Massachusetts DCF’s Chronic Child Welfare Failures
In recent years Massachusetts has seen a stunning toll of child abuse deaths, and DCF has been in the spotlight for systemic failures in protecting these children. A detailed investigative report found that between 2009 and 2013 at least 110 children died of abuse or neglect in Massachusetts, and one-third of those had been under DCF supervision. Most victims were toddlers who were beaten, smothered, or drowned by their caretakers. These alarming figures rose steadily during those years, from 14 deaths in 2009 to 38 in 2013, and drew harsh criticism. Even Gov. Charlie Baker acknowledged that DCF “has many systemic problems and we are going to fix them… no one is standing here and saying everything is fine.” But Baker’s pledge has yet to stop the next tragedy.
High-profile child deaths exposed DCF’s most notorious breakdowns. The agency’s failures include cases like five-year-old Jeremiah Oliver, a Fitchburg boy who vanished while under DCF supervision and was later found dead along a highway. His disappearance and death were so egregious the Governor ordered a special investigation. Likewise, Baby “Doe,” identified later as two-year-old Bella Bond, was found dead in a trash bag on Deer Island. She had twice been in DCF’s care as an infant. Reports on these cases bluntly noted that DCF had “faced harsh criticism for failing to protect” such children. The public learned that even an infant with clear neglect could be assigned to a “lower risk” caseload with minimal oversight, setting the stage for disaster.
A 2014 exposé found that DCF’s missteps and failures were long concealed by secrecy, allowing mistakes at all levels of the child welfare process. Children at risk slipped through the cracks, and infants in open cases died quietly without intervention. The state’s own child fatality review system has been described as dysfunctional. Experts such as Dr. Robert Sege warned, “It’s a very dysfunctional system. Not only is DCF failing, but the child fatality review teams are largely nonfunctional.” In short, decades of investigations show Massachusetts swings from one tragedy to the next without accountability or lasting reform.
Audit reports confirm how badly DCF manages tracking and reporting. A 2017 state audit under Auditor Suzanne Bump revealed that DCF failed to track or report hundreds of serious injuries to children in its care. Over 2014 and 2015, DCF was unaware of 260 incidents in which a child under its supervision suffered serious bodily harm. Shockingly, the agency did not even log most cases of sexual abuse because it did not classify them as “critical incidents” reportable to the Office of the Child Advocate. Auditor Bump blasted that omission, asking, “How can the agency not consider sexual abuse a serious injury to a child? It defies logic.”
These oversights meant that children who arrived at hospitals with burns, concussions, or clear signs of assault sometimes vanished from DCF’s radar entirely. The audit underscored DCF’s chronic data shortcomings. It found numerous abuse homicides that the agency had not even counted, because hospitals or medical examiners failed to notify them. This failure to share information or collect accurate data meant the state could not even measure the scope of its own child protection crisis.
DCF’s deficiencies extend to children who go missing. A federal audit in 2022 revealed that Massachusetts had among the highest numbers of missing foster children in the nation. In 2018 alone, 949 children went missing from state foster care and later returned. Auditors sampled 88 of those cases and discovered that in 72 of them the agency never screened the children for trafficking or exploitation upon their return. This failure is particularly dangerous because runaway foster youth are highly vulnerable to predators. Despite this damning evidence, DCF has only committed to vague promises of better training and internal tracking. Missing children remain a glaring sign of systemic neglect.
The agency’s systemic issues also harm vulnerable parents. In 2015 federal investigators concluded that DCF repeatedly denied or delayed services to parents with disabilities, in clear violation of federal civil rights laws. A formal Letter of Findings from the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services declared that DCF had discriminated against a mother with a developmental disability by refusing her needed accommodations.
The investigation found a pattern of similar complaints. Parents with physical disabilities were denied interpreters. Parents with hearing impairments were not given proper support. Service plans were not adapted for parents with intellectual disabilities. DCF’s rigid policies and poor communication subjected these parents to outright discrimination, effectively driving struggling families out of the child welfare system instead of helping them. This led to a federal settlement and hundreds of pages of corrective agreements, a sign of just how far the agency had strayed from its duty.
Even DCF’s basic procedures for handling complaints have been found unconstitutional. In 2023, a Suffolk County judge ruled that DCF had violated a mother’s constitutional rights by denying her any hearing to contest allegations of neglect. Under a policy change from the Baker administration, parents labeled with a “substantiated concern” were not entitled to an impartial review. Judge Katie Rayburn concluded that this deprived thousands of families of due process. The court found that the agency’s decisions could not be trusted without oversight.
The ruling forced DCF to allow hearings after the fact, but only because the courts intervened. Evidence showed that hearing officers overturned DCF’s findings nearly half the time. This means thousands of families were wrongly punished without ever having the chance to defend themselves. The case revealed an agency more concerned with administrative convenience than with justice or fairness.
Investigations into individual tragedies reveal how deeply mismanaged DCF truly is. A report by the Office of the Child Advocate into Jeremiah Oliver’s case showed that DCF caseworkers carried among the highest caseloads in the state. The report concluded that the overwhelming workloads directly contributed to dangerous oversights. Supervisors and managers failed to prioritize their limited resources in a way that protected the most at-risk children.
The OCA’s report urged DCF to develop emergency protocols for triaging cases when staff were overloaded. In effect, the agency had been operating on an unwritten first-come, first-serve policy, leaving children like Jeremiah unprotected. That case was not an isolated failure, but a stark example of a system that has no plan for handling crises when caseloads spiral out of control.
DCF’s failures are not confined to home visits. In September 2022, 12-year-old Syeisha Nicolas died in a DCF-funded group home in Fitchburg. She suffered from severe epilepsy and had just been discharged from a hospital the night before. Her grieving mother reported that DCF gave her no information about how her daughter died and even refused to let her see the body. DCF claimed only that it had “notified” the family.
The mother’s public pleas highlighted a deeper pattern. Families of children in foster care or group homes often report being kept in the dark about hospitalizations, injuries, or even routine incidents. The lack of transparency not only deepens parents’ grief, it also prevents systemic accountability. Syeisha’s death raised urgent questions about how many other children suffer in silence, their families never told the truth about what happened.
Perhaps the most devastating example of DCF’s collapse is the death of 14-year-old David Almond in Fall River in 2020. An intellectually disabled teenager who loved school, David was reunited with his father under DCF’s supervision. Within months he was starved, beaten, and found dead in a filthy apartment. His twin brother barely survived. The Office of the Child Advocate declared it a multisystem failure involving DCF, the schools, the courts, and the medical system.
Advocates were horrified at the decisions that placed David back in harm’s way. Commonwealth Beacon reported that DCF had failed him time and time again, making inexplicable choices and ignoring warning signs until David died, emaciated and bruised. State Child Advocate Maria Mossaides said at a press conference, “every single safeguard failed David.” He even had fentanyl in his system at the time of death. Governor Baker called the case “hugely distressing” and said the death was preventable. But DCF has only promised to “evaluate” recommendations from the report, while families and lawmakers demand real accountability.
These repeated failures reveal a culture of secrecy and inaction that has long plagued DCF. The state’s mandated child fatality review team filed just four reports in 15 years, despite laws requiring annual reviews of every child abuse death. Local fatality review committees often did not meet at all. Child welfare insiders admitted that social workers seldom learn what went wrong when a child dies, meaning no lessons are shared.
Even when DCF publishes data about children in its custody, it often buries the truth. Reports show that children in foster care graduate at much lower rates and are suspended from school at much higher rates than their peers. Yet DCF provides no analysis or public plan to address these disparities. The agency seems content to collect numbers while refusing to act on them.
The pattern repeats with grim predictability. After each tragedy, politicians promise reform. More caseworkers will be hired, new rules written, budgets boosted. Yet critics point out that DCF’s systemic problems remain deeply entrenched. A 2024 report showed the agency handled over 92,000 abuse complaints that year, yet caseworkers still struggled to locate homes when investigating allegations. Even with millions in new funding, crises continued to emerge.
Experts have warned that you cannot improve what you refuse to examine. Dr. Robert Sege asked bluntly, “How do you make improvements if you don’t open your eyes and look at what is going on?” DCF’s critics insist that the agency needs true independent oversight to break the cycle of cover-ups and failures. Without outside accountability, the agency has proven it cannot fix itself.
In recent years, reports and lawsuits have continued to highlight the same problems. The Office of the Child Advocate has flagged DCF’s dysfunction in areas ranging from hearing regulations to case handoffs. Advocates describe hotlines so understaffed that calls go unanswered, and immigrant families unable to access services due to language barriers. Even DCF leaders admit the agency failed in high-profile cases, firing regional managers after David Almond’s death. But without systemic change, these measures amount to little more than damage control.
The stories of Jeremiah Oliver, Bella Bond, David Almond, and Syeisha Nicolas are not isolated tragedies. They are symptoms of a systemic breakdown. Time and again Massachusetts has promised to protect its most vulnerable children, only to watch them slip through holes in a broken system. Unless the state demands full transparency, aggressive oversight, and accountability at DCF, more tragedies will occur. For the sake of the children, and the conscience of the Commonwealth, DCF must confront its failures directly instead of hiding them behind bureaucracy and excuses.
