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.
1 comment:
I went through the living hell back in 2001 when my then wife try to kill our 11-month-old child and I had to use force in preventing it. My now ex-wife had me arrested for DV but the Queens DA couldn't prosecute the matter because of all the lies she told them. An ACS caseworker came to my home after learning of the case in confrence, and she threatened me that I had no rights reporting my wife for child abuse. My ex was having some form of mental problem and a previous report was made to the state about her, which the case worker accused me of filing against her. She told me she was going to have the judge throw the book at me, and she filed a false report against me then hid from the case. Read more about it and publish the link on your page. http://www.badcitygirls.blogspot.com
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