Re: Sean's short life shows system's flaws/ Sean Paddock


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From the article below:

The day Sean and his siblings left for the Paddocks, they visited with
their aunt and uncle, Ron and Lee Anne Ford. They had looked after the
children when they were first taken from their parents in 2002; the
couple went broke caring for them.

Ron and Lee Anne Ford snapped photos of their niece and nephews and made
them scrapbooks.

Ron Ford said he begged the social worker to leave the children with
him.

Ford remembers her words: "There's nothing you can do. At 12:05, you
will no longer be their family. They will be adopted."

A social worker pulled 3-year-old Sean out of Lee Anne Ford's arms and
drove him to Smithfield.

The next time the Fords saw him, Sean was lying in a coffin, tiny and
blue.



***So the *state* wouldn't financially *help* the aunt and uncle to keep
them, but they would *pay* the Haddocks to abuse them. What a racket
this Children's Home Society has going with the state. They get paid
for every placement they make. Their only incentive is to 'place' kids,
regardless of their circumstances.***


Photo's and more info at link:

Sean's short life shows system's flaws
State, local and nonprofit agencies overlooked red flags that indicated
4-year-old was in danger
Mandy Locke, Staff Writer
Comment on this story

Sean Paddock was born in turmoil, early and tiny, to a broken family.
Social workers fretted over how to protect the boy. They finally
recruited new parents to raise him.

Sean, 4, died at the hands of his adoptive mother, Lynn Paddock. She
beat him and bound him in a dark, drafty attic in her Johnston County
farmhouse. This month, a jury sent Paddock to prison for the rest of her
life.

Sean's death rattled the system the state built to protect children like
him. The state funnels foster children into adoptive homes, sparing them
years in limbo while their parents straighten up.

To make the system work, the state attaches a dowry of sorts to children
like Sean. The state pays new parents and pays private adoption groups
such as Children's Home Society to help recruit families.

But Sean's death shows how the system can fail the children it was meant
to protect.

Nearly 12,400 former foster children are currently being reared by
adoptive parents recruited through this system. It's not clear how many
have been adopted into dangerous homes. Adoption records and social
services reports of abused and neglected children are confidential in
North Carolina.

But Paddock's trial, a review of state contracts with Children's Home
Society and documents obtained by The News & Observer show how easily
Sean ended up in harm's way.

Social workers had plenty of warning that Sean might be harmed at
Paddock's home. Wake County social workers had misgivings about putting
him in the crowded house, miles outside the nearest town; a bruised
backside after his first visit made them even more nervous.

And, over a decade, a social worker from Children's Home Society spotted
unsettling risk factors in Paddock's home. But her agency had no
incentive to walk away. The state pays the agency for completed
adoptions.

The state Division of Social Services might have noticed something was
amiss, but its annual audits don't go beyond a technical review of
contract obligations.

In 2005, social workers declared the Paddocks' home the best place for
the Ford children to grow and thrive. The state sent the Paddocks their
first monthly check for $1,270.

All the while, Lynn Paddock was coming undone.

Moment of reckoning

North Carolina's child welfare officials had a moment of reckoning in
the early 1990s. Abused and neglected children were growing up without
parents. The state had found their birth parents unfit, and they had
been sent to live in temporary homes while social workers waited on
their parents to get it together.

The state set deadlines for these parents. If they couldn't shape up in
about a year after their child was taken, the state would look for
replacement parents.

Finding them would be difficult. Most of these children were damaged:
beaten, starved, molested. Persuading parents to adopt them would be a
tough sell.

The state carved out money to pay private adoption agencies to recruit
and prepare adoptive parents. Agencies such as Children's Home Society
earn from several thousand dollars to $15,000 for every child placed.
Children's Home Society could have earned as much as $45,000 for placing
Sean and his two siblings, though the state won't say exactly how much
the agency earned.

Adoptive parents would be paid, too, for taking on such a
responsibility. Depending on the child's age, they earn between $390 and
$490 a month until the child is 18.

In the mid-1990s, the number of foster children adopted each year jumped
from about 250 to about 1,300. This year, the state offered nearly $26
million to adoptive parents caring for 12,384 former foster children.

Children's Home Society did well. They found homes for hundreds of
foster children.

The agency was also responsible for screening families, weeding out
those not equipped to adopt foster children.

The state's relationship with Children's Home Society could be a
problem, said Richard P. Barth, dean of the University of Maryland's
School of Social Work. He said there's no incentive to walk away from a
bad fit.

"To do more placements and meet contract obligations, there's a tendency
to overlook ... red flags," Barth said.

Heavy baggage

Lynn Paddock followed a boyfriend and the hope of a job to Raleigh in
the late 1980s, her family said. She hauled heavy baggage: a turbulent
childhood, two failed marriages and an addiction to alcohol.

In 1989, she ended up at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Raleigh,
ready to get clean.

There she met Johnny Paddock, a young father also trying to wean himself
off alcohol. Within a few months, Lynn moved in with Johnny and his
infant daughter, Jessy. By 1990, they'd married.

They wanted a playmate for Jessy, Lynn told jurors, but pregnancy never
took. One day, as the Paddocks ate at a Wendy's restaurant, a place mat
caught her attention. On it, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas urged customers
to adopt older foster children.

"At that point, I thought that was my calling," Paddock testified.

The Paddocks called a social worker at Children's Home Society of North
Carolina. Deborah Artis, now the Triangle's regional director for the
agency, screened them. According to Artis' reports, she inspected their
home, talked to their friends, reviewed their income statements.

In 1994, the Paddocks earned $43,000 a year cleaning carpets. Artis told
the Paddocks that the state could offer help to ease the financial
hardship of caring for a troubled child.

Artis probed into the Paddocks' childhoods. Johnny described his Army
father's long absences and a reckless youth of smoking dope and drinking
heavily.

Lynn told Artis that she had used alcohol to cope with life's
challenges, the records show. She told Artis about the foster family
who'd taken her in after she ran away from her abusive mother.

Paddock described her painful life with her mother. She said she'd been
"spanked, hollered at or hit, sent to [her] room without eating."

Cleared to adopt

A few months after Artis met the Paddocks, she determined they were
ideal adoptive parents.

She helped them adopt Tami, a 9-year-old in foster care in Wilmington.
By 1997, the Paddocks asked to adopt a boy. Artis launched another round
of paperwork, and within a year, they welcomed Ray, then 8.

In 2002, the Paddocks called Artis to ask for a group of siblings. By
then, much in their lives had changed.

Paddock had begun homeschooling Jessy, Tami and Ray. The family had left
its Baptist church in Raleigh and found a smaller, fundamentalist church
in Sanford that advocated wearing long dresses and shutting out popular
culture. Lynn Paddock had turned to the advice of Michael Pearl, a
minister from Tennessee who advises parents to whip children with
plastic plumbing supply line; Paddock put a piece of it in every room of
the house.

The Paddocks had also moved to a farm in rural Johnston County. The
family of five shared a single bathroom in the 1,200-square-foot home;
they hoped to finish the attic and convert it into a bedroom.

Artis extolled their new house in a pre-placement adoption report in
2002.

"The home has lots of character and open space. There are large windows,
which allow lots of light into the home," Artis said. "They are
convenient to area shopping, educational and medical facilities."

In 2003, soon after the Paddocks had been approved for another adoption,
Artis phoned. She had a troubled girl who needed a home right away.

The next day, the Paddocks and Artis traveled to a Raleigh mental
hospital to pick up their newest daughter, 5-year-old Kayla.

With four children, the Paddocks still wanted more, preferably a sibling
group of four or five, according to Artis' reports. Artis returned in
2004 to prepare another assessment.

For the new report, Artis repeated everything from her 2002
pre-placement assessment. She inserted a few lines about Kayla, their
new daughter. But everything else, including descriptions of the
children, now two years older, was identical to her 2002 assessment.

Artis did not return calls for this story. At Paddock's trial, Artis
testified that she'd been deceived by the family, that Paddock had never
told her that she beat her children. Artis wept as she looked at
pictures of the children's battered bodies.

Barth, the social work professor, said Artis' reports revealed a number
of troubling risk factors in the Paddocks' home.

"It is unbelievable that an additional child would have been placed in a
home like that," Barth said.

Relying on trust, faith

As part of Children's Home Society's contract with the state Division of
Social Services, officials from the state DSS audits the agency each
year. It's a technical audit, though, designed to ensure that the agency
performed the services it billed for. Before 2003, state officials
didn't even keep a record of their monitoring visits, said Esther High,
who supervised the auditors for the state DSS until her retirement last
fall.

"A lot of this relies on trust and faith between agencies," High said in
2006, after Sean's death.

In January 2005, DSS official Tamika Williams went to inspect several of
Children's Home Society's adoption files. She reviewed the file for
David, Sean's brother. She checked a box indicating that Children's Home
Society provided "appropriate/quality services."

DSS officials and Children's Home Society leaders declined to comment
for this report, citing a pending civil claim for Sean's death. A DSS
spokeswoman did say that since Sean's death the agency has not changed
they way it supervises or audits private agencies such as Children's
Home Society. This year, Children's Home Society secured $1.5 million in
contracts to help the state find adoptive homes for foster children.

Goodbye to family

In October 2004, Artis heard that the Ford children -- Sean was then 3,
Hannah 6 and David 8 -- needed new parents. Artis called a Wake County
social worker to recommend the Paddocks and their farm.

Wake County workers weren't sure about the match, Arlette Lambert, a
social worker, testified at Paddock's trial. The children's
court-appointed guardian worried that the children would feel isolated
on the Paddocks' remote farm. The Paddock children were quiet; the Fords
were noisy. Paddock home-schooled her children; how would David and
Hannah, special education students, do there?

But Children's Home Society prevailed in its pitch for the Paddocks, and
Wake County social workers readied the children for their first visit.

Sean left that visit with a bruise on his backside, according to Wake
County records. He told his foster mother and a day-care teacher that
Paddock hit him because he petted the family dog.

Wake County opened an investigation and asked Johnston County social
workers to check on the older Paddock children. It also asked Children's
Home Society to talk with Paddock.

Artis explained in her report to Wake County that Sean had a temper
tantrum during his visit to the Paddocks. She said Paddock put him down
for a nap, and he fell out of the bunk bed.

Two weeks later, Wake County agreed to go forward with the adoption. By
mid-March, the Ford children were sent to live with the Paddocks for
good.

Wake County officials declined to comment, citing the pending lawsuit.

The day Sean and his siblings left for the Paddocks, they visited with
their aunt and uncle, Ron and Lee Anne Ford. They had looked after the
children when they were first taken from their parents in 2002; the
couple went broke caring for them.

Ron and Lee Anne Ford snapped photos of their niece and nephews and made
them scrapbooks.

Ron Ford said he begged the social worker to leave the children with
him.

Ford remembers her words: "There's nothing you can do. At 12:05, you
will no longer be their family. They will be adopted."

A social worker pulled 3-year-old Sean out of Lee Anne Ford's arms and
drove him to Smithfield.

The next time the Fords saw him, Sean was lying in a coffin, tiny and
blue.



http://www.newsobserver.com/news/crime_safety/paddock/story/1124238.html

Something very wrong with the way the incentives are administered, for
sure. However, the spin in this article is troubling:

"The day Sean and his siblings left for the Paddocks, they visited with
their aunt and uncle, Ron and Lee Anne Ford. They had looked after the
children when they were first taken from their parents in 2002; the
couple went broke caring for them... Ron Ford said he begged the social
worker to leave the children with him."

"Went broke caring for them"??? That was repeated twice in the article.
WTF does that mean? Sounds to me the writer is working overtime to
influence MO. Many, many families are extremely poor, and still manage
not to give up children. And afterwards this uncle "begged" to get them
back - but not until they were already, essentially, adopted by that
dangerous woman and her witless husb?? This article stinks to high heaven
IMO. I'm thinking there's something quite wrong with the way these
adoptions are handled, yes, but I'm not cheering for these people either.
Yes, extended bio families should receive preference, including
financially. But I don't know about these folks. "Broke" are they? Lotsa
broke parents out there who haven't surrendered children. Something about
this just sounds so self-serving.

jc


Uncle, aunt couldn't afford 3 extra kids
Mandy Locke, Staff Writer
Comment on this story

Dwayne Ford, Sean's father, phoned his brother late one December night in
2002.
Social workers are taking the kids, Ford told his brother, Ron Ford Jr.

Wake County social workers had finally lost patience with Dwayne and
Georgia Ford, Sean's parents. Rodents roamed their house; the two fought
in front of their children. That December, Sean arrived at day care
shivering, chilled from another night without heat.

Ron Ford Jr. and his wife, Lee Anne, picked up Sean and his two older
siblings. They agreed to keep the children until Dwayne and Georgia Ford
got their act together.

A weekend turned into seven months. The children's chances of going home
dimmed when social workers learned that two of them had been molested by
their father. Dwayne Ford was later convicted of abusing his children.

By 2003, the Fords found themselves caring for six children -- three of
their own and the three additions. Wake County Human Services offered
little financial help, save a gift certificate to buy the children winter
clothes.

In North Carolina, relatives who take in children removed from their
parents can receive only a fraction of the financial help offered to
strangers called upon to take in the children. By law, the Fords could
have received about $200 a month for the three children, compared with
more than $1,200 each month collected by the Paddocks.

This is outrageous. Surely someone will sue on behalf of the surviving sibs?
and/or the Fords will sue and win somehow? And maybe other families will
benefit from the way this nutty policy has come to such public attention?
And force change? I'm sure the state's concerned about being scammed, but
puh-leeze. (At the same time, I can't say I don't still have reservations
about the Fords. But if poverty is indeed their only difficulty, well okay
then.) (But it wasn't just having 3 more kids that caused their financial
difficulty, and it galls me he blamed his entire fin problem on those
children.) At the same time, why oh why can't foster families be properly
monitored??????? That's rhetorical - I know we and everyone else on earth
has been wanting to solve this terrible problem forever. And it comes down
to $ every time, one way or another.

jc


The Fords say they were never offered even the monthly $200. Wake County
officials declined to comment, saying they are constrained because of a
pending civil lawsuit.

The Fords say they eventually wiped through their savings account. By
spring 2003, they were feeding the children peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches for practically every meal. They worried they were cheating
their own children and not doing well by their niece and nephews.

They asked social workers to take the children until they could get back
on their feet. Ron Ford was laid off two months later; they also lost
their home.

Ford said social workers quit communicating with them after they turned
the children back over. They regret ever letting them go.

"We blame ourselves," Ron Ford said. "We feel like we should have just
kept our mouths shut and kept them."

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/crime_safety/paddock/story/1124106.html


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