John Williams reports that a Senate committee has endorsed Sen. David Johnson’s bill that would allow state Human Services to release information about children who die in the state’s care.

Readers know I’ve been griping since last summer about the state’s stonewalling on  four deaths of children last year. I simply don’t believe that the agency cannot now talk, at least in general terms, about such cases and specifically about performance of agency employees in  responding to abuse cases.

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The Beebe administration has backed this law change. Fine. But it doesn’t cover the case of the child discovered in a Little Rock grocery last year, nearly beaten to death, who’d been returned to the care of an abusive home in which a DHS worker lived despite a report of mistreatment to DHS. That case is STILL being stonewalled. That case WON’T be covered by this law.

I’ll believe the Beebe administration’s good intentions about transparency in child protection when it starts explaining how cases such as this occurred and whether there’s been any fallout for any employee as a result. 375-2985

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