State orders changes in Madison County agency

ANDERSON -- The state welfare agency has ordered corrective measures in a county office where a caseworker was indicted in an 8-year-old boy's death from neglect.\nThe Madison County Division of Family and Children Services scored lower than any other child protection office reviewed this year, officials said Tuesday.\nThe county scored 71 percent in providing services to at-risk children in a review covering the period Feb. 17 to 23. The state standard is 90 percent.\n"There were problems that needed to be addressed," said Scott MacGregor, a spokesman for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.\nThe review was ordered after firefighters found the boy, who had cerebral palsy and was confined to a wheelchair, dead after a Jan. 21 fire at his home in Elwood, about 45 miles north of Indianapolis.\nAn autopsy found he had died of pneumonia a day before the fire, and tests found evidence that he was malnourished and had not been given medicine to treat seizures.\nA grand jury indicted social worker Mike Warrum in March on felony neglect charges alleging that he failed to adequately protect the boy. Warrum was placed on administrative leave.\nProsecutor Rodney Cummings expressed skepticism about the review and said it would not have much effect unless supervisors "stayed on top of it."\n"If we didn't charge a caseworker with a crime nothing would have changed," said Cummings.\nThe county agency's director, Bruce Stansberry, was downgraded in a performance review and three supervisors were given work improvement plans, MacGregors said.\nThe plan proposed by Stansberry and accepted by the state addressed screening cases of alleged neglect, improving communications and improving staff morale.\nThe fallout from the Norris case has affected the entire state, said Elaine Fuller, who directs Madison County's court-appointed special advocates. One county is now requiring caseworkers to take a photograph of every child in the system on a monthly basis and submit it to the courts, she said.\n"Every agency should go through a self-assessment process," she said. "The key is not to let children die"