Social Workers Sit in at Council Hearing

A few dozen social workers from the City's Child and Family Services administration traveled to the Wilson building Tuesday to hear testimony at a hearing looking into the DC's Government's response to the Jacks family crisis.

Deloris Williams, a 13 year veteran says there is shock over the firings of two of her colleagues who went to the Jack's home but left and eventually dropped the case. She says there is now fear on the part of remaining social workers about what will happen to them if they make mistakes on the job.

Sources told me the one administrator fired by Mayor Fenty is Cynthia Courts-Marshall. She had been with The Department of Human services for a while; but in the top job over social workers for only about a year.

Two telephone operators were also fired because the Mayor felt they hadn't done their jobs after the agency was first notified that Banita Jack's family was in crisis.

In the end it was US Deputy Marshalls, and not social workers on the case, who found the four daughters of Jack, dead..their decomposing bodies in their house in Southeast where Jacks had been holding them captive--away from their schools, Booker T Washington and Meridian Charter schools, both on Florida avenue in Northwest.

The girls hadn't been to classes for at least 33 days. Meridian never notified authorities according to city officials who testified at the hearing called by Councilman Tommy Wells.

In an interview with me on Tuesday, Wells, said if needed, a bill would be forthcoming requiring Charter schools to comply with a rule that says notification must come if a student is absent without excuse for ten days.