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House oversight hearing details child-welfare failures after multiple deaths, audit flags
Summary
A Michigan House oversight subcommittee heard testimony from an attorney, a county sheriff and other witnesses describing multiple child deaths and systemic lapses by Children's Protective Services and MDHHS, citing an Auditor General review that the Office of the Family Advocate excluded and failed to complete dozens of child-death reviews.
LANSING — The House Oversight Subcommittee on Child Welfare System heard graphic testimony and calls for accountability as witnesses described years of missed warning signs, inadequate supervision of private placements and failures by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services' Children’s Protective Services.
Attorney Jonathan Marco, representing the father of 3-year-old Chase Allen, told the panel that “the system needs to be fixed” after recounting that Allen’s decaying body was discovered in a basement freezer on June 24, 2022. Marco said medical records and CPS referrals showed prior serious injuries — including skull and femur fractures, brain bleeds and blindness diagnoses — that were not acted on in the months before Allen’s death.
The testimony added to accounts from other cases Marco said he represents, including a 9-year-old who drowned after placement with a private contractor, a 16-year-old who died after being restrained multiple times and a 15-year-old who took his own life while in a private facility that Marco described as “worse than a prison.” Marco said…
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