When document numbers of kids die or undergo near-fatal accidents by the hands of their dad and mom, alarm bells ought to sound. Loudly. Particularly when these children have been already on the state’s radar as doubtlessly unsafe.
That’s precisely what’s occurred in Washington over the past two years. So, it behooves lawmakers to take a tough have a look at the Division of Youngsters, Youth & Households, whose main mission is preserving children protected.
Final month, all 19 Senate Republicans signed a letter asking the Democratic management for such an inquiry. There’s specific urgency, they famous, in mild of the enormous legal settlements being paid out by DCYF for previous failures.
Sen. Claire Wilson, a Democrat who chairs each the Human Providers Committee and the DCYF Oversight Board, dismissed the request. The issue, she mentioned, is much less about apply throughout the baby welfare company and extra about a dearth of assist for fogeys battling dependancy.
“It’s onerous to carry individuals accountable when the companies and assist aren’t there,” Wilson mentioned in an interview.
That’s not what the kid fatality reviews present. Repeatedly, drug-addicted dad and mom have been provided therapy and refused it, or relapsed, or did not comply with by way of. Wilson ought to do some homework and rethink.
Extra to the purpose, youngsters’s lives can’t be hostage to a ledger sheet. Washington is certainly dealing with dire funds realities, and if drug therapy isn’t available it’s extra vital than ever to regulate protocols at DCYF. Maybe by taking extra children into foster care, or not less than by offering higher oversight whereas they continue to be with their households.
But the alternative appears to be occurring. Courtroom filings to make children legally depending on the state have plunged 35% since 2021, when the Legislature handed its Maintaining Households Collectively Act to shrink foster care.
This isn’t essentially a foul factor. There are highly effective causes to maintain youngsters out of that system. However the level is to do it safely, and Washington is failing that take a look at. The proof? Some 200 useless and severely injured youngsters recognized to DCYF since 2023, greater than the state has seen in a decade, or longer.
Tana Senn, secretary of the company, has deflected questions on a baby welfare disaster, preferring as an alternative guilty fentanyl for the stunning spike in vital incidents — a 67% enhance between 2020 and 2024.
However fentanyl isn’t the one offender. Some youngsters have been tortured. Or starved. Or by chance suffocated.
One sample unites all of them: a number of referrals to Youngster Protecting Providers. One household was reported 85 instances between 2012 and 2025, earlier than their youngest, an toddler, died.
This doesn’t imply the Maintaining Households Collectively Act itself is at fault. It means employees at DCYF haven’t been educated to perceive and apply the regulation accurately. (As an illustration, solely a decide can ship a child into foster care, however out of 47 incidents of extreme baby maltreatment in the course of the first quarter of 2025, simply two instances had been delivered to courtroom.)
It additionally means the company, fairly clearly, should change the way in which it assesses danger.
That’s behind-the-scenes work Senn, who inherited this mess, wants to guide. As a result of exterior her company, advocates are more and more indignant. A gaggle known as Maintaining Children Protected plans to rally on the Capitol on Jan. 14, and its organizer says greater than 100 individuals have signed up.
Their goal is the Maintaining Households Collectively Act, the newest instance of a well-intended state regulation handed with out the infrastructure important to make it work.
As Sen. Leonard Christian, R-Spokane Valley, informed the DCYF Oversight Board final month, “It’s actually onerous to be involved with a baby’s well-being once they’re useless.”
