Child welfare bureaucrats have allowed the deadlines to lapse in nearly 900 abuse and neglect cases, potentially leaving the children vulnerable to mistreatment and threatening to drag the city into court receivership, The Examiner has learned.

Under a consent decree stemming from a class action suit over the collapse of its child protection agencies, the District promised to resolve abuse and neglect complaints within 30 days.

It has never met the deadline. But since the badly decomposed bodies of four girls were found in a squatter's row house in Southeast earlier this year, the already hobbled Child and Family Services Agency has been flooded with complaints.

The backlog of past-due cases has more than doubled in the last month, records obtained by The Examiner show. It is at its highest point since July, 2004, when there were nearly 700 overdue investigations, records show.

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City lawyers are due back in federal court April 1 to explain the District's reform efforts. If the court is unsatisfied with their explanation, D.C. could lose control of yet another critical agency.

Officials have been rattled by the discovery that welfare bureaucrats ignored signs that Banita Jacks, a homeless woman, was a threat to her kids. Jacks is now charged with killing her girls.

Since Jacks was arrested, calls to the city's abuse and neglect hotline have gone up by more than 400 percent, according to city records. There are now more than 1,600 open investigations, counting those filed in the last 30 days.

After the scandal broke, Mayor Adrian Fenty promised to fix the child welfare system. He summarily fired six officials whom he accused of mishandling the Jacks case. But some are worried that the mayor and the city are only reacting to events, not trying to shape them.

"We've been asking the mayor and the council to focus on services that will prevent children from having to be put in foster care," said Judith Sandalow, executive director of The Children's Law Center, an advocacy group. "We have an ongoing concern about the influx of calls."

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles could not be reached for comment Friday. Mindy Goode, spokeswoman for CFSA, did not respond to requests for comment.

Got a tip on the child welfare system? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or send him an e-mail, bmyers@dcexaminer.com.