5 CPS supervisors are put on leave
Governor forms an independent task force to probe agency’s disregard of abuse cases
Five higher-level staffers at the state’s child-welfare agency were put on administrative leave Monday, hours after Gov. Jan Brewer named an independent team to oversee an investigation into why thousands of cases of child abuse and neglect were shelved without checking on the children’s welfare.
Clarence Carter, director of the Department of Economic Security, made the decision to place the employees on leave, said Charles Flanagan, chairman of Brewer’s newly created Child Advocate Response Examination, or CARE, team. He did not know their names, and DES officials did not immediately identify the Child Protective Services employees.
The decision to sideline five higher-level staffers is the first personnel move since Carter’s announcement nearly two weeks ago that more than 6,000 reports to the child-abuse hotline had been categorized as “not investigated,” drawing howls of protest from Brewer, lawmakers and the public.
Responding to calls for an independent examination of what went wrong at CPS, Brewer created the nine-member CARE team. The team will oversee CPS’ investigation of the neglected cases, as well as identify flaws in CPS operations Laurie Roberts » Plenty of blame and shame to go around with latest Child Protective Services scandal. B1
and make recommendations to avoid a repeat of the current situation.
The number of unexamined reports has fluctuated in recent days, with the DES last week saying the total is 6,550, up from its original figure of 6,110. The Governor’s Office put the figure at 6,441 late last week.
“Failure to investigate even one, let alone thousands of cases of potential child abuse, is absolutely inexcusable and undermines people’s confidence in the system that is charged with protecting the welfare of Arizona’s children,” Brewer said. “Every case must be investigated, period.”
The team will report directly to the governor.
Brewer charged the team of child-welfare advocates, law enforcement and lawmakers with tracking CPS’ work as it investigates the cases.
Flanagan said the team will double-check CPS’ initial review of all the cases: the 2,919 that were completed last week and the remaining number that CPS staff said they finished over the weekend.
The team also will birddog investigations that follow the review. Not all the cases will result in a full-blown investigation.
For example, some are eligible for an “alternative investigation” that requires a phone call to a mandated child-welfare reporter, such as a teacher or a nurse, to see if the child he or she reported on is safe.
CPS’ first batch of reviews found 62 percent of the cases merited a full investigation.
Flanagan will temporarily leave his post as head of the state Department of Juvenile Corrections to run the team, which is expected to finish its work on Jan. 31, the same date CPS intends to have all investigations completed.
However, Flanagan said, the date could shift as circumstances warrant.
He said the state is creating a website, which the team will use to report its progress. That is a response to Brewer’s demand that the team operate transparently.
In announcing the independent review, Brewer took pains to laud the work of CPS caseworkers, who she said are “overburdened,” a reference to the fact their caseloads exceed the state’s standard by 77 percent.
She also emphasized that the shelved cases were not the result of caseworkers’ neglect, because the 6,000-plus cases “never made it to their desk.”
Creation of the CARE team brings to three the number of investigations into CPS since the revelation last month that staff had marked cases “NI,” for “not investigated.”
CPS is doing its own investigation. The state Department of Public Safety is also investigating CPS procedures, assigning a team of up to five officers full-time to the DPS inquiry.
Brewer rejected suggestions that her administration is responsible for the agency’s problems, noting that child-welfare issues plague officials in other states, as well.
“It’s never going to be perfect; we don’t live in a perfect world,” she said.
And, as Brewer has noted since the news broke last month, the overlooked cases were discovered only because of legislation she championed to create an office at the DES to investigate potential criminal conduct in child-abuse cases.
The cases date to as early as 2009, but nearly all are from 2012 and 2013. They came to light when a Phoenix police detective who is temporarily leading the agency’s Office of Child Welfare Investigations came across case files marked “NI.”
Last week, Carter said he planned to bring in an outside group to do a quality-assurance review of the agency’s work.
That drew criticism from state Rep. Debbie McCune Davis, D-Phoenix, who said public confidence in the work would increase if someone other than Carter, such as the governor, selected the outside group.
The CARE team will take over that quality-assurance role, the Governor’s Office said.
The discovery of the shelved cases again focused attention on CPS, which has seen reports of abuse climb even as the state has put more money into the effort and as other states have seen such reports decline.
Dana Wolfe Naimark, president and CEO of the Children’s Action Alliance, called Brewer’s move “an excellent first step.”
The alliance is among the groups that urged Brewer to launch an independent review of CPS.
But Naimark also said the state’s child-welfare system needs more than an examination of the current crisis.
CPS has a 10,000-case backlog, as well as 12,000 cases started during the last budget year that, as of the most recent report, had not been completed. The agency needs to keep its attention on those cases, too, she said.
In addition, Naimark said the state would benefit from bringing local and national experts together to look at the broader issue of child welfare, from support for troubled families to how to best promote family reunification.
In addition to Flanagan, other members of the CARE team are state Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor, DPhoenix; state Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix; Robert Bell, children’s justice coordinator at the Childhelp Children’s Center of Arizona; Cindi Nannetti, a prosecutor with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office; Deb Gullett, a child advocate and former legislator; Greg McKay, chief of the Office of Child Welfare Investigations; Jan Strauss, a former Mesa police chief; and a CPS representative to be chosen later.