CPS boss seeking monitor for review
Outside group to oversee case audit
Arizona’s child-welfare agency plans to bring in an outside group to conduct a quality-control check on its review of thousands of uninvestigated cases of child abuse and neglect.
Arizona Department of Economic Security Director Clarence Carter is working to line up either a police agency or a child-welfare group, such as the Casey Family Foundation, to do a random check of the agency’s review once it is completed, said James Hillyard, deputy director of operations for the DES, the parent agency of Child Protective Services.
That check, Hillyard said, “will be a couple days; it won’t be weeks.”
That will delay results of the review, on track to conclude by Monday, but will hopefully bolster public confidence in the work Child Protective Services is doing, he said.
When the review results are released, likely late next week or early the following week, they will cover 6,550 cases that were reported to the state’s child-abuse hotline but not investigated.
The total is higher than the 6,110 cases officials disclosed earlier this week, because of an accounting lapse in translating a list of cases reported on the basis of the federal fiscal year, which runs from October through September, to a calendar year.
Hillyard said the 440 previously undisclosed cases are among the 2,919 cases already reviewed by state workers.
State Rep. Debbie McCune Davis, D-Phoenix, said Friday that if Carter really wants to gain confidence with a public skeptical of CPS, he should not “handpick” the outside consultant.
“I think he should have had a quality-assurance program in place all along,” said McCune Davis, a member of the legislative CPS Oversight Committee. “I think that decision needs to be made by the governor.”
Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix and co-chair of the oversight committee, said she’s not taking a position on whether Carter should make the call on whom to hire for an outside review. But she welcomed the move.
“Given the fact we can’t agree on a starting number, an outside quality review makes sense to me,” Brophy McGee said.
Gov. Jan Brewer’s office late Friday said it believes the number of unexamined cases is smaller: 6,441. Spokesman Andrew Wilder said it’s understandable the numbers may fluctuate given the speed with which the review is happening, but he said the fact remains that any uninvestigated case is “inexcusable.”
“It doesn’t change anything the governor says or feels,” Wilder said.
Brewer has called the situation “heartbreaking” and “totally unacceptable.” She has maintained her support of Carter, although she has made it clear she wants to see what Carter’s own investigation, as well as that of the state Department of Public Safety, yields before making a final judg- ment.
Wilder added that he did not have enough information about Carter’s plan for quality assurance to comment on who should call on an outside entity to check the CPS review.
Meanwhile, Hillyard said about 20 CPS staffers are working through the holiday weekend to complete the review Carter ordered after the discovery earlier this month of thousands of cases that went without investigation.
Those cases came to light when the agency’s Office of Child Welfare Investigations reviewed several reports alleging child abuse or neglect and found they had been marked “NI” for “not investigated.
A Phoenix police homicide officer on loan to lead that office took his findings to Carter, who called for an immediate investigation by both his agency and the DPS.
As of Monday, a total of 2,919 cases reported in 2013 had been reviewed; an additional 3,631 dating to 2009 are scheduled to be finished by Monday.
Hillyard said the review is not a “deep dive” — that will come in the ensuing investigative phase.
Rather, it’s a quick check of the cases as recorded in the agency’s electronic database, looking for details that would indicate if the child involved is at immediate risk of harm.
Hillyard estimated staffers will need about 15 minutes to determine each case’s proper disposition.
During the review, staffers are using a risk evaluation that is used to sort calls to the childabuse hotline.
Their first determination is whether the child or children in the report were in immediate danger when a hotline employee answered the call, given this round of the review covers cases from 2009 through 2012. If so, that case is sent immediately to a caseworker for investigation.
If not, the process is then designed to determine whether the case qualifies for an “alternative investigation.” That is basically a phone interview with a “mandated reporter,” such as a doctor or teacher, to check on the child’s welfare. These alternative investigations have been used since the 1990s, Hillyard said.
If the phone check reveals the child is at risk, or if the child’s safety is unclear, the case is forwarded to the Office of Child Welfare Investigations, which began work last year to handle cases of a criminal nature.
If the child is not determined to be the victim of potential criminal conduct, the report is assigned to a caseworker for investigation.
When this process was used on the 2,919 cases from this year that had not been investigated, it determined nearly 62 percent warranted a “deep dive” investigation, including 23 cases of possible criminal conduct.
An additional 30 percent qualified for an alternative investigation that resolved the case without the need to forward it to a caseworker.
Carter’s action plan for unraveling a backlog of 6,550 cases calls for any needed investigations to be completed by Jan. 31.
When that is done, the agency won’t be able to talk about individual cases, given privacy laws, Hillyard said. But CPS will be able to say how many of the cases are substantiated reports of abuse and neglect and how many resulted in children being removed from homes, he said.
Hillyard added that the agency, as of late Wednesday, was trying to identify how many experienced staffers could be redirected to help with the investigations, so as to not add to the workload of existing caseworkers.
However, he added, it’s likely some of the new investigations will be assigned to caseworkers, who already are carrying loads that exceed state standards by 77 percent.