State officials have downgraded the Wayne County Office of Children & Youth agency’s license to provisional, citing a failure in a child’s death and numerous failures to properly document cases.
A copy of the state Department of Human Services issued license says it went from full to provisional on May 27. The license expires Nov. 27.
Before then, state inspectors will return to re-examine the Honesdale-based agency’s operations to determine if things have improved enough to restore the full license.
The state report says the county has already submitted “acceptable” plans to correct the problems. The report does not blame the agency for neglect that resulted in the child's death.
The department may issue up to four provisional licenses. After that, the department can revoke a license if an agency doesn’t show adequate improvement.
It is common for the department to issue consecutive provisional licenses before a child protection agency improves enough to regain a full license. This happened to child protection agencies in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties in recent years.
The county explains
Wayne County Commissioner Jocelyn Cramer blamed the county agency's difficulties partly on “really significant staffing shortages” similar to the kind found at many child protection agencies across the state, but also said the latest problems are largely “clerical.”
“It was never the care of a child that was the problem, but we got behind on some clerical stuff,” Cramer said.
She said the agency remains about 30% shy of a full staff. She did not have precise staffing levels immediately available. The shortage has existed since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the county has tried to overcome the shortage by more aggressively recruiting and advertising and offering signing bonuses, she said.
“We've tried a lot of everything, to be honest with you,” she said. “It just remains a difficult department (to find staff) ... We've really managed, I think, as best we could through this. And we've got some really good leadership, both our human services administrator, her deputy, and our children and youth director.”
Efforts to reach agency director Jeannine Latsch were unsuccessful.
Cramer said she expects the county agency will regain its full license after the next inspection.
“My expectation is that we'll work our way through this pretty quickly. I certainly don't expect another one,” she said. “That's not to belittle what the state is concerned about. We take it very seriously. It's a way that we can improve our services and the way we serve this community, but I don't see this being a long-time problem at all.”
What went wrong
The reports cite deficiencies, including:
- Failing, in one case, to ensure the factors used on a risk assessment included the “characteristics of the parent, caregiver, household members and the primary person responsible for the welfare of a child and perpetrator.”
The identity of the case is blacked out, but one inspection report dated April 1, 2024, mentions a training session for staff scheduled for June 4, 2024. Both came after the state police arrest of Michael Crowl, then 26, in the “shaken baby” death of a 3-month-old boy in November 2023. That arrest began based on a report to the agency.
Crowl pleaded guilty to criminal homicide. A county judge sentenced him to spend 20 to 40 years in prison in October 2024, according to online records.
The agency license was not downgraded after that inspection report.
The report says the agency did not interview people who might have known information helpful to determining whether a child needed protection. The county received information that a person had previous history with the (redacted) Division of Protective Services resulting in the termination of ... parental rights.”
“The county did not make attempts to contact (redacted name) to confirm the report,” the report says. - Failing in seven instances to submit seven general protective services cases to the department on time.
- No description of what made the placement of a child with someone else necessary in one of six placement records.
- No completed child permanency plan or evidence the child, the child’s representatives or service providers had participated in developing the plan.
- No evidence of a child living independently “being offered to have two members of (the) case planning team present” when the plan was developed in three of six placement records.
- Late supervisor reviews on seven of 20 intake records, which are filled out when a suspected abuse or neglect case is reported.
- "Insufficient evidence that law enforcement was notified immediately after ensuring safety of the child” on one of ten intake records.
- "Insufficient evidence” that a child’s primary care doctor was told of “circumstances which negatively affect the medical health of a child.”
- Insufficient documentation that someone who applied to be a foster parent was “financially stable” in one of 12 foster home records.
- The foster parent did not review an annual evaluation until four months after it was approved in one of 12 foster home cases.
