Harmony Montgomery case shows Mass. child welfare system is still troubled

BOSTON — It was a case that rocked New England. Harmony Montgomery, with parental arrangements in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, had gone missing while with her father, Adam Montgomery, after being placed in his care.

Several months passed. She was nowhere to be found.

The governors and welfare systems in both states pointed fingers at the other, claiming, “It’s their fault!”

The custody placement of Montgomery that led to her death rested at the discretion of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, a government-funded child welfare agency with the intended purpose of aiding children in dire home and/or familial situations.

“It’s an agency that struggles because of the nature of the clientele," said Stan Rosenberg, the former Massachusetts Senate president and a founding member of the Legislature’s Foster Care Caucus (the caucus is now inactive). "The people that they come into contact with are in trouble in some way. It’s very, very difficult to figure out what the right answer is.”

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Over the past decade, numerous findings have cataloged DCF’s shortcomings — shoddy record-keeping, unfit conditions for foster children, the lack of intervention at necessary times, incorrect assessments in dangerous home or parental situations, improper interventions in which no danger is present and, most recently, the lack of responsibility or preparation toward the children in its care at the time of intervention.

Staffing shortages lead to corners being cut and details being overlooked, even though the largest percentage of the budget is spent on the agency’s social workers. Racial disproportionality for Black and brown families and children creates friction in safe families that are deemed otherwise free from outside inspection.

“Families who are more likely to be living in poverty,” said Rachel Gwaltney, executive director at The Children’s League of Massachusetts. “Poverty is more associated with negative outcomes; people make assumptions about minority families and poor families."

Racial disparities

Focused on child welfare reform, CLM works alongside DCF to address issues.

“A typical example of child welfare would be, say you’re a young, single, white mother and your child falls off the bed and you take them to the emergency room and the doctor says, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry that happened, let’s get you fixed up,’ and sends you home,” Gwaltney said. “If you’re a Black mother, and that exact same thing happens, they’re much more likely to be critical of what’s happened, to ask more critical questions.”

Black and brown children also take longer to be reunited with their families once divided; take longer to become adopted or placed in a foster home; and are more likely to be falsely or wrongfully reported to DCF while taken seriously.

The Harmony Montgomery case, closed in November, is another silent cry for DCF’s need for reform.

With about 8,000 children placed in foster care annually, the question remains: How egregious do situations have to be in order for intervention involving child removal or relocation to occur, and what conditions must be in place? How much abuse must a child undergo in order to find justice?

While it is unclear what the particular conditions create the discretion to remove or keep the child in the environment, “signs of abuse or neglect” have regularly been recited as the general consensus by DCF and child welfare reform workers. Details of these “signs,” namely surrounding abuse, are not specific. Covert abuse and emotional neglect is nearly impossible to prove while being the most rampant form of child mistreatment.

For this reason, DCF involvement feels like a futile waste of time for some families or when reported by children.

Therapy or rehabilitation services for addicted parents are sometimes selected or offered in place of foster care placement or home relocation. When placed in foster care, the goal is often reunification while the unfit caretaker cleans up their act. This provides an opportunity for relapsing back into toxic cycles once reunited. There is no standard set time a child may remain out of their parents’ care when removed.

“If a family comes into contact with DCF, it’s never good,” said Rosenberg. “(When DCF becomes involved in a family), it’s always because the family is falling apart, or because the family has already fallen apart, or because the child has been in a situation where they have been neglected or potentially abused.

“When a family becomes engaged with DCF, the social workers, the supervisors, the staff at DCF are always on the line for trying to figure out what is going wrong with this family, what do they need, how do we help this family get back on track. The big question is, should we remove the children from the family or not?”

Foster home overcrowding

Overcrowding in foster homes, said Rosenberg, is one reason the agency may balk at relocation of a child in an environment under its investigation.

“It’s a dynamic in which, depending on what’s happening in that particular point in time, the agency is buffeted between those who want more children to be removed more quickly, and returned more slowly to their family, and those who don’t want the children removed at all, and wants DCF to fix the homes in which children are living so they don’t have to be separated from their families,” Rosenberg stated. “You’ll find this dynamic all over the country. It’s not just Massachusetts.”

New Hampshire can attest to that.

The preference is in favor of putting children into a family situation, said Rosenberg. This may be where the case of Harmony Montgomery went wrong.

“Child welfare agencies across the country, including DCF, are the most difficult agencies to run, and to work in, because of the nature of the individuals, the families and the situations that they have to deal with,” Rosenberg said.

DCF officials declined to comment.

Annual statistics on out-of-home placements are tucked away in lengthy reports. The resulting reunifications or crimes against children upon reunification, or who are left in the homes of abusive or neglectful family members, remain unknown.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: MA child welfare system still troubled by staffing shortages