Since being sent to live in an adult jail eight days ago, 16-year-old Jane has spent 22 to 23 hours a day in her prison cell.
Department of Children and Families
Posted inEducation
Key CT lawmaker asks: Is federal supervision of DCF still relevant?
Lawmaker questions whether federal oversight of DCF is still needed — but a national children’s advocate says, “There continue to be real problems” with the agency.
Posted inCT Viewpoints
Child Protection: A system crying for change
The Connecticut Department of Children and Families has adopted a “differential response system” that allows its caseworkers more flexibility in reacting to various kinds of child abuse and neglect, depending on the risk to the family. Families and staff say this new kind of intervention is more effective, satisfying and respectful.
Posted inNews
Child Protection: A system crying for change
The Connecticut Department of Children and Families has adopted a “differential response system” that allows its caseworkers more flexibility in reacting to various kinds of child abuse and neglect, depending on the risk to the family. Families and staff say this new kind of intervention is more effective, satisfying and respectful.
Posted inEducation
Federal monitor: Connecticut DCF staffing levels have ‘worsened’
Dino Depina has had social workers who seldom look at his school grades. “Case workers don’t have enough time to,” said Depina, a Norwich teen who has been in foster care since he was 11. “I say, how about lowering the case loads.” Others agree. During a conference last week at the state Capitol complex, […]
Posted inEducation, Health
Little help for Connecticut’s many homeless youths, advocates say
Chancharay Tyson: "I had nowhere to go. It was scary." It’s been a rough four years for Chancharay Tyson who, at 18, “aged out” of state custody after years of living in numerous group homes as a foster child. A year later, with nowhere to live after leaving her abusive boyfriend, the Norwich 19-year-old again […]
Posted inEducation
Will locking up troubled girls help? State aims to find out with new Middletown facility
The new girls detention facility in Middletown The state’s child welfare agency will open a new state-run facility in January to lock up girls who break the law –- a decision that has generated mixed reactions from those who work most closely with these children. The facility that the Department of Children and Families will […]
Posted inEducation
To mixed reviews, DCF curtailing out-of-state placements
Frank Gregory, the director of treatment at CCP: 'We are getting it ready now for more children.' For years, the Department of Children and Families has left beds unfilled at its two psychiatric facilities while sending hundreds of children out-of-state, an expensive and criticized practice. This summer, DCF is bringing some of those children home […]