After Santa Clara County child welfare agency director resignation, social workers call for more changes

Days before the resignation of Santa Clara County’s child welfare agency director takes effect, social workers on Tuesday demanded county supervisors hold more top leaders accountable for the death of baby Phoenix Castro and staff up the agency tasked with keeping children safe.

“When leadership responds to the tragedies in our community by making excuses, dragging their feet and hoping that no one will hold them accountable, children and families are left at risk,” social worker Karlie Eacock said during a rally outside the board chambers.

The county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services is so short staffed that 33% of social worker jobs that investigate child abuse and neglect are vacant, social workers said, and in the dependency court division where decisions are made whether to remove children from their parents, 50% of the jobs are vacant.

“The workers and supervisors are in crisis mode, triaging cases and doing the minimum when it comes to child abuse investigations,” social worker Sylvia Roque told supervisors, speaking at the microphone during the public comment period. Social workers are “grossly understaffed,” she said, with cases going unassigned for weeks and new workers thrown into jobs without proper training.

The board of supervisors began major reforms to the child welfare agency a year ago after a Bay Area News Group investigation found that county policies favored family preservation over child safety — and that those policies factored into the fentanyl overdose death of baby Phoenix who was sent home with her drug-abusing father despite warnings from social workers. A state investigation last summer also called for immediate action to keep children safe.

But those reforms have come too fast without enough staff to properly implement them, social workers said Tuesday, or the right leadership to guide them. Social workers have been demanding leadership changes since the Bay Area News Group first broke the story in October 2023, naming as culpable County Executive James Williams, Department of Social Services Director Daniel Little who drafted the family-first policy and Department of Family and Children’s Services Director Damion Wright.

Only Wright has resigned, and he did so on his own accord, announcing the day after Christmas that his father’s recent death — not any pressure related to the investigations — led to his departure. He leaves his job Friday. During a national search for a new director, Assistant Director Wendy Kinnear-Rausch will be serving as acting director.

Supervisor Sylvia Arenas, who was first to call for the agency overhaul, has been critical of all three leaders. But the board only has authority to fire the county executive, not department heads, and there has been little interest among the supervisors to push Williams out, saying they prefer to “look ahead” to fix things, not look back to assign blame.

Williams previously led the county counsel’s office, which helped implement the family preservation policy. It’s uncertain the effect the two new supervisors, Betty Duong and Margaret Abe-Koga who took their seats Tuesday, will have on the 5-member board.

Social worker supervisor Pa Chang says the county is failing children.

“We have children who are placed in foster care who are not able to visit their families,” Chang said. “We have children who are placed hundreds of miles away from their communities. We have children and families who are not adequately served because we don’t have language capacity to meet their needs. Court matters are being delayed, continued for weeks, if not months due to the influx of cases and we don’t have any staff to handle that.”

Social worker Eacock on Tuesday called for a “clean sweep” of department leadership.

“Rather than doing the work, the hard work of repairing a broken system, DFCS leaders are recklessly reorganizing, and our workforce and our community is suffering,” Eacock said. “When social workers are overworked, sleep deprived, burnt out and in roles that they were forced into and not trained for, children and families are left at risk.”

Social workers first gathered outside the board chambers Tuesday morning along with baby Phoenix’s great uncle, Ed Morillo, who not only lost baby Phoenix to fentanyl, but his niece, Emily De La Cerda, who died months later also of a fentanyl overdose. Her husband, David Castro, is in jail facing felony child endangerment charges.

Morillo also called for new leadership among those in charge of child welfare.

“The buffoonery at the top needs to stop,” he said.  “We need to make sure that these kids are taken care of.”