Some reports of child abuse in Imperial County weren't investigated for months, state says

Social workers in Imperial County failed to resolve about 550 reports of child abuse for years and took months to assess some hotline complaints instead of the 24 hours laid out in state guidelines, a state oversight investigation found.

Social workers also kept a backlog of some 1,500 handwritten case notes regarding abuse, providing little accountability to state regulators through all of last year.

The California Department of Social Services conducted its investigation earlier this year after getting a report that the Imperial County Department of Social Services had a large backlog of cases.

Gil Rebollar, a spokesperson for Imperial County, said the department had a plan to address the open cases before the state's involvement and has since worked to act on other recommendations made in the report.

"There is no existing backlog of open referrals," Rebollar wrote in an email, adding: "The County of Imperial remains steadfast in our commitment to our mission, which is to diligently serve the public and ensure the safety and well-being of children in our community."

The state department, CDSS, sent a team of six to review case files and interview management on April 4 and 5, 2023. The state's completed report was sent to the county in July.

It's unclear if the report had been made available to the public by either the state or the county, until this story's publication. A CDSS spokesperson did not immediately respond to The Desert Sun's inquiry about the report.

CDSS noted in the report the department’s shoddy record keeping and the hazards to children it could be hiding.

In one case, a referral was made on Sept. 23, 2021, about the physical abuse of a child who was said to be injured. By the following May, there were no notes or documented visits by a social worker, other than the family’s history with the department being copied and pasted into the file. The records showed that reported allegations of sexual abuse had been made against the same family in 2019. For that case, a social worker interviewed the family and a family friend, but did not contact the child. The case remained open until April 2021, about a year and a half.

“This is also illustrative of a pattern of inconsistent documentation seen during the case reviews conducted,” the state report notes.

That pattern of poor record keeping was widespread in the county department, CDSS found. It reviewed 53 open referrals during its investigation. Of those, 52 had been open for more than one year, 31 were referrals that required immediate action and 22 required 10-day action. Physical copies of these same files showed inconsistent records of in-person interviews, or none at all.

Issues grew for years

The state department has oversight authority over all county child welfare agencies, and is responsible for ensuring counties comply with laws establishing deadlines for taking action on reports of child abuse.

Data reported to the state department between July 2021 and December 2022 showed Imperial County had nearly twice the normal rate of open child welfare reports requiring investigation. While counties averaged about 9% of investigations open at any given time, nearly 16% remained open in Imperial County.

The Desert Sun found that the backlog had ballooned between 2019 and 2021. Data for the California Child Welfare Indicators Project show that allegations of child abuse that had yet to be investigated in Imperial County jumped from about 1% in 2017 to nearly 10% in 2018. An average of 16% of cases remained unresolved starting in 2019 and 2020, surging to 23.5% soon before the state opened the investigation.

Among the open child welfare investigations were reports of negligence or abuse considered among the most urgent, legally requiring either immediate or 10-day response times. The state found that abuse hotline staff documented incoming reports to an emergency response inbox and that the subsequent investigations were substantially delayed and lacked documentation in a state-mandated record keeping system.

The state reported that it had concerns about the county's screening and investigative process, parts of which were violations of state laws. And it reported a lack of documentation of face-to-face visits with victim children and families, raising concerns about whether the investigations were done at all.

Reports of child abuse are required by law to be meticulously documented and reported to the state. When any county department receives a report of suspected child abuse, a social worker must determine if an in-person investigation is needed and properly enter data so that a record of the alleged abuse is maintained.

Handwritten notes, months of delays

In one case, the state found that a mandated reporter provided information to a county social worker on Sept. 9, 2021, saying they believed a child was being abused and "did not feel safe returning to the home." Instead of being immediately entered into the system, the report was not completed until Oct. 20, 2021. And the person who created the entry also approved it, instead of a supervisor doing so, a violation of state policy.

The investigators found that there was a backlog of 1,500 handwritten referrals that had yet to be included in the state’s database. This was in part due to "antiquated protocols of handwriting hotline documentation," the state team found.

Hotline referrals are required to be assessed according to state-established criteria no more than 24 hours after being received. In certain of these urgent cases, a social worker is required to get supervisor approval to extend the timeframe needed to follow up on a referral. The state found that certain hotline assessments were not being completed until months or years after the referral was received.

In one example, a mandated reporter made a referral on Sept. 3, 2021, that a child was potentially being physically abused by a mother who was under the influence of alcohol and the child was distressed about returning home. The person filling out the initial information incorrectly recorded that the case did not require an immediate response. The subsequent evaluation of the case was not completed until Feb. 13, 2023, and approved on March 13, 2023 — around the time the state started analyzing the county's reports.

If it is determined that abuse or neglect warrants an in-person investigation, that must happen either immediately or within 10 days. If that can’t happen, for whatever reason, the social worker has 30 days to close the case, according to state law. At most, a referral should not be open for longer than 40 days, according to CDSS policy.

Cases in Imperial County remained open for much longer than that, investigators found.

CDSS staff analyzed the county’s data in March and found 547 referrals had been open for more than 60 days. Of those, 13 had been open for 3,000 days, 68 for more than 2,000 days and 39 for more than 1,000 days.

CDSS staff found 704 referrals in which no first contact was documented by the county. One had been opened on Sept. 10, 2021, and another on Dec. 3, 2021, but both remained open at the time of the audit and no contacts had been made. Others had been found to be closed after social workers visited the homes a few times and got no answer.

And social workers had kept another case open since Dec. 24, 2020, noting only that the child was in the process of being reunited with family, but with no documented contacts thereafter.

More training needed

CDSS provided Imperial County with several recommendations in the report, such as more training for the department's staff emphasizing its own policies manual and state law.

"The CDSS found no evidence that the manual is an integral part of (the county's) practice or staff training and during staff interviews, it was disclosed that most staff were unaware of the existence of a policy and procedure manual,” the report reads.

The department was told that they should stop using handwritten notes and that all documents and notes related to reports of abuse and subsequent investigations should be entered into its database and reported in the timelines required by law. Supervisors should help the social workers if the timelines can't be met, the report recommended.

Roger Booth is a civil attorney who represents children in suits against public departments around the state that did not protect them. He first learned of the case backlog in Imperial County when concerned residents reached out to him. While he does not have any cases against Imperial County, he said that when he started researching the backlog there, he also grew deeply concerned.

"There's no county in the entire state that has had a backlog anywhere remotely similar to Imperial County," Booth said. "The whole idea of a backlog is pretty incredible. These are like 911 calls; time is of the essence. If a report is made, there are rules about how fast this all needs to happen."

After CDSS completed its investigation, Booth obtained the report and sent it to several organizations in Imperial County he thought needed to know about its findings. Among them was the county's board of supervisors, who he said never responded. The Desert Sun's questions to Rebollar, the county spokesperson, about whether the supervisors were made aware of the report also went unanswered.

"There's a bunch of investigations that were not properly documented and there's no evidence that they ever did the investigations, that ought to be a big concern for people," Booth said. "The hope is that they are now doing proper investigations, which includes documenting the steps that they're taking and that they've changed their practices moving forward."

Christopher Damien covers public safety and the criminal justice system. He can be reached at christopher.damien@desertsun.com or follow him at @chris_a_damien.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: California county failed to investigate child abuse reports for months