PHOENIX — A special team named to find out why 6,554 child-abuse cases went uninvestigated concluded Friday there was a “systemic failure, a lack of accountability and transparency and bad decision-making,’’ requiring a total revamp of how Arizona handles child welfare.
No state law or departmental policy existed to justify Child Protective Services workers marking all those cases “not for investigation,” the report by the Child Advocate Response Evaluation team said.
Yet Charles Flanagan, who heads the team and has since been named to head the new Division of Child Safety and Family Services, said that is exactly what happened, despite laws requiring all CPS complaints be investigated.
“The basic problem (with CPS) is you don’t really have a system,’’ he said. “What you have is something that is set up to look like a system but it is operated based on personality, individual decision-making, either because there are no policies and procedures or they’re not followed.’’
He said those uninvestigated cases went undiscovered for years because there was no real system of checks and balances. The people who directed that cases be ignored were the same ones responsible for “quality assurance,” he said, “which is nonsensical.”
The evaluation found the decision to shelve those complaints was far from harmless. Subsequent investigations have resulted in 407 children now being removed from their homes.
But uninvestigated cases are only part of what the team outlined in its 53-page report to Gov. Jan Brewer.
More than a quarter of the 3,200-plus calls to a child-abuse hotline last year were abandoned, with callers hanging up before someone picked up, meaning nearly 850 calls not answered.
“While we know that many of these callers do call again, it is reasonable to assume that some do not,’’ the report states. “Even one missed report of abuse is significant.’’
And Flanagan said many abuse reports that do come in “will sit uninvestigated until resources are available.’’
He said staff shortages not only delay investigations but lead to frustration that fuels high employee turnover, further stalling investigations as the agency hires and trains new caseworkers.
The Legislature this week approved funds to immediately hire 126 new caseworkers on top of the 1,194 already authorized.
Flanagan said the new agency replacing Child Protective Services is going to revamp everything, from its mission and culture to its leadership.
Dana Naimark, president of the Children’s Action Alliance, which has been lobbying for changes in CPS for years, applauds the shift, saying it “recognizes that simply changing the org chart, or even simply getting more bodies, is not going to resolve it.’’
Brewer already has abolished the CPS division of the Department of Economic Security and replaced it with the new Division of Child Safety and Family Services. And Flanagan will report directly to her.
One controversial recommendation says current CPS employees transferring to the new agency lose all merit protections that give them certain rights when a supervisor seeks to discipline or fire them.
Naimark fears that could subject workers to political pressure on individual cases, as in the multiple instances in which legislators and their families have come under CPS scrutiny.
Flanagan, however, said giving more latitude to supervisors means the ability to reward good employees with promotions and higher pay.
Flanagan says the public will trust his new agency only if they get to see what it is doing. While much is hidden based on federal laws that protect child privacy, Flanagan said the agency should still be able to provide information while shielding individuals’ identity.
Among other recommendations:
- Make better use of local police departments to help ensure that all complaints of abuse are investigated.
- Create “multidisciplinary teams embedded in the community” to look closely at complaints. Members would include law enforcement, criminal investigators within the state’s child-welfare agency, social workers and others.
- Provide better training to child-safety specialists who will conduct field investigations.
While Flanagan’s team detailed what happened, there is a time line for completion of a Department of Public Safety investigation into who was responsible.
