The real lessons from the latest “revelations” in a Santa Clara County tragedy

Photo by Steve Rhodes from 2007, when the Mercury News was a real newspaper.

The lessons are nothing like what the Mercury News wants you to think (but you probably guessed that).

The latest story about Santa Clara child welfare from Julia Prodis Sulek of the San Jose Mercury News reads like an act of desperation to keep the foster-care panic in Santa Clara County going. The story is about two-year-old Jaxon Juarez, who died after enduring horrific abuse, allegedly at the hands of a cousin whose mother was serving as Jaxon’s foster mother. Sulek and her all-purpose insta-quote source have taken some newly public details and left the impression that they reveal callousness and incompetence. They don’t. 

The story begins with almost literally breathless prose hyping the supposed revelations. (“I have to catch my breath here,” says Mr. Insta-quote at one point.) By and large, I won’t be repeating that here. Instead, I’ll reprint parts of the main body of the story, the part many readers won’t get to. That part, which offers more detail, reveals failings that are far more mundane and lessons that are far more useful to those in Santa Clara County making a good-faith effort to find solutions. 

We already know a lot about the death of Jaxon, and how the real causes may well be linked to the very panic that Sulek and her allies have done so much to foment. All of that is discussed in this previous post. So I’ll focus now on the latest “revelations” – according to Sulek’s story. Excerpts from the story are in italics, starting with this: 

Concerns about Jaxon’s health appeared to begin April 2 at his daycare center, where staff members noticed a rash on his body and a line on his neck. In an interview last month, the daycare director said she called Jaxon’s foster mother to take him to the doctor. 

So we already know something crucial. Daycare staff are mandated reporters of child abuse, and, especially in the current climate in Santa Clara County, they’re probably terrified not to report their slightest suspicion. The fact that the director called Jaxon’s foster mother, and not a child abuse hotline, suggests whatever she saw raised no suspicion at all. 

On that Friday, April 3, the foster mother took Jaxon to the SPARK Clinic which serves foster children. 

Also significant: While it’s the foster mother’s son is accused of horrifically abusing and killing Jaxon, the foster mother herself has been portrayed only as someone with two DUI convictions with children in the car, convictions that should have disqualified her as a placement. Yet instead of seeking to cover up possible child abuse, she does exactly what the daycare center owner suggests. 

Jaxon returned to the daycare center that afternoon, the director said, with a doctor’s note suggesting they use cream on his rash. 

So, apparently, the examining doctor didn’t suspect abuse either. 

Why Jaxon wasn’t immediately seen downstairs at the Child Advocacy Center, which partners with the SPARK Clinic and specializes in assessing children for signs of sexual abuse, isn’t entirely clear. But it appears there was a paperwork problem that prevented him from being seen immediately. At about 1:40 p.m. that day, Jaxon’s father, Albert Juarez, was asked by his social worker to sign an authorization form allowing Jaxon to be treated there. By then, however, Jaxon was napping at the daycare center across town before an Easter egg hunt planned that afternoon. 

This leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Without benefit of hindsight, it’s not at all clear what prompted anyone to see a need to refer a child with a rash on his body and a mark on his neck to the Child Advocacy Center. Nor is it clear who wanted him seen there. Was it the doctor who first saw Jaxon? Was it some other doctor who might have heard about Jaxon? Was it the social worker acting on her or his own initiative? Regardless, initially, it seems, it was not considered urgent enough to awaken Jaxon from his nap and bring him back that day. 

After Jaxon’s appointment at the SPARK Clinic, a call was made to the child abuse hotline about his “suspicious injuries,” the newly released documents show. The hotline keeps the identities of callers private. 

The same day, a doctor at the Child Advocacy Center emailed both a social worker and a division manager. 

The doctor, whose name was blacked out, was “requesting the child be seen for an evaluation as soon as possible and requesting the assistance” of the county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services “to bring the child in for the evaluation.” 

That didn’t happen. 

So what’s the order of events here? Did the hotline call prompt the social worker to seek permission from Jaxon’s father? That seems unlikely since Jaxon was not in his father’s custody, and if a doctor says it’s urgent that a child be seen, I’m aware of no requirement that an agency wait for a birth parent’s permission.

Or, and this is no more than speculation, perhaps the doctor who originally treated Jaxon spoke to a colleague downstairs who said something like “That might be serious, we should call the hotline and get the child in ASAP.” 

Either way, none of this suggests any lack of caring or competence on the part of the county child welfare agency. 

Now, let’s get back to what the story says did happen: 

Instead, the social worker forwarded the email to her supervisor, “noting she was not available to bring the child in the next day but would ask the caregiver to do so.” 

So, again, remember: Only with hindsight do we know that the hotline caller was right and the situation was urgent. And given how cooperative the caregiver was when the daycare center director first suggested taking Jaxon in for a medical exam, the social worker had no reason to believe she wouldn't do so again. 

Here’s what else we know: During a foster care panic, everyone’s workload increases. So while Sulek and Mr. Insta-quote seem to want to leave the impression of some sort of dereliction of duty, it’s more likely that any number of other things appeared to be more urgent at that moment. In other words, this is still another way, in addition to those discussed in this previous post, that the foster-care panic may have contributed to Jaxon’s death. 

The story continues: 

The division manager, meanwhile, “responded that she had been sent the email in error,” according to a summary of events put together by the county as part of its internal review. 

And that’s where Sulek and Mr. Insta-quote – that one source she counts on to say what she wants said – really go in for the kill. 

Before the story gets to these mundane details, toward the very top of the story, after mentioning what the manager didn’t do, Sulek writes: 

Steve Baron, a member of the county’s Child Abuse Prevention Council, said the revelations are shocking, especially for a division manager to apparently ignore the doctor’s email. 

“I have to catch my breath here,” said Baron, who said he wasn’t speaking for the council. He hadn’t seen the documents, but relevant excerpts were read to him. “If it is accurate that the manager, because the email was sent to her in error, took no action to ensure that the child was seen by the clinic, that’s absolutely inexcusable. [Emphasis added.] 

Loaded language like “dismissed” implies that the manager read the doctor’s email, and shrugged her shoulders because, somehow, she was too uncaring to jump in.

In fact, the manager never should have been involved at all; she got the email by mistake. She simply pointed that out. She had no reason to believe that the supervisor wouldn’t simply assign someone else to take Jaxon to the Child Advocacy Center. 

As for the supervisor not acting immediately, that might be explained by the fact that a caseworker did, in fact, act immediately. Again, from the story itself: 

The emergency response social worker who was called out to “immediately assess” signs of possible physical abuse that Friday afternoon noted that Jaxon’s cheeks were rosy and he had a “scratch” on his neck and bumps on his ear. But the social worker wrote that she “was unable to determine whether it was eczema or impetigo.” 

In a letter from the Child Advocacy Center the day Jaxon died, a doctor wrote that “in young children, skin injuries on the neck and ear are highly sensitive and specific for child physical abuse.” 

The social worker, however, wrote that Jaxon “presented unharmed, made no sounds and appeared to be appropriately attached to his caregiver.” 

Look closely again. The letter in question came the day Jaxon died – after he already was hospitalized with horrific injuries; it wasn’t anything the worker knew about beforehand.  The worker knew only that the day care center did not suspect abuse, the first doctor who saw Jaxon apparently did not suspect abuse, but the Child Advocacy Center wanted to see him. 

Medical examinations by Child Advocacy Centers are themselves often enormously traumatic for children. And the behavior of so-called child abuse pediatricians repeatedly has been called into question for their allegedly jumping to conclusions. 

So, again, try it without the hindsight: Should every child with “skin injuries on the neck and ear” really be subjected to those traumatic medical exams? And if any call from a doctor to a hotline alleging child abuse automatically means it’s child abuse – or at least something urgent enough to have the child examined immediately, why have caseworkers at all? Why have investigations at all?   

But Sulek didn’t see it that way. Her story then goes into full self-righteousness mode: 

County officials declined to answer questions from this news organization, including why Jaxon was marked “safe” and why there wasn’t more effort to act with urgency in getting him to the Child Advocacy Center. 

Probably because, without benefit of hindsight, and with the crushing workload caused by the foster care panic, there wasn’t time to look more closely, and, on the surface, Jaxon did, indeed, look safe. Just as he apparently looked safe to the daycare center director and the first doctor to examine him. So, yet again, the foster-care panic may have contributed to the tragedy. 

And that, of course, is the most fundamental lesson of all. We’ve already seen how the foster-care panic may well have led to a series of missed opportunities to keep Jaxon safe by bolstering support for other family members who wanted to care for him. Now we see how, during a foster-care panic, workers don’t have time to look as closely as they would otherwise, and may miss warning signs they otherwise might have spotted. 

The other lesson is not to let any one source become what amounts to an information choke point. In Santa Clara County, the Child Abuse Prevention Council fills its reports with citations to the same extremely limited group of “scholars” preferred by Steve Baron, while ignoring contrary research. Then the Council presents its reports to the County Board of Supervisors. Then Julia Prodis Sulek gets comment on what the Supervisors say or do – from Steve Baron. 

I think Steve Baron sincerely wants to save children. But as has been clearly documented, his approach is backfiring. So it’s urgent that the Board of Supervisors broaden its source base and reach out to the many scholars who know what really works to make children safer – and what does not.