Sacramento County's Child Protective Services "could have – and should have – done more" to protect a 4-year-old boy, beaten to death this week despite the agency's attempts to intervene, a top county official acknowledged Thursday.

Lynn Frank, director of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CPS, said the social worker involved has been placed on paid administrative leave, pending further review.

"It just amazes and horrifies me that we had another death," Frank told The Bee. "We're going to have to look deeply at what we do, and see what we can do differently."

The agency will make internal changes, Frank said, including an immediate re-examination of all 921 current investigations involving children 5 and under.

CPS supervisors will accompany social workers on investigations over the next 30 days to evaluate their skills and provide training as needed, Frank said. And, case reviews will be increased from quarterly to monthly.

"We've just got to figure out what we can do to ensure that these children are safe," she said.

The death Monday of Jahmaurae Allen came exactly five weeks after CPS opened a case on the child for suspected abuse. A medical provider contacted the agency about suspicious bruising, according to sources.

Frank said an emergency response worker was assigned to investigate in June.

The boy and his two siblings were not removed from the home, and early Monday the child was found unresponsive in his mother's Foothill Farms apartment. He died at the hospital later of massive head and internal injuries.

The mother's boyfriend, 26-year-old Jonathan Lamar Perry, has been arrested in the boy's death – the fourth time this year a child has died in the county of abuse or neglect despite CPS intervention.

The 6-foot-4-inch, 250-pound former security guard is being held at the Sacramento County jail on murder and child endangerment charges. He was under observation in a psychiatric cell Thursday after he indicated a desire to harm himself, Sacramento County sheriff's officials said. His arraignment was rescheduled for today.

The dead child's siblings, a 3-year-old boy and an 18-month-old girl, have been taken into protective custody.

Frank said in a prepared statement that a preliminary investigation into the county's handling of the case found that the emergency response worker had "worked in isolation and did not follow established department procedures."

The worker failed to make the required contact with the reporting party or with medical personnel, Frank said. The worker also failed to review the case with the supervisor, or make contact with people familiar with the family.

"In the majority of cases, records show our workers make the right decisions," Frank said in her statement. "In the case of Jahmaurae Allen, we did not adhere to our own high standards."

The caseworker is not being named because of county personnel policy, Frank said.

The apparent breakdown between CPS policy and practice in the field was cited recently as a key concern by members of two prominent citizens' groups, who investigate child deaths in the county and oversee CPS.

The Child Death Review Team and the CPS Oversight Committee warned the county Board of Supervisors last year that CPS must emphasize child safety over keeping troubled families together. That was the mandate given CPS in the aftermath of 3-year-old Adrian Conway's gruesome death in 1996, which led to numerous changes within the agency.

Since then, the agency's budget has nearly quadrupled and its staffing has doubled.

Last month, The Bee published results of a five-month investigation into CPS, which revealed numerous shortcomings, particularly in the areas of risk assessment, supervision and training, and accountability for mistakes.

At the time, Frank and CPS Director Laura Coulthard assured The Bee that much progress had been made since Adrian's death, and that adequate policies were in place. But both cited heavy caseloads and high turnover as persistent problems.

Frank cited caseloads again Thursday, saying the emergency response program received an "inordinate amount" of calls in June. The social worker assigned to Jahmaurae received 24 new cases in June, in addition to an existing caseload, she said.

"I'm certainly not making excuses, because there is no excuse for what happened," Frank said. "But I can't even imagine how you would deal with that many cases."

Call The Bee's Marjie Lundstrom, (916) 321-1055.