One of the policy proposals tucked into the recently enacted 634-page budget bill involves child welfare issues.
The “Dominique Moody Safety Act” is the legislature’s response to the death of six-year-old Dominique Moody from neglect and abuse. Social workers and law enforcement in Mecklenburg County were aware of conditions in the child’s home, but she wasn’t taken from her relatives in time.
The new legislation will create a new Child Welfare Escalation Team at the state level that will investigate reports of abuse and neglect in households deemed "high risk." The bill passed the House unanimously, and while the Senate didn't take action on the original bill, some of its components were added to the budget bill.
Rep. Allen Chesser, R-Nash and the bill’s sponsor, joined this week’s WUNC Politics Podcast to talk about the changes. He says the proposal stemmed from a House oversight committee hearing on the Moody case.
This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
How did you learn about this case, and at what point did you decide the legislature needed to get involved on this particular issue?
"I learned about it as much of the general public did, through the media and the reports that we saw in the media, and so I started sending out some feelers and had my staff send out feelers to Mecklenburg County. Based off of their responses, I felt like we were going to need to be a little more firm in our investigation."
What stuck out to you that this is not just a random tragedy, this is something that was structural, and systems failed to get to the point where this child died?
“Once we got behind the curtain and saw the amount of law enforcement involvement and the amount of (Child Protective Services) involvement in the case, and the fact that the child was allowed to remain in the home — that sent up every red flag that we have, and we knew we had a very tragic situation that we could not afford to allow to repeat itself."
You're on the oversight committee that held a lengthy hearing with Charlotte and Mecklenburg County officials to determine what went wrong in this case. What were some of your main takeaways from the hearing on where this could have and should have been stopped — for this child be taken out of the home?
"My main takeaway, I'm still not sure that we can talk about publicly yet. It's still under court order, but I'm hopeful that that'll become public sooner rather than later.
"Someone made a proper decision, and someone else overrode that decision, and I think that is what allowed this tragedy to occur, and so essentially the question becomes, 'who watches the watchdog? What does the process look like when a supervisor overrides someone who's on the line? Is there a way to appeal that decision, and who is monitoring that at large to make sure that there's not a pattern of gross misbehavior there?"
You co-sponsored the Dominique Moody Act with Rep. Carla Cunningham, U-Mecklenburg, to strengthen child welfare regulations. What would this do to change how child welfare regulations work?
"It has an escalation team in it. That's the backbone of the bill, that extra 'watchdog on the watchdog' portion that we talked about: someone who can actually look at these decisions and make sure that from a 30,000-foot view, 'hey, do we agree with this decision? Do we think they're making the right decision with the information that's in front of them or not?' So that, I think, will help alleviate a lot of the conditions that led to Dominique Moody's death. The one piece that didn't make it into the budget, but we'll continue to fight for, was the new training model, as far as recognizing risk and assessing risk."
Chesser also spoke about his bill to regulate blockchain and digital assets, as well as a proposed sales tax exemption on diapers and feminine hygiene products.
Listen to the full conversation on the WUNC Politics Podcast.
