PROTECTING CHILDREN

D.C.'s Child and Family Services failed in the case of Banita Jacks, who has been charged with the murder of all of her children:

The D.C. medical examiner positively identified the bodies of the four girls found dead in a Southeast Washington row house last month, but could not determine how they were killed because their organs were so badly decomposed.

The investigation formally confirmed, through DNA and dental records, that the dead were Brittany Jacks, 17, Tatiana Jacks, 11, N’Kiah Fogle, 6, and Aja Fogle, 5, the daughters of Banita Jacks, officials announced Wednesday.

The mother was charged last month in their slayings.

The medical examiner’s office is waiting on a report analyzing insects found with the bodies to narrow down the time of the girls’ deaths. Authorities say the sisters had been dead for at least two weeks and more likely for months before U.S. marshals discovered the gruesome scene Jan. 9 while they were serving an eviction notice....

Today in the Washington Post comes this story, indicating that Child and Family Services can also go too far in the other direction:

On the Thursday before Labor Day, while Julianna Caplan was changing the diaper on one of her twins, she heard a dull thud. She turned around to see her other 8-month-old trying to push herself up from the floor, where she'd been playing, and knock her head.

There were no bumps or bruises, but over the next few hours, the little girl acted fussy, then altogether out of sorts. After she began throwing up and drifting off to sleep, her parents grew concerned, called the doctor and ended up at Children's Hospital.

The baby recovered fully within 24 hours, but almost six months later, Caplan and her husband, Greg, remain trapped in the District's frightening child-abuse system. It is a quicksand of bureaucratic paralysis, a warped mirror image of the indifference that permitted Banita Jacks's four girls to die in Southeast last year.

The city took both Caplan twins away from home and placed them in foster care for a time. The parents are still on the city's child-abuse registry, even though a court and police have found no evidence of abuse.

After Mayor Adrian Fenty fired six Child and Family Services Agency workers because they "just didn't do their job" in the Jacks case, social workers predicted that the pendulum would swing to the point that the slightest whisper of possible abuse would result in knee-jerk reactions against parents.

[...]

The parents believe the city was right to suspect abuse, right to investigate, right to run tests. But they say the case went off the rails when city lawyers continued to press abuse allegations even after the judge found no cause to proceed.

[...]

The Caplans plan to sue the District, seeking reforms in the child welfare system and reimbursement of what they spent fighting the allegations. The twins are happy and playful children now, but the daughter who spent two weeks in foster care "freaks out if I leave the room," Julianna says. "Before, she would let anyone hold her. Now, she screams."

Government bureaucrats aren't known for their common sense, of course. And more government bureaucracy, which both of the leading Democratic Party's candidates propose in their stump speeches, will lead to more abuse of citizens and taxpayers at the hands of the nanny state.

The nanny state is corrupt and incompetent, yet Americans keep turning to the idea of the nanny state for an ever-widening range of solutions.

As Barry Goldwater said,

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

That includes one's children.