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Child Advocate outlines priorities: youth voice, medication gaps and placement oversight
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Summary
The Office of the Child Advocate told the committee it is prioritizing outreach to youth, monitoring placement instability and focusing on medication access and oversight of congregate care, and said it will track agency responses to formal recommendations.
Carrie Leonard, Child Advocate, briefed the committee on the Office of the Child Advocate’s staffing expansion, intake work and annual priorities. The office is one year and a half old; Leonard said the OCA’s role is independent, investigative, and focused on representing children’s interests across child welfare and juvenile justice systems.
Top priorities
- Youth outreach: OCA flagged that while it receives complaints from parents, foster parents and professionals, direct reports from youth are fewer. The office is designing outreach (including youth‑facing materials and youth bill‑of‑rights distribution) to increase safe, trusted channels for youth to speak directly to the OCA. - Placement instability and medication access: Leonard described repeated cases in which youth entered placements without essential medications, producing dysregulation and rapid placement failures. The OCA told the committee it will pursue root‑cause analysis of why medication hand‑offs fail and work with case managers and providers on corrective actions. - Best‑interest staffing review: the OCA is working with DCF, Children’s Alliance and other stakeholders to design a more independent review process for contested adoptive selection decisions; currently, the ‘independent reviewer’ is often an employee of the case‑management subcontractor, which raises conflict‑of‑interest concerns.
Office activity and remedies
OCA investigators review complaints; where problems are found the office issues formal reports and recommendations to DCF and contracted case‑management providers. The OCA tracks agency responses: agencies are asked to provide implementation timelines for corrective steps and OCA follows up to monitor whether recommended changes were adopted.
Pilot and cross‑system work
Leonard said the OCA is convening providers to explore interventions for a small cohort of adolescents who repeatedly disrupt placements and who are often involved in juvenile justice. The OCA also emphasized the importance of connecting placement instability patterns to gaps in community mental‑health services and to the availability of licensed, trained staff in foster homes and residential settings.
What the committee asked for
Members asked for data on Sedgwick/Region 7 failures to place and on specific DCF forms that notify parents of appeal rights. Leonard said the OCA will assist in gathering records, and the committee asked DCF for written materials describing notice and appeal timelines.
