Legislative Report Soft-Peddles DSS’s Blame in the Haleigh Poutre Case
Eric Francke 6-16-2006

A new report following a legislative inquiry into the case of Haleigh Poutre was delivered on Wednesday to a Beacon Hill Committee. Investigators only made about one-half the report public when they delivered it to the House Post Audit and Oversight Bureau at a noon time meeting.

The report said that “lack of continual oversight and integrated case management by DSS personnel may have, in one case, unduly placed the child in harm’s way."

Even the staunchest defenders of DSS would have to say that such euphemistic terms don’t come anywhere near describing the neglect and disinterest DSS had in the life of Haleigh Poultre. The most significant effort DSS made legally in the case was an attempt to kill her by starvation.

Haleigh Poutre was hospitalized on Sept. 11, 2005, with a damaged brain stem that authorities say resulted from blows inflicted by her adoptive mother and stepfather, Holli and Jason Strickland, who were charged with assault (with a baseball bat). DSS had placed Haleigh in the care of the Stricklands after taking her from her biological mother. The beating came after Department of Social Services received no fewer than 16 abuse or neglect reports, yet they still left Haleigh in the care of the Stricklands.

DSS took legal custody of her, and in October, just three weeks later, had won a court order from a juvenile court judge to cut off life-support systems for her on the grounds that she was in a “Persistent Vegetative State”. Fortunately, legal battles waged by her stepfather held off the court order from DSS long enough for doctors to prove that she was not in a Persistent Vegetative State. Today, she is in a rehabilitation hospital slowly recovering.

DSS in Massachusetts has a checkered past of mismanagement. Auditors found in March of this year that sixty-eight foster care providers were found with overdue or blank Criminal Offender Record Information records in fiscal 2005, and that 340 children were placed in foster homes prior to the home being licensed. It has also been charged that DSS has essentially created a cottage industry of seizing children and placing them in foster care, driven by a $4,000-$6,000 financial incentive from the Federal government for every child that they can take into custody.