An audit of the state's child-welfare agency released this week highlights murky guidelines on how to classify reports of child abuse and neglect, a lack of services to help struggling families, inadequate attention to getting kids into permanent homes and poor communication with people involved in the system, from parents and foster families to service providers.

Why the audit?

Senate President Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, insisted on a "nose-to-toes" audit of the Department of Child Safety last year as the Legislature was working on a plan to make the former Child Protective Services office a stand-alone agency that reported directly to the governor. Biggs unsuccessfully argued the comprehensive look should be done before creating a new state agency, which marked its first year of existence last month.

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What was the state of child welfare when the auditors started their work?

The state was recovering from the effects of the Great Recession and the child-welfare agency was showing the strain. The economic slowdown led to more poor kids in Arizona. The state had cut child-care subsidies as well as the child-welfare workforce to help erase budget deficits, which compounded problems.

Auditors noted calls to the state's child-abuse hotline jumped 44 percent between 2010 and 2014, adding there was a "surge" of neglect reports, even as abuse reports were trending downwards. More troubling, a growing number of hotline calls were found to merit investigation (12 percent last year, compared with 6 or 8 percent before 2009), which the auditors said "complicated" the work facing DCS.

Arizona was putting more kids in foster care than most other states (17,000 as of last year) and they were staying there longer: The time spent in foster care had increased nearly 50 percent by 2014, compared with 2009.

"As a result, pressure on the foster-care system grew at a nearly exponential rate," the report said.

What are the areas of high risk?

1. The "front door." The audit found ambiguity in how DCS prioritizes the hotline calls it gets on child abuse and neglect. While applauding improvements in faster response times and response rates, auditors found the agency needed clearer direction on the proper response, such as whether to remove a child or provide services.

2. Lack of services to families. This results in a higher, and unneeded, rate of removing the child from the home. It's better to provide these services while the child is living with his or her parents, rather than sending the child to foster care, auditors wrote.

3. Reduced attention to getting kids into permanent homes. This is due to DCS being stressed by the number of incoming calls as well as a mounting backlog of inactive cases. The result: More kids in foster care.

4. Accountability. This focused on the data DCS gathers and found it "weakest" in the area of child safety. For example, the data don't include safety threats caseworkers may see when visiting a home, nor risks or any services a family might need. Nor does it track how timely its initial response is when contacting a family.

5. Court relations and capacity. A child cannot be removed from his or her home without a judge signing off. But there are not enough attorneys to handle cases, limiting how well children and families are represented.

6. Relations with families, foster parents, advocacy groups and others. The audit cited "basic mistrust, confusion, lack of transparency, and so on" when it came to DCS' relationships with constituents and outside groups.

Did it find any bright spots?

The audit commended improvements in the agency's hotline, such as faster response times and fewer dropped calls. It also applauded DCS' start on gathering more, and better, data.

It urged the state to increase the Healthy Families Arizona program, which sends social workers to visit new parents with the goal of keeping families intact and kids out of foster care. It cited the program as one of the few DCS is following that is backed up by evidence it works.

What are the recommendations?

1. Standardize how calls coming into the hotline are classified. Clarify how the agency evaluates the risk to a child when receiving hotline calls.

2. Look at hiring retired case workers, outside companies or community groups to deal with the backlog of inactive cases. (That number was 15,473 as of last month.)

3. Continue Healthy Families Arizona.

4. Increase the number of attorneys who handle child-welfare cases and rework the salary system to incentivize better legal representation.

5. Return staffing ratios to pre-recession levels. The goal is to reduce the caseloads carried by workers and overseen by supervisors.

6. Continue efforts to gather better data, focusing on key outcomes.

7. Work with universities and other outside experts to determine the best practices that will keep kids safe, and then put those practices to work.

8. Open up communications with everyone involved with the child-welfare system, from families to service providers to kids in foster care. Hold regular meetings, develop a newsletter and hold forums to get ideas from the community.

What does the agency say?

Director McKay accepted all of the audit's recommendations, noting in several instances where the agency is already on the path the audit recommends. For example, DCS has issued a "request for information" to identify if there are outside services that can be used to deal with the backlog. The agency has formed a commission to remake the foster-care system, which McKay said will draw heavily on the ideas of community members and others involved in foster care.

After the audit was released, he tweeted out his thanks to Biggs and Chapin Hall. "Information is power. Substantial, sustainable reform on the horizon," he wrote.

Who did this audit?

The state Auditor General contracted the work out to the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. The audit cost $250,000, which lawmakers approved last year.

Reach the reporter at or at 602-444-8963.

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