MACON, Ga. — In recent weeks, the U.S. Senate Human Rights Subcommittee held a series of hearings in Washington D.C. outlining blistering allegations against the Georgia Department of Family and Child Services (DFCS).
The subcommittee's chairman, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, says the hearings are part of "an ongoing bipartisan probe into the safety of foster kids in Georgia." That investigation began in February, his office said in a press release.
"What we have found thus far through the initial stages of the investigation is that independent watchdogs have been sounding the alarm for years about systemic failures of protecting the most vulnerable children in Georgia," Ossoff told reporters after the hearing. "We will continue this effort."
During the course of the hearings, the subcommittee has heard from a mother who says the agency's inaction caused the death of her 2-year-old daughter. They heard from judges who say the agency's commissioner called for locking up children with special needs in juvenile detention.
The committee also released data from an internal review of DFCS from 2023 which found the agency failed to "make concerted efforts to assess and address risk and safety concerns" for children in 84% of reviewed cases.
They say the agency "systematically fails to actually assess and address the risks and safety concerns" for children in both foster care or in their family's homes.
“This is an investigation about children, the most vulnerable children in our nation,” Ossoff said. “Orphaned children. Children who have faced the most extreme forms of abuse and neglect imaginable."
They also released data saying over a thousand children had gone missing while in the custody of DFCS.
"Reform is absolutely the ultimate goal," Ossoff said. "Change starts with the truth. So our role is to investigate and understand what is happening to the most vulnerable in the state of Georgia — and why."
But DFCS is saying that many allegations that have been leveled against them are, in fact, misleading or not true. They also say that the subcommittee has not worked with the agency as part of their ongoing reform efforts.
"DFCS remains committed to serving the interests of the state's most vulnerable population and finding workable solutions to the difficulties inherent in working with foster children — with or without the Subcommittee's help," the agency's lawyers wrote.
In a three-page letter to the top-ranking Democrat and Republican on the subcommittee, Sen. Ossoff and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), DFCS introduced their side of the story so "that any investigative effort be fair, complete, and fact-based."
Death of 2-year-old Brooklynn Aldrige:
In 2018, Brooklynn Aldridge died of blunt force trauma to the head.
At the subcommittee's hearing, Brooklynn's mother Rachel Aldridge testified about her efforts to get Brooklynn out of the care of their father. His girlfriend, Amanda Coleman, would eventually be convicted in Brooklynn's murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
But Aldridge said that Coleman should have never been in the care of her daughter.
“The system meant to protect children failed Brooklynn at every level, from management down to caseworkers,” Aldridge said. “They failed to follow the policies meant to keep my child safe and violated our rights. Brooklynn’s death cannot be in vain. I am here today to seek change.”
According to Ossoff, the agency had a policy that required them to run background checks on people who take care of children. If that background check was run, Ossoff said they would have found that Coleman had a criminal history and had a child neglect case against her.
But in their letter to the two senators, the agency "acknowledges and in no way diminishes the tragedy of Brookylnn's death," but they point to a decision in the Georgia Court of Appeals that found DFCS was not responsible for Brooklynn's death.
"While the circumstances of this case are distressing, there is no dispute that Brooklynn was already having unsupervised visitation at Lott's residence before DFCS intervened, that Brooklynn's death occurred weeks after Appellant was released from jail, and that the incident happened after Appellant had agreed to joint custody with Lott," DFCS quoted the Georgia Court of Appeals as writing.
They say that Aldridge's claims against DFCS were dismissed by the court of appeals.
In the letter to the subcommittee, DFCS emphasized that Brooklynn was never in the care of the agency, and a judge had signed off on the arrangement between Aldridge and Lott.
"Brooklynn was first placed in the physical and legal custody of Ronald Lott, Jr. on January 23, 2018, by order of a Georgia superior court, and was not in DFCS custody at any time, including the time of her death," DFCS' lawyers wrote.
Because of that, they say pitting the blame on them is not fair, and the court system had agreed with the agency on that.
Housing kids in Juvenile detention
A press release from Ossoff's office said DFCS Commissioner Candice Broce proposed "locking up children with special needs" at an August meeting with judges in Georgia, according to testimony from Paulding County juvenile court judge Carolyn Altman.
"Commissioner Broce said that DFCS was not set up to be caregivers for these children, and she asked judges to consider detaining the children — locking them up in a juvenile detention center for a few days — so that DFCS could maybe find a placement for them," she testified. "As judges, we do not lock up children, especially special needs children, because we cannot find a place for them."
Ossoff asked whether or not that was legal, according to the press release, and Altman told them that it "is not lawful."
The agency's lawyers say that the August meeting where those allegations stem from were misconstructed: "Yesterday's testimony on this point was lacking critically important context and accuracy."
"Some judges in attendance spoke about the extreme difficulty balancing the child's treatment needs, the family's safety concerns, and overall safety for the community," they wrote. "Often, solutions are tough to find."
But the solution they say the Broce never encouraged: breaking state law.
"Commissioner Broce did not encourage judges to violate state law, and it has never been DFCS policy to punish a child with complex needs through detention," they wrote. "She and the participating judges all shared ideas on how to tackle these challenges in a more united front to further improve Georgia's child welfare system."
They argue that the judges had the opportunity to push back on those assertions. They claim they never did.
"To DFCS's knowledge, yesterday's witnesses never raised any concerns about the content of this meeting with the Commissioner or with the legislature, despite opportunities to do so," they wrote. "Ultimately, the courts and DFCS are in this fight together and must stay focused on productive efforts to improve Georgia's child welfare system."
Missing children:
During the investigation, the senators found that between 2018 and 2022, 1,790 children who were in the care of DFCS were reported missing, according to the committee's analysis of National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) data.
Children who go missing from foster care are often very vulnerable to human trafficking and other forms of exploitation.
“This is about human beings,” Ossoff said in a press release. “This is about vulnerable children who deserve protection from abuse, who deserve sanctuary from neglect."
But DFCS says these numbers — while concerning — are much better than other state's foster care systems.
"What we do know is that a recent report by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that Georgia's rate of foster children reported missing is lower than its neighboring states of Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina, and is less than half the rate of a number of other states — including New York, Ohio, Maryland, Nebraska, Delaware and Kanas," the lawyers wrote.
With that being the rate of children being reported missing, that would account for the population differences between those states and the number of children in their care.
The agency's lawyers told Ossoff and Blackburn that they take the issue of missing or runaway children "seriously," pointing to their 14-page policy memo that provides caseworkers guidance on how to handle reports of missing children.
They also tell the lawmakers that the agency works "closely" with a number of law enforcement and child welfare agencies — such as the NCMEC, the GBI and the U.S. Marshals — to help find any children who have run away, are missing or have been abducted.
The agency also says that the subcommittee's lack of cooperation has meant they don't have the necessary understanding of the data Ossoff's office released to the press.
The attorneys for DFCS raised questions about these numbers and who was included in them. They asked whether the numbers took into account children who were found and recovered, or if they included children who aged out of foster care and refused to sign back into the agency's care.
"Unfortunately, the Subcommittee never shared with us any of the information in its request to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children or the information it obtained, so we have been denied the opportunity to understand or respond to this analysis," DFCS lawyers wrote.
Housing kids in hotels and offices:
In the hearings, witnesses decried the "necessity of housing children in hotels or DFCS offices," but the DFCS attorneys say that this is something that the agency works hard to avoid. In recent months, they say the practice of "hoteling," as some groups call it, has dramatically decreased.
According to the advocacy group Voices for Georgia's Children, for Fiscal Year 2022, it cost DFCS $28 million to house children in hotels or state offices.
Then, for the first five months of Fiscal Year 2023, the agency spent $15 million on "hoteling." Those numbers are from July 1, 2022 and Nov. 30, 2022.
For each night the DFCS keeps a child in a hotel, it costs the agency $1,500 per night, Voices says, because this also includes the cost of the room, their meals and oversight. The behavioral aids who oversee those children while they are housed in hotels charge $1,000 a day per child, according to the organization.
Many kids were held in hotels for months, according to reporting from 11Alive. Many of those kids, according to Voices, need "24-hour supervision to prevent them from causing harm to themselves and others."
But DFCS says that this practice — and the high price tag created by it — was the result of a "provider shortage" and Georgia's "managed-care insurance company" denying coverage for more sustainable treatment for the children.
"Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the current Commissioner, DFCS now appeals almost every insurance denial, and often pays outright for residential treatment while it appeals the coverage denials, spending tens of millions of state dollars in 'stop-gap' healthcare," they wrote.
Plus, the agency says they kept most kids out of hotels or DFCS offices for weeks now. They only had one kid in recent weeks who had to stay in a hotel, because they were still trying to find placement for them, they say.
Moving forward
The agency also took issue with claims by one of the witnesses that the number of children in Georgia's foster care system is "11,000 and rising."
According to the agency, the number of children in Georgia's foster care system decreased significantly since May 2018, when 14,202 children were in foster care. In their letter, they say that since January 2022, the number of children in foster care has remained steady.
In January 2022, there were 10,432 children in foster care and in August 2023, there were 10,464 children in foster care.
However, the lawyers for DFCS say that the subcommittee's actions raise questions about the fairness of the investigation.
"The misstatements, omissions, and failure of the Subcommittee to request relevant information or responses from the department in advance of its publicized hearing and press conferences leave the unfortunate impression that the goals of the investigation are political," they say.
DFCS claims— despite participants painting the hearings as bipartisan — the democratic majority led by Ossoff's staff is driving the proceedings.
"In more than 35 hours of witness interviews with DFCS personnel, or in the back-and-forth document requests that yielded nearly 10,000 pages of documents, the Chairman's investigators never once asked what kind of help or assistance the Department could use from the federal government — and that need is considerable," they wrote.
Ossoff's office released a statement on Tuesday saying they look forward to including DFCS in the process.
“The Subcommittee looks forward to interviewing relevant DFCS personnel about yesterday’s testimony by Georgia judges that DFCS proposed to keep children with special needs in juvenile detention facilities," a spokesperson for Ossoff's office said in a statement. "The Subcommittee has been in regular contact with Georgia DFCS throughout this investigation and will seek Georgia DFCS’ continued cooperation."
At the end of the day, they say that their focus is on the children of Georgia.
"The Subcommittee’s investigation is ongoing, and the essential question is whether children in foster care are protected from abuse and neglect given serious concerns raised for years by watchdogs, parents, and the press," they said.