TO THE EDITOR:

I have read Mr. Tepoortenís response to my letter. I find the response a little confusing and very defensive. He stated that he did not interchange Child Protection with Child Welfare. Mr. Tepoorten wrote, ìI could only find a single instance in which I used the phrase ìchild welfareî in place of ìchild protectionî...The state used the term ìchild welfareî eight times and Liz Hanson used this term 15 times.î They used this term because this is the correct term. Child Protection is only one of the many services provided under Child Welfare. Let me reiterate, Child Welfare includes Mental Health Services, Developmental Disability Services, Chemical Dependency Services, Financial, and many more services.

Previous articles have suggested that county employees were not in compliance with the IV-E MSW program because they did not work in Child Protection. I would just like to clarify, once again, that they may not have worked in Child Protection, but did in fact work in Child Welfare and were in compliance with the program. I thought I had made this clear in my last letter, but clearly Mr. Tepoorten did not grasp this distinction.

As far as using individual employee names, I am aware that county employees, unfortunately, are not given the luxury of anonymity. However, out of respect for those hard working social workers, I would hope that most people with any decency would omit their names from such an article. The inclusion of these names in an accusatory article is a way of casting guilt on specific employees. These allegations being made are not about decisions these individuals made, but about decisions the agency made. This attempt to smear the names of public employees seems callous and without cause.

I find it interesting that the Chisago County Review printed essentially the same article, but did not include any names. If Mr. Tepoorten thinks he did not cast a cloud of guilt over each of these individuals he is fooling himself and being dishonest to his readers.

I stand by my previous comment that Mr. Tepoorten owes these individuals an apology. The Board and Mr. Moosey also owes them an apology for not supporting them in trying to improve Child Welfare Services for Chisago County, but rather unjustly allowing them to be smeared by the local paper without comment.

Amy Johnson
Chisago City