{"id":168117,"date":"2026-02-07T12:57:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T12:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/168117\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T12:57:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T12:57:06","slug":"3-children-died-after-repeated-warnings-to-santa-clara-county-child-welfare-east-bay-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/168117\/","title":{"rendered":"3 children died after repeated warnings to Santa Clara County child welfare \u2013 East Bay Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parental neglect contributed to the previously unreported deaths of three Santa Clara County children in 2022, even after repeated referrals urged the county\u2019s child welfare agency to intervene and ensure their safety, according to a newly released report<\/a> that raises fresh questions about longstanding failures at the troubled department now under new leadership.<\/p>\n

In each case, social workers closed repeated referrals as unfounded or inconclusive, referred parents to voluntary services they never completed or took no further action until after a child died, according to the report issued by the county\u2019s Child Death Review Team and led by the chief medical examiner.<\/p>\n

In one of the cases reviewed, parents were later charged with felony child endangerment. In another, they ultimately lost custody of their surviving children. The cases have come to light because the Child Death Review Team said it \u201cperformed a deeper dive\u201d into them, revealing more detail about the circumstances than previous reports.<\/p>\n

The Child Death Review Team findings represent the latest blow\u00a0to an agency that has faced intense scrutiny since the 2023 fentanyl poisoning death of baby Phoenix Castro. Despite dire warnings from social workers, the department sent the newborn home with her drug-addicted father, a decision that ultimately revealed agency policies more focused on keeping families together than protecting children. Her mother later died of an overdose, and her father has been charged with murder<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Extensive reporting by The Mercury News<\/a>, along with investigations by the state Department of Social Services, previously found that beginning in 2021, the agency\u2019s new family preservation policies led to a dramatic reduction in the number of children being removed from their homes by the courts, and instead a new emphasis on keeping them with their parents who were supposed to take classes to improve their parenting skills. Because those services were voluntary, however, parents often skipped or refused the services, and faced little consequence from the child welfare department. The agency\u2019s former director, Damion Wright, resigned in December 2024. Since then, the department has embarked on a sweeping reform effort.<\/p>\n

The agency, now led by Wendy Kinnear-Rausch, said it has implemented numerous changes since 2023 aimed at improving child safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose changes included implementing each and every recommendation from the recently released 2021-2023\u201d report, the county said in a statement. \u201cWe remain committed to continuous efforts in every domain to keep children safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those recommendations included that when parents fail to engage in voluntary services \u201caction be taken to ensure the protection of the children from ongoing abuse or neglect,\u201d and that the child welfare agency provide to the Child Death Review team comprehensive fatality reviews on every case with a history of abuse or neglect referrals.<\/p>\n

Since reforms began in late 2023, the number of children removed from their homes has since dramatically<\/a> increased, returning now to earlier levels, according to county data.<\/p>\n

But Santa Clara County Supervisor Sylvia Arenas, a former child welfare professional and the first county official to call publicly for an overhaul of the department, said there is still much work to be done. Many reforms have focused appropriately on infants and very young children, such as increasing interventions when babies are born with drugs in their systems, she said. But she believes that neglect cases \u2014 particularly involving older children \u2014 remain under-addressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that we are there yet for the older children, especially those children who are suffering from neglect or who are developmentally delayed or disabled,\u201d Arenas said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t really put them at the center of our focus and discussion. I think they merit that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Child Death Review Team acknowledged that the department has already acted on many of its recommendations, praising its \u201csteadfast participation, its transparency, and robust discussion.\u201d Still, Arenas said neglect cases in particular are challenging for social services agencies to handle.<\/p>\n

\u201cNeglect is so silent,\u201d she said. \u201cNeglect doesn\u2019t have a bruise to show for itself and so it\u2019s harder to substantiate and harder for neighbors and friends and teachers to report.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s previous report, which examined child deaths from 2019 and 2020, identified eight deaths linked to neglect but did not clearly indicate whether those children had been the subject of prior child welfare intervention. The new report, covering 2021 through 2023, identified 12 child deaths associated with neglect and pointed out \u201can increasing trend of child deaths occurring in dysfunctional families.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest findings also concluded that most child deaths were preventable and that isolation and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic were contributing factors in several suicides and drug overdoses.<\/p>\n

The report warned that neglect is often minimized within the child welfare system, where it can be conflated with poverty and social workers may be reluctant to penalize poor or minority parents who are juggling multiple jobs.<\/p>\n

California law can further complicate intervention, the report noted, requiring mandatory reporters to show that neglect \u201cis not the result of a parent\u2019s economic disadvantage,\u201d which raises the bar for action by social workers.<\/p>\n

The report cited a 2013 study finding that \u201cchildren referred for physical abuse faced a significantly lower risk of unintentional fatal injury than children referred for neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s kind of counterintuitive,\u201d that neglect could be a stronger harbinger for fatality than physical abuse, Arenas said. However, because neglect is more insidious and \u201cwhen you don\u2019t interrupt and when you don\u2019t intervene, these cases get to this point where the neglect eventually leads to death.\u201d<\/p>\n

A severely autistic 17-year-old boy died of COVID-19 in his bed while his mother ran an errand. Over the previous decade, the county had received seven referrals alleging abuse or neglect, including one just three months before his death. All but one allegation was deemed unfounded or inconclusive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe parents were referred to voluntary services on multiple occasions,\u201d the report said, \u201cwith no evidence that the parents ever successfully engaged in such services.\u201d Only after the boy\u2019s death were allegations involving his siblings substantiated. They were taken into protective custody.<\/p>\n

A 16-year-old girl died of a fentanyl overdose while staying with a friend at a board-and-care home. Social workers had engaged with with her family five times over the previous decade following reports of abuse and neglect. Because none were substantiated, no services were offered. After her death, a new maltreatment report involving a surviving sibling was also deemed unfounded, and the child was determined to be safe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A 9-year-old boy drowned after climbing a fence with his brother into a neighboring apartment complex pool. His autism and other health conditions were considered contributing factors. The county had engaged with the family three times before his death, including over reports of suspicious injuries. Each time, the child was deemed safe. After his death, the parents were charged with child endangerment.<\/p>\n

The Child Death Review Team said it will continue monitoring the department\u2019s progress, particularly whether it follows up in every case where parents are offered voluntary services.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michelle Jorden, who chairs the Child Death Review Team, said she was unavailable for additional comment.<\/p>\n

Steve Baron, a child welfare expert and member of the county\u2019s Child Abuse Prevention Council, said social workers face enormous challenges navigating complex family dynamics. He emphasized he was speaking in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the council.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not an easy issue,\u201d Baron said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to look back at any child death and say, you know, we should have done this or that and we didn\u2019t. We don\u2019t want to miss opportunities to help families and children early on, and not wait till after the third, fourth or fifth referral for suspected abuse or neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 19-year-old former foster child in Santa Clara County, whose experience was detailed in an earlier Mercury News investigation<\/a> into the county\u2019s unlicensed group homes that were the scenes of numerous runaways and assaults, said the report\u2019s findings were unsurprising.<\/p>\n

The woman, Destiny, said social workers repeatedly visited her childhood home following reports of abuse but concluded the allegations were unsubstantiated and left her in her mother\u2019s care. That outcome, she said, reinforced her mother\u2019s belief that nothing was wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause they were not conclusive, she didn\u2019t really care,\u201d said Destiny, who asked that her last name not be used to protect her privacy. \u201cI was scared to go home a lot. It definitely made sense to why my life turned out the way it did now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parental neglect contributed to the previously unreported deaths of three Santa Clara County children in 2022, even after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[184,7,8,733,16193,138,181,23,100,385,88,90,89,198,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-168117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-child-abuse","12":"tag-child-safety","13":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","14":"tag-latest-headlines","15":"tag-local-news","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-regional","18":"tag-san-jose","19":"tag-san-jose-headlines","20":"tag-san-jose-news","21":"tag-santa-clara-county","22":"tag-south-bay"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}