STATE SEN. AISHA WAHAB said Monday she is alarmed by the lack of leadership and sense of urgency in Alameda County following a scathing audit of the county’s child welfare department.
The California State Auditor released a report last month that details failings in several key areas managed by the county’s Department of Children and Family Services.
On Monday, Wahab, D-Fremont, gathered at Hayward City Hall with several current and former elected officials from throughout the county to demand immediate, measurable action based on the audit’s findings.
“It’s not the first time, it’s not one case, it’s not two cases, it’s decades of failure on Alameda County’s part to do right by the children of this county,” said Wahab, who was herself a foster child in the county. “This is not about paperwork failure. This is child endangerment by government neglect.”
The audit found that DCFS failed to start about 50 percent of investigations within the time allowed, failed to ensure that foster youth received medical care and mental health services promptly, failed to adequately report critical incidents at its Transitional Shelter Care Facility and often failed to ensure that foster children were able to keep in touch with family.
“From 2019 to 2024, 89 percent to 95 percent of the urgent abuse cases weren’t investigated within the legal requirements of 24 hours,” Wahab said.
Also, investigations into child abuse, neglect and exploitation averaged 187 days to start and 275 days to close and children have disappeared from shelters where abuse and trafficking occurred, she said.
“This is not mismanagement, it’s criminal neglect” that has been nurtured by a “culture of denial and excuses,” Wahab said.
State auditors also found that from fiscal years 2019-2020 through 2024-2025, the department’s vacancy rates doubled from 17 percent to 34 percent for child welfare workers and more than doubled from 8 percent to about 18 percent for supervisors.
The vacancies resulted in child welfare workers at the department’s Emergency Response Unit having caseloads higher than the recommended 15 new cases per month, according to the report.
Livermore City Councilmember Evan Branning said his wife is a former DCFS employee who would come home from work in tears daily after struggling with a deeply flawed department.
“She got into the profession because she wanted to help, and she found a bureaucracy in the system that instead left her doing the least,” Branning said. “We have to do better. We must serve these children. They are our most vulnerable youth.”
Uncovering ‘decades of failures’
Despite the seriousness of its findings, the county has so far failed to respond to the audit with a sense of urgency it demands, according to Wahab.
She also said that she could open state Senate hearings on the subject and tie county funding to the department’s compliance with reforms, at least some of which have been identified in the past.
For example, the audit notes that on at least three other occasions — a 2023 Alameda County Grand Jury report, a 2024 California Department of Social Services review and a lawsuit filed by the city of Hayward — serious problems were discovered with DCFS investigations, overall staffing levels and conditions at one of its youth shelters.
“They’ve had many, many reports spanning decades of failures,” Wahab said.
Both she and Oakland City Councilmember Carroll Fife said the Alameda County Board of Supervisors is holding on to a $15 million reserve fund that could be used to improve the department’s performance.
“The county is sitting on reserves that are unimaginable to cities like Oakland,” Fife said.
Wahab and Fife, along with several other speakers Monday, mentioned eight-year-old Sophia Mason, who died after allegedly suffering sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her mother and her mother’s boyfriend — even after repeated reports to DCFS about signs of abuse from doctors, teachers and relatives.
“Sophia was not unseen, she was ignored,” Wahab said.
She also brought up the case of 3-year-old Mariah Musafa, who was hospitalized for allegedly ingesting meth, and then sent back to the same foster home.
“Days later, she overdosed again and died,” Wahab said. “That was not bad luck. It was negligence.”
Alameda County Administrator Susan Muranishi and a spokesperson for the county didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
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