By Sophia Solis 
Cronkite News Service

PHOENIX – Gov. Jan Brewer has created an independent panel to oversee Child Protective Services staff reviewing 6,000 reports of child abuse and neglect that weren’t investigated.

“The goal is to ensure a thorough, transparent and independent oversight in the investigation to each of these neglected cases,” Brewer said at a news conference Monday.

Dubbed the Child Advocate Response Examination team, the eight-member group also will review CPS operations and policies and identify areas for improvement, Brewer said.

Charles Flanagan, director of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, is chairman of the panel, which includes two lawmakers: Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor, D-Phoenix, and Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix.

The action stems from an announcement last month by Clarence Carter, director of the state Department of Economic Security, that 6,000 child abuse reports weren’t investigated between 2009 and 2013.

Brophy McGee said the team will help reverse a process that appears corrupt.

“It is absolutely critical that we have independent oversight,” McGee said.

Pressed by reporters about problems with CPS during her tenure, Brewer noted that her administration exposed the uninvestigated cases.

“This was discovered by our team and brought to light, and that’s what we call transparency,” she said.

Brewer said blame shouldn’t be placed entirely on CPS staff.

“The situation was not created by the failure of CPS case workers,” she said. “These cases never even made it to their desks.”

Kathy Rau, executive director of the Southern Arizona Children’s Advocacy Center, said in a telephone interview that Brewer should instead focus on improving CPS from within.

“Oversight will not fix the problem; CPS needs to be fixed,” Rau said.

CARE team:
• Charles Flanagan (Chairman): Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections
• Deb Gullett: Child advocate
• Jan Strauss: Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police
• Leah Landrum Taylor: State senator
• Rob Bell: ChildHelp
• Greg McKay: Office of Child Welfare Investigations
• Kate Brophy McGee: State representative
• Cindi Nannetti: Maricopa County Attorney’s Office

This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 4, 2013.

5 replies on “Brewer Creates Independent Panel to Oversee and Review 6,000 CPS Cases”

  1. I’m a little hazy on how the director of DES discovered anything about investigations in CPS. I don’t doubt that CPS is deeply flawed, I’m just wondering how this was actually discovered. I’m positive it wasn’t because Jan had someone look into things.

  2. The concerns with CPS has been well known for years with respect to understaffed as a result of the family court not doing its share of the work. However, as the AZ Governor stated, it is unclear if Carter was aware of the lower rank corruption. The Governor stated that she seeks an independent agency to investigate into who was authorizing the CPS Units with such corrupt conduct of investigation policy violations with the upper DES leadership being by-passed. Why? The link below shows that Pima County Judiciary often contacted and directed false findings to CPS agents and units, during open hotline investigations. On around August 2012 Commissioner Dean Christoffel and Commissioner Margaret Maxwell had been documented in contacting CPS agents and units directing them to modify CPS investigation reports. Mr Tod Stone of DES Records office modified CPS records without acquiring upper leadership approval authorizing him to modify records as to meet the judiciary “verbal orders” to embed and modify records of interests to the judiciary in the pima county superior court. Judges and Commissioners of Pima County Superior Court directed CPS agents to fabricate false findings against fathers evidenced from 2007 to present. The first round of corruption was discovered in 2012 and three agents had been terminated and by years end the entire Broadway Blvd CPS Unit was scattered and all agents and managers terminated. Fathers had been setup through fraud record as a result of corrupt commissioners and judges of pima country superior court contacting and directed the agents to side step the CPS’s upper leadership and CPS policy. It is clear that the family court judiciary over burdened CPS with cases by failing to do their job during the family court proceedings and unilaterally interfering with active CPS investigations. There does appear that family court often accused CPS from 2007 to present rather then using its family court judiciary discretion to honorably rule on the thousands of cases that are clearly evidenced based and should have been resolved within the family court process rather then family court tossing the clear concerns over the wall to CPS.
    https://www.facebook.com/PimaCountyJudicia…

  3. Corrupt, Corrupt, Corrupt – 6,000 cases neglected! How could they not know about 6,000 cases? Brewer has little choice but to clean house to restore public faith ASAP! Was the AG’s Ofc. asleep at the wheel on this one too? 6,000 cases uninvestigated are testimony to a systematic failure – someone must have known. Why did they remain quiet for so long?

    “Pressed by reporters about problems with CPS during her tenure, Brewer noted that her administration exposed the uninvestigated cases.”

  5. first, go after arpaio and ALL of his pedophile ‘people’ There’s a start. The minutemen, teabaggers, his deputies…

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