Audit faults Arizona child welfare agency for lax foster-care oversight, late court reports

Numerous shortcomings that could jeopardize the safety of children in Arizona's care and the prospect of reuniting families were discovered in a wide-ranging audit of the state's child welfare agency.

The audit also found deficiencies in conflict-of-interest policies that could affect the agency's impartiality in awarding taxpayer-funded contracts.

The Department of Child Safety was slow to look into complaints about foster care and group homes, the audit found. For one group home, the agency took more than a year to complete its investigation. Of 30 complaints involving the licenses of these temporary placements for children, investigations of only half were completed within the required 45 days.

Slow investigations, the state Auditor General Lindsey A. Perry noted, could allow risky or unhealthy practices to continue. The 30 complaints examined in the audit were a fraction of the 1,389 DCS received in 2022, the audit noted.

The audit was done as part of a sunset review of DCS, which was created as a standalone state agency in 2014. Lawmakers will use the audit, as well as two others completed earlier this year, as they decide whether to allow the agency to continue operating. Any action will be taken in a public hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.

DCS Executive Deputy Director David Lujan agreed with the findings, outlining steps the agency would take to correct the issues the audit identified. An exception was DCS’ rejection of 15 recommendations from an audit that dealt with how to respond to complaints of child neglect and abuse. The agency in 2016 explained why it was taking a different approach on that topic, Lujan said.

The audit faulted DCS case managers for repeatedly blowing deadlines to submit reports to county juvenile courts. The courts preside over cases that will determine whether children are removed from their homes, are placed in foster care and, ultimately, whether parental rights are terminated or children are put up for adoption.

These reports, which cover issues such as whether a parent is on track with required services and whether parent-child visits are happening as scheduled, should be submitted to the court 15 days before the hearing.

Read the report:Arizona Department of Child Safety—Sunset Review, Sept. 29, 2023

But that didn’t happen in 69% of the 67 cases the auditors scrutinized. This was not a new problem: In 2016, the Auditor General’s Office faulted the agency for late reports.

The current audit reported complaints from 17 of 28 juvenile court judges surveyed, who said the DCS reports they received lacked specific details, contained outdated information and were poorly written.

In some cases, these issues caused court hearings to be delayed, prolonging the amount of time a family was tied up with juvenile court issues.

The audit also found deficiencies in DCS’ conflict-of-interest policies, noting some employees did not meet the requirement to fill out the forms annually. In a sample of 30 forms, it found four cases where it was unclear whether a new hire even had filled out a disclosure statement.

Auditors said they had received complaints about conflicts of interest involving DCS employees but did not specify what those conflicts were or who was involved. But, the audit cautioned, without such disclosures, it could be hard to boost confidence that employees were not self-dealing when it came to awarding or overseeing contracts. DCS contracts out many of its services.

Lujan, in his response to the audit, agreed with the recommendation that the agency’s conflict-of-interest statements should be placed in a folder that is publicly available.

Among the many recommendations that Lujan said the agency would follow involved the revelation last month that 95,000 records in child-welfare cases were found in the agency's information-management system without any evidence that they were forwarded to a child's case file. Lujan said the agency is reviewing those reports from service providers, especially those that involve 596 ongoing cases.

Gov. Katie Hobbs, who tapped Lujan to head the agency earlier this year, on Monday said she has confidence in her appointee to fix the issues identified in the audit.

"We've already seen a lot of things turned around, including announcing the number of kids in care going below 10,000 for the first time in years," Hobbs said. "So he's tackling these issues, and I have confidence in him tackling this one as well."

DCS in September reported there were 9,900 children in out-of-home care, the lowest level since July 2008. That marked a 53% decrease from the high point of 18,657 kids in 2016.

The audit also noted that, since 2018, DCS has increased the number of children placed in kinship care by 9%.

Arizona Republic reporter Stacey Barchenger contributed to this article.

Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-228-7566. Follow her on Threads as well as on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @maryjpitzl.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.