Yearly, the state points a report tabulating circumstances the place kids died, or almost died, whereas on the radar of Washington’s little one welfare system. It’s often a dry doc, regardless of the ache and tragedy it tracks, filled with charts and proposals introduced in easy, intentionally undramatic phrases.
Not this 12 months. For the primary time, Patrick Dowd, the Ombuds for Households and Kids, has included information about vital circumstances through the first two quarters of 2025 — on prime of his general abstract for 2024.
Why? As a result of between January and March alone, there have been 47 little one deaths and near-deaths amongst children recognized to the Division of Kids, Youth and Households — greater than throughout any quarter of 2024. That was no onetime blip. The sample has continued, such that by the tip of final month, there had been 92 of those vital circumstances — extra incidents recording kids in mortal hazard than all through all of final 12 months.
“What considerations me,” stated Dowd, “are the quantity that qualify for critical-incident opinions” investigating severe abuse and neglect. If this price of kid distress continues by way of 2025, he added, “We’ll have to have a look at what wants to alter.”
Dowd is a sober, considerate man, not given to hyperbole, and he has been doing this work for greater than a decade. So to see him waving his arms, warning of hazard, makes one sit up and take notice.
Fairly a bit has already modified at DCYF over the previous two years, for the reason that state’s new Protecting Households Collectively Act was put into apply. Looking for to stem the variety of kids taken from their households and positioned in foster care — a extreme trauma unto itself — legislators handed the legislation, aiming to boost the bar for eradicating children. Whereas kids remained at house, the pondering went, caseworkers would steer mother and father towards voluntary drug- and psychological health-treatment applications.
That was the plan. However clearly, it’s not assembly the mark.
Practically 40% of kid fatalities in 2024 occurred after mother and father had participated in a voluntary Household Evaluation Response, or Household Providers, and the state, happy, closed their circumstances. Forty-two p.c of households wherein a toddler died final 12 months had open circumstances with the division on the time.
To reverse this dismal pattern, Dowd suggests increasing drug therapy for pregnant ladies and new moms and, in circumstances involving older children, permitting them to stay with their mother and father however beneath intensive, court-ordered supervision — in-home foster care, he calls it.
Standing up such a program can be neither fast nor straightforward. But it surely’s value severe consideration by Tana Senn, the newly appointed secretary at DCYF, who has a possibility — and an obligation — to make enhancements.
No matter her resolution, Senn should confront these numbers and discover a approach to make the division’s insurance policies match actuality.
