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After a year of investigation into Georgia’s foster care system and the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), Senator Jon Ossoff’s office recently issued a report detailing what his office called “distressing” findings. James Onlinecovered that report here. Not surprisingly, DFCS has a response. And it is blistering. 

“The Ossoff report repackages a grab bag of issues, many of which arose long before the current DFCS administration was in place, and almost all of which have previously been reported and addressed by DFCS itself,” said DFCS in their response. “The Ossoff report then makes numerous unfounded, speculative claims about DFCS and, in some cases, irresponsible assertions about the cause of children’s deaths and injuries that omit or mischaracterize important data and context provided by DFCS. It also both confuses and misuses statistics DFCS has reported to the federal government to misrepresent the safety of children in DFCS’s care. And it wrongly denigrates the work of the DHS Office of Inspector General and other personnel.” 

One theme of the complaints was what DFCS feels is an unfair focus on Georgia for its sample, lacking comparison to the rest of the country or peer states. “The review is a myopic focus on Georgia alone—despite the state’s relatively strong performance among its peers, even though substantial state comparative data was provided by DFCS,” said DFCS. For example, the first statistic that the response cited is Georgia’s rate of recurrence of maltreatment – meaning a child is the subject of a second credible maltreatment report – is 4.5 percent, not great sounding but less than half of the national average of 9.7 percent. 

As mentioned in James coverage of the report, the response also notes that the data included from Ossoff’s office pre-dates the new commissioner of DHS, who is aware of issues and addressing them. Another for example, the Ossoff report began as an investigation into the use of temporary facilities like hotels or DHS offices to house children in the foster system. The response notes that when Commissioner Candice Broce took over in July 2021, there were 60-80 children sleeping in these kinds of facilities. Just over two years later in September 2023, this number was zero but there was no mention of this improvement from the Ossoff office or its report. 

The response from DFCS also notes the lack of future plans from Sen. Ossoff’s office and little mention of reforms advocated by the DFCS office. “Importantly, the report makes no mention of the nationwide mental-health provider crisis or what Senator Ossoff intends to do to help bridge the gap while children are suffering. DFCS leadership has advocated for reforms to the provision of Medicaid coverage for children in DFCS custody in an effort to get children the care they need and deserve.” 

You can read the full response from Georgia DFCS here