DSHS - Child Deaths in Washington State and Arizona

More Arizona kids died of abuse in 2010 - Arizona News from The Arizona Republic'

Here is another state reporting an increase in child deaths in 2010 in Arizona. In Washington State in the last report I reviewed showed that almost before every child death someone had called the Child Protective Services (CPS) Hotline. The review only focused on the intake worker having missed something. The report didn't study the managers who hired, oversaw and trained the intake workers.

In this Arizona news article it reported:

"CPS had not been notified in at least one-third of child-maltreatment deaths, according to the report, even though those who knew the children died of abuse or neglect were required by law to notify the agency. Those so-called mandated reporters include police, medical personnel and teachers."

It then went on to say that law enforcement had a phone line to CPS that CPS answered immediately whereas the other "professionals" who were mandatory reporters did not thus per the news article:

"...professionals must wait on hold with the general public and those waits can exceed 30 minutes. In 2009, more than 12,000 of the 123,000 callers to the child-abuse hotline hung up before they spoke with anyone."

Without the news article giving such a precise assessment one could think that there were fewer CPS reports because they couldn't get through to the hotline staff.

Did professionals not call? And was it because CPS didn't pick up the phone? Then the logical next step is to call the police if a child is in danger. Then the next logical step is to write it down and send in a report to both CPS and the police.

We been so taught to get in line through our public education careers (K-12 and most colleges) that we believe we can't think outside of the box. We can. The common person is intelligent, children are intelligent and we all have critical thinking skills and we can problem solve. I know this from teaching in the community these last five years. The community is filled with kind, feeling and competent folks.

I made a CPS report on CPS in August 2011 for failure of CPS to protect four and six year old brothers. The intake worker said, "You can't do that." Yes, I can. And he did. Then we had a meaningful conversation about the system as I am a former CPS intake/investigation social worker.

We can figure out how to be in community and maybe help out before it gets so bad we have to a call a failing government system.