Santa Clara County’s child welfare agency is once again mired in a contentious blame game, as social workers say department leaders are scapegoating an attorney for a controversial practice that the county recently abandoned: inviting parents to attend child abuse interviews, even when the parent is the one suspected of abuse.
The attorney, Bhavit Madhvani, was reassigned from his position in recent days shortly after the Bay Area News Group reported he provided training that instructed about 45 staff members to “ignore” a state penal code that gives children the right to be interviewed about abuse in private. County leaders wouldn’t comment on Madhvani’s job status, calling it a personnel matter.
But social workers and their supervisors — long at odds with the county counsel office’s outsized role in Santa Clara County child abuse investigations — are coming to Madhvani’s defense, saying it is unlikely he would have provided such extraordinary guidance without the approval of his superiors. Even one of the county’s elected leaders is calling into question the honesty of department heads.
Alex Lesniak, a social worker and union steward, summed up the sentiment.
“We workers know what his chain-of-command is, and workers know it’s not just” a county lawyer making decisions, she said. “It’s not fair to Madhvani.”
Madhvani declined to comment to the Bay Area News Group, citing attorney-client privilege.
The showdown is the latest upheaval in Santa Clara County’s child welfare system, which has been under fire in recent months for its mishandling of the case of 3-month-old Phoenix Castro, who died from fentanyl poisoning after being allowed to go home with her drug-abusing father.
Revelations from the Bay Area News Group’s ongoing investigation into Phoenix’s death led to a series of reforms and calls for an overhaul of the county’s child welfare system. Critics have flagged a number of parent-friendly policies introduced in recent years as the county embraced the goal of keeping troubled families together and kids out of foster care. Some child welfare advocates fear the county’s mission is endangering at-risk children.
The new controversy raises additional questions about transparency among the county’s top executives.
Earlier this month, hours before the publication of a Bay Area News Group report on the practice, Santa Clara County announced it would give social workers the green light to bar parents from child interviews when court orders were obtained.
On Friday, the Bay Area News Group asked county leaders whether Department of Family and Children’s Services Director Damion Wright; his boss, Social Services Agency Director Dan Little; or County Executive James Williams, who formerly served as County Counsel, were aware of the guidance on child-abuse interviews before this news organization began reporting on the issue in mid-February.
The response from a county spokesman: “The answer to your questions as to each of the individuals is no.”
But Lesniak, the union steward, said that in a meeting Wednesday between social worker supervisors and department higher-ups, Wright acknowledged that many people in the department knew about the guidance on abuse interviews.
“I am hearing that it was discussed, it was admitted, and that staff have been lifting up these concerns since December,” Lesniak said.
A county spokesman on Friday called the claim about Wright’s acknowledgment “inaccurate.”
As it turns out, the concerns were delivered to county leaders as early as February 2023. A state report on a dramatic drop in child removals from Santa Clara County homes stated that “Social Workers are no longer able to interview children at school without a parent’s permission. Interviews at school are often the only time social workers report being able to interview a child without concerns of coaching or being altered due to a parent’s presence.”
Santa Clara County Supervisor Sylvia Arenas, who has been leading the charge to overhaul the department, said she was dubious that Wright has been upfront about the controversy, especially after County Counsel Tony LoPresti came forward to acknowledge his office “recently became aware” of the interview guidance shortly before the Bay Area News Group broke the story.
“We cannot begin to right this ship until we start meeting basic standards of honesty with the public and the Board of Supervisors,” Arenas said last week.
In a statement Wednesday, Williams also said that county leadership “recently became aware” that legal advice was being provided to social workers that was not in alignment with the county’s legal or policy positions. He said that county lawyers and welfare workers will conduct a review of presentations, policies and other materials “to ensure they align with the law, reflect best practices, and are grounded in prioritizing the safety of our most vulnerable children.”
In recent days, amid the renewed blame game, social workers and supervisors have flagged yet more concerns about how abuse cases have been handled locally after interventions by county lawyers.
Social workers say county lawyers have also blocked them from getting court orders to enter homes without a parent’s consent to investigate child abuse.
Veteran Oceanside family and parental rights attorney Donnie Cox said that he knows of “no other county who claims that they can’t get an order to go into a home … with probable cause.”
“For them to say that there’s no way they can get a warrant or they can’t get an (entry) order and are telling their social workers not to go get an order, is a cop-out — a serious cop-out,” Cox said.
This week, within a day of this news organization contacting county officials about those concerns, Wright released a memo telling the staff that they “are permitted to request entry orders in the investigatory process when needed to interview children.”
Even Cox, who has established seminal case law in California on behalf of parents and families, questioned Santa Clara County’s deference to parents’ rights.
“We don’t want them to stop protecting kids,” he said. “We just want them to follow the Constitution while they’re doing it.”