Advocates push for state Department of Child Safety oversight

Lori Ford wanted a voice.

Not just for herself, but for all the families who feel they lose their right to demand accountability of the Arizona Department of Child Safety the moment a caseworker questions them or a loved one.

She met other parents and grandparents who felt the same.

The group came together, and in the process has forced a DCS community advisory panel, which lawmakers created three years ago, to listen to community members.

The loose group of self-appointed watchdogs now calls itself the Arizona DCS Oversight Group.

When the group learned last year that DCS Director Greg McKay had moved to disband Arizona’s external Citizen Review Panels and replace them with an in-house system, they started asking questions.

Because state child-welfare services are funded in part by federal taxpayer dollars, each state is required to form Citizen Review Panels — made up of community volunteers — that exercise some oversight of DCS. The panels are “federally mandated mechanisms for citizen participation in child protection,” according to the Child Abuse and Neglect Technical Assistance and Strategic Dissemination Center, or CANTASD, website.

Since Citizen Review Panels were one of the few ways the public could influence the state’s child-welfare system, Ford’s group was keenly interested in McKay’s announcement that the panels would be replaced with an in-house system.

Would the new panels maintain oversight of DCS actions and cases? How would the public inform the panels of their concerns? And if transparency in public outreach was required, why did the agency appear to be closed off to citizen accountability?

They searched the DCS website for answers.

“It was zero results,” Ford, 59, said. What the group did find was a webpage for a DCS Community Advisory Committee.

That sounded like a forum where they could continue to voice their opinions on DCS’s actions and policies.

It wouldn’t be easy.

A DCS review board for the community?

Arizona lawmakers established the Community Advisory Board in 2015,the same year Gov. Doug Ducey appointed McKay director of DCS.

Under the law, the committee was to provide a community forum to:

❚ Inform the department, analyze current law and policy and make recommendations to improve the ability of the department to increase the safety of children, respond to child maltreatment and ensure the well-being of and timely permanency for children who are referred to and involved in the child-welfare system.

❚ Collaborate among state, local, community, tribal, public and private stakeholders in child welfare programs and services that are administered by the department.

❚ Improve communication between mandatory reporters and the department. Arizona requires anyone who suspects child abuse to report it. But certain professionals, including teachers, doctors and social workers, are mandated by law to report suspected abuse or neglect.

The committee members, who are unpaid, would include 14 child-welfare representatives appointed by the DCS director. Appointees represent a variety of stakeholders including an organization that deals with child-welfare-system policy, current or former foster or adoptive parents, medical providers, volunteers with the Foster Care Review Board or Court Appointed Special Advocate program, an academic from a state university who conducts research in child welfare services, child maltreatment or neglect, the courts, someone from courts involved with child-welfare issues, a Native American who has experience in the child-welfare system.

Arizona’s child-welfare agency has historically been criticized for secrecy that limits public oversight.

McKay’s move to bring in-house an external review system, which was managed by the Arizona State University’s School of Social Work, was questioned by lawmakers, child-welfare experts and grassroots family advocacy groups like the one Ford belongs to.

Critics also worried that their fears over Ducey appointing a former police officer, who would prioritize enforcement, rather than a child-welfare expert, who would prioritize services for families, were warranted.

Some of the questions Ford’s group had, began to be answered in April. That month,the Community Advisory Committee voted — at DCS’ request — to become a Citizen Review Panel. Officials with DCS told The Arizona Republic there are two other newly-formed Citizen Review Panels, but neither state nor federal law requires the meetings be public.

‘We bombarded them’

When Ford and her friends first attended Community Advisory Committee meetings, no public comment was allowed.

“We bombarded them,” she said. “We said, ‘What’s going on here?’”

They sent emails to the designated address for the committee.

“Unbeknownst to me, those emails were going to DCS headquarters,” Ford said. “They were basically getting screened.”

When they got a response, it was from a DCS employee — Ben Brooks, executive assistant to McKay, the DCS director.

Ford said that when they asked DCS about it, they were told the Community Advisory Committee would get the appropriate emails.

The Republic emailed the committee, addressing its chair Emily Jenkins and asking for an interview with a committee member.

A response came from Brooks. “I have forwarded your email to Emily Jenkins,” Brooks wrote, in part.

The Republic never received a reply from Jenkins.

A complaint from the public

Ford said that they encountered a series of roadblocks to public comment and what they viewed as an overall lack of transparency by DCS. So members of her group filed an open meetings law violation complaint, which included the public being told they had to turn over their ID for scanning before being allowed to enter a meeting.

“We went through the Attorney General’s office knowing it would get bounced back, but we just wanted the paper trail,” she said.

Their complaint did get bounced, she said, from the Attorney General’s Office to the County Attorney’s Office. County Attorney Bill Montgomery had backed Ducey’s appointment of McKay.

Ford said the county attorney found there was no violation of the state’s open meeting laws. They also complained to the Ombudsman-Citizens’ Aide Office, which is independent of DCS and under state law addresses complaints from people who have disputes with or feel they have been treated unfairly by a state agency or administrator.

In the process, her group’s complaints to the County Attorney’s Office, including their personal information, were posted online by DCS. “So our address, phone number, email was on there,” she said.

One thing changed though: The committee opened the meeting to public comment.

“Somehow, someway we got them to have public comment,” Ford said.

A chance to speak?

The group continued attending meetings and airing their concerns about DCS actions.

But there were constraints: Each person was allowed to speak for two minutes. While there is no regulation mandating time allotted for public comment, many cities provide three minutes for residents to address elected officials and public meetings can continue until the wee hours of the night until everyone has had their chance to speak.

The group was also told that once they had brought up an issue they should not raise it again to the committee.

At an August committee meeting, Jenkins, the chair of the committee, advised speakers of rules for the publiccomment period.

“If they have previously brought information to the committee please do not repeat that,” Jenkins said.

At that same meeting, Jenkins said they would form a subcommittee to study public comment.

“I have felt that we have all fumbled a little, and me particularly, in terms of the public-comment period, partly because I’m not an expert on the open meeting law,” she said.

The subcommittee, she said, would work with a state government attorney to develop recommendations on the process for public comment at future meetings. That recommendation and a presentation by the state ombudsman were expected to be delivered at the committee’s meeting Friday.

Malinda Sherwyn, 65, a member of Ford’s group, said she also monitors juvenile family court proceedings as part of a citizen watchdog group. She is used to the government telling citizens what they can and can’t do. But even she was shocked by DCS’ requirements for a meeting that was named as a community advisory group.

“They were public meetings but the public had to sit there silently,” she said.

DCS responds

DCS officials told The Republic in an email that the Community Advisory Committee is “an open meeting in accordance with state law.”

Officials said that public comment was always available at the meetings but it was temporarily suspended.

“There was a period when committee members became concerned about the tenor of the call to the public, so they decided to receive comments via email for a few meetings,” said Darren DaRonco, a DCS spokesman. “Call to the public has since resumed.”

Judy Krysik, a Community Advisory Committee member, told The Republic that she welcomes public comment, but that the committee cannot discuss a family’s child-welfare case. Addressing the committee’s rule that people not use the public-comment period to repeat the same concerns, Krysik said that she is conflicted.

“If they’re saying the same thing every time, I don’t know if that’s going to help,” she said.

Sherwyn said that DCS, children and families, biological and foster, would benefit from greater transparency and oversight. Nothing is more important than your children, she said, arguing that it’s common sense that families would repeat their concerns about DCS actions until they believe the problem has been resolved.

“The best way to learn about an organization and system is to listen to its victims and they look at us with rank disdain,” she said.

Ford said she doesn’t understand why DCS has placed privacy over family rights.

“They say we’re intimidating and threatening, but we’re just a bunch of old people, really,” she said.