Joshua Allen Online

Who Watches the Watchmen?  The Board of Supervisors has decided to audit DCFS!

The Business of Child Abuse

By Joshua Allen

Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?  Who watches the Watchmen?  The Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal not Alan Moore although the ‘Watchmen,’ was a cool comic when it first came out.

So here is my advice should the Board of Supervisors go this route.

Audit the auditors.

You know, the guys who go around and superficially talk to foster parents and kids to make sure everything be okay.

The young folks who come to the agencies and check out the cooked books allowing millions to be misspent year after year after year…

The people who have allowed DCFS to get by on the same billions of dollars budget they have had for years while serving perhaps a third of the amount of kids in foster care.  Where is all that extra money going?  (Do we really have to ask)?

The same folks who have allowed Family Preservation to become a big joke, allowing “Paraprofessionals,” to collect moonlighting income year after year knowing full well the program does little of what it is supposed to do.

The same folks who have allowed double and triple dipping executives without college degrees to run agencies into the ground or to continue drinking nectar from the golden goose year after year when everyone who gets near these places knows that something funny is happening.

The same folks who have allowed elders in their dotage to continue on full salary while they putter around the office a day or two a week on full tax payer salary because they were one of the original investors of the seed money and now know where the bodies are buried.

The same folks who bought antiquated equipment that is little used because training is too complicated for retired-in-place-investigators who can barely use their cell phones.  Or because by the time the IT department actually gets around to using the stuff the price for the infrastructure has increased to the point where there isn’t money left to implement the majority of the devices.  (Or do I have it wrong?  I think not).

Yes certainly, audit the department.  What’s a few BILLION DOLLARS a year among friends?  Amazing they never thought of this before!  Why should DCFS be any different from our schools or MLK hospital?

Thank heavens for the love and decency that come from our foster parents.  There are a lot of good ones out there and they are all that stands between the enshrinement of mediocrity that currently typifies our foster care system.

A loving foster parent is our best defense, and the rest is commentary.

Joshuaallenonline.com

Joshuaallenonline@gmail.com