Gregoire defends DSHS changes

State faces renewed calls for autonomous children’s agency

By Adam Wilson | The Olympian • Published August 01, 2007

Highly publicized allegations that the state returned a Pierce County boy to an abusive home prompted new calls Wednesday to split the Children’s Administration away from the massive Department of Social and Health Services.

Gov. Chris Gregoire said the state had failed the child but defended her changes to children’s services during the past two years, which included opposing a bill to make the children’s agency its own department.

“As a mom, as a former caseworker and as governor, I am as upset as anyone about how this could have happened,” she said, acknowledging that the Department of Social and Health Services failed in the boy’s case.

Pierce County prosecutors charged the 12-year-old Puyallup boy’s grandfather and the grandfather’s wife with child assault for alleged physical abuse. They have pleaded not guilty.

Police criticized the state for returning the boy to his grandfather’s home after he had been removed this summer because of suspected abuse. DSHS Secretary Robin Arnold-Williams said Tuesday that she is conducting an investigation.

On Wednesday, Gregoire said Child Protective Services must work better with police, and it must develop new protocols to do so within a month.

Gregoire also said her efforts have made children safer, pointing to a 25 percent decrease in repeated abuse she credited to her more aggressive policy on responses to abuse reports.

Sen. Val Stevens, R-Arlington, said the time has come for more drastic measures. Stevens was part of a bipartisan legislative task force last year that supported splitting the Children’s Administration from the DSHS.

Stevens backed a bill to make the change, but it failed.

“It died because the governor convinced us she had a plan that was going to work. ... The governor herself, one of her campaign planks was to break the Children’s Administration away from DSHS,” Stevens said.

Gregoire acknowledged she has favored a separate agency but restated her concern that the change would be a distraction from its other reforms now.