ACS Supervisor Charged In Girl's Death Defends Herself

Chereece Bell

The former Administration for Children's Services supervisor who was charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of 4-year-old Marchella Brett-Pierce is speaking out about the troubled agency. Chereece Bell claims that, before the child died from malnourishment, she told her supervisors to move social worker Damon Adams out of her unit, noting that he couldn't handle his caseload. The Wall Street Journal reports, "She said every time she spoke with Mr. Adams about the Brett-Pierce family, he told her, 'The children are fine.'"

Marchella's mother, Carlotta Brett-Pierce, had been under ACS monitoring since 2009 when she failed a drug test after having her son. When Marchella died last fall, she was just 18 pounds and severely bruised. ACS, which admitted that there were missteps, revealed that Brett-Piece would beat Marchella with a VHS tape and keep her tied to a bed.

Adams, who was also charged with criminally negligent homicide, is accused of failing to make nearly all of the mandated biweekly visits to the Brett-Pierce home in Brooklyn, and falsifying ACS records to show he did, while Bell is accused of failing to properly oversee and monitor Adams' work. Bell says she had weekly meetings with Adams, but requested that he be transferred because he couldn't keep up with the work. Bell's lawyer also told the WSJ, "Ms. Bell was only able to rely on the information about the family that she got from Mr. Adams. She never visited the family, nor was she supposed to."

As for problems at ACS, Bell said, "We're always understaffed. The amount of cases that we're getting with the amount of requirements needed on each case, it's impossible to get it done."

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By Jen Chung in News on March 29, 2011 4:20 PM

Comments [rss]

nyforny

What strikes me is Bloomberg defending the ACS head. Outrageous! He wants to wait and see how it plays out in the court. Really?

bashment_girl

If the caseworker falsified records then he should be fired and given a REASONABLE sentence for his crimes. ACS is NOTORIOUS for mistreating and abusing their workers. They create hostile work environments (by pitting employees against each other), break union rules, and practice blatant favoritism. Falsifying records did not cause the tragic death of this toddler. Bloomberg cut funding to this agency several times and they are extremely understaffed as a result. D.A. Hynes is wasting taxpayer money and should be removed.

gauchonyc

A death took place. No excuses. Prosecute the people responsible for the death of the little girl.

nccpr

Ms. Bell is not the only one paying a price for Charles Hynes’ desperate bid for 15 more minutes of fame. Every caseworker and supervisor now is on notice: Take away hundreds of children needlessly and the children will suffer terribly but your career is safe. Leave one child in a dangerous home, or even be the supervisor on that case, and not only is your career over, you face up to seven years in jail.

Falsification can’t be ignored. It deserves firing and possibly criminal charges. But ratcheting up those charges to criminally negligent homicide – and making the supervisor a scapegoat as well – is only likely to set off a foster-care panic, a huge surge in removals of children taken needlessly from everyone they know and love. Not only does that harm those children, it overloads the system so workers are even less likely to find the next child in real danger. Details are on our Child Welfare Blog here: http://bit.ly/eU2tER And there is a link from that post to a New York Times story that talks about that ad campaign other commenters have mentioned.

Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
www.nccpr.org

gauchonyc

What if that little girl was your daughter, sister, niece, granddaughter?

schmeep

I remember a few years ago there was an advertising campaign for ACS; "Do you have what it takes?" I was offended (I work in social services)- *I* have what it takes, but the infrastructure doesn't. Set up a system that's not built like Russian Roulette, and we'll talk.

Jen Chung

Yeah, I remember those ads too—it's just a sad situation, the ACS is charged with monitoring all these families, and there just aren't enough social workers to stay on top of all the cases, especially with budget cuts.