When file numbers of kids die or endure near-fatal accidents by the hands of their dad and mom, alarm bells ought to sound. Loudly. Particularly when these youngsters had been already on the state’s radar as doubtlessly unsafe.
That’s precisely what’s occurred in Washington during the last two years. So, it behooves lawmakers to take a tough take a look at the Division of Kids, Youth & Households, whose main mission is maintaining youngsters secure.
Final month, all 19 Senate Republicans signed a letter asking the Democratic management for such an inquiry. There may be explicit urgency, they famous, in gentle of the enormous legal settlements being paid out by DCYF for previous failures.
Sen. Claire Wilson, a Democrat who chairs each the Human Companies Committee and the DCYF Oversight Board, dismissed the request. The issue, she stated, is much less about observe inside the baby welfare company and extra about a dearth of assist for folks scuffling with habit.
“It’s onerous to carry folks accountable when the companies and help aren’t there,” Wilson stated in an interview.
That’s not what the kid fatality reviews present. Repeatedly, drug-addicted dad and mom had been provided therapy and refused it, or relapsed, or did not comply with via. 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 finances realities, and if drug therapy isn’t available it’s extra essential than ever to regulate protocols at DCYF. Maybe by taking extra youngsters into foster care, or no less than by offering higher oversight whereas they continue to be with their households.
But the alternative appears to be taking place. Court docket filings to make youngsters 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 check. The proof? Some 200 useless and severely injured youngsters identified 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 toddler welfare disaster, preferring as a substitute in charge fentanyl for the surprising spike in important incidents — a 67% enhance between 2020 and 2024.
However fentanyl isn’t the one wrongdoer. Some youngsters have been tortured. Or starved. Or by accident suffocated.
One sample unites all of them: a number of referrals to Baby Protecting Companies. One household was reported 85 occasions 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 legislation accurately. (As an example, solely a choose can ship a child into foster care, however out of 47 incidents of extreme baby maltreatment throughout the first quarter of 2025, simply two instances had been delivered to court docket.)
It additionally means the company, fairly clearly, should change the way in which it assesses threat.
That’s behind-the-scenes work Senn, who inherited this mess, wants to steer. As a result of outdoors her company, advocates are more and more indignant. A bunch known as Maintaining Children Protected plans to rally on the Capitol on Jan. 14, and its organizer says greater than 100 folks have signed up.
Their goal is the Maintaining Households Collectively Act, the newest instance of a well-intended state legislation handed with out the infrastructure important to make it work.
As Sen. Leonard Christian, R-Spokane Valley, advised the DCYF Oversight Board final month, “It’s actually onerous to be involved with a toddler’s well-being once they’re useless.”
