The death of 6-year-old Dominique Moody has sparked outrage across North Carolina.
She died last December after police found her starved, beaten, and, according to other children in the home, forced to live in a dog crate.
A state investigation found Mecklenburg County received multiple reports of alleged abuse and neglect at Dominique's east Charlotte home before her death, and the case has left many people asking: How could this happen? And if the system failed, what needs to change?
Emily Putnam-Hornstein, a child welfare researcher at UNC Chapel Hill who testified before state lawmakers about the case, joined WFAE's Nick de la Canal to discuss.
Nick de la Canal: I think what many people find especially troubling about this case is that Dominique Moody was not unknown to the system. There were reports to social services. Social workers had been to the home. Law enforcement had responded there multiple times. And yet she still died in these conditions. What does that tell you?
Emily Putnam-Hornstein: The reality is that her death was incredibly preventable, obviously. I find myself almost incredulous that the conditions were not obvious to people who responded to her home, and I think that those beg real questions.
I think where I struggle, and others are struggling, is to understand how we didn't connect the dots in this case, given that it seems highly unlikely these conditions she was found in emerged very recently, versus being longstanding concerns that were present.
De la Canal: There was a state investigation that followed this death that found a number of what it called "systemic" failures in Mecklenburg County's child welfare system. For example, social workers weren't always asking the right questions or following up with families. When you looked at those findings, what stood out to you?
Putnam-Hornstein: I'm not sure that I've been able to see all of the same materials that the state or the oversight committee have been privy to. But what I will say is that we need an incredibly well-trained workforce, where they know how to ask good questions, think critically and follow up to verify claims.
It seems as if there was no good practice in this case, and it sounds like that (lack of) good practice probably spanned more than one report and more than one worker.
De la Canal: Since you brought up the workforce, Mecklenburg County leaders say they plan to invest more money in child welfare services and hire more staff. But you've suggested that this may not simply be a staffing problem. Why not?
Putnam-Hornstein: I think often we assume that because caseloads might be higher than ideal, that if we simply hire more workers, we will solve that problem.
I haven't seen anything that would suggest that this was a caseload or workload issue. It feels like we either didn't have the right people with the right training, or we didn't have the right accountability for their practice.
De la Canal: Lawmakers have proposed the Dominique Moody Safety Act, and Mecklenburg County is now under a corrective action plan from the state. When you think about potential reforms, what changes do you think have the greatest potential?
Putnam-Hornstein: I've looked at the Dominique Moody Safety Act, and I love that what's being proposed is a means of identifying and escalating certain cases for greater scrutiny and follow-up. I think that's a great approach.
I do worry that it's being constructed in a way that may be highly burdensome for counties as they try to track which cases would be escalated. So in my mind, it's a perfect opportunity to think about implementing some kind of predictive risk model to help identify which cases need to be escalated.
And then I do think there are opportunities to invest much more in a well-trained workforce. As I mentioned, it's incredibly difficult work, and I don't know that we are training our workers to conduct the proper investigations that are required to assure child safety.
