Santa Clara County Placed Children in Foster Care Without Safety Checks
Santa Clara County’s child welfare agency failed to follow common safety checks before placing vulnerable children in foster homes, according to a state investigation released this week.
Investigators with the California Department of Social Services found “significant systemic gaps in documentation and timeliness across required emergency placement procedures,” the report states, including that only 10% of emergency placements complied with state law.
State officials also found that about half of background checks on foster parents were conducted only after children were placed in their care — and that workers often didn’t include evidence of criminal records when checking potential foster parents and extended family members.
The county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services was already under close watch after a 3-month-old under the department’s care died of a fentanyl overdose in 2023, when 2-year-old Jaxon Juarez died in the home of a foster parent in April. Juarez’s foster mother was previously convicted of felony child endangerment.
That summer, county officials announced it was firing four social workers related to the case after three had already resigned.
After Jaxon’s death, county officials requested that the state investigate the handling of that case. State investigators elected to review 55 foster care cases, 60 emergency placements and 13 resource family approvals from April 2025 through May 2026.
They found safety concerns in 20 cases. Those included caregiver neglect, unsafe unauthorized people living in the home, children with behavioral crises and unsupervised contact with a parent.
The state was also concerned about Santa Clara County using “extended visits” — or placing children temporarily with relatives or non-relative family kinship caregivers — in its emergency assessment criteria while the formal approval processes are being finalized.
In a letter to county officials, Angie Schwartz, deputy director of California’s Children and Family Services Division, wrote that investigators found the need for “continued intervention and monitoring” to “ensure that state child welfare laws and regulations are followed to keep children safe.”
James R. Williams, Santa Clara’s County executive, said the county is “taking a systematic look at every aspect” of the department and implementing every recommendation from the state, in a statement to KQED.
He said the county has already established a new compliance office “which will provide dedicated in-house capacity for ongoing, thorough case reviews and help ensure consistent compliance and documentation become standard operating procedure as we take every step we can to keep kids safe.”
The state gave the county until Oct. 7 to respond to the findings and a deadline of Nov. 13 to submit an updated corrective action plan.
Meanwhile, state officials are also monitoring Alameda County’s Department of Children and Family Services, which reportedly fails to investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect in a timely manner.