Mary Ann Hartman told the state Senate Health and Human Services Committee that she repeatedly alerted the El Paso County Department of Human Services that Alize Vick, a 2-year-old in foster care with her neighbor, was being badly abused. She even recorded the abuse when she heard it over a baby monitor.
Despite her evidence, and a visit by a social worker, Alize was never removed from the home and died from head trauma.
“Think about Alize Vick and how she might possibly be alive today if I had someplace else to go with my concerns,” Hartman told the committee Thursday as it considered a bill that would create an advocate’s office to protect children through independent oversight.
According to committee testimony, 35 children in Colorado’s child-welfare system have died in the past three years.
On Thursday, the committee passed the bill, 7-0.
That same day, Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, and Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, sent letters to Gov. Bill Ritter and Attorney General John Suthers, and Karen Beye, executive director of the Colorado Department of Human Services, demanding an independent investigation into how the state reviewed the 2008 death of a Fort Collins infant, Chad Munoz.
The Department of Human Services started the child fatality review that same year, but it was forgotten for 15 months because employees had left the department, according to Beye.
Lundberg, a co-sponsor of the ombudsman bill, SB 171, said the letter “highlights one of the most egregious cases, but there are scores of situations that should have been done better, and could have been done better, had everyone known there was more transparency to the process.”
The current bill puts the ombudsman office in the Department of Human Services.
But Penry said he is contemplating an amendment that would put it in the office of the attorney general.
“We need someone with a totally fresh set of eyes, and this wouldn’t be without precedent,” Penry said.
The Office of the Consumer Counsel, “a watchdog for the utilities commission,” he said, is placed in the attorney general’s office.
Lundberg wasn’t “entirely happy with it being in (DHS), but if that’s the best we can get right now to move forward,” then he supports it, he said.
His major concern, he said, is that “the ombudsman get full access to all information, so it’s not just a rubber stamp.”
“This needs to be an independent area, and if it isn’t going to work that way, and there are people holding us accountable, I’m going to be out front cheering them on,” Lundberg said.
