From Ian Sousis to Dovia Pernell, Ky Cabinet’s failures lead to tragedy | Opinion

A year-and-a-half ago on these pages, I wrote about the tragic deaths of two children who had been institutionalized by the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, only to die while in the agency’s care. Here’s what I wrote about nine-year-old Ian Sousis, who drowned in the Ohio River after running away from a “residential treatment center.”

His grandparents had custody since he was an infant. As a toddler, he was diagnosed with autism. No matter where he was, he ran away a lot. All the grandparents needed was therapy for the child and help to be sure he was never out of someone’s sight. Had they been rich they easily could have purchased both. But they’re not rich. So they had to turn to the Cabinet … which offered no alternatives except institutions – and took control of where Ian would live.

Here’s how much Kentucky officials learned from that tragedy:

In 2024, adoptive parents couldn’t handle the behavior problems of their 15-year-old daughter, Dovia Pernell. Unable to afford the therapy she needed, they turned to the Cabinet for help. They offered no help except to take custody of the child and take control of where she would live. They parked her in a foster home in Lexington while waiting to institutionalize her. Before she could be institutionalized, Dovia ran away. She was shot to death in Louisville.

If anything, Dovia’s story illustrates even more failings of Kentucky’s “child welfare” system than Ian’s.

We don’t know why Dovia was first taken from her own parents, more than a decade ago. We do know that then, and now, Kentucky tears apart families at a rate far above the national average, even when rates of family poverty are factored in. Maybe Dovia really was in such danger that no other option was possible, or maybe she was poor and the family’s poverty was confused with neglect.

But here’s what we do know:

The one, good, safe, stable foster home Dovia needed, if she really needed to be taken at all, was not available. When you tear apart too many families, it creates an artificial “shortage” of foster homes. So After Dovia endured the initial trauma of removal, she was moved to another foster home. Then she was moved again. And again. And again. She was moved 11 times in all just by the time she was five years old when she was adopted. If the emotional trauma of all those moves isn’t enough, consider: Multiple independent studies find abuse in at least one out of four foster homes; more likely one out of three. Dovia was in 11.

All that trauma is bound to come out somehow, and for Dovia, apparently, it did when she became a teenager. That’s when her adoptive parents reached out for help.

Imagine if the caseworker they called had said: We’re not going to make Dovia go anywhere. We’re not going to make her endure still another trauma, and find out that the “forever family” she was promised won’t be forever after all. And we’re not going to provide some kind of generic, off-the-shelf-counseling program. We’ve read the research, we know institutionalization makes things worse. So instead, we’re going to find out exactly what Dovia needs to cope with Dovia’s particular problems – and then we’ll provide it, in your home, not in an institution. And we will provide whatever help you need to help Dovia.

That’s not magic, that’s wraparound, an approach that has vastly better outcomes than institutionalizing children, at less cost.

But of course, Kentucky didn’t do that. You know how the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Well, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services did for Dovia Pernell the same thing it did for Ian Sousis – and got the same result.

Richard Wexler is Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, www.nccpr.org