San Jose, California — A newly released county report found that parental neglect contributed to the deaths of three Santa Clara County children in 2022, despite repeated warnings to the county’s child welfare agency urging intervention, raising renewed concerns about systemic failures within the department.
According to the report from the county’s Child Death Review Team, social workers repeatedly closed referrals as unfounded or inconclusive, referred parents to voluntary services that were never completed, or took no further action until after a child had died. In one case, parents were later charged with felony child endangerment, while in another, surviving children were eventually removed from the home.
The findings add to long-standing scrutiny of the agency following the 2023 fentanyl poisoning death of baby Phoenix Castro, a case that exposed policies prioritizing family preservation over child safety. Investigations previously found that beginning in 2021, Santa Clara County sharply reduced child removals, relying instead on voluntary services with limited enforcement…