A veteran social services administrator named to lead Rockbridge area’s troubled child welfare agency said Friday he’s no longer a candidate for the position.
That revelation came after questions from The Roanoke Times and local residents about his professional and financial past.
Rockbridge Area Department of Social Services officials named Andre Chambers director of the agency on Monday, Board Chairman Duaine Fitzgerald said. Fitzgerald could not be reached to comment on Chambers’ statement that he is no longer coming to Rockbridge County.
Searches of Chambers’ background by The Roanoke Times found the following:
• While Chambers served as interim director of the Fulton County, Georgia, Division of Family and Children Services, a 4-year-old boy died after an earlier agency investigation found he “was at risk of death” if there wasn’t a change in his environment.
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• Police in Greenville, South Carolina, arrested Chambers on charges of pointing and presenting firearms at a person. He pleaded guilty to unlawful carrying of a pistol and was sentenced to one year of probation.
• Chambers filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in 2009 in Georgia, according to federal court records. An address cited in documents in that case was also listed in a 1997 bankruptcy filed in South Carolina by an Andre Chambers.
Fitzgerald declined to comment on whether the board knew about Chambers’ past or discussed it in interviews with him.
Fitzgerald said Chambers was one of four candidates interviewed by the local board. Regional officials screened applicants and sent qualified candidates to the local board for review. Four candidates interviewed with two members of the local board.
The county administrator and the city managers of Buena Vista and Lexington were also invited to the initial interviews, Fitzgerald said.
Two candidates, including Chambers, proceeded to interview privately with the entire board July 3. Fitzgerald would not comment on why Chambers was selected over other candidates.
“We were just looking for a new director to lead our Rockbridge social services forward,” he said.
Chambers worked as a director in the Division of Family and Children Services for five different Georgia counties from August 2004 to May 2017, agency spokesman Walter Jones said in an email.
While Chambers was working for Fulton County’s family welfare agency, the department investigated a complaint against a mother in 2010 and found inadequate medical care, determining the woman couldn’t afford her young son’s medication and the boy was at risk of death. The child, 4, died Aug. 2, 2012.
According to a Division of Family and Children Services report, there was a miscommunication between child protective services workers and placement staff about the case. Chambers’ name is listed at the top of the report in a list of county workers who discussed the circumstances of the case with state staff to determine whether policy was followed.
Court records show Chambers filed for bankruptcy in 2009 in Georgia. He owed $338,925 and had $196,045 in assets. A judge approved a financial reorganization plan and ruled five years later that Chambers had successfully completed it.
In that case, Chambers was forced to surrender a 2005 Porsche Boxster he had leased from an address in Charleston, South Carolina. An Andre Chambers from that same Charleston address, but with a different Social Security number, filed for bankruptcy in South Carolina in 1997.
Asked to comment on his background, Chambers only repeated that he is no longer a candidate for the Rockbridge job.
Chambers would have been the Rockbridge agency’s fifth leader since former Director Meredith Downey went into early retirement amid an investigation into the department by the state’s regional office in 2016.
The probe found that a supervisor in the Child Protective Services unit shredded reports without entering them into the agency’s database and ignored reports of child abuse in the county.
The regional office’s investigation was one of three into the department. A special grand jury report released in May 2017 detailed “top to bottom” dysfunction in the Child Protective Services unit. That and the local board’s “hands-off” approach, the special grand jury found, might have contributed to the death of two babies and the continued sexual abuse of two girls.
The Virginia Department of Social Services board launched its own investigation in October to determine whether local board members should be removed. The state board plans to announce its decision at its Aug. 15 meeting in Richmond.
Critics of the local board question whether it should be authorized to select a new director while members are at risk of removal by the state board.
Mark Reed of Lexington has repeatedly called for the board members’ resignations. He said he has little confidence in the board’s ability to select a qualified director and also raised concerns about Chambers’ history.
“This board shouldn’t have made that decision,” Reed said. “They have a history of poor judgment. Considering what we’re dealing with, you would think we would want someone who was spotless. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.”
Reed alerted local and state board members about Chambers’ past in an email to Duke Storen, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Social Services, on Thursday.
“It is — at a minimum — alarming that you are overseeing an Agency that hires a Director without doing its due diligence,” Reed wrote. “It is, frankly, insulting that you, your Staff, your Board, your Regional Division, and our local Board are certainly aware of Rockbridge County’s needs and have nevertheless hired a Director whose previous conduct is starkly similar to the conduct that led to multiple incidents of child abuse, neglect and death in our community.”