I got a snail mail letter today claiming I have libled someone. Should I be scared? Of what - an anonymous complainant who can't even specify what he or she is complaining about? Well, what about "we know where you live"? Or even "we know who your kids are"?
You've threatened my wife and children. This is something you would be good at doing, as most likely you are a seasoned staffer at Emergency Children's Services and threatening women and children with an actual kidnaping here and there- that's actually your profession, isn't it?
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
The Anonymous caseworker. (revised Tuesday May 22)
An anonymous post to this blog, probably made by a caseworker, or Child Protective Specialist from Emergency Children's Services gave the name of the woman he or she believes is Ramon Vargas' at work sex partner. The email blames the problems of Emergency Children's Services on this alleged dalliance. I erased the worker's name as soon as I saw this post.
The problems at ECS include cliquism and a viscious undercurent of animosity and division in the staff. This blog is not here to promote one clique over another nor to be a venue where one case worker atttacks the name of another.
Supervisor II's and managers are political appointees as well as government officials. Their actions do deserve the light of day.
The problems at ECS include cliquism and a viscious undercurent of animosity and division in the staff. This blog is not here to promote one clique over another nor to be a venue where one case worker atttacks the name of another.
Supervisor II's and managers are political appointees as well as government officials. Their actions do deserve the light of day.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
An Open Letter to The Commissioner-Mattingly, Are You OK?
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Mayor Bloomberg appeared to shake his head in disbelief when his child welfare commissioner, John Mattingly, announced his cell phone number to a crowd of 230 rookie caseworkers at a graduation ceremony Tuesday morning.
Commissioner Mattingly, I also shook my head in disbelief when I read this on WNBC's website yesterday.
http://www.wnbc.com/politics/11127085/detail.html
I could understand why you gave your cell phone number to the new caseworkers- for a moment you put yourself in their shoes. They've just gone through a pretty intensive training and they're about to find out something that you could have told them but you didn't - that most of this training is going to be useless, because in your agency it is not the written word of procedure that rules, it is the spoken word of your line supervision and management. And frankly many of your line supervisors and managers don't even understand the concept of working under rules and regulations - ah, but you already know that, you read www.ACSmustbestopped.com, and you might have glanced at its companion website www.cpmramonvargasisnotanidiot.com.
Yes, these caseworkers are in for a shock. Some of them will be revulsed by things that people like Sunday Adegbola and Ramon Vargas want them to do- they'll want to let you know about it. But you already know about it.
But your odd behavior at the graduation tells of something else- your own meltdown. You came to ACS with ideas of reforming it and making it less destructive to the community- because you knew and still know that it is a destructive force, but one that seemingly is never going to go away. Your first real test was the Nixzmary Brown imbroglio. Any idiot knew that a doctor at Woodhull Hospital had given the child a clean bill of health, and any idiot could see through the NYPD nonsense that their elite secial victims squad had gone to Nixzmary's sibling's school to give security to caseworkers. Any idiot knows that special victims detectives are not caseworker bodyguards. Caseworkers have no body guards. But Mattingly, you folded. You gave your people up while the doctor, the nurse, the detectives skated. Then you folded again, a worse collapse- you gave up the children!
You allowed ignorant insensitive media owners and politicians to set your agenda.You knowingly allowed children who were not in any danger at all to be taken out of their homes in order to feed the monster of the media and the politicans' need to be "tough" on child abuse. You knew that this was a very dangerous game - that a removal panic leads to more child fatalities- not less child fatalities.
Now the numbers of child fatalities in ACS cases has soared on your watch, and your agency cannot even keep an accurate count of the children it is taking away from their parents. Also to the shame of this city the scandal of the illegal and unethical drug experiments that were done under mayors Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani are being swept under the rug with your active participation. I kind of think that you really feel a lot of shame, embarassment, and a dread of what may come next.
God is just, Mattingly. God has to be angry at what is being done at ACS. You know better than what you are doing, that is why you are acting strange.
What is the honorable thing to do? Call a press conference, tell the truth and resign.
By the way I plan on letting as many caseworkers as possible know that it is not a good idea to avail themselves of your open cell phone policy- because you will ultimately turn them over to their immediate bosses - the people they hope you'll correct. They only have to read www.acsmustbestopped and www.cpmramonvargasisnotanidiot to know that.
Sincerely,
Eugene Weixel
veteran caseworker
Mayor Bloomberg appeared to shake his head in disbelief when his child welfare commissioner, John Mattingly, announced his cell phone number to a crowd of 230 rookie caseworkers at a graduation ceremony Tuesday morning.
Commissioner Mattingly, I also shook my head in disbelief when I read this on WNBC's website yesterday.
http://www.wnbc.com/politics/11127085/detail.html
I could understand why you gave your cell phone number to the new caseworkers- for a moment you put yourself in their shoes. They've just gone through a pretty intensive training and they're about to find out something that you could have told them but you didn't - that most of this training is going to be useless, because in your agency it is not the written word of procedure that rules, it is the spoken word of your line supervision and management. And frankly many of your line supervisors and managers don't even understand the concept of working under rules and regulations - ah, but you already know that, you read www.ACSmustbestopped.com, and you might have glanced at its companion website www.cpmramonvargasisnotanidiot.com.
Yes, these caseworkers are in for a shock. Some of them will be revulsed by things that people like Sunday Adegbola and Ramon Vargas want them to do- they'll want to let you know about it. But you already know about it.
But your odd behavior at the graduation tells of something else- your own meltdown. You came to ACS with ideas of reforming it and making it less destructive to the community- because you knew and still know that it is a destructive force, but one that seemingly is never going to go away. Your first real test was the Nixzmary Brown imbroglio. Any idiot knew that a doctor at Woodhull Hospital had given the child a clean bill of health, and any idiot could see through the NYPD nonsense that their elite secial victims squad had gone to Nixzmary's sibling's school to give security to caseworkers. Any idiot knows that special victims detectives are not caseworker bodyguards. Caseworkers have no body guards. But Mattingly, you folded. You gave your people up while the doctor, the nurse, the detectives skated. Then you folded again, a worse collapse- you gave up the children!
You allowed ignorant insensitive media owners and politicians to set your agenda.You knowingly allowed children who were not in any danger at all to be taken out of their homes in order to feed the monster of the media and the politicans' need to be "tough" on child abuse. You knew that this was a very dangerous game - that a removal panic leads to more child fatalities- not less child fatalities.
Now the numbers of child fatalities in ACS cases has soared on your watch, and your agency cannot even keep an accurate count of the children it is taking away from their parents. Also to the shame of this city the scandal of the illegal and unethical drug experiments that were done under mayors Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani are being swept under the rug with your active participation. I kind of think that you really feel a lot of shame, embarassment, and a dread of what may come next.
God is just, Mattingly. God has to be angry at what is being done at ACS. You know better than what you are doing, that is why you are acting strange.
What is the honorable thing to do? Call a press conference, tell the truth and resign.
By the way I plan on letting as many caseworkers as possible know that it is not a good idea to avail themselves of your open cell phone policy- because you will ultimately turn them over to their immediate bosses - the people they hope you'll correct. They only have to read www.acsmustbestopped and www.cpmramonvargasisnotanidiot to know that.
Sincerely,
Eugene Weixel
veteran caseworker
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Individuals who are beyond shame.
Attorneys involved in litigation against Administration For Children's Services should be sure to read this blog. They will see how Administration For Children's Services has been warned time and time again regarding the incompetence of the namesakes of this blog. These warnings went all the way up to Commissioner John Mattingly, to Zeinab Chahine, to the Inspector General of The City of New York.
I'm not an attorney but I would guess that any harm that the manager who was on duty when the Whitick case came into ACS, that the manager who sent a teenage sex abuse victim and her mother who was terrorized by the father back to his control may have done your clients after these warnings were given by email and ignored (not really ignored, they set out to remove me from their agency) is all the more egregious.
A very competent and capable manager, Patrick Malia, who also has had well deserved fame as a caseworker who has won prestigious awards and recognition, and who is possibly the best softball coach John Jay College ever had, unfortunately sees his job as "incompetents protective manager" rather than (or perhaps in addition to) "Child Protective Manager". His name is on the emails because he is capable and in fact I know that he knows what I am saying is right. What a shame.
I'm not an attorney but I would guess that any harm that the manager who was on duty when the Whitick case came into ACS, that the manager who sent a teenage sex abuse victim and her mother who was terrorized by the father back to his control may have done your clients after these warnings were given by email and ignored (not really ignored, they set out to remove me from their agency) is all the more egregious.
A very competent and capable manager, Patrick Malia, who also has had well deserved fame as a caseworker who has won prestigious awards and recognition, and who is possibly the best softball coach John Jay College ever had, unfortunately sees his job as "incompetents protective manager" rather than (or perhaps in addition to) "Child Protective Manager". His name is on the emails because he is capable and in fact I know that he knows what I am saying is right. What a shame.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Why I say Ramon Vargas is a symbol of a system beyond repair.
Child Protective Manager Ramon Vargas makes decisions five days a week that can spell the difference between life and death. He is probably not the worse manager they have at Administration for Children's Services in New York, but he does symbolize what's irreparibly wrong with their system.
Vargas is a poster boy for two waves of so - called "reform" of ACS. The first "reform" wave he represents came in 1996 under the cowboys Rudolph Giliuliani and Nichola Scopetta, his sidekick. After announcing bold new strict and impressive requirements for the position of supervisor at ACS Giuliani and Scopetta went on to promote a whole cohort of unqualified supervisors- people who now run the agency.
Like many, Vargas neither passed a test nor won an advanced degree to become a supervisor. Like very few, Vargas got a direct appointment to Supervisor II (senior supervisor) with no experience whatever as a supervisor I (remember this guy never passed a test). He was given a position as an "Instant Response Team " coordinator and spent a few weeks supervising a unit of veterans who were scheduled for the quietest time of night at Emergency Children's Services and then - bingo! the man is a manager and IRT heavyweight.
To recall the Nixzmary Brown case is to learn a lot about the "Instant Response Team".
Then there is the Whittick case.
Then the cases I personally experienced working with Vargas.
Vargas is a protected species under the latest "reform" Commissioner John Mattingly, under whose watch child fatalities of children on the ACS caseloads has skyrocketed. Mattingly is a complete captive of the media and the go along get along paperpushers in his agency.
Because it deals with poor and minority and immigrant children and their families there is no consistent interest by the informed public about this agency, nor by the political establishment. Comes a slow news day, an all too common incident of a child being violently killed is splashed across the media, and the entire agency is sent into a tailspin, being ordered around by ignorant media moguls whose bottom line is not children, but media sales.
It is under this environment that someone like Vargas not only makes decisions that impact other people's lives, he blunders and is protected, because in truth high quality individuals with real qualifications do not want Vargas' job. He and those like him have this power by default.
It would be better to close down this monument to corruption and incompetence called Division of Child protection, Administration for Children's Services, have the police investigate real crimes, have a small unit assigned to placing the very few real victims of child abuse who have no friends or relatives to care for them and calling it a day.
You want to read about governmental idiocy? Read this blog.
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