In a report titled “Falling Through the Cracks,” Santa Clara County’s Civil Grand Jury investigating the county’s foster care system found its child welfare agency had a “poor track record” of helping older youth and expressed “serious reservations” that its leaders could effectively improve their care.
For years, “their goals were clear, yet they failed to execute,” the report said.
The report recommended the county identify a senior leader by Sept. 1 with responsibility to implement improvement plans for foster teens. Those would include quarterly public updates on progress and setbacks beginning in October, increased stipends for foster parents caring for the most difficult youths, and the addition of a highly trained staff member at each existing county-run group home. The county must respond by mid August to the report by the Civil Grand Jury, an independent watchdog body for local government that examines public agencies and citizen complaints.
The report is the latest investigation critical of the county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services.
Over the past 18 months, the agency has been the subject of investigations by The Mercury News over the fentanyl overdose death of Baby Phoenix Castro as well as its operation for years of a string of unlicensed group homes for older foster youths — reporting the Grand Jury referenced in its June report — as well as two investigations by the state of California’s Department of Social Services.
Whether the county’s child welfare agency can overcome the grand jury’s skepticism will largely be up to its new director, Wendy Kinnear-Rausch. A longtime social worker and agency assistant director, she was recently named to replace former director Damion Wright. Wright left early this year after months of criticism from social workers upset that he failed to take accountability for agency policies that favored family unity over child safety, and led, in part, to baby Phoenix’s death. The newborn had been sent home with her father despite written warnings from a social worker that he abused drugs and had already lost custody of his two older children because of severe neglect. She died at 3 months old with fentanyl found on her pink-flowered onesie. Her father, David Castro, and his alleged drug dealer, Philip Ortega, have both been charged with murder.
Over the past year, The Mercury News also exposed a string of unlicensed, county-run group homes for mostly foster teenagers that the state had been told repeatedly were illegal. Five of the scattered sites were the scenes of numerous psychological breakdowns and assault and battery incidents, the reporting found.
After details about baby Phoenix’s death first came to light, County Supervisor Sylvia Arenas and former supervisor Cindy Chavez demanded an overhaul of the Family and Children’s Services agency. The state later required a 5-year “corrective action plan,” which is under way.
Nonetheless, “the County will need to overcome significant operational and coordination challenges to be successful,” the grand jury found. “Achieving these goals requires commitment, transparency, and a willingness to learn from past mistakes.”
Kinnear-Rausch declined an interview with this news organization, and an emailed statement did not directly address the grand jury concerns. Instead, the statement said that when the agency completes its response to the grand jury, it will share it.
“Caring and supporting high acuity youth continues to be a top priority for the County and requires the close coordination and involvement of multiple County departments and community based organizations to ensure youth receive the support they need,” the county said in the statement.
The statement also referenced its $2 million plan to improve care for foster teens, including recruiting more high-level foster parents able to care for the most challenging youth and, to help overcome affordability as a key obstacle, possibly acquiring homes for foster parents. The plan also calls for opening “short-term residential therapeutic program” homes for foster youth who need therapy and other intensive support services — similar to therapeutic homes in San Mateo County.
In response to criticism over the past year, the county has said that the state left them little choice but to run the unlicensed homes after the state Legislature in 2015 adopted new rules to try to keep troubled children with relatives instead of in group homes. Numerous licensed group homes run by private contractors across the state shuttered after that. The county opened it’s own group homes in 2020 and only recently received state licenses.
Supervisor Arenas, who spent her early career working with foster children, said the grand jury report “affirms what many in our community have long recognized — that our systems have fallen short in meeting the complex and urgent needs of young people in crisis.”
It’s critical that the county continue on its path to offer “real solutions for children who have experienced more trauma and neglect in their earliest years than anyone should experience in a lifetime,” she said in a statement. She agreed with the grand jury report that “the county must move quickly and decisively.”
Social workers, however, have expressed concern that they are not properly staffed to implement changes. In February — a month after Wright left the agency and Kinnear-Rausch stepped in as interim director — social workers confronted the county’s Board of Supervisors, complaining they were “grossly understaffed” and “in crisis mode.”
The county serves less than three dozen of the most difficult to place foster teens a year, but “the challenges posed in the daily care and supervision of the most traumatized children, especially teens, should not be underestimated,” said Steve Baron, a member the county’s Child Abuse Prevention Council who emphasized he was speaking for himself. Staff must be properly trained and adequately paid, he said.
Supervisor Arenas said the county is committed to improving the plight of troubled foster teens “so that no child falls through the cracks.”