What is Accountability? 🔗
the fact of being responsible for what you do and able to give a satisfactory reason for it - Cambridge Dictionary
When someone or some agency has a responsibility to fulfill we should expect them to fulfill that responsibility and be able to provide evidence of being responsible. All too often agencies fail to fulfill their responsibilities, especially largely unregulated public agencies, whether by choice or ignorance. We should expect the public services we pay for to uphold their responsibilities and further we should expect to be able to hold them accountable when they don’t.
Why should I care? 🔗
The inconvenient truth is that the more we, the public, allow our public services to go unchecked the more emboldened they become and this is a vicious cycle that, in the case of DCYF at least, leads to the agency traumatizing children and families in special and unique ways knowing full well that they can do anything they want and nobody will fight back. Even if you believe that DCYF is the perfect organization because they took your side once and ruined the life of someone you dislike you should understand that they will do that to you as well if they so choose to and they do it to families all over New Hampshire consistently.
In an ideal world DCYF would act in the best interest of the children they are involved with and investigate each case properly, without predjudice and to better the lives of the family they are involved with. This can only happen if we ensure that it does because the current situation is the opposite of that and it’s unacceptable.
Excuses.. excuses. 🔗
DCYF often says that it’s impossible to provide attention to each case because of the high workload that they have to deal with every day but this is a bad cop-out that can be easily debunked by looking at their own website which encourages people to file more reports even when that may put them in danger of civil liability and in fact the worse the public perception of the organization the less prospective employees they will have which continues the vicious cycle worsening the organization in every way.
DCYF asking for more funding to resolve internal issues related to workload is just throwing more money at a problem emboldened by not being held accountable continuing and enabling the significant organizational, training and employee issues within. Proper training, good communication with the public and ending the abuse conducted by the organization will improve it’s case load and resolve many of the issues they claim to face.
What can I do? 🔗
Keep records of everything and do your research. Do not let DCYF bully you and when they inevitably break the law, sue them. That’s right, sue them. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small claim or a large one. We as the public have a duty to hold them accountable and if we continue to allow their abuse it will continue to ruin children and families. It doesn’t matter if you believe you cannot afford a civil case you should reach out to several civil lawyers and tell them what’s happened. Don’t be demotivated if some lawyers tell you that they don’t want to take your case or they believe you don’t have one this is common because it’s difficult to take on a government organization like DCYF but it is possible and the more it happens the easier it will become.