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For new DHS chief, always a crisis

Anne Marie Ambrose had little more than a month to settle into her new post as head of the city's troubled Department of Human Services when the first crisis hit.

Anne Marie Ambrose took over an agency in June that has been described by the district attorney as in "total meltdown." "Our role is to help vulnerable children and families, and we failed," Ambrose says. (APRIL SAUL / Inquirer)
Anne Marie Ambrose took over an agency in June that has been described by the district attorney as in "total meltdown." "Our role is to help vulnerable children and families, and we failed," Ambrose says. (APRIL SAUL / Inquirer)Read more

Anne Marie Ambrose had little more than a month to settle into her new post as head of the city's troubled Department of Human Services when the first crisis hit.

On Thursday, a Philadelphia grand jury indicted not only the parents of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly, who had cerebral palsy and died in 2006 of starvation and neglect, but also two DHS social workers and two employees of the contractor DHS hired to provide direct services to the girl.

The grand jury's report slammed DHS, which has a $600 million-plus annual budget, and the now-defunct contractor, MultiEthnic Behavioral Health.

"How could parents have been so unloving? How could professionals have been so indifferent? And most of all," the report said, "how could the Philadelphia Department of Human Services - the giant, expensive safety net we have set up to protect the children of uncaring or incompetent parents - have been so uncaring and incompetent?"

What Ambrose, who was not with DHS when Kelly died, finds most disturbing is "the lack of attention we paid to this case. It's a huge system failure," she said in an interview Thursday night. "This didn't have to happen."

She said she will announce her decisions today concerning what to do about DHS employees named in the grand-jury report who had not been disciplined.

At a news conference after the grand jury report was released, Ambrose sounded tough and confident when she said, "I'm the commissioner at DHS, and I have every intention of . . . doing all that needs to be done to correct the deficiencies that were pointed out in this report."

But she choked up when asked her reaction to autopsy photos she had not seen before that showed a skeletal Danieal Kelly. Ambrose deflected the answer to Deputy Mayor Donald Schwarz. He said they were "both appalled."

"I was overcome with emotion," Ambrose said Thursday night. "Our role is to help vulnerable children and families, and we failed."

It was the failures, though, that prompted District Attorney Lynne Abraham to say DHS was in "total meltdown" and should be taken over by the state. The state and Schwarz, whose brief includes DHS, don't agree.

Pennsylvania Welfare Secretary Estelle B. Richman, for whom Ambrose used to work, said there were times well before Thursday that she had considered direct state management for DHS.

If it had come to that, Richman said, "I probably would have assigned Anne Marie, which tells me I still have the confidence in her to turn this agency around."

'Work cut out for her'

Ambrose, 45, is well known to Richman and at DHS.

After graduating from Emory University Law School in 1987, Ambrose represented children for 13 years with the Defender Association of Philadelphia.

She was the DHS deputy commissioner for Juvenile Justice Services and Court Practice from 2001 to 2005, then was the state's director of Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Services from 2006 until returning to Philadelphia in June.

DHS is charged with protecting the city's most vulnerable children. It investigates reports of abuse and neglect and can set in motion removing a youngster to a foster family or therapeutic treatment if the family home is deemed dangerous. It also works with Family Court to oversee those placed at the secure-detention Youth Study Center, which DHS runs.

Wherever DHS-dependent children live, the agency is supposed to keep tabs on them, to ensure they are safe.

Carol W. Spigner, a University of Pennsylvania distinguished professor who chaired a review panel of DHS and now heads its community oversight board, said last week: "This organization has been studied again and again and again. It's an organization that is very good at starting, but has had a tradition of not being able to move change all the way through the system."

DHS's new commissioner agrees. "I'm OK with people telling us we're doing something wrong and revisiting a decision," she said.

Ambrose was not in the initial pool of candidates Mayor Nutter looked at to succeed interim DHS Commissioner Arthur C. Evans Jr. The administration looked first at people with more experience in child and family welfare, said Deputy Mayor Schwarz. "It occurred to us as we looked through the pile of candidates nationally that we had a gem" in Pennsylvania.

During her first DHS stint, Ambrose worked with Family Court to improve alternative placements for young people in the justice system, and reduced overcrowding at the Youth Study Center.

"Many people were focused on the system as a system. Anne Marie was focused on children and families," Schwarz said. Nutter was impressed.

Testimony she gave July 17 to a State Senate hearing touched on some of the same issues raised two weeks later in the grand jury's report. Ambrose said she and Nutter want to "create a culture of accountability throughout DHS, at all levels, starting with senior management."

"There have been many reform efforts in the past that have followed tragic child deaths, yet they were inadequate in one crucial way," she told the panel. "They lacked sustained leadership and management structure that would allow any of the recommendations to be implemented correctly, or to hold anyone accountable for their failure or success."

Even though that goal could mean bumping heads with staff, AFSCME officials representing DHS workers praised Ambrose.

"The agency is in great need of reform," said Rita Urwitz, vice president of Local 2186, which represents about 150 DHS supervisors. "I think Annie does have her work cut out for her."

Kahim Boles, president of Local 2187, whose membership includes about 1,000 DHS social workers, said, "The union's position has always been we would like to see accountability on all levels. Annie is the person to do that. . . . She is somebody who does believe in management being even more responsible than people on the lower level of the totem pole."

Ask Ambrose to describe her approach, and "direct" is the response. "I really do cut to the chase. I am decisive. I try to include everybody's viewpoints," she said, "but I'm the decision-maker."

Ambrose has a vision of a more efficient DHS, but is a realist who expects answers when she asks questions. "Nonresponsiveness makes me crazy," she said, as does asking for money without justifying its need.

On Thursday, she assembled a leadership team to read the grand jury report and meet Friday morning to discuss an action plan and review the personnel files of DHS employees mentioned.

Since starting as commissioner June 23, Ambrose has been putting in 14-hour days.

Every issue before her is a big one, including improving direct contact with children, complying with a new budget system, and boosting staff morale.

By 11 one mid-July morning, she had worked on State Senate testimony, met with DHS staff and contractors about youngsters who outgrow the foster-care system, and sat down with executive cabinet members to discuss how best to use clinical-review meetings in which all city departments involved in a child's life go over the case.

Ambrose is not satisfied with only an administrator attending those meetings.

"I want someone there who knows the child and presents the case. Our structure is not conducive to doing individual advocacy on these kids, and that has to change," she said.

Ambrose asked her cabinet what was going on with strengthening contracts and monitoring consultants' performance. (Kelly's death has pointed out DHS's failure to provide such oversight.)

"I'm thinking one thing, and you're thinking another, and let's get on the same page," she said, staring at two staffers who were having a disagreement. "Let's meet a few minutes after this."

A passion for her calling

These days, Ambrose's own children aren't seeing much of her. She spends most of the week away from them, husband Mark Winner, 42, and the home in Mechanicsburg, Pa., the family is trying to sell. The kids miss their mom, Winner said, but are coping.

On that busy mid-July day, Alyssa, 12; Jack, 9; and Emma, 7, called her repeatedly on a family-only cell-phone line. Between morning meetings, Ambrose took time to return their calls.

One of the first impressions Winner had when he met his wife, then a legal defender, was her approach to work.

"I thought I had a job and she had a passion," he said. "I don't know if envious is the word, but I was impressed by the fact that she woke up every day and went to work for much different reasons than I did."

A paycheck and recognition from his job were what he sought, Winner said. She wanted a better life for kids.

"You asked me what makes me smile when I think of her, and that's it. She loves kids and really is fighting for them."

When she died at 14, Danieal Kelly weighed 42 pounds and looked, the grand jury said, "like a child victim of a concentration camp." To read the grand-jury report, with a startling photo on Page 23, go to http://go.philly.com/dhsgrandjury

For previous Inquirer coverage of DHS, go to http://go.philly.

com/dhs

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