Arizona completes work on child-welfare cases
- The state says 6%2C500 cases of child abuse and neglect have been cleared.
- The cases were deliberately not investigated and triggered a child-welfare overhaul.
- Of the children named in the reports%2C 4.5 percent had to be removed from their homes.
The new child-welfare agency has cleared the pile of more than 6,500 child-neglect and abuse cases that led to an overhaul of Child Protective Services.
The announcement from the new Department of Child Safety means caseworkers have checked on the welfare of 12,879 children who were named in the files that had been deliberately set aside and designated as "not investigated" over a four-year period beginning in 2009.
Of those children, 582, or about 4.5 percent, had to be removed from their homes because state workers found circumstances that put the child in harm's way.
Charles Flanagan, director of the new child-welfare agency, called it a good-news/bad-news situation.
The low percentage of children who were removed from their families' homes was good news. But 582 children were found to be in unsafe circumstances.
"They didn't have to be," Flanagan said. "They didn't have to be removed if we (the state had responded)." A prompt response could have prevented a situation from spiraling into danger, he said.
The children who were removed are either in the process of being reunited with their families or have been placed in foster homes or with other caregivers, he said.
Flanagan said completion of work on the 6,596 cases relieves more than 300 staffers of the "crushing workload" that has consumed them since late last year.
"It's a great emotional boost to the employees to have this done," he said.
Those staffers are now freed up to work on the backlog of other child-abuse and neglect cases, as well as dealing with the calls that come in daily to the child-abuse hotline.
In a statement, Gov. Jan Brewer said she was proud of staffers' efforts to deal with the crisis.
"Today's news is a true testament to the good that can be accomplished by devoted individuals collaborating toward a common and noble cause," she said.
The discovery of the
files prompted Gov. Jan Brewer to dismantle the then-Child Protective Services division and work with lawmakers to create a new state agency that would report directly to the governor.
The Legislature provided additional funding to cover the cost of the work needed to check on each of the 6,596 cases.
The so-called "NI" process was discovered last November when the police officer heading the Office of Child Welfare Investigations stumbled upon some of the cases.
The discovery led to the eventual dismissal of six CPS staffers, who have complained they were made scapegoats for carrying out a policy that was widely known and necessitated by a lack of manpower to deal with a crushing load of neglect and abuse reports.
Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8963.