Head of Tennessee's child protective services resigns after '151 children died in custody within a 3.5-year period'

  • Kate O'Day has served as commissioner of state's Department of Children's Services since January of 2011
  • DCS previously reported 151 children had died between January of 2009 and July of 2012 while in their custody
  • DCS has since redacted that number and say they don't know the exact number which is believed to be higher


Out: Kate O'Day, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, has resigned amid scrutiny of how her agency was handling cases of children who died after investigations of abuse and neglect

Out: Kate O'Day, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, has resigned amid scrutiny of how her agency was handling cases of children who died after investigations of abuse and neglect

The embattled commissioner of Tennessee's Department of Children’s Services has resigned amid an investigation into at least 151 children who died while in their care in a three and a half-year period.

Gov Bill Haslam announced Kate O’Day’s resignation on Tuesday in a news release while stating no mention of the investigation nor any admitted wrongdoing.

'She was concerned that she had become more of a focus than the children the department serves,' Haslam said in the release. He wasn't immediately available to comment.

The Republican governor last week defended O'Day's leadership, even after the agency told a federal judge it couldn't say with any certainty how many children died while in its custody.

The department previously reported the deaths of 151 children in their custody between January of 2009 and July of 2012 but retracted that number after a third party reported that number to be less than exact.

They now say they are not sure how many have died.

According to the Tennessean in the first six month of 2012 there were 31 deaths among children, ranging from newborns to teenagers.

The deaths originally reported by DCS included infants, toddlers, grad-schoolers and teenagers. The causes of death included bodily fractures or injuries, gunshot wounds, natural causes and drug exposure.

DCS had since been sued by The Tennessean, The Associated Press and 10 other news organizations to obtain case records of those 151 children and had been the subject of state investigations of abuse or neglect.

'It’s something the public has a right to know about as it pertains to the safety of children,' Chattanooga Times Free Press Managing Editor Alison Gerber told the Tennessean.

O’Day previously said that the names are being kept secret ‘not to protect DCS, they’re really to protect the families,’ according to the newspaper.

Chancellor Carol McCoy ruled last month that DCS, which had claimed it was keeping the records closed to protect the children's privacy, had to release hundreds of pages from four cases to the news organizations after identifying information was redacted. A decision on whether more records were to be released is pending.

Numbers: The department, pictured, admitted to the deaths of 151 children in their custody between January of 2009 and July of 2012 before redacting that figure that was later accused as too low

Numbers: The department, pictured, admitted to the deaths of 151 children in their custody between January of 2009 and July of 2012 before redacting that figure that was later accused as too low

Attorneys for the agency last week said it would cost at least $55,584.55 to make all records publicly available. They tallied costs including extra administrative assistants for filing and copying, extra paralegals, hand transportation across state, and enormous supplies of white out.

DCS has been under federal court oversight for more than a decade over problems in Tennessee's foster care system.

Less than two weeks ago DCS told a federal judge that it couldn't accurately count how many children have died in its custody, saying its tracking system had missed nine deaths in 2011 and 2012.

In December a quarter of the state’s child abuse hotline were also found going unanswered, the Tennessean reported.

The revelation and increasing calls for DCS to improve its performance have threatened to derail more than 10 years of work to resolve a long-running lawsuit over the agency's handling of foster care.

Thus far, officials have not been able to explain how DCS overlooked the nine deaths except to say that it was the result of human error.

DCS’ operations are currently being monitored by a third party which was the first to discover the additional unreported deaths according to WBIR. The department is now trying to get out of that consent order.

Haslam has named Commissioner Jim Henry, the head of the Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, to serve as interim commissioner of DCS.

O'Day had been commissioner since January 2011, when she was appointed by Haslam. Before that she was president and chief executive officer of Child & Family Tennessee in Knoxville.

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