Probe Finds Caseworkers Blameless in Child’s Death

An internal county review stemming from the death of a 2-year-old Oxnard girl--who died after social workers recommended that she be taken out of protective custody and returned to her home--has concluded that there was no way to predict that tragic outcome and that little could have been done differently.

Social workers had made sure her young parents went through parenting courses. They also had visited the home and checked on the child’s welfare.

Still, Joselyn Hernandez was beaten to death in June, county officials said. No arrests have been made in the case. The youngster was initially removed from her home when she was 6 weeks old and hospitalized with broken legs, cracked ribs and week-old burns on her hands and feet.

She eventually went to live with her grandmother, but when the woman died earlier this year, the child was returned to her parents based on the recommendation of social workers.

Jerry Blesener, deputy director of Ventura County’s Public Social Services Agency, said that recommendation came only after Joselyn’s mother and father completed necessary classes and demonstrated that they were ready to care for the child.

“Obviously in hindsight, it was the wrong thing to do,” said Blesener, who is in charge of protective services for the county. “But if you look at all the indicators, all the facts at the time, it appeared to be the right way to go. Given what we knew, there is not a lot that could have been done differently.”

Blesener is quick to point out that there is still much that is not known about the case.

Oxnard Police Sgt. Cliff Troy said investigators have concluded their probe into Joselyn’s death and have forwarded the results to the district attorney’s office. No charges had been filed as of Friday.

Troy said both parents remain suspects, although they have maintained their innocence since the June 22 death.

In reviewing the matter, Blesener said social workers found some areas in need of shoring up when handling cases of abuse or neglect.

For example, he said case workers will begin exercising greater care when drafting court recommendations so that parents have a clearer understanding of what is expected of them and the consequences of not meeting those expectations.

But Blesener said the primary focus, one that agencies like his across the state are grappling with, is learning to better assess the risks of returning a child to a home where abuse is suspected or has taken place.

This month, state and county officials teamed up to develop better tools for assessing risk in an effort to reduce the odds that abuse will occur.

“There’s something intangible involved, a prediction factor that we don’t have our hands on and that we can’t quite identify,” Blesener said. “Our challenge is to look at the family and see how we can work with them to reduce the risk factor of the child remaining with that family.”

Currently, there is no statewide standard for assessing risk in abuse cases, said Wes Beers, chief of the child and family services division of the state Department of Social Services.

A more comprehensive and uniform approach would help social workers gather all the information necessary when reviewing such cases, Beers said.

“Everybody in this system is obviously well-intentioned and trying to do their best, but we think it might be good for everyone to be trained to the same set of values,” Beers said. “There are risk factors that we want to try to better understand and to minimize.”

But efforts to minimize those risks have been thwarted in recent years by expanding workloads and shrinking budgets.

The county’s Public Social Services Agency receives about 18,000 calls per year involving allegations of child abuse or neglect. Of those, typically between 6,000 and 7,000 are thought to be valid, with the county responding to about 4,200.

In addition, social workers have seen their workloads increase by an average of eight to 10 cases over the past five years.

Superior Court Judge Melinda Johnson said that as social workers are forced to do more with less, judges and other decision makers could be forced to weigh abuse cases without the benefit of all the available information.

“Sometimes you have a lot of facts and sometimes you just have instinct,” said Johnson, presiding judge of the Juvenile Court. “I think we’d like to see as many resources as possible available in these cases to eliminate the guesswork. You always want as many people seeing the family as possible. I need to know what they know and what they see.”

Even the nonprofit organizations trying to help prevent child abuse have been squeezed by cuts.

Over the past four years, Child Development Resources of Ventura County has used a federal grant to run a home-visitation program aimed at helping families avoid the problems that may lead to child abuse or neglect. The program has provided services to about 100 families annually.

But the program is scheduled to shut down today as federal funds run out.

“This program has been offering stressed families a safety net before entering a cycle of abuse and violence,” said Julie Irving, the group’s executive director. “It’s really a sad day for Ventura County families because we are losing a much-needed and very successful program with a proven track record.”

With that program gone, only Advocates for Children and Families, formerly known as Child Abuse and Neglect, or CAAN, will offer a home-visitation program to prevent child abuse.

Kara Hillock, associate executive director of the nonprofit group, said home visits are widely regarded as the best form of child abuse prevention. She hopes to see more emphasis on such programs in coming years.

“I think prevention is kind of the future in this area,” she said. “We really believe if you can identify families at risk early on, you can work with them and avoid a lot of the real heavy stuff that happens down the line.”