For weeks, Santa Clara County leaders have refused to acknowledge that a highly unusual practice of social workers inviting potentially abusive parents into interviews with their vulnerable children was official county policy.
But all that time, sitting on the county Department of Family and Children’s Services publicly available website, a single line made it clear:
“A parent does have the right to be present during the social worker’s interview with the child, even if that parent is the alleged perpetrator,” the county’s policy guidance stated.
Then, some time last week, that sentence vanished.
County leaders who have said repeatedly they were unaware of the controversial practice wouldn’t comment directly on why the guidance appeared — and then disappeared — from the agency’s official policy for abuse investigations on the county’s website. They said the county is in the process of “updating and reviewing all trainings, policies, procedures, presentations and other materials” to be sure they align with the law and prioritize child safety.
The controversy comes on the eve of a crucial meeting Tuesday of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, who will review a recommendation to overhaul the county’s child welfare system that a new analysis estimates could come with a $22 million annual price tag.
Supervisor Sylvia Arenas called for dramatic reforms in December after the fentanyl overdose death last year of 3-month-old Phoenix Castro. Last fall, an investigation by the Bay Area News Group found that the infant was sent home with her drug-using father despite warnings from social workers. The reporting also raised questions about whether a philosophical shift that prioritized preserving troubled families was partly to blame.
Santa Clara County leaders again came under fire again earlier this month when this news organization reported on the highly questioned guidance that social workers were trained to follow in abuse investigations. Social workers shared how the practice had a chilling effect on children from speaking about abuse in front of their parents. After that news report, county leaders reassigned the lawyer in the County Counsel’s office who led those trainings. Some social workers say he is being scapegoated.
Arenas said the most recent controversy shows it’s even more important to push for reforms.
“It’s time to move past gaslighting and scapegoating,” Arenas said. “Our county had policies, practices, and trainings focused on including abusers in the investigative interviews of children who report abuse and neglect. As we make changes to our child welfare system to improve safety, an honest accounting is a necessary starting place.”
According to internal emails obtained this news organization, leaders within the county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services, including agency Director Damion Wright, were part of a review in July of emergency assessments, including the abuse interview guidance noted on the website. A spokesperson for Santa Clara County did not immediately respond when asked about the review.
Nonetheless, when the Bay Area News Group asked March 15 whether the county’s top child welfare leaders knew about the interview guidance, a county spokesman said none of them were previously aware of it, including Wright; his boss, Social Services Agency Director Dan Little; or James Williams, the county executive who used to oversee the County Counsel’s office that regularly weighed in on whether children should be removed from their homes.
Within five days, by March 20, the instruction to include “alleged perpetrator” parents in children’s interviews disappeared from the publicly available policy website.
All three of those leaders, Wright, Little and Williams, are expected to attend Tuesday’s meeting, where supervisors will review an analysis of some of the recommendations they made in December to restructure the child welfare agency. The most dramatic proposal came from Arenas, who recommended that the Department of Family and Children Services, which reports to the larger Department of Social Services run by Little, instead report directly to a new deputy in the county executive’s office. Making the child welfare agency its own department, Arenas said, would allow closer oversight by supervisors.
But an analysis by county budget officers concluded that such a drastic change would cost the county’s general fund about $22 million a year, which includes an estimated loss of $17 million in federal and state funding plus a cost of an estimated $4.8 million to hire new staff and provide other services. The loss in state and federal funding, the budget analysis says, would be due in part to millions of dollars in overhead expenses that the larger social services agency can recoup at higher rates than a newly-created, separate agency could.
Removing the child welfare agency from the purview of the larger Social Services Agency would also make Santa Clara County an outlier. Of California’s 58 counties, only Los Angeles County’s child welfare agency acts as its own separate department, according to a memo to the board prepared by Williams, the county executive.
That memo also offers alternatives other than a structural overhaul to increase oversight of the child welfare agency, including inviting a panel of outside experts to “provide independent assessments and recommendations” directly to the supervisors and the county executive’s office.
