DCS says it will end outside oversight

Citizen-led groups to be replaced by agency effort

The state’s child-welfare agency is disbanding citizen panels intended to bring an outside view on its work and is moving the effort in-house.

Critics, surprised by the Nov. 21 notification from Department of Child Safety Director Greg McKay, say they fear the move will further insulate DCS from outside oversight on its operations.

The agency casts the change as a streamlining move, and national experts say that it’s not unusual to have the federally mandated citizen review panels be run by the child-welfare agency they were created to advise.

The important thing is to maintain independence, said Blake Jones, a University of Kentucky social-work professor who has taken on the informal role of tracking the work of these panels nationwide.

“At their core, these panels need to have some level of autonomy from the agency,” Jones said. He coordinated the state of Kentucky’s panel for 15 years as an outside adviser.

The panels were created in 1996 by Congress when lawmakers amended the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. Each state is required to have three volunteer citizen panels, meeting four times a year, with the mission of reviewing compliance with child-protection policies.

In Arizona, the panels have always been coordinated through a contract with a group outside the childwelfare agency. Initially, it was the state Department of Health Services; it later moved to Arizona State University’s School of Social Work.

Last month, McKay thanked the panels and ASU for their work, but gave them notice the contract would end this month, when each panel submits its annual report.

DCS will manage the panels in-house. A newly created position, expected to be filled in January, will coordinate the three panels, as well as the agency’s various advisory committees, McKay wrote.

It is unclear who will appoint the new panels’ members, or when they will be in place. But McKay held out the possibility that current panel members might be invited to remain, writing that he encouraged their continued involvement as DCS advisers.

Many of those involved in the current process worry the change will dampen an independent, citizen-level evaluation of DCS.

In 2008, the then-Child Protective Services considered moving the panels’ work in-house, but rejected it, said Judy Krysik. She runs ASU’s Center for Child Well-Being, which has coordinated the panels for the past nine years on a $120,000 contract with DCS.

“It would be like the fox watching the hen house,” she said of the prospect of moving oversight in-house.

Becky Ruffner, who heads the northern Arizona review panel, is skeptical that the shift will result in an independent eye on DCS’ work.

“If you’re picking the people, and you’re providing them the only information they will see, that does not speak well for transparency,” she said.

Her panel has been doing research on the best way to deal with babies born exposed to or addicted to drugs or other substances. But it has been hampered by a slow flow of information from DCS, she said.

For example, panel members had a hard time getting basic information, such as how widespread substance-exposed births are in Arizona.

The DCS workers assigned to staff the review panels have “extremely limited time,” Ruffner said, and are reticent to take on much homework between the panels’ quarterly meetings.

“This is a staffing issue,” she said. “Or it might be a little bit that they (DCS) don’t want us to know.”

Relations further eroded as work bogged down on an agreement that attempted to clarify the roles of the three panels, of ASU as the contract administrator, and of DCS.

The southern Arizona panel refused to sign the document unless DCS agreed to share case files. DCS questioned the utility of looking at individual case files, noting a handful of cases is not representative of the agency’s work.

Besides, redacting information that would identify children and others in a case was time-consuming for a staff that had many duties, spokesman Darren DaRonco noted in an emailed statement. DCS preferred the panels work on broader themes, he said.

Although DCS sent back suggestions on the proposed agreement in September, the document was never signed.

Janet Cornell, a former co-chair of the Maricopa County review panel, said it was hard to get the ear of DCS. Even then, there was only limited time to talk with DCS about policy matters that her panel was reviewing, she said. Most recently, the Maricopa County effort was focused on medical neglect of children.

“It sets the panel up to not be listened to,” Cornell said.

She resigned as one of the Maricopa County panel’s three co-chairs in August.