By Howard Fischer
Mail | X: @azcapmedia

PHOENIX — A new report says the state Department of Child Safety has a “culture of not wanting to take punitive enforcement action against its foster homes and group homes.”

Auditor General Lindsey Perry said the agency is authorized to suspend or revoke licenses for foster homes and child welfare agencies as well as a group home’s operating certificate. It also can put child welfare agencies into a “provisional” status.

But she said that as of Sept. 3, a review of 2,711 closed investigations, there was not a single documented instance where DCS had suspended or revoked a child welfare agency license or group home operating certificate, though there were 30 instances where licenses were revoked for foster homes.

The report cites the 2022 testimony of the DCS director at a legislative committee who told them the agency “did not want its enforcement actions to be punitive and stated a preference for working with facilities to remediate issues rather than closing them.” The report does not identify that person. But Mike Faust was the director at that time.

That’s not the only evidence Perry cited.

“Further, during the audit, current department management expressed concerns that punitive enforcement could lead to retention issues with licensees,” she said.

But all that, the audit concludes, is resulting in “slow and ineffective” action in oversight by DCS of foster and group homes that could result in risky or unhealthy environments for children in out-of-home care.

Perry said her staffers also found DCS was slow to take enforcement action in some foster home licensing complaints they reviewed. She also said the agency “did not effectively use its enforcement authority” in some complaints.

And Perry said DCS did not perform any ongoing monitoring of 35 group homes and other child welfare agencies during the review period.

The report makes 12 specific recommendations for improvement. And David Lujan, who was tapped earlier this hear by Gov. Katie Hobbs to head the agency, agreed to implement all of them.

Problems at DCS, the report says, start with timing.

Perry said rules require complaints against licensed foster homes be investigated within 45 days. But she said a review of a sample of 30 complaints found half of them were not finished within that time frame.

And in the case of three of the group homes, the completion times were 158, 171 and 406 days, respectively.

On top of that, she said, DCS was slow in taking enforcement actions even after the complaints were concluded, waiting in one case 101 days.

“When the department is slow to take enforcement actions, licensees may continue operating with uncorrected violations that contribute to risky or unhealthy environments,” the report says.

For example, she said DCS took 91 days to take enforcement action after it validated that the licensee left a child unsupervised despite a history of self-harm.

In other cases, Perry said, even when there were enforcement actions they were insufficient.

At the very least, she said, agency rules require the licensee to develop a corrective action plan. But of the 13 validated complaints reviewed, the report says, that didn’t happen in three of the cases.

“Further, child welfare agencies operating these three group homes with validated licensing complaints had a history of similar prior, validated licensing complaints,” Perry said.

In one of those complaints, an employee allegedly provided marijuana to children. But the agency’s explanation of its decision to take no further action was that the group home had taken care of the problem by firing the employee.

“However, our review of 44 prior validated licensing complaints for the child welfare agency that operates this group home since March 2021 found other specific instances of inappropriate and harmful staff interactions with children, including staff issues such as verbal abuse of children and inappropriate use of restraints causing injuries to children,” Perry said. And while DCS required a corrective action for those reports, the agency never considered any of that history when deciding what to do with the new complaints that the Auditor General’s Office reviewed.

The report also says there’s a separate issue: the failure of DCS to interview most children involved in four of 28 complaints reviewed.

What makes that important is that speaking with the children involved in an allegation or others living in the foster or group home may have information about not just other licensing violations but also potential or abuse beyond what was alleged in the original complaint.

The report cites one complaint about a group home with an allegation that an employee had hugged a child and touched the child’s face against the child’s will.

“Although the child’s caseworker met with the child after the complaint was received, the department’s licensing complaint investigation record did not include any information from the caseworker’s conversations with the child,” the report says. “And Office of Licensing and Regulation licensing specialists did not interview the child or any other children from the home.”