A Ray of Hope For Abused Pair - And for DCFS

Let's start with some good news, which seems too often in shortsupply these days.

Clifford Triplett, that heartbreakingly abused 5-year-old kidwhose case was so unforgivably mishandled by DCFS, is gaining weight,feeling better and may be getting out of the hospital on Friday, I'mtold.

The idea is for him to spend Christmas with his also-abusedbrother, Willie, and their paternal grandparents in Mississippi, whoseem to be the only people able and eager to give the boys the kindof love all kids have coming.

This temporary holiday arrangement is not official yet, but letus hope the social welfare system that has so far so woefully failedthese two kids doesn't go haywire again.

I asked DCFS Inspector General Denise Kane about thesegrandparents and what might be best for the kids in the coming legaldecision on their custody.

"I would hope the grandmother who wants to adopt both boys" isawarded custody, Kane said. She is a "beatific vision" to Clifford."He keeps her picture with him."

The grandmother, Rebecca Triplett, 48, and her husband alreadyhave Willie, 7, living with them as a consequence of earlier abuse byEddie Lee Robinson, 34, the ex-con boyfriend of their mother, ArethaMcKinney, 25.

And when the grandmother heard about Clifford - beaten, scarred,malnourished, weighing only 18 pounds, his mother and Robinson jailedat last on felony cruelty charges - she immediately drove up toChicago and went to see him at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's MedicalCenter, where he had arrived close to death on Thanksgiving Day.

"He beamed when she came into the room," Kane said. "In everyfamily there's a strength, and in this family it's Rebecca."

The grandmother works in a fish factory, her husband does farmwork, they live in their own two-bedroom home in a "nice middle-classneighborhood," Kane said.

Willie's uncle, a teacher, picks him up every day after school;the boy's getting A's and B's in school, and he's joined the BoyScouts since going to Mississippi after a DCFS investigation intoabuse of him by Robinson.

Kane frankly acknowledged last week that DCFS investigatorsfailed their duty by not taking Clifford into protective custodyafter visits to the McKinney-Robinson South Side apartment last April and again in June.

McKinney relatives living upstairs and aware of the abuse hadcalled DCFS but done nothing else about the case.

I asked Kane about McKinney receiving, along with public aid,monthly federal disability payments for Clifford, who had beendiagnosed in 1990 with a developmental problem.

"You're asking, were they exploiting welfare as well asClifford," Kane said, "Yes. She (McKinney) was a very exploitiveperson."

"All the grandmother (who took in Willie with no help from DCFSand now wants to take care of Clifford, too) gets is food stamps,"Kane noted. "She's solid, she's the hope of that family."

Kane, who has extensive on-the-street experience in socialwelfare work, was appointed to her newly created job by Gov. Edgaronly last spring following an earlier abuse case disaster at DCFS.

She said she believes - would not have taken the job if shedidn't - that DCFS Director Sterling Ryder genuinely "wants to dosomething" to straighten up an agency that too often performs like acollection of crash-dummies.

She spoke again, as she did last week when recommendingsuspension or firing of three DCFS employees on Clifford's case,about the need for "systemic change" in what has become a "culture"of bureaucratic malaise, of better training, higher-qualityrecruiting, sterner discipline.

Kane has a staff of one part-time attorney and fourinvestigators. They already are wrestling with a caseload of "about150" complaints about DCFS performance.

This is not going to be an easy turnaround. Kane knows that.But it has to work, and soon, for all the Cliffords and Willies outthere.