Child welfare workers have put thousands of Utah kids at risk of harm — including a child who was badly injured and another who eventually disappeared — by missing deadlines to protect their safety, an audit revealed Friday.
“These are more than simple policy violations; neglecting these key case tools and controls can and has put children in danger,” legislative auditors wrote.
They reviewed the 23,000 cases the Utah Division of Child and Family Services handled in fiscal 2025.
Auditors found a lack of “proper management” extends “from the top levels of DCFS leadership down to front-line caseworkers.” That, they said, “has created a culture in [Child Protective Services] in which poor performance is tolerated far too often.”
The audit follows years of the Utah Legislature expressing concerns about the agency’s operations.
“It is going to be very difficult making changes moving forward when it’s culture-based,” House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, told agency leaders Friday. “Those are hard to root out of a department the size of DCFS and it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take real leadership and tough decisions.”
(Utah Legislature) Tonya Myrup, the director of the Utah Division of Child and Family Services, speaks during a meeting of the House Health and Human Services Committee at the Capitol,. Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026.
Tonya Myrup, the director of DCFS, told lawmakers that the division recently moved to a new data system, and she believes it will help leaders “get ahead of some of those problems and avoid some of the things that we’ve seen highlighted in the audit.”
‘Inexcusably bad situations’
Auditors determined workers at DCFS failed to make face-to-face contact with children within deadlines — set based on the severity of an abuse allegation — in over 3,200 cases.
In one case that involved multiple children, a caseworker did not visit the family for three months after a child endangerment report, auditors found, in an example from 160 case files they analyzed in depth. The worker acted only after one child was badly hurt and a newborn tested positive for methamphetamine.
The DCFS employee worked on the case for one week, then “did no documented work” for six months. One of the children was ultimately exposed to drugs and so severely injured that, under state law, the case should have been reported to an oversight office for a near fatality, according to auditors.
Utah caseworkers also exceeded time limits for creating a safety plan for children in 7,800 cases.
In one instance, a caseworker had photo evidence of bruising on a child from two separate occasions. They did not complete a safety assessment for 10 months after the child was first seen, limiting the agency from intervening to protect the child and leading to confusion for law enforcement officers, auditors said.
There were no documented repercussions for the caseworker.
An additional 4,600 investigations continued beyond a 30-day time limit without supervisors approving an extension, per the audit — “a strong indicator that supervisors are not paying attention to their teams’ cases.”
After one child’s case was open for nearly a year — “well outside acceptable standards” — an allegation was submitted to the agency that the child was sexually assaulted and “taken by unnamed persons.” The caseworker reportedly did not document taking any actions, and another employee was assigned to investigate the case eight days later “after it appeared the child was missing.”
That case mirrors one from 2017 that ended in a child’s death, auditors wrote, adding, “It is highly concerning that similar, inexcusably bad situations are still occurring eight years later.”
Auditors found instances when “poor investigative work” and employees violating policies led to “unjustified action” against families.
According to the report, one DCFS employee dressed like a health care worker and entered a child’s hospital room without telling the family. That employee repeatedly visited the wrong home over the course of that same investigation, and when asked, never provided the family with a list of instructions as to how members could best comply with the investigation.
Schultz, who is familiar with the case, said the family paid $80,000 in legal fees when the case went to court, where a judge ruled there was not enough evidence to show the child was harmed. Auditors discovered division records nonetheless still include a finding that both parents mistreated the child.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) at a meeting of the Legislative Audit Subcommittee at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026.
Further oversight of the agency’s work is limited by a lack of information in reviews compiled by the Department of Health and Human Services after a child dies, auditors wrote.
“We believe that these reports are not providing the information that is required in law,” auditor Brian Dean told lawmakers Friday.
In recent years, the department’s Fatality Review Committee has stopped reporting instances of DCFS not complying with policy.
Of the 146 deaths that internal committee analyzed from 2023 to 2025, none of the reports identified examples of noncompliance by caseworkers. Reports on the 194 deaths analyzed in the preceding five years had pointed out 47 times employees violated policies.
When those reports have been delivered to the Child Welfare Legislative Oversight Panel, as required by law, they are often censored to the point of being unreadable, the audit said.
“I take it a little bit personally as a member of the Child Welfare Legislative Oversight Panel to read in an audit that information was omitted, that the report was not as transparent as it could be,” Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, said, adding, “I want to make sure I trust you guys.”
The panel has twice requested that DHHS stop unnecessarily redacting fatality review reports it submits to the entity.
Friday morning, prior to the audit being published, two Republican lawmakers had already filed a bill to further clarify in state law that only surnames and addresses should be blacked out in those documents.
“This is so important for the families moving forward,” Schultz said, “and there will be a follow-up on this audit, and we would like to see significant improvements to the department.”
The federal government’s Children’s Bureau, under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, conducts its own review of each state’s child welfare program every five to 10 years. It is scheduled to assess Utah this year.