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High-profile child abuse death cases in recent years have for “transformative changes” to the state’s existing child welfare system.

The Child Welfare Services Branch of the Department of Human Services certainly needs more money and resources to monitor thousands of children each year. But truly transformative change requires departing from old ideas that are not working — such as excessive secrecy around CWS supervision. 

In 2023, in the wake of Ariel Seller’s disappearance and presumed death, the Legislature created the Mālama ‘Ohana Working Group to gather the voices of the parents, children and others who have been involved with child welfare services. The that “CWS is seen as a closed, secretive, and inconsistent agency.” 

Community listening session participants “loudly and consistently emphasized the imperative of accountability and transparency in the child welfare system overall, and especially in the child welfare services agency.” The community wants “a transparent, accountable system that earns and maintains public trust. They envision independent oversight, effective complaint resolution processes, and regular public reporting on system performance. They want to see careful review and learning from critical incidents, with meaningful community engagement in system monitoring and improvement.”

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Researchers from the University of Colorado’s for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect tether the public’s lack of trust directly (and rather obviously) to the overly secret nature of child welfare services: “Laypeople outside the child welfare system rarely see the inner workings of these complicated structures, and one more structure ensures this, namely, the lack of transparency shrouding the system as a whole, imposed from the system itself in the name of client confidentiality and government integrity. The system is structured to self-preserve at every turn, creating an increasingly intractable knot for families, children, and the concerned community.” 

Secrecy also conceals successes that could promote public trust. Despite a handful of high-profile death cases, our child welfare system seems to be doing an okay — average — job of protecting children in Hawaiʻi. According to measures of efficacy of state child welfare systems, Hawaiʻi falls in the middle for most categories and excels by some metrics. In 2020, Hawaiʻi had the lowest number of child maltreatment deaths per capita and virtually no reported incidences of child maltreatment in foster care. Absolute secrecy means we only know about the extreme cases — the highly publicized failures — and even then, critical information remains hidden. 

The role of public trust in the child welfare system is not mere theory. It is critical to the operation. As the Kempe Center noted, “Child welfare is not just a government program or service; it is the public’s collective response to child abuse and neglect … CPS caseworkers intervene in the most private domain of family life, and in return the public is asked to trust that those workers will intervene in a way that protects, supports and respects children and their families.”  

The Mālama ‘Ohana Working Group drew similar conclusions — protecting children is not simply the kuleana of one government agency, it is shared across the community. “It is the collective and collaborative shared kuleana that is our greatest hope.” 

Public trust is necessary to realize the full potential of this shared responsibility: “While individuals, especially the leaders who participated in the Mālama ‘Ohana Working Group process, received high praise, as a whole, the agency does not have the confidence or support of the communities it serves. Negative perceptions and fear of retaliation chill opportunities for collaboration and problem-solving.”

Respect for the difficult work of child welfare professionals can coexist with meaningful accountability. Dependency courts in 20 states, for example, are . Transparency and accountability concerns child welfare as a system, not individual judges, caseworkers, or government contractors. 

Why would we not scrutinize policies and decisions that placed a child with adoptive parents who are now accused of her murder? As a community we cannot afford to shy away from painful truths. They will metastasize if ignored. 

I hope DHS gets increased funding. That is almost certainly part of the solution. But we need to better understand what the problems are if we are to fix them. That cannot happen if unchecked confidentiality remains the status quo. 

Whenever the government spends taxpayer money and exercises government power in the name of the public — like policing families for child safety — the public deserves access to enough information to deeply understand what the government is doing. Absolute secrecy prevents meaningful accountability, erodes public trust and stymies reform efforts. It’s an old idea — and it should go.