This story first appeared in How We Care, a weekly newsletter by Spotlight PA featuring original reporting and perspectives on how we care for one another at all stages of life. Sign up for free here.
Pennsylvania’s foster care and juvenile justice systems leave a lot of kids with scars, said Bree Hood.
Hood was abused by a worker at a facility where she lived as a teen, but didn’t report it. She now advocates for youth with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, and said that too many vulnerable kids are getting hurt and staying silent out of fear.
"You can't really trust none of the staff in the system, because all the staff talk to each other," Hood told Spotlight PA.
Physical and sexual abuse of youth in Pennsylvania detention and treatment centers is widespread, according to investigations by news organizations and lawsuits. More than 200 suits have been filed in the past year alone, some of which name state-run centers.
Acknowledging failures at facilities including Glen Mills Schools — a Delaware County youth detention center where children were abused for decades despite state oversight — former Gov. Tom Wolf created the role of child advocate through a 2019 executive order. The advocate was tasked with triaging complaints about the child welfare system and making recommendations to improve it.
"Today, we are being honest that the decades-in-making, outdated, rigid, convoluted system is not working," Wolf said before signing the order.
But the role turned out to be a paper tiger, said Maryann McEvoy, the second person to hold it — with limited legal and administrative power to investigate abuse complaints. She left the job in January, and the Shapiro administration, citing the position’s lack of statutory authority and funding, has not hired a replacement.
That’s left the state at a crossroads.
McEvoy, Hood, and other advocates want the legislature to create an Office of Child Advocate that can independently investigate suspected abuse in state facilities.
But a bill that would have created the office died in the GOP-controlled state Senate last year after organizations for county commissioners and children-and-youth agencies came out in opposition, according to The Inquirer.
The news outlet also reported that “Shapiro is no longer firmly committed to maintaining such an office,” citing the legislation’s sponsors.
In an interview with Spotlight PA, Secretary of Human Services Val Arkoosh said the administration has been supportive of legislation to codify the Office of Child Advocate and acknowledged that such a bill is needed to make the position effective.
In the absence of legislative action, Arkoosh said DHS has evaluated what the system is doing to keep children safe.
“Should there be other people at that table? How can we make sure that every dollar in this relatively under-resourced system is being used to its maximum amount? And what proposals can we give to the governor for a go-forward plan?” she said.
Arkoosh highlighted a working group the department plans to launch with representatives from the counties, courts, and more to look for opportunities for improvement.
She also said the agency is working to have more physicians consult on investigations of possible child abuse and neglect after a 2023 report found that caseworkers too often make critical calls without this expertise.
Arkoosh noted that a third of the Pennsylvania kids who died from abuse or neglect between 2019 and 2023 had no previous contact with child welfare services, and said she wants to figure out why these kids are getting missed.
McEvoy agreed with Arkoosh that the legislature needs to step up, and said she knows Shapiro cares about kids.
But she also said his administration doesn’t oversee the child welfare system as aggressively as it could. It could push harder for legislation to create a child advocate office, or hire a new child advocate and find ways to be more supportive of their work, she said.
"He is the governor who wants to be president someday," McEvoy said. "Show us that kids matter."
An empowered advocate
McEvoy, who began under Wolf, thought she’d be able to make Pennsylvania’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems safer and more transparent. She also sought to amplify the voices of the kids who grow up in these systems so they could feel more comfortable speaking out when being harmed or abused.
She told Spotlight PA that her lack of power prevented her from effectively investigating complaints and concerns, though she was able to push for some policies. But when Gov. Josh Shapiro took office, she said, internal politics sidelined her from continuing this work. McEvoy was no longer included in policy discussions she'd previously participated in, she said, while some working groups were discontinued or paused indefinitely.
Among her top priorities: creating a direct line to her office for kids in state care to contact if they were being harmed. It never launched.
“There were concerns about how much outreach it would receive and whether or not I would need more staff to support the work which they weren't willing to provide me prior to legislation passing,” she said.
Currently, the best option is to call Pennsylvania's ChildLine, a 24/7 hotline designed for people to report suspicions of abuse and neglect; most callers are legally obligated to do so because of their professions. These complaints are often routed to the county welfare offices.
“It’s completely biased and not designed for children to report abuse,” McEvoy said of this setup.
A child can also speak to their caseworker, who is usually employed by or under contract with the county agency. If that doesn’t work, they can try to appeal the issue to the state’s Office of Children, Youth, and Families, or reach out to their court-appointed attorney.
This process takes time, is cumbersome, and might not be handled confidentially, say child advocates. Hood said that’s why she never spoke up about her abuser: She feared retaliation from the adults who controlled nearly every aspect of her life.
The legislation to formalize McEvoy’s old position would have empowered the child advocate to receive and review complaints from children, access confidential records, and conduct interviews at facilities licensed by the state.
It passed the Pennsylvania House last session but stalled in the Senate. State Sen. Judy Ward (R., Blair), who chaired the committee where it died, did not respond to a request for comment.
State House Democrats plan to reintroduce the bill as early as this month. But advocates contend the previous version of the bill was flawed because it would have housed the child advocate office inside the Department of Human Services, which oversees Pennsylvania's county-based child welfare system.
Instead of DHS, the child advocate should be put in the Office of State Inspector General, said Sarah Font, an associate professor at Penn State who studies child welfare policy. That agency works to detect and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse within executive agencies.
Such a system prioritizes independence and oversight, Font said. The United States Ombudsman Association similarly recommends that public sector watchdogs should be independent of agencies’ influence and control to ensure impartiality.
But there are drawbacks to putting the child advocate outside DHS, said Aubrey Edwards-Luce of the University of Baltimore School of Law, where she works to prevent families’ unnecessary involvement with the court system. Being within DHS would give the advocate more direct access to help resolve conflicts such as a kid’s caseworker not returning their calls, she said.
Edwards-Luce agreed with Font that, if part of the job was to investigate systemic shortcomings, Pennsylvania kids would be better served if the advocate was not part of DHS. She said it comes down to what role Pennsylvania wants the child advocate to fulfill.
A centralized system?
Twenty-four states have independent agencies that monitor and investigate child welfare issues, and an additional four have offices that autonomously operate within the agencies they oversee, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Despite their widespread adoption, there’s little evidence that an independent child advocate is the best way to reform a complicated and multifaceted welfare system, Font said. That's partly because it can take years to know if a policy is successful.
For example, a decrease in child abuse investigations could indicate that fewer kids are getting hurt or that an agency is understaffed. Likewise, an uptick in foster care placements could mean kids are getting removed from dangerous homes faster, or that families are not getting the support they need.
Font argued that shifting from a county-based system to a centralized state one would produce better outcomes. This would improve data collection so the state can detect problems more quickly, and come up with better solutions.
Counties share data with the state only once or twice a year, which means an alarming trend might not be detected right away at the state level, Font said via email.
“Even when a concern is detected, all the contextual data that counties have isn't available to the state to understand what is actually going on,” she said. “Taken together, there can be major delays in addressing problems that threaten the safety of children and the integrity of families.”
Brian Bornman, executive director of the Pennsylvania Children and Youth Administrators Association, warned that a state system could disenfranchise rural counties, as resources might be concentrated in places with more people. But he agreed with Font that a child advocate office alone would not make kids safer.
DHS already oversees licensing for county agencies, argued Bornman. Giving a child advocate more authority could make the system worse, he said, as it could create more administrative burden for already overworked staff.
"At a certain point, you need more workers than bosses," Bornman said.
In some ways, child welfare workers are first responders. They enter people's lives during a crisis to mitigate harm from systemic issues. Borman said that urgency inevitably results in incomplete information and things getting missed.
That's why he favors forming a children's cabinet, which could rally expertise from agencies and offices that oversee areas like child development, family court, and mental health care to find ways to intervene before a difficult situation becomes a tragedy.
McEvoy said a cabinet might produce smart recommendations but it wouldn’t provide accountability for Pennsylvania kids. She said that’s the value of an independent watchdog: the ability to demand action even when it's politically uncomfortable.
Bree Hood agrees. She said most of the kids she grew up with are now unhoused, incarcerated, or dealing with substance use. Others have died. She argued these outcomes prove Pennsylvania needs an outside voice to figure out why kids in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems don’t become successful adults.
BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.