac and his sister were placed with Kennedy, one of her daughters noticed while changing the little girl's diaper that her genital area was swollen.
"They called me and said, 'Mommy, come see this,' " Kennedy said.
