SAN JOSE — Santa Clara County is moving to fire four child welfare agency employees, while three others have resigned or retired, after an internal investigation into how 2-year-old Jaxon Juarez was placed in a relative’s foster home where authorities allege he suffered fatal abuse by a teenage cousin.
The workers were among 12 social workers, supervisors and managers placed on paid administrative leave shortly after Jaxon’s April 9 death. An eighth worker remains on leave pending further investigation, while four others have been cleared of wrongdoing and returned to work, county officials said.
Wendy Kinnear-Rausch, the head of the county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services, announced Tuesday that she had “begun the process of terminating” the four workers for their roles in placing Jaxon with a cousin who had a criminal history of felony child endangerment and whose teenage son now is charged with Jaxon’s rape and murder. The county did not name the workers or detail each employee’s specific role.
“Jaxon’s death is a heartbreaking tragedy,” she wrote in a memo to staff. “Our investigation remains ongoing, including with respect to other aspects of how his case was handled.”
While the terminations are directed at workers “involved in placing Jaxon in the home where he experienced abuse,” Kinnear-Rausch said in a statement, she didn’t specify the fate of the workers called out to the foster home two days before Jaxon was found unconscious there and determined he was safe.
The potential firings in Jaxon’s case mark the first time employees of the department are being held accountable for a string of recent child deaths that have thrown Santa Clara County’s child welfare system into crisis. Jaxon was the third child in county care to die since 2023. All of the deaths, including the 2023 fentanyl overdose death of baby Phoenix Castro and the stabbing death of 7-year-old Jordan Walker allegedly by an uncle, occurred after social workers placed the children with family or extended family. In each case, red flags were overlooked, Bay Area News Group investigations found.
After Jaxon’s death, District Attorney Jeff Rosen told reporters in April outside Juvenile Hall, “Enough, Enough,” as he called for criminal probes of the agency.
Rosen declined to comment on the status of possible criminal investigations of agency employees, but on Wednesday said in a statement that “people who work for the safety of children have to be held to the highest standards.”
resignations, and making the systemic changes that will protect our most vulnerable kids all have to happen. I can’t think of a higher priority than the safety of our children.”
After Jaxon’s mother died and his father’s health problems left him unable to care for his son, Jaxon was ultimately placed in February in the San Jose home of his paternal cousin and her three children, including her 17-year-old son later charged with murder.
Social workers used the “Emergency Family Placement” process to allow the cousin to serve as his foster caregiver, even though she had what county officials acknowledged was a “disqualifying” criminal record.
In 2014, the woman pleaded no contest to “willful cruelty to a child” — part of the felony child endangerment statute — after driving drunk with her 1-year-old daughter in the back seat. This news organization is not naming the woman to protect the identity of her son, who was 17 at the time of Jaxon’s death and is being prosecuted in juvenile court.
Kinnear-Rausch also said in her memo that the county is analyzing the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, known as CLETS, which provides social workers with criminal records of potential foster parents. The county also is reviewing “existing decision support systems for social workers to see where improvements and efficiencies can be realized.”
The workers designated for firing will be given an opportunity to respond before any formal termination.
Each of the tragedies has intensified scrutiny of a 2021 “family preservation” policy implemented by Dan Little, the agency’s former director who has since been promoted to lead the county’s Department of Social Services. The policy was intended to reduce the removals of children from their homes, which often were children of color, and instead provide parents with classes and other resources to improve their parenting skills.
Investigations by the Bay Area News Group and a state audit after baby Phoenix’s death found, however, that parents often didn’t engage with or complete those voluntary safety plans. Nonetheless, over the next two years, the number of removals plummeted. Then baby Phoenix, born with drugs and alcohol in her system, died three months after she was sent home with her drug-abusing father despite dire warnings from a social worker who said she wouldn’t be safe there. The coroner found remnants of fentanyl powder on her pink-flowered onesie.
Kinnear-Rausch, a longtime agency social worker and leader, helped implement the family preservation policy before replacing then-agency Director Damion Wright last year. More than a year after baby Phoenix’s death, Wright left the agency of his own accord.
James Williams, now the county executive, also has faced criticism from social workers because he previously led the county counsel’s office, which they say often overrode their recommendations to remove abused children from their parents. Williams is the only county leader with authority to fire agency heads. Only the county Board of Supervisors can terminate the county executive.
In public meetings since the death of baby Phoenix, social workers have called for the firings of Little, Kinnear-Rausch and Williams.
Union officials did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Wednesday. When the workers were first placed on leave, however, Zeb Feldman from the County Employee Management Association said workers and supervisors will often be blamed “when, in fact, they are executing a policy.” At the time, he said it was too soon to say whether any workers were negligent or made reckless mistakes.
After investigations by this news organization as well as the state in the wake of baby Phoenix’s death, Williams, Little and Kinnear-Rausch have all vowed to re-prioritize child safety. For the past 18 months, the state has overseen reforms intended to do that.
Jaxon’s death, however, raised new questions about whether those measures had taken hold.
Along with the county’s internal investigation, the California Department of Social Services conducted its own investigation of Jaxon’s death. It issued a report last month to the Department of Family and Children’s Services, but both the state and the county have kept the report secret, so it’s not clear whether the state reached the same conclusions about culpability over Jaxon’s death.