No winning blame game
There is nothing as gut-wrenching, to borrow Sal DiMasi's phrase, as the needless death of an innocent child.
The House speaker was referring to the death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley, whose parents have been charged with first-degree murder for allegedly poisoning her, filling her up with medication intended to curb hyperactivity.
Every tragedy requires a villain, and the emerging one in this case seems to be Harry Spence, the commissioner of the Department of Social Services. The agency is fending off criticism that it didn't do enough to investigate concerns that Rebecca and two siblings were being overmedicated. Blaming the people who allegedly fed her the drugs isn't sufficient, it seems.
Spence has spent the week defending his agency. He argues, correctly, that social workers are not qualified to challenge doctors on issues of medical care, and that doctors are unwilling to challenge one another. That isn't making an excuse; it is stating a fact.
"I think the department did creditable, competent child welfare work," he said yesterday. "I think with more resources and support the department can always do more, and with each increment you hope you reduce the risk. But I think they did thoughtful, solid work."
Spence well understands the criticism he is receiving.
"I think criticism is absolutely human, is absolutely understandable, because of how disturbing children's deaths are to all of us," Spence said. "But I think that the problem is that there's a tendency to jump to conclusions and not to hear what actually happened."
The Riley case comes at a delicate time for Spence. After five years as commissioner, he makes no secret that he wants to continue in the job. That may not be as much of a sure thing as it seemed a few weeks ago.
But Spence's professional future is one of the least important issues raised by this case. Cases like this are also a mirror of our expectations for government.
Obviously, the state should do every last thing it can to protect the lives of children at risk. One avoidable death is one too many. Protecting children is really the only reason DSS exists.
The trouble, though, is that government cannot always save families from themselves. If overwhelmed parents overmedicate their child with tragic consequences, the painful truth is that DSS is not necessarily going to be able to stop them.
Managing social services is perhaps the most emotionally fraught job in state government because the consequences of failure are so high. Success is taken for granted, and failure is scandal. Few, if any, DSS commissioners have left to bouquets and applause. We always believe that if the right person is at the helm, tragedies will stop occurring.
This blame game does little to make children and families safer. Running a better agency does -- but the day-to day performance of the agency isn't what people pay attention to.
If the death of a child is horrendous, the thought that it may have come at the hands of her parents is guaranteed to make us squirm. Yet if the state's version of what happened is correct, Rebecca was failed -- and killed -- by her parents, not by DSS and not by Harry Spence.
Spence says he hopes to spend another five years at DSS, continuing the work of reorganizing the department and overhauling how teams of social workers manage cases, which he believes will improve the agency. "I want to continue because it's the most important work I can imagine doing," he told me. He deserves to be judged on his body of work, and to finish what he has begun.
People constantly recycle the cliché that agencies such as DSS deal with the most vulnerable populations. But they don't want to deal with the inevitable implication of that statement, which is that DSS will not always succeed. Placing the accountability for this tragedy where it perhaps belongs -- under the roof of a very troubled family -- is a lot more difficult than blaming a bureaucrat.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 
