County social services outlines system improvement and corrective-action steps for child welfare

Santa Clara CountyDeputy Director Sarah Duffy and acting Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) Director Wendy Kinnear Rausch presented a year-in-review and an updated System Improvement Plan (SIP) and Corrective Action Plan (CAP) on Feb. 4, noting progress on safety assessments and outlining next steps for quality assurance and workforce development.

The board unanimously received the report and approved a package of additions and reporting directions to tighten safety-plan monitoring, expand training and strengthen community engagement around child-welfare work.

DFCS framed the update around three strategic pillars: safeguarding children, workforce empowerment and partnership building. The department told the board it has improved some statutorily required timeliness measures (DFCS reported safety-assessment completion near 98% in recent reporting) and has increased use of child-and-family team meetings; staff said 2,066 such teams met in 2024 and 59% of meetings were attended by familiesor natural supports.

Agency leaders said challenges remain. DFCS managers reported an increase in involuntary and court-related cases and higher family reunification caseloads. Navigating those demands while raising quality of home visits and safety plans motivated a set of CAP-driven actions the department described: mandatory training on structured decision-making (SDM) tools, supervisor coaching on safety-plan content, monthly managerial reviews of active safety plans and a rollout of a safety-review tool for continuous quality-improvement audits.

Naveen Sanghwan, manager of the systems improvement bureau, explained the statutory basis for the SIP work: AB 636 (the California Child Welfare System Improvement and Accountability Act) and the related five-year review process. DFCS said the countyself-assessment was approved in 2023, the SIP implementation chart was informally approved by the state in November 2024, and stakeholder outreach is ongoing.

Board members pressed for more disaggregated performance data and operational detail. Vice President Arenas led a lengthy line of questioning asking how the county will ensure timely monthly visits are done in residentshomes and how safety-plan quality (not just presence) will be audited. Arenas and other supervisors asked staff to: 1) provide SIP measures broken down by age and race; 2) include targeted action steps to prioritize behavioral-health and substance-use treatment for caregivers with court timelines; 3) add external coaching for DFCS leadership; and 4) use the countychild-welfare roundtable to surface implementation challenges.

DFCS agreed to revise the SIP work plan to reflect those directions and to return with more detailed reports: an off-agenda background on grant alignment and a plan for layered monitoring of active safety plans. The board also asked DFCS to expand reporting on differential response outcomes and to map DFCS referral categories against SIP goals.

The board voted unanimously to accept the report with the amendments. Supervisors asked for routine progress updates to the CountyServices and Finance Committee and annual progress reports to the full Board of Supervisors.

Moving forward, DFCS said it will continue targeted SDM coaching for supervisors, expand training on safety planning and family engagement, deploy evidence-based tools to improve father and caregiver engagement, and stand up random supervisory audits of safety-plan content to evaluate effectiveness.

Ending: The department will return with the revised SIP/CAP materials and additional disaggregated metrics as directed by the board; supervisors signaled they intend to follow the implementation in subsequent quarterly updates.