Isaac Lethbridge, 2, was
beaten to death in a Stewart Center foster home. The center
is appealing its state license suspension.
Related articles:
About the Stewart Center
- The Lula Belle Stewart
Center is a nonprofit foster care agency that is among
241 private foster care and group home agencies licensed
by the state's Department of Human Services.
- The center, located at
1534 Webb in Detroit, was first licensed as a
child-placement agency in 1993. It has 84 licensed
foster homes, although state officials said only 51
homes had been assigned children.
- From 1997 to July 31,
2006, the center's executive director was Edna Walker of
Detroit. Walker, who retired to care for a dying aunt,
said recently that she has been too busy to look into
the problems at her former agency.
"Having separated from the
agency, I'm not in touch with what's really going on,"
Walker said. "I know in general that it is a very horrendous
situation, but I'm just totally in the dark on Lula Belle."
The center is named for the
late Dr. Lula Belle Stewart, Detroit's first
African-American pediatric cardiologist.
After the Aug. 16 killing of a
2-year-old boy in a foster home licensed through the Lula Belle
Stewart Center in Detroit, a team of seven state child abuse
investigators took a closer look at how the agency was caring
for its 106 other foster children.
What the investigators found
was startling:
Seven of the center's foster
children were in placements deemed dangerous or unacceptable and
were immediately pulled out.
Six children were not in the
homes where the Lula Belle Stewart Center said they were,
including two who were living in other states without the
knowledge of the state Department of Human Services.
Twenty-one children could not
even be located immediately. All but two have since been found,
but two remain among 266 missing foster children statewide, the
vast majority of them runaways.
The disturbing pattern of
problems at the Lula Belle Stewart Center is documented in an
updated state licensing report obtained Tuesday by the Free
Press.
The center's license was
suspended shortly after 2-year-old Isaac Lethbridge was beaten
to death inside the Detroit foster home of Charlise
Adams-Rogers, a placement made by the Stewart Center.
Detroit police are continuing
to investigate Isaac's death and have not made an arrest.
"This is an enormous tragedy
and continues to have the highest level of attention in the
department," DHS spokeswoman Maureen Sorbet said Tuesday. "The
safety of children is our primary responsibility."
After Isaac's death, an initial
licensing report showed that some of the Stewart Center's foster
care workers had failed to report Isaac's suspected abuse to
Child Protective Services, as required by law.
Sorbet said Tuesday she was
unable to answer why the DHS had not caught the problems at the
Stewart Center earlier. She said the center is only the second
to incur a suspended license in the last few years.
The DHS's Office of Children
and Adult Licensing is seeking to permanently revoke the
center's license to place children in foster care. The center is
appealing the license suspension and the revocation effort in a
hearing that began Tuesday in Detroit before state
Administrative Law Judge Carole Engle.
Janet Burch, the Stewart
Center's interim director who came to the troubled agency on
Aug. 1, was present for Tuesday's hearing but on the advice of
the center's lawyer declined to comment.
How foster care is monitored
Private foster care agencies
receive from the state daily administrative rates to supervise
foster children that range from $18.48 to about $33, depending
on the difficulty of care of individual children. Foster parents
receive basic rates of about $12 to $17 per day per child or
more, depending on the level of care required.
Sorbet said the DHS's licensing
office monitors how the state's 241 private child-placing
agencies comply with rules and regulations. As part of the
process, personnel files and some case files at each agency are
audited every other year and some agencies are audited at random
in off years, she said.
Other DHS workers monitor how
the private agencies are supervising the children assigned to
their care. That monitoring involves reviewing documents related
to the children's care but does not include actually seeing the
foster children unless someone files a complaint.
The state's latest licensing
report, however, said workers at the Stewart Center often misled
the DHS and family court judges about the care of children under
the center's supervision.
From Aug. 17 to Aug. 24,
according to the state's latest report, DHS child abuse
investigators tried to visit 51 of the Stewart Center's 84
licensed foster homes in an attempt to see 106 children the
center's documents listed as being placed in those homes.
In five cases where a Lula
Belle Stewart Center foster care worker had specific knowledge
of possible child abuse or neglect, the center failed to
initiate a special investigation as required by the state, the
report says.
Investigators finds other
lapses
These are among the other
problems the state found:
A foster parent listed by the
Stewart Center as being deceased was alive and caring for three
adopted children.
Four homes listed as licensed
foster homes were vacant and one foster home had two adults
living there who had not been cleared by the center through
criminal background and Child Protective Services records checks
-- a requirement for adults living in foster homes under state
licensing regulations.
A foster home that the center
said was caring for four children actually had only one child.
Two children had been moved and the foster parent told
investigators the fourth child never was in her care.
Another foster parent told
CPS investigators that a child listed by the Stewart Center as
being in her home had not lived there for four years. That
foster parent also said that no workers from the center had been
in her home for more than a year. Foster care workers for
private child-placement agencies are required by the state to
visit foster children in their homes at least once every 30
days.
Another foster parent
reported that a child in her home had run away on July 6, 2006,
but the foster parent said the center never contacted her
further about the missing child. Another foster parent said no
Stewart Center worker had visited her home since October 2005.
One foster child had been
placed by the center into a foster home that state licensing
records show had been closed in March 2004.
Four foster homes listed by
the Stewart Center as having foster children in fact did not
have any.
State licensing workers, who
removed all foster care files from the Stewart Center on Aug.
21, said foster care licenses had expired for 26 of the center's
84 homes from October 2001 to June 2006. The center later
renewed some of the licenses.
After the license suspension,
the cases of all foster children under the Stewart Center's
supervision were taken over by the DHS, which then assigned
those children and foster parents to at least 15 other private
foster care agencies.
Contact JACK KRESNAK
at 313-223-4544 or
jkresnak@freepress.com.
