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At that point, caseworkers did not even know which services might be available for children. They had no way of comparing notes or logging resources. They had no flexibility in meeting individual needs. They had no guidelines for contact between children in foster care and their birth parents. In most cases, the rules simply forbade it.
Following the federal ruling, social workers set out to retrain, refocus and reshape the welfare system county by county, inspiring a hands-on, more heartfelt attitude among hardened social workers and abuse investigators. Greater emphasis was placed on restrengthening and rebuilding families by setting up programs in their own neighborhoods and communities in order to lessen the disruption of children's lives. The average stay in foster care dropped from 14 months to three. Alabama, though a rural state in the American South, won early praise for its progressive ideas and was considered a potential model for national reform.
Then politics intervened. James and Nachman sued to contravene the rulings, which the Governor deemed obstructive federal intervention. A hiring freeze left social workers' positions vacant. Nachman refused to disburse "flex funds" that the court allowed counties to spend at their discretion, and social workers had to open charge accounts at Wal-Mart to buy diapers and clothes for children. Nachman later resigned amid controversy over allegations she had lied on her resume and had withheld information from a grand jury investigating whether the foster-care problems in Mobile were the result of criminal negligence.
By then David Dohilite, 15, had been sucked into the system. An incorrigible kid, David had rebelled against his working-class parents in Magnolia Springs, Ala., near Mobile, in a yet unreformed county. Under state law, parents could turn over custody of defiant children to the department of human resources, but the agency lacked "therapeutic foster homes" for kids more troubled than abused. If kids threatened suicide or suffered the slightest mental disorder, they would be bounced to the Department of Mental Health. If they had broken the law, they would go to the agency that handles juvenile delinquents. The screening process involved a brief interview by an intake worker.
With no other place for David, a judge sent him to the Eufala Adolescent Center, 150 miles away, where kids who escaped were hunted by dogs. David was kept secluded in Building 112, locked in a 9-ft. by 6-ft. cell with metal crates as a wall and a door painted black. Even though he talked of suicide, banged his head against the walls and screamed profanities, staff members treated him as a behavior problem. In March 1992 a center worker found David trying to hang himself and placed him under observation. Two days later, he tried again, using a shoestring. He suffered severe brain damage. "Till the day we die, we'll have to take care of him," says his father Michael, a school custodian. "There's a lot of anger for what they allow to happen to these kids--how these kids cry out for help and nobody answers."
Fob James was defeated in the 1998 gubernatorial elections. But his legacy is a state of delay. Only a third of Alabama's 67 counties have yet fully converted to the new systems mandated by the court order.
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