Read this story and it will break your heart. As a father, and as someone who has devoted much of my professional career to protecting the safety and innocence of children and strengthening families, this is completely unacceptable.
Remember when Janet Napolitano promised, about four years ago, to fix Child Protective Services? Yeah, me too. Seems like we gave her a lot of state money to do that. How many more stories like this will we have to read? To be fair, no government agency can get it right all the time. But when children’s lives are at stake, we have to do better than this.
UPDATE JUNE 25: Here is an irony — this is from Janet Napolitano’s self-congratulatory weekly email. This was released just before the death of baby Zacorah was announced:
Child Protective Services
Another “win” not only for this office but for the future of Arizona is a sum of $14.5 million that will go to continue the progress we’ve made with Child Protective Services. When I took office in 2003, there were serious problems in the system; we’ve worked diligently for the past three and a half years to fix the shortcomings at CPS. Today, Arizona is a safer place for children, and during the next fiscal year, we will see the CPS system become even better.
While Janet congratulates herself for another “win”, a baby dies and exposes the truth — the “shortcomings at CPS” are not “fixed”.