In a one-on-one interview, Oswego County Department of Social Services Commissioner Stacy Alvord defended her department’s handling of the case of 17-year-old Jordan Brooks, and said the department is making changes in response to his death.

Brooks was living with cerebral palsy and court documents say he allegedly suffered neglect so severe that it ultimately led to his death. His mother Lisa Waldron and stepfather Anthony Waldron face charges in the case, including criminally negligent homicide.

“This has been devastating to us at the department of social services,” Alvord said of the case.

Alvord said she got into the field to advocate for children like Brooks. “It’s my mission, it’s not just a job. It’s something that I’m very committed to,” she said.

But Alvord is facing questions surrounding the way the department handled the Brooks case. A state child fatality report shows that the Department of Social Services received four calls on Brooks, which were consolidated into three cases due to proximity in time and similar situations being reported on two of those occasions.

The state concluded in that report that on more than one occasion, DSS should have made calls to doctors and other contacts to verify claims allegedly made by Lisa Waldron that her son was getting the care that he needed, including a swallow test that was intended to ensure his ability to safely consume food, and if he wasn’t, that her assertion that pandemic was to blame was accurate.

When asked if DSS dropped the ball in this case, Alvord responded the department was limited in what they could do, both as a result of the pandemic and because of the information they received.

“We did everything we could,” she said. “We listened to Jordan, and we listened to his mom. Mrs Waldron knew well what her son's needs were, that was very obvious to us. She was articulate about his needs, she knew how to meet them, there were no barriers to her family meeting those needs."

When asked if anyone at DSS ever had a feeling that more should be done in Jordan’s case prior to his death, she said no.

“I have stated publicly that we take responsibility for not following up on what had happened with the swallow test. We believed that COVID did, indeed, interfere with the swallow test. We believed that COVID interfered with securing a new wheelchair,” she said.

Alvord acknowledged that the department should have made more calls to verify what they were being told by Waldron and others, but said that several people, including Jordan himself assured them that he was not in imminent danger.

“When our caseworkers go out on calls, they are only as good as the information that they are given,” she said.

When asked how the department could have missed bedsores on Jordan’s back that court documents and the state fatality report allege progressed to the point of exposing bone and a hip implant, Alvord said the department wasn’t equipped to make those types of medical evaluations, but she said they are taking steps to make sure children in similar situations to Brooks are getting the attention they need.

This comes in the form of sending what is known as the multidisciplinary team on calls that involve medically frail children.

“They are the most experienced, the most well trained, are trained in forensic interviewing, we now send out MDT caseworkers out on those calls, that happened right afterward,” she said.