Q- Okay, so Vargas was the manager on duty and also the Instant Response Team coordinator when the Whitick case came in to ECS, so he didn't send a case worker to the kids, he did have someone make a phone call, didn't he?
A- Yes, well someone did, and Vargas was in charge under two different hats, that of manager on duty and of IRT coordinator. Question- were the kids beaten to a pulp before, during or after the brilliant telephone call?
Q- Okay, so Vargas sent a teenaged sex abuse victim out of the shelter system with her mom back to where the guy that the kid and mother had run to the precinct away from thirteen hours earlier. You hadn't done a home assessment, Weixel. (Ask Vargas, he said you needed to do a home assessment). Also Adegbola wrote into the case record that that you only provided second hand information on this case. Not to mention that veteran supervisor George Baird was the "night administrator" that night and he thought it was fine to send the kid back, right?
A- This is where it is hard to say that Adegbola is not an idiot, but truth is he is not an idiot. He has a Master's Degree. Even if his lie were true, and I had only got information from cops, detectives, social workers, nurses and doctors of Elmhurst Hospital (who were very helpful in this case by the way, - thanks) that night and not one word from the mom or kid (a bald faced lie by Adegbola and he can take me to court if he wants to) the information was clear that the kids and mom needed to get away from that step father. That's why next day Zeinab Chahine, number two at Administration for Children's Services, (skipped over twice, now that's not nice) and her buddies were at ECS trying to fix Vargas' blunder. Don't forget, this was not even a removal. The mother agreed to bring her children to the shelter system as domestic violence victims, which all of them were. I wonder who Vargas' rabbi is. Do you?
Q- What's this thing about the four month old? What did Adegbola and Vargas do in that one?
A- A young mom and her seventeen year old baby daddy had a fight at paternal grandmother's Bronx apartment, cops came and they decided that the mom had attacked the dad, and that the house looked fine and so they locked up the mother and left the baby at the grandma's apartment not calling ACS to see if there was any child abuse record and definitely not checking to see if grandma was a criminal herself.
As they often do (when they bother themselves to do it at all) the cops called CPS hours after they had taken their own action regarding a child's well being.
When mom got released from jail with charges dismissed, she called in a CPS report that I was assigned to. I found in the record that baby's daddy was a child himself who had been removed and ordered by a judge not to return to grandma's house because she had brought baby daddy and her other kids upstate to a prison and tried to smuggle some heroin to her man and got caught. So baby daddy was not allowed to be where he was, let alone the baby. A Bronx ACS worker had come there, looked around, liked the furniture and left. So I told Adegbola that I needed to go there and get that baby out of there, and if possible baby daddy too. I told him it would be good to go there with cops as there had been violence and grandma is a felon and I would be there to take her kid and grandkid. Adegbola blew his stack, got defensive of his turf as boss and well, I went to Vargas who backed Adegbola up. Only by writing my opinion into the case record and by emailing the honchos was this assinine decision reversed.
I have a question. Okay a lot of people know about the Whitick case but the two other ones. They just involved me alone. How many other caseworkers have stories they feel too afraid to tell anyone about idiotic decisions by Vargas and Adegbola? Probably quite a few.
The public needs to consider the caliber of people in charge at ACS before they make a mistake and put a family into their hands by making that phone call. Think about it. If it's an emergency call the cops, they won't do any worse at least than ACS does, and maybe they'll do better. If it's not an emergency leave the family alone. For God's sake we all have problems and not every problem has a neat clean solution. Foster care by God surely isn't one.
PS to the people at Elmhurst Hospital. This sex abuse/domestic violence case was an ACS case on the night of 2/10/05 into the morning of 2/11/05. You can see how I tried to get the attention of the higher ups at ACS to take action about the irresponsibility of Vargas and Adegbola and how I tried to get ACS to repair the damage they had done HERE.
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