Tragic discovery of hidden child abuse reports must never happen again
Madera County’s Child Welfare Services states its primary goal is to “prevent or remedy neglect, abuse or exploitation of children.” Yet the division itself is guilty of unconscionable neglect, as shown in an in-depth investigation by Bee staff writer Yesenia Amaro.
More than 300 reports of possible child abuse last fall were not immediately investigated because a social worker in the division kept them on her desk or in special locked wastebaskets. No one else knew about them. There were no internal controls to flag the worker’s intentional negligence.
As if that is not shocking enough, Deborah Martinez, the head of the Department of Social Services, admitted to the county’s chief administrative officer in an email that children almost certainly endured “incredible pain and suffering” due to abuse that was not investigated in a timely way. Some of the abuse was sexual.
Compounding matters, Madera County officials never told counterparts at the state about the discovery. Amaro also reports that at least some of the department’s leaders wanted to keep the missing-reports discovery quiet, both from colleagues and the public.
There already is a criminal investigation, as sheriff’s investigators look into the worker’s actions.
Moving forward
The social worker who withheld the reports is no longer with Madera County. Her colleagues investigated the reports once they surfaced.
That said, words cannot do justice to describe how big a failure this is by Madera County government. It is a deep stain of shame that will take years to clear.
As the top elected officials, Madera County’s five supervisors must take the next step, and that should be ordering an independent audit of Child Welfare to learn how and why one social worker, for whatever reason, was able to create this problem.
A review of the social worker’s other cases should be undertaken to ensure no additional problems were created by that person.
The supervisors should also oversee creation of new protocols and training so child abuse reports can never again be stashed away, out of sight and undetected.
One good step already taken is a new team of workers to screen calls to the abuse hotline.
County supervisors would be well within their rights to question if Martinez should remain the director. A thorough house cleaning may be needed to get Child Welfare back on track. Any such revamping should not harm the best social workers who, through no fault of their own, are now seeing their department dealing with a mess that never should have happened. Those workers’ morale would be understandably low.
Child Welfare has had major problems before. When Martinez arrived in 2017 there was a backlog of 1,000 cases, the result of an exodus of social workers.
Madera County cannot afford to not get it right this time.
Bottom line: no single child abuse report should ever be neglected. It is the county’s sacred duty to investigate such reports quickly and thoroughly. The physical, mental and emotional well-being of children is at stake.