CUYAHOGA COUNTY Were kids put in foster care who didn't need to be?

Child deaths in the mid-1990s led to an increase in foster-care placements.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- A sharp drop in the number of Cleveland-area children being put into foster care is raising questions over whether Cuyahoga County officials may have been pulling too many children from their homes during the late 1990s.
"Kids came in [to foster care] who didn't have to," said James McCafferty, the director of the county Department of Children and Family Services.
McCafferty took over the agency in 2001. Since then, the number of children placed in foster care has dropped from 3,239 to 1,916 in 2003.
McCafferty declined to say how many children were taken from their homes who should not have been.
The decline under McCafferty follows six years of ramped-up placement activity. A string of child deaths in the mid-1990s preceded a jump in foster-care placements -- 3,200 in 1996, up from about 2,000 in each of the previous six years, The Plain Dealer reported Sunday.
The department had been created in 1991 after the suicide of a 10-year-old prompted county commissioners to rework the child-welfare system, the newspaper said.
What happened
The county hired Judith Goodhand, a top assistant at the Lucas County child-protection agency, as its first director. Goodhand believed keeping children with their families was a better alternative to foster care, but her approach would be challenged.
In 1993, a social worker let 21-month-old Denise Rome stay with her mother, despite finding suspicious marks on the girl's body. A few days later, Audrey Rome beat her daughter to death. Foster-care placements briefly increased after the death but then returned to their usual level.
Two years after Denise's death, a Cleveland television news program accused Goodhand of altering the department's report on the death, an allegation that Goodhand called "an absolute hoax."
In the meantime, several more children in county custody had died -- some from natural causes. Memos began to circulate around the agency on child deaths, and the department started to review the death of every one of its clients, even if the death had nothing to do with abuse or neglect, The Plain Dealer reported.
Social worker Donna Butler said the attitude at the agency changed in the late 1990s.
It became one of "I'm going to cover my behind," she said. "You were afraid that if you left the child in the home and the child died, your name would end up in the paper."
A 2002 study by Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court showed that the legal system may have been partially to blame for children wrongly removed from homes. The court's study said only one in 20 cases showed that parents were properly notified of abuse allegations or court hearing dates.
The court shortly thereafter began using certified mail to notify parents of legal proceedings.