Child Protective Manager Ramon Vargas, Poster Boy of Giuliani's Child Welfare "Reform"(revised June 1, 2007)

I couldn't find a poster of CPM Vargas, so I will use one of Giuliani, doing what he does best. (Giuliani missed the Vietnam War unlike many of his generation, however he loves to wave a flag, or help someone else wave one.)






Joe Torre and Mayor Giuliani - ©Photofile

Photo

Buy at AllPosters.com



Vargas was an ordinary case worker who had been boosted out of the Brooklyn Field Office under arguable circumstances# and consigned to the nights and weekends at Emergency Children's Services when some how some way he got a double promotion to Supervisor II and got assigned to the notorious "Instant response Team" (Google "Instant Response Team", "Nixzmary Brown" ). Vargas had no experience as a unit Supervisor I, had not passed a supervisor's test (most of the new supervisors can't pass this exam, which, incidentally, I did pass) and had not gained a Masters Degree either. (It is interesting how many "Masters of Social Work" cannot pass the ACS supervisor Exam, but maybe a book needs to be written about that.) Anyhow after a brief stint as a Supervisor II Vargas got boosted yet again, still without a degree or a passing mark on the Supervisor's test, this time to the title "Child Protective Manager" (a non civil service, non unionized title whose holders serve at the pleasure of The Mayor.)

Giuliani and his Child Welfare Commissioner Scopetta had just announced new tougher standards for the making of supervisors in the agency when Vargas got his first lucky break at ECS.

Vargas may have no civil service protection and he may have no union but he clearly has a rabbi.

I had a case in which a four month old baby was given over to a criminal whose own children had been removed from her home by the courts in an informal NYPD "child placement", a disaster that was seconded by a Bronx ACS worker, by Sup II Adegbola and by Vargas, though not by their superiors once I insisted that the situation was dangerous. The higher ups were furious - not at Vargas, but at me, because I had blown their "Me? I see nothing. Me? I know nothing" cover. After the Whitick case, after this case, after the case of the teenage girl who was sexually abused by her stepfather and sent back to him by Vargas, Vargas still makes life and death decisions for the victims of child abuse and for the victims of ACS.


# To hear Vargas tell the tale, he was being stalked by a mom on one of his cases and she was threatening his life. I never had anything like that happen to me even with moms whose kids I took away.