Mercury News: ‘Breach of trust’: Santa Clara County supervisor calls for overhaul of child welfare system at hearing over baby Phoenix

SAN JOSE — In a packed and passion-fueled special hearing Tuesday over the fentanyl death of a 3-month-old, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors President Susan Ellenberg made one thing clear from the start: There is “no doubt that our system failed baby Phoenix.”

Over the next four hours, the county’s child welfare leaders and social workers, public health nurses and doctors, nonprofit leaders and parents, the district attorney and a juvenile dependency judge clashed over what’s best for vulnerable children: Keeping families together despite reports of child abuse or neglect or removing them, even temporarily, from their homes.

But Supervisor Sylvia Arenas saved the most dramatic confrontation of Tuesday’s special hearing for the end.

Citing what she called “a breach of trust” with the county’s child welfare leaders, Arenas called for a restructuring of the system, stripping the Social Services Agency of its role in overseeing the county’s child protection agency and moving the county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services to report to a deputy county executive with a background in child welfare instead.