In 2011, Joette Katz stepped off the Connecticut Supreme Court to take a far more difficult job: running the state Department of Children and Families, Connecticut’s equivalent of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services.
Within months, the death of a child “known-to-the-system” made headlines. As happened at least twice previously, there were calls to tear apart more families, and enormous pressure on Katz to tell her workers to do just that. In past years, her predecessors had caved. Katz did not.
“I think in the past that’s been exactly the mistake, frankly,” Katz said at the time. “A child dies and the next thing you know workers are getting thrown under the bus and 500 children get removed [from their homes] the next day because it’s a reaction to a tragedy. I think that’s the exact wrong way to behave.” That’s why, at the time, I called Katz the gutsiest leader in child welfare.
Now ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser will face the same pressure. Will he have the same kind of guts? Children’s lives may depend on it — literally. ...
