Maryland Association of Resources for Families and Youth

November 10, 2004

Thank you for inviting me to join you today. And, more importantly, thank you for everything you do for our kids, every day, when you’re not here in Ocean City. Our city and our children are much better off for your work.

The best moments of my job have been provided by Baltimore’s children – when our first and second graders scored above the national average in reading and math for the first time in 30 years, that was a huge statement of what our kids are capable of achieving. When I visit classrooms – which I try to do as much as possible – I see hope for our city’s future in each child’s eyes. When I see the Sandtown Children’s Choir sing I choke up – every single time.

The lowest moments of the past five years also have involved children – not long after I took office, a two year-old boy was shot and killed sitting in a barber’s chair getting a birthday haircut. I’ll never forget visiting him and his mother in the hospital, and seeing his little body hooked up to all those tubes. Burying the five Dawson children – who were killed by someone barely out of childhood himself – was indescribably sad. The life and death of Ciara Jobes, somehow, was something none of us foresaw, nor, apparently, was able to prevent.

The most cutting question of my five years in office was asked by a 12 year-old girl named Amber. At one of our town meetings at Dunbar High School, Amber walked up to the microphone and said: “Some people at the newspaper call my neighborhood Zombieland because so many of the people are addicted to drugs. My question is: do you know about my neighborhood, and what are you doing about it?”

Every day, we try to answer Amber’s question through our actions. We’ve had some success – we’ve gone from treating 11,000 people for their addictions in 1999 to 25,000 today, and we’ve reduced violent crime by 40%—to it’s lowest level since 1970. But 32 children have been murdered in our city this year. Our test scores are rising, as more children in our schools achieve. But too many children are still dropping out of school – turning away from opportunity, because they can’t see it within themselves.

These are the contradictions that exist in Baltimore. And, although some may wish to pretend it’s not so, Baltimore is not an island separated from the rest of our state. These are the contradictions that exist in Maryland. The challenges Baltimore’s children confront are those faced by children in every corner of our state – rural, urban and suburban Maryland.

In this wealthy state, children should be safe… children should be cared for… children should have opportunities for education and growth… children should be loved. But every one of us in this room knows that, for too many of Maryland’s children, none of these things are true.

In this wealthy state, children are killed – and are killers… children are left to raise themselves, with parents who are absent or addicted… the chaos of the streets sometimes intrudes upon our schools… too many children grow up knowing fear, not love.

And the ultimate cruel irony is that children continue to get hurt and die while in the care of the system that was designed to protect them when all else fails.

When I look at Maryland’s child welfare system, I’m reminded of Ben Franklin’s line: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Our Department of Social Services has been operating under a consent decree from a 20-year old lawsuit – and we face the same issues now, concerning caseworker to client ratios, that we faced in 1984. The other morning I woke up to read about abuse in a boot camp where DJS was sending kids. We’ve long heard reports of violence in large facilities like the Hickey School and Cheltenham – and now we’re hearing about it at the brand new Baltimore Juvenile Detention Center. It’s like Groundhog Day – only it’s damaging to children, and a damning indictment on our state.

Given the difficulty of reforming these systems, I think it’s easier for a lot of people to give up and throw up their hands, rather than digging in and getting to work. I hear it from politicians and so-called wise men all the time – don’t get involved in the city schools, don’t get involved in DSS, don’t get involved in DJS. They’re disasters… they can’t be fixed. Look what happened to the Lt. Governor when she tried to reform Juvenile Justice.

But all the smart people in this room wouldn’t show up for work every morning if it were impossible to fix. And the welfare of our State’s children is too important for us to accept mediocrity and failure. We should judge our society based on how we treat the least among us.

I believe that the road to reform is clear, and consists of two primary, guiding principles: transparency and accountability.

Last May, there was another in a long string of tragedies that made clear the need for these reforms. Emunnea and Emonney Broadway were sent home from the hospital where they were born with their troubled young parents – despite a record of abuse. When a hospital worker called DSS to see if there were any problems in the home, the answer was no. This deadly mistake was one part of the problem.

But what also was disturbing to me was that DSS didn’t know who answered the phone call or exactly what they knew about the parents. It was disturbing because it’s so basic to making an organization operate effectively.

What really got to me is that in Baltimore – with our 311 call center and our CitiStat accountability system – a phone call to report a pothole would result in an electronic record recording the time of call, the customer service representative’s name, a tracking number and a work order. And a phone call that could have saved a child’s life didn’t get nearly as much care and attention.

Without the right information, there cannot be accountability, and there cannot be transparency. And that’s where we need to start.

Jim McComb, Marfy’s Executive Director, visited our CitiStat and 311 operations with some colleagues a few months ago. CitiStat is based on the very simple idea that what gets measured gets done. Citizen calls for service are logged and tracked. Supervisors and inspectors also initiate service requests based on agency priorities. And we drive performance toward achievable goals.

What Jim saw was a system that manages for results based on four tenets: Accurate and timely intelligence; Effective tactics and strategies; Rapid deployment of resources; and Relentless follow-up and assessment.

Every two weeks, every one of our agencies provides reports on the basics of what they do. For example, in Solid Waste, we measure everything from tonnage collected to citations issued.

However, we determined early on that three indicators were the best initial measures: absences, overtime and citizen complaints. They were all connected – when employees were absent, others had to pick up the slack, driving up overtime, and there were fewer people to get the job done. By tracking data, by sharing ideas to improve performance, and by recognizing good performers and disciplining poor performers, we cut overtime by millions of dollars, reduced absenteeism, and improved service.

We find solutions by holding employees accountable for their numbers and by sharing information with all relevant people – inside and outside government.

Obviously, children are a lot more complex than trash and trucks. But it is possible to pick five or six important indicators and manage performance. You would know better than I what are the most important indicators, but every time there’s a bad article in the paper about DSS or DJS, it usually involves something that can and should be tracked.

I understand Maryland is last among the 50 states in follow-up investigations on abuse complaints. A Stat program could eliminate that problem – and it’s our experience that it wouldn’t necessarily cost more. Are children getting mental health treatment on schedule? Are children getting regular medical treatment? Are foster families getting background checks? Are children receiving medication? Who is answering the phone and do they have the information to do their job? These are the kind of things we should track.

There are a finite number of children in care. Experts like all of you in this room know very well what our children need to succeed. This is not an unmanageable challenge if we care enough to hold ourselves accountable.

And to be truly accountable, there must be public accountability – some higher level of transparency. I understand that in working with children there must be a certain level of confidentiality. But the longer I am in office, the more I believe that people use confidentiality as an excuse to mask the ineffectiveness of our bureaucracies. Too many children have died with their confidentiality intact, but their lives in tatters.

I’m told that the people whose names will go on the federal Child and Family Services Review, as its authors, cannot get a copy of the report from the State. They’ve filed a Public Information Act request, which has been denied. This is insane. It’s aimed at protecting the Administration’s rear end, rather than protecting children.

Light is the most powerful disinfectant. And it’s time for our child welfare system to be opened up so it can be healed.

This past summer, CitiStat won the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Innovations in Government Award. I’m a big believer in the power of innovation.

We must innovate in child protection, foster care, juvenile services – not repeat our mistakes over and over. We cannot let our children drift through life – and through a dysfunctional system – until they are seriously delinquent and, then, lock them up.

People are making progress in other states. Missouri has completely rebuilt its juvenile corrections system around smaller facilities and positive intervention. According to Maryland’s own Casey Foundation, 70% of the youths released from Missouri’s youth services system in 1999 had avoided recommitment three years later. I doubt we have the data to make a comparison, but I’m certain Maryland is not meeting this level of success.

In New York, the Harlem Children’s Zone is intervening in the lives of families in a 60-block area – with about 15,000 children. This is not some small pilot project. Geoffrey Canada, who heads the Children’s Zone, was in Baltimore last week with the Open Society Institute.

He talked about talking to women on the street if they looked pregnant to ensure they received prenatal care. He talked about teaching parents how to care for their children. He talked about schools that are community centers of excellence – with extended days and school years. He talked about the importance of synching up family values, community values and school values – lessons learned in the classroom will not take if they are contradicted everywhere else. He talked about teaching children to be optimistic, and to envision their future – bad choices like crime and dropping out are driven by desperation.

” But he also talked about data, and performance measurement, and return on investment. And most of all he talked about outcomes, not inputs or activities. This is where Maryland should be heading.

There is great, groundbreaking work going on in Maryland – New Pathways, run by your Board President Kevin Keegan, is doing cutting edge stuff in transitioning kids from foster care to productive adulthood – and tracking their progress in life. The Casey Foundation has been a national leader in encouraging accountability and entrepreneurship. Marfy’s membership list is filled with creative organizations and people.

But innovation is not encouraged in Maryland, today – and, more importantly, it’s not funded. We keep trying the same things over and over.

We know that early investments can save money down the road. We know that investing in innovation can pay big dividends. But that word – “investment” – seems to have fallen out of favor in Annapolis these days.

In Baltimore, we’ve seen our local DSS office cease to be an advocate for our share of TANF funds. There were problems long before the current administration, but in the past few years we’ve seen: $1.4 million cut from daycare for parents in drug treatment; $2 million cut from after-school programs funded by the Family League; $1 million cut from summer jobs; $3 million cut from dropout prevention; $1.2 million cut from adult literacy; and $1 million cut from our Health Department that went for pregnancy prevention, our Men’s Health Center, and job training for school health aides.

Welfare savings intended to help families facing hard times are being raided by politicians facing hard choices. These cuts are another case where transparency would help. With no one fighting for us, the cuts occur and we find out when it’s too late. I don’t think anyone voted to cut after-school programs or dropout prevention.

I’m very hopeful that our new director Sam Chambers will turn things around, but we’ve been digging deeper.

If we intervene in a child’s life at a young age – with education, health care, counseling, whatever it takes – then we are less likely to pay the higher costs of incarceration and victimization. The same is true of our child welfare and juvenile services systems – the longer we wait to right our course, the more expensive it will be.

We know what works – based on examples in other states and what is working here in Maryland. What is lacking is the political will to make investments that are directly tied to outcomes – with accountability and transparency.

Our state really needs your help in making the case. There are no spare children in Baltimore. There are no spare children in Maryland. I would appreciate any advice you might have about how I can help you make this case.

Finally, you’re all welcome to visit CitiStat and our 311 center. I think you’ll see that – with a little money and the guidance of the people who know these issues – we could hold our child protection systems accountable today. You’re right, and the cynics are wrong. Real progress is possible.

I think what we have been doing in Baltimore, and the way we have been doing it, with openness, with transparency, with opening up public institutions so that the people who actually pay for it, and whose government it actually is, with all due respect to our incumbent governor, it is not his government, it our government, that that openness and transparency is what makes government effective. It is what makes it responsive, and I don’t think as Democrats that we should try away from making government effective and responsive – that’s what people want. I’ve never met a person that didn’t.

We now have a state, which has been the great beneficiary of the investments that you and I and our parents have made over the years. We are a state that despite the downturn in the national economy actually did better than other states. Why, because we made the investments necessary. We had the guts and the courage to believe that all of us are in this together. So we invest in higher education. We believe that people who work hard, who are responsible enough to work their way through high school, and want to work their way through college that they shouldn’t be priced out of an in-state tuition.

We’re a people who believe that one of the greatest things that prior generations have passed on to us is the beauty of this state, including the Chesapeake Bay, and we have a moral obligation to pass that on to the next generation. In a cleaner, better, healthier state than we received ourselves.

We are a people who believe that if we make sound investments based on a common vision that we can even tackle thorny problems like the transportation gridlock that threatens in a very well way the quality of life we have and the time we are able to spend with our families.

We are a people who believe that we are all in this together. And that indeed security, whether homeland security, or whether security in our cities or older communities is something that effects all of us.

There is a doctor named Jeffery Sachs, and he an advisor to Kofi Annan at the U.N. All of us have seen the outpouring of generosity that comes from Americans in the wake of the horrible pictures we all saw in the tsunami disaster, right? Even as our national government embarrassed us in the eyes of the world with miserly contributions to reliving that, we saw the goodness of the American pour out their hearts and open their wallets to that suffering – that loss of 175,000, I haven’t read the paper today – whatever it may be up to, especially with all the other diseases that might be hitting them.

Well, Dr. Sachs points out in a kind of mind blowing way that 200,000 people died last week around our planet, most of them children, from things that from an American perspective are entirely preventable. Things like dysentery, tuberculosis and malaria, and another 200,000 will die next week from things that from 1% of our GNP we can prevent or eliminate.

There is in Brooklyn, NY a little marker – you know, we all remember 1776 as the time our independence was declared – but what we don’t remember as well is that it was an awful year for the American Army. Defeat after defeat at Harlem Heights and on White Plains. There is a marker that says there in Brooklyn over the mass graves of 256 Marylanders, a marker that says, “In Honor of the Maryland 400, who on this Battlefield on August 27, 1776, saved the American Army.”

The reason I throw out that little history tidbit is this. The people who saved the American Army in 1776 were your neighbors and mine, whether our families came here long after that or not. They were your neighbors and mine, and we have inherited from them not only a legacy, not only an opportunity, but also a responsibility.

There is a tide that is pushing against what I think are the true ideals of America, of fairness, responsibility, opportunity, and security. There is a tide that is pushing against us at a national level and friends, it is also right here in Maryland. And it is time for Marylanders once again in the “Old Line” state to defend the line that makes America, America.

To defend the line against a state government that would raid transportation trust funds, that would seek to secretly sell off public lands, that would gut open space dollars, that would play these cynical shell games where they cut $23 million in vouchers for child care, increase $3 million in another, $20 million gets pocketed to the general fund, and then they do press conferences talking about how this is the “Year of the Child.”

And in the “Year of the Child” we’ve cut $375,000 from the lead abatement efforts that Baltimore has received national awards for, for the lawyers that go after those contaminated properties.

There is a responsibility that we have in Maryland to hold the line. To hold the line, to hold the line against this sort of cynicism, this sort of divestment in the future, this sort of irresponsibility, and yes, the lack of honesty, the lack of candor, the lack of open communication that has descended in Newt Gingrich-style from Capital Hill down to the State House in Annapolis.

Let me go back to Amber and Jeffery Sachs before I open it up here and try the best I can to answer any questions you have, giving the disclaimer right off the top that I don’t have the answer to every single problem that faces us, but I am willing to try, and I think you are too.

I really think that our future as a country is going to be determined not by how many smart bombs we are able to send against our enemies, but by how many smart, compassionate and educated American hands we are able to extend from places like NIH, Metamune, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland to the most fragile our neighbors around the world.

It’s also going to be determined by how we defend this state and the quality of life that we pride ourselves on. And it is also going to be determined in a very real way in what we do in the battle between justice and injustice that rages in every single big city in the United States of America most starkly across battle lines where 12-year old girls like Amber live.

I think, I know. I believe Maryland can do better, and I think you do too.

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