Another shakeup rocked Oregon’s foster care system Wednesday with the sudden departure of the state’s child welfare director.
Gov. Kate Brown forced the ouster of Marilyn Jones, who was in charge of improving safety for Oregon’s most vulnerable children, saying Jones had not made enough progress turning around the struggling child welfare division at the Department of Human Services.
Jones had held the job of state child welfare director for 18 months when the governor declared in April that Oregon’s child welfare system was still in “crisis.”
Brown installed an oversight board and hired a team of outside consultants to hold the agency accountable for making urgently needed improvements, including recruiting more foster families, finding safer placements for children sent out of state and shoring up training for case workers and supervisors.
On Wednesday, the same day that the oversight board convened for its twice-monthly meeting, Brown said progress was not happening fast enough under Jones’ leadership. Jones was chosen for the job in September 2017 by Brown’s hand-picked director of the Department of Human Services, Fariborz Pakseresht.
“After consulting with experts in the field and discussing with DHS leadership, it became clear that now is time for change at the top of the child welfare division,” the governor said in a statement.
Brown’s leadership has been called into question since a deal she brokered to prevent another walkout by Senate Republicans fell apart Thursday and the 11 GOP senators fled Salem in protest over a Democrat-backed climate bill. Their quorum-preventing absence stalled progress of all bills needing Senate action, including at least two that would provide additional protections to foster children.
Jones left her position as child welfare director Wednesday only hours after giving notice. She alerted Pakseresht, her boss, in an email at 4:19 p.m. Tuesday that she planned to retire. She will officially do so Aug. 31.
Both Jones and Pakseresht declined interview requests through an agency spokesman.
Her exit means Brown must find the fourth child welfare director since she took office in 2015. She installed Pakseresht, long an administrator at state agencies, to direct the agency in 2017.
Pakseresht quickly plucked Jones from her veteran supervisor position in eastern Oregon to oversee the reforms.
Months after the pair took over, state auditors issued a report that uncovered widespread systemic failures that placed children at risk. A follow-up review issued earlier this month credited agency leaders with implementing some of the recommended changes but said that most remained unmet.
One flagship change under Jones -- centralizing the state’s child abuse reporting hotlines into a central hub in Portland -- encountered “substantial transition issues” as it started operating this spring, the report said. Only 3 in 10 call takers had previous experience and the number for the hotline itself didn’t always work.
The follow-up audit also questioned the agency’s insistence to funnel some reports of child abuse to be investigated outside of the child welfare division, without being able to show how that model made children safer.
The governor decided to install her own team at the agency to oversee reforms days after advocacy groups sued the state in federal court on behalf of foster children whose rights they claim were violated. The suit names Jones as a defendant.
Lawyers for the children want the state to agree to changes they contend would improve the child welfare system. Attorneys for both sides met for a settlement conference Monday and have scheduled more talks for next month, court records show.
One child represented in the lawsuit, a 9-year-old girl, was chemically restrained to control her behavior at an out-of-state facility in Montana that announced plans to close after her story came to light.
Under Jones’ leadership, the state has placed more foster children at institutions outside Oregon.
Lax oversight of such facilities, including a second facility to which Washington officials now refuse to send their state’s foster children, has prompted a series of legislative hearings into the practice this spring.
At a June 4 hearing, Sen. Sarah Gelser, the Senate’s human services chair and a longtime advocate for vulnerable children, pressed Department of Human Services officials what made Oregon children safer at the facility.
“I don’t think that were saying that they’re safer,” said Jana McLellan, deputy child welfare director. “I think we’re saying at this time we’re trying to figure out where to move those children that continues their treatment plan.”
At least one Oregon child remains at the facility three weeks later. McLellan will take over as interim child welfare director until a replacement for Jones is found.
During Jones’ tenure, the department also become less transparent about the steps it takes in the cases of children who died from abuse after case workers received reports about risks to their well-being. Oregon law requires the agency to post reviews into such children’s deaths within a specific timeframe and to notify the public when such reports are delayed.
But reporting by The Oregonian/OregonLive showed the agency rarely met those requirements last year, and the agency has only recently begun to publish long-delayed reports with greater frequency. Many of the reports that are posted include far fewer details than those the department has issued in the past.
The delays and omissions prompted Gelser to sponsor a bill, since passed by both chambers of the Legislature, that sets stricter standards for when and what the department must publish.
In an op-ed published in response to the Oregonian’s original reporting about the reporting delays, Jones said that she examined the review process and implemented changes as part of sweeping reforms across the agency.
“While I am determined to proactively identify problems and solutions to protect children’s safety, I must stress that we are in a rebuilding phase that requires learning, self-reflection and time,” Jones said.
“When our Child Welfare staff and programs are not given the space and support needed, the work of improving processes and child safety is slower and more difficult.”
Jones will remain at the agency as a consultant until August 31, said Jake Sunderland, a spokesman for her department. He said Jones had been considering retirement when she was first hired into the child welfare director role.
He said Jones started out her job as director by assessing the current state of the agency and then put together teams to carry out suggestions put forward by state auditors in critical review in 2018.
“Now that that assessment has been made, and now that we have a plan and a team in place, there’s an opportunity to pivot and refocus and identify the future needs of that position,” Sunderland said.
Jones announced her departure in an email to employees.
“We are all super heroes,” she wrote. “My superpower is to recognize talent, shine a light on it and get out of the way so work can be done.”
This post has been updated.
Hillary Borrud of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.
-- Molly Young