Agency to review policies

Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002 | 11:25 a.m.

One of the agencies that had a fleeting chance to notice impending danger and prevent the death of a 1-year-old girl named Sierra earlier this week is questioning its own policies after receiving news of the tragedy Wednesday.

"Whenever there's a situation like this, it's important for us and the community to look at what we've done and what we can do differently," said Susan Klein-Rothschild, director of the Department of Family Services.

"This was such a young child and we should learn from this," she said.

An investigator from the agency received a call about domestic violence in the child's household on Dec. 12, 2001, Klein-Rothschild said.

Two days later, the investigator called Sophia Mendoza, Sierra's mother, who said she was due to be evicted and planning to move with her five children to Texas. She said they would be safe there from Demone Tisdale, the children's father.

According to court records, Tisdale had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery-domestic violence in February. According to the criminal complaint, Tisdale pulled Mendoza's hair and dragged her along the floor during the fight in December.

Neighbors say police often were called to the house.

The Family Services investigator then made three attempts to visit Mendoza in person on Dec. 17, 20 and 24. No one was home all three times, and the third time, the house was vacated.

The agency assumed the mother and children had moved to Texas, and the case was closed.

The agency director said about 50 investigators receive 8,000 reports of possible child abuse and neglect a year -- 160 per investigator.

"We have to look at the question -- 'When you can you say you have enough (investigators)?"' Klein-Rothschild said.

Verna Propios, victim advocate for the Shade Tree, a women's shelter, said that stretched resources are always a problem for programs to help battered women and their children.

"In a perfect world, there would be a child protective services worker for every call they get. But that's not the case," she said.

If the agency had been able to establish that Mendoza's children were in danger, the investigator would have pursued two possible courses of action, Klein-Rothschild said.

The options are developing a plan to keep the children safe at home, or placing them in a county-run emergency shelter or foster home. But the investigator never got to see the children.

There also is help available for mothers like Mendoza who are victims of domestic violence and their children. But it isn't always easy to link the mothers to the programs, Propios said.

"We have shelters set up, but people are so isolated and there's still so much stigma attached to being a battered woman. So they fall through the cracks," she said.

But Klein-Rothschild couldn't escape the question Wednesday: Should her agency have done more?

"There's nothing in our policy that says we should have responded in a different time frame," she said.

"Or that says anything about whether to try and contact people like family members or neighbors when you can't reach families at home, or when to call on the phone again.

"But these are some of the things we are going to be looking into in the coming weeks...it's not the end of this for us."

The other piece of the story is the community itself, she said.

"Neighbors said they saw this or heard that. These people should have called us. We all have this responsibility and children depend on us, because afterward, it's too late."