Scathing report upsets foster mom
Recalls nurturing abused babies for DCF
A couple of years ago, Barbara Papile got a call from a social worker asking her if she could take in a 1-month-old baby girl. Papile went to the hospital to see the baby, who had been abused by her teenage father and had 30 broken bones.
Papile took the infant back to her Rockland home where she had raised her own three children. For a week, Papile told the baby she was beautiful and loved. She played her music and tenderly slipped on sleeveless onesies so she wouldn’t hurt her broken arm. Twenty of the infant’s ribs, as well as fingers and toes, were fractured. Her broken hip was in a harness.
“It was like caring for Humpty Dumpty. You couldn’t pick her up by her legs to change her diaper, you had to pick her up by the small of her back,” recalled Papile, a 57-year-old grandmother who fostered at least a dozen babies and toddlers from 2008 to 2015. “She was a very good baby.”
Papile spoke to me last night after the release of a blistering audit that found the state’s Department of Children and Families failed to report cases of abuse, rape and other crimes committed against children in their care — and were oblivious to hundreds of other injuries to kids.
Papile, the founder of Massachusetts Foster Parents UNITED, which is pushing for a “foster parent bill of rights,” has had her own battle with the beleaguered child care agency.
It started after she expressed concern over caring for a 4-month-old baby who weighed just 8 pounds, wouldn’t take a bottle and had failure to thrive. She questioned if it was the right placement.
After their own children had grown, Papile said she and her husband decided to become foster parents.
“We always had the spare room and we did a great job with our kids, it wasn’t always easy, but the one thing I can successfully say is we raised three great kids,” Papile said.
“We missed having babies in the house and we figured this was a perfect outlet to give kids a safe, loving home,” she added. “There were kids we had a day and there were kids we had for five months. While they’re in our care, we give them the best possible start.”
She also cared for babies born exposed to drugs. There was an infant whose mother was on methadone. “She was born in a toilet at home,” Papile said of the child. “She was born unresponsive.
“She was miserable about 23 hours out of a 24-hour time span,” she said.
But that soon changed, with a little love.
“She hit that four-month mark and she turned a corner. She was a whole different kid. She was engaging and smiling.”