DHS chief OKs axing of 2 named in Danieal Kelly grand-jury report

The city's new DHS commissioner yesterday in effect dismissed two social workers who allegedly failed to help Danieal Kelly, a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who died a slow, unimaginable death after months of being essentially imprisoned in a feces-littered bed without food or water.

The move to fire Dana Poindexter and Laura Sommerer came just one week after the District Attorney's Office released a stunning grand-jury report that examined Danieal's brutal death and evoked widespread outrage across Philadelphia.

"It is our mission at DHS to support and protect vulnerable children," Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose said in a statement. "I intend to hold every staff member and provider accountable for upholding that mission."

The grand jury concluded that Poindexter failed to investigate at least five abuse or neglect complaints regarding Danieal. In his 16 years at DHS, Poindexter was suspended four times for poor performance, including last week's suspension in the wake of the grand-jury report, which branded him as a "do-nothing" social worker with "dangerously reckless work habits."

Sommerer, a graduate of Villanova University, who has worked for DHS since 1992, also failed to check up on Danieal or ensure that she attended school or received medical care, the grand jury concluded.

"The consequences of her failure were deadly," the grand jury said.

Under her mother's care, Danieal, a once-smiling girl who liked to sing, wasted away to 42 pounds, and a ravine of maggot-infested bedsores spanned her entire back.

Prosecutors charged Poindexter and Sommerer with child endangerment, a felony that carries a maximum seven years in prison.

Sommerer's attorney, Tomika N. Stevens, did not return a call yesterday. No one answered Poindexter's phone at his Powelton Village home last night.

After disciplinary hearings on Wednesday, a DHS panel unanimously voted to suspend Poindexter and Sommerer for 30 days without pay, pending their dismissal. Yesterday, Ambrose upheld the panel's recommendation.

Poindexter and Sommerer did not attend the hearings, but they were represented by their union. Bob Bedard, a spokesman for District Council 47 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, declined to comment on the dismissals. He cited a union policy not to comment on disciplinary matters.

Meanwhile yesterday, a group of mothers fighting to get their children out of foster care held a rally outside DHS headquarters in Center City. The rally, dubbed "DHS - Give Us Back Our Children," drew about 25 people, said Pamela Thomas.

Thomas, who is a member of a network called Every Mother is a Working Mother, applauded the commissioner's decision to fire Poindexter and Sommerer. But, Thomas said, she worries that Danieal's case might spark a "foster-care panic" in which DHS workers might remove kids from their homes "too quickly and too recklessly" because they're afraid of making a mistake.

DHS spokeswoman Alicia Taylor said that social workers don't take kids from their homes without first performing a thorough investigation.

"The overwhelming majority of our social workers do an excellent job, day in and day out," Taylor said. "While they may be very upset about what happened in [Danieal's] case, they are very diligent and will continue to do an excellent job." *