Child Abuse Ignored

PHOENIX (AP) — Five senior Arizona child welfare employees were fired Wednesday for orchestrating a plan that led to more than 6,500 Arizona child abuse and neglect cases being closed without investigations, officials said.

The firings were the first major personnel action since the cases were discovered in November.

Charles Flanagan, who heads a new state child welfare agency created in the wake of discovery of the closed cases, said an additional senior administrator at the state agency that formerly oversaw Child Protective Services was also fired Wednesday.

Flanagan briefed reporters after state police completed an investigation into what led to reports phoned into a state child abuse and neglect hotline not being investigated starting in late 2009. The discovery of the cases led Gov. Jan Brewer (above) to pull CPS from its parent agency and create a new cabinet level post led by Flanagan to oversee child welfare cases statewide.

Flanagan said the five upper-level managers and administrators he fired were responsible for creating and overseeing the case closings against policy and in violation of state laws. He said they not only knew that what they were doing was against policy but took steps to keep their actions secret.

"There was a lack of policy, a lack of procedure, lack in systems, people made decisions that they actually documented that they knew were wrong and did them anyway," Flanagan said. "They made decisions and failed to communicate those appropriately."

All six were at-will employees, meaning that they could be fired without cause.

The lawyer for the five fired CPS workers, Terry Woods, said they acted on the orders of the fired deputy director of the Department of Economic security, the former parent agency of CPS.

"Our position is that it was unfair to terminate them for planning an operation at the request and direction of their superiors and executing it with the knowledge and direction of their superiors,' Woods said. "The person they know knew everything was Sharon, and of course she lost her job too."

Sharon is Sharon Sergent, the DES Deputy Director for Programs.

Woods said he is reviewing whether a wrongful termination lawsuit is possible.

"In Arizona, at will employees can be fired for no reason, or for a good reason, but not for a bad reason — or a reason that violates public policy," he said.