The state Auditor General’s Office has offered some quick answers to questions about infants exposed to drugs in the womb.
They can be found in a two-page question-and-answer report, the first in a series of proposed Q&A’s on Child Protective Services. The reports can be found at www.azauditor.gov
The auditor general’s staff is widely known for performance and financial reviews that ferret out mismanagement in state agencies. But the Q&A is more of a fact sheet, said Dot Reinhard, performance audit division manager.
“It was designed to get additional information into the hands of the legislators and the public,” Ms. Reinhard said.
The Q&A format, she added, grew out of brief factual reports produced by a three-person auditor general’s team set up to perform ongoing audits of CPS.
The full-time CPS audit team was created by H2024, a 58-page bill that came out of a 2003 special session. The legislation provided more money to investigate child abuse and called for early intervention where abuse has been reported. Governor Napolitano called the special session amid criticism that CPS was understaffed and had done too little to ensure the safety of children.
The special auditing team, Ms. Reinhard said, is continuously auditing CPS. “We established an audit schedule and one year’s worth of audits have been completed, and we’re now starting on the next set of audits and reviews, which will take us through fiscal year 2008,” she said.
In that year, five regular audits and five informational briefs are planned — along with seven Q&As.
CPS, part of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, investigates reports of child abuse, offers family services and determines if an abused child should be removed from the home and placed with relatives or in foster care.
The auditor general is an agency of the Legislature.
Other topics covered
Some of the auditor general’s information briefs on CPS have covered such arcane topics as federal IV-E waivers.
Federal IV-E funds are available for foster and adoption programs, Ms. Reinhold said. If granted, the waivers would give the state more flexibility in how the funds are used, she added.
A December 2004 fact sheet says the funding would go toward a demonstration project to provide intervention in families where children have been abused. The project would provide “parent mentors” among other things, the fact sheet said.
The first report in a Q&A format posed four questions about newborns who had been exposed to drugs before birth.
Question No. 1 asks: “Does the state require that all newborns be screened for substance abuse?” The answer: “No. Although the state requires all newborns to be tested for congenital disorders, the state does not mandate that all newborns be tested for substance exposure.”
That leads to the second question: How are newborns exposed to drugs identified? The answer is that hospitals can voluntarily adopt procedures to determine if a baby had been exposed.
The report goes on to say that health care professionals are required by law to report cases of substance-exposed infants to CPS. It adds that CPS will determine if the child should be removed from the home.
Sen. Karen Johnson, R-18, heads the Senate Family Services Committee, which has CPS oversight.
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Regarding the Q&A, Ms. Johnson said: “I read through it, and I think the information is probably fine. I’m not sure how many legislators are going to read it, I hate to tell you.”
She added: “I’m happy that the auditor general is in CPS. It’s extremely needed.”
Ms. Johnson has criticized CPS under Governor Napolitano, saying agency workers have been too quick to take children from their parents.
Under H2024, the agency now places child safety ahead of keeping families together.
Among the upcoming Q&A reports, Ms. Reinhold said: “We’re planning on having a question-and-answer document on the employee-evaluation process.”
DES spokeswoman Liz Barker Alvarez said the question-and-answer reports are a cooperative effort between CPS and the auditors
“The Q&A’s are produced in partnership,” Ms. Barker Alvarez said.
She added: “Anything the helps to get information out and informs the public about child welfare is a really good thing, especially with complex issues.”
One such issue, she added, is child substance exposure.