Sacramento County's grand jury quietly began an investigation this week of Child Protective Services following a string of seven children's deaths, even as county officials announced plans for their own independent review of the troubled agency.
The grand jury is looking into the agency and the children's deaths, a source told The Bee, something several child advocates have been calling for since last month's beating death of 4-year-old Jahmaurae Allen.
Meanwhile, county officials said Tuesday they hoped to hire an outside consultant within two weeks to examine the agency, its structure and how it handles cases. They said they did not know who would be hired, how much it would cost or how long it would take.
The existing CPS oversight committee – created in 1996 following the death of 3-year-old Adrian Conway – will work with the expert in the review.
"The more oversight and review into CPS, the safer the children will be in the future," said Robert Wilson, executive director of Sacramento Child Advocates, whose attorneys represent children in dependency court.
But Wilson, who was among those pressing for a grand jury investigation, said it is imperative that the consultant be truly independent, without ties to the county.
The series of deaths, beginning last September, was alarming to many because of the agency's involvement with the children and their families before the deaths.
One of the seven children died in foster care, while the rest had remained in their homes. Jahmaurae was the subject of a CPS case opened five weeks before he was beaten to death on July 21.
Jonathan Lamar Perry, the live-in boyfriend of the boy's mother, has been charged with murder and child endangerment. He made a brief appearance in Sacramento Superior Court on Tuesday morning. Later in the day, the Sheriff's Department also charged the 26-year-old former security guard with physically abusing Jahmaurae's 3-year-old brother.
That boy and an 18-month-old sister were taken into protective custody after Jahmaurae's death.
Perry has not entered a plea, and his case was continued Tuesday until Aug. 19.
The death of Jahmaurae (pronounced "Ja-MAR-ee") spawned a firestorm of criticism of CPS' performance, the subject of a Bee investigative series published in June that exposed shortcomings in the agency. Despite an infusion of resources – the agency's budget has nearly quadrupled since Adrian's death, and its staffing has doubled – The Bee found that problems persist, among them: inadequate supervision and training, sloppy investigations, poor evaluation of children's risk and lack of accountability for mistakes.
The Sacramento grand jury has issued six reports on CPS since Adrian's 1996 murder, citing many of the same problems – especially the agency's failure to protect children in homes known to be troubled.
Grand juries have broad subpoena power in their secret investigations of public agencies or officials, which can result in criminal charges, recommendations for new laws or reports identifying problems.
Ed Howard of Sacramento, senior counsel for the San Diego-based Children's Advocacy Institute, said it is "heartening that the county now appears to be taking this seriously.
"But it is distressing in the extreme that it took so much news coverage, so many angry editorials, for the county Board of Supervisors to do what every parent would do at the first hint of trouble – not when it becomes a full-blown scandal," he said.
In recent days, Supervisors Don Nottoli and Roberta MacGlashan have raised concerns about the deaths, with MacGlashan saying she favored an outside look at the agency.
"The idea is not to have it be one of these year-long projects, but to be more strategic and timely," she said. "I think it's important for ourselves and for the community to know it's not just us looking at ourselves – which we're doing – but that there's outside expertise."
CPS already has begun an internal review of some procedures. Director Laura Coulthard said Tuesday that the agency had reviewed all 921 active cases involving children 5 and younger since Jahmaurae's death and had found no widespread problems.
Despite that, Coulthard said, the process of improving CPS procedures would continue.
"Any time there is a child death, it is totally unacceptable," she said.
Coulthard and Supervisor Roger Dickinson, who said he was representing the board at an afternoon news briefing about the plans to hire the outside expert, said CPS is underfunded and social workers have high caseloads.
Dickinson, who was the board's chairman when Adrian died, said Tuesday that the agency has "made some very significant changes" since the child's torture and death.
"But that was never the end of what we did – either as a board, as a county or as a child protection agency," he said.
Dickinson complained that the state of California has shorted CPS millions of dollars, which "forces us to not have as many social workers as we need or should have."
However, Coulthard said later she does not blame the deaths on budget constraints, and that the agency has identified internal problems with accountability and communications.
Coulthard's boss, Lynn Frank, who heads the county's Department of Health and Human Services, recently told The Bee she would welcome a grand jury inquiry and would cooperate fully.
Among the grand jury's previous criticisms was a lack of cooperation at CPS.
The new grand jury probe comes amid heightened awareness statewide of the deaths of children with prior CPS involvement. Last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation that would give county boards of supervisors increased powers to probe those deaths.
Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi, D-Castro Valley, sponsored the bill, which allows supervisors to investigate deaths of children with a connection to county child protective services. That has proven difficult in the past because of confidentiality laws.
Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele said she pushed for the legislation because she was "furious because nobody wants to talk about it or do anything about it" when a child known to CPS dies.
"It gives any board of supervisors a right to investigate any of these deaths," she said, noting that "Sacramento has had an unusual number of deaths."
Call The Bee's Marjie Lundstrom, (916) 321-1055.