The team looking into thousands of reports of child abuse that went ignored said more than half of those cases have been assigned to investigators.
In late November, the director of Child Protective Services’ parent agency revealed that more than 6,500 calls to a hotline for reporting neglect and abuse were wrongly classified and illegally ignored. Five senior CPS workers have been placed on administrative leave.
Three weeks ago, Gov. Jan Brewer named a team to investigate the ignored cases, led by the head of Arizona’s Juvenile Corrections department. Thursday, the team gave the latest report on its progress. It said nearly 3,300 ignored cases have been assigned to child welfare investigators. More than 1,700 children have been checked on in person, and nearly 1,500 other cases have also been responded to.