Joette Katz, the new commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, held an open meeting with reporters Monday to outline changes that are underway with the troubled agency.
Katz, a former State Supreme Court justice, has the tall task of turning around an agency that's been under federal court supervision for 20 years.
Among her priorities: restructuring the agency to cut bureaucracy. "Create a flatter agency, one that has fewer layers in the hopes that we will be delivering to our families at a more streamlined, efficient, and effective manner," said Katz.
Katz says she'll personally review the most serious cases where children under DCF supervision end up dead. One of those cases involved an infant born addicted to cocaine who was under DCF supervision all of his life. He died at two and a half months old, after his father, Anthony Nelson, admitted falling on the baby's head while walking to get a beer.
"We need to learn from these things," said Katz. "There are a lot of things that we do very well but that doesn't mean we do them perfectly and it doesn't mean there's not room for improvement."
Other changes Katz plans to make include consolidating the Riverview Psychiatric Hospital and Connecticut Children's Place under one superintendent, bringing many of the 360 children who are currently housed out-of-state back to Connecticut, increasing foster homes, especially homes where children can stay with relatives and reclassifying low-risk cases from investigations to assessments.
"We hope to embrace our families in a much friendlier way," said Katz.
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Katz says she's hoping federal oversight of the agency will end in one to two years, and that talks are underway to outline what steps DCF needs to take to make that happen.
