Social workers demanding accountability from child welfare agency leaders had a multitude of grim reasons to stand up to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors Tuesday: the deaths of two San Jose children under the agency’s supervision, two damning state investigations, the use of a string of unlicensed group homes and a recent lawsuit from a grieving grandfather.

There was another reason, too. The details were revealed in a letter submitted to the supervisors by social worker Matthew Kraft, whose pleas to remove baby Phoenix Castro from the care of her drug-abusing father went unheeded in favor of the agency’s “family preservation” policy. Phoenix died a year ago in May, fentanyl found “all over” her pink-flowered onesie.

A parade of social workers stood in line during Tuesday’s meeting to tell the supervisors about how they had lost trust in their top leaders and how some of their reforms have been rolled out piecemeal, leaving them grossly understaffed and the county’s most vulnerable children in danger.

“Please thoroughly exfoliate the lackluster, lazy, self-serving, self-aggrandizing, deceptive and grossly incompetent, ineffective, visionless, indifferent, retaliatory and combative management,” social worker Robert Brizuela told the supervisors. “When the team is not doing well, we don’t get rid of the team, we get a new coach.”

The social workers’ appeal to the Board of Supervisors is the latest attempt at holding the county’s child welfare leaders accountable — or at least show them when they’re not — for a range of problems that have plagued the Department of Family and Children’s Services over the past year.

The letter Kraft submitted Tuesday cited an exchange during a Sept. 17 all-staff virtual meeting last month of the Department of Family and Children’s Services. A sole social worker had raised her hand and asked Director Damion Wright to finally take responsibility for the “colossal” management mistakes that led to baby Phoenix’s death and sparked a Bay Area News Group investigation into the agency’s practices.

“It can be as easy as to say we had good intentions, we thought we would try something different and we got it wrong,” the social worker, who wasn’t identified, told Wright, according to a transcript of the hearing included with the letter. “I don’t think it would be that hard to actually say it.”

He didn’t, according to the transcript and audio recordings of the meeting.

Instead, although he had been assistant director of the agency for two years before baby Phoenix’s death and co-acting director when she died, he replied that he only been “hired” as director after her death.

When the social worker replied that even a parent can’t get away with saying something like “I wasn’t here that week,” Wright responded, “I hear that and I respectfully disagree with your points.”

Supervisors did not respond at Tuesday’s meeting as the matter wasn’t on their agenda.

During a board meeting last month, Supervisor Sylvia Arenas lambasted Wright and Daniel Little, director of the county’s Department of Social Services, for failing to take responsibility for the agency’s failures.

In an interview late Tuesday, she called the social workers who came forward “brave.” And although she had been in office only a few months when baby Phoenix died, “that doesn’t mean that I’m not responsible for this system.”

“I’m elected to represent our community, and so when something isn’t working within one of our departments, it falls on the shoulder of administration, it falls on the shoulder of board as well,” she said. After the systemic problems came to light, she and Supervisor Cindy Chavez called for an overhaul of the agency that is underway now. “But you can’t create a path to move forward,” she said, “if you don’t look back.”

The social workers union is also circulating a petition calling for an independent investigation of Wright, assistant director Wendy Kinnear-Rausch, and Little, who implemented the family preservation policy in 2021 when he held Wright’s job. The petition blames their management for “a series of alarming consequences” that endangered the county’s most vulnerable children.

None of the three child welfare leaders attended the board meeting, but in a statement Tuesday afternoon the agency said that child welfare work is “extraordinarily important and exceptionally challenging” locally and across the country,

“We’re focused on doing what is right for children,” the statement said, “including the swift and complete implementation” of the recommendations contained in the state Department of Social Services investigative reports, and the reforms adopted by the Board of Supervisors. They also are working internally and with partners “to help protect children and support the families we serve.”

And they said they “appreciate the continued dedication and work being done” by staff.

The only county official with authority to fire department heads is County Executive James Williams, who previously led the County Counsel’s Office which helped guide some of the child welfare agency’s most controversial policies.

In the transcript of the online staff meeting, Wright told the social worker his definition of accountability — and to him that meant looking forward, not back.

“The accountability piece is making sure that what we try to do moving forward is pretty clear,” Wright said. “And making sure as a director and those below me, whether assistant directors or whether it’s the whole team, that they’re clear around what we’re trying to do. I think those are the things that we’re trying to be accountable to. And the one piece I’ll say is, is specifically around how we’re looking at this is, if the intent is really to have safe children.”

Kraft, who submitted the letter with the transcript of the meeting, said in an interview Tuesday that when leaders don’t take responsibility for tragedies, the workers shoulder the burden — and that’s not fair, especially since he’s the one who sounded the alarm about baby Phoenix.

“It comes off like you’re blaming workers and they’re not really taking accountability for their policies that they put in place that have limited our actions and ignored our assessments,” Kraft said.

In baby Phoenix’s case, Kraft recommended the child be removed from her parents’ care because her two older siblings had already been taken away and the parents had done little to complete the parenting and drug courses need to win them back.

“Leadership has thrown responsibility to literally everyone but themselves, and now we’re expected to just trust them for whatever future reason they have,” Kraft said. “And it’s frustrating that they can’t, or that they don’t, see that or admit that.”