Pennsylvania’s last governor appointed a statewide child advocate. Then the pushback started.

Stepping into the role of Pennsylvania child advocate in 2021, Maryann McEvoy knew she had her work cut out for her.

Gov. Tom Wolf had created the post as part of a new Office of Advocacy and Reform by executive order in 2019 — citing rampant abuses at the state-licensed Glen Mills School, and the tragic, preventable murder of 14-year-old Grace Packer in Bucks County. He described the job as an ombudsman with an important role in preventing future tragedies.

McEvoy, a former special-education teacher and a longtime advocate for children with disabilities, saw it as a broad mandate: to respond to complaints from kids and families, and to be their voice in policy discussions.

In the end, she was unable to accomplish either goal.

Instead, McEvoy discovered she did not have the legal authority to access information she needed to follow up on complaints, or the clout to pursue policy matters. Then, amid uncertainty as to whether Gov. Josh Shapiro would continue funding the office, staffers fled. That left McEvoy a solo operator until she, too, stepped down in January.

That leaves Pennsylvania as one of just six states, and by far the largest, without a child advocate or ombudsman.

The story of how the advocate position went from an ambitious response to a crisis of abuse to a position unable to investigate complaints and then to an empty desk has alarmed and outraged some advocates.

It also demonstrates the fragility and political susceptibility of even bipartisan efforts to expand oversight of the $1.2 billion state child-welfare system.

Shapiro’s administration has made no moves to fill the advocate position. It also sunsetted working groups that had involved the advocate, on infants born with substance exposure and tracking trends in abuse-related child fatalities.

Last fall, lawmakers believed they were near the finish line with legislation aimed at establishing a permanent child advocate office — one that would be independently funded and fully empowered to investigate and respond to complaints. Now, its sponsors understand that to be a long shot.

A key factor, they say: Shapiro is no longer firmly committed to maintaining such an office.

According to a spokesperson, the administration is reevaluating how such a role could work effectively.

Groups representing county children and youth administrators and private providers had objected to the advocate’s broad oversight role. They argued it would duplicate the work of the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) and other agencies that license and inspect facilities.

“At some point, there’s too much oversight,” said Brian Bornman, executive director of Pennsylvania Children and Youth Administrators, at a hearing last year. He added, “If [providers] get conflicting guidance, that’s never a good thing.”

Yet virtually everyone agrees that Pennsylvania’s child-welfare system is in crisis.

Reports of suspected abuse have increased 35% since laws were overhauled in 2014 after the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal. And agencies are reeling from a staffing crisis that has impaired their ability to respond.

Four county child-welfare agencies are operating under provisional licenses, meaning the state identified serious concerns. At one point last year, that number was up to seven — including Delaware County, where the state discovered workers did not promptly investigate some allegations. One agency, Blair County’s, briefly lost its license after workers questioned caregivers without notifying them of their rights.

Even facilities fully licensed by DHS have been the site of alleged maltreatment.

For instance, kids in Philadelphia juvenile detention are regularly held in seclusion in violation of state law, the city Office of Youth Ombudsman recently reported. Kids held there said staff have offered cheesesteaks as bribes for them to assault other kids, an Inquirer investigation found. The facility came off a provisional license in 2023 and is now in good standing with the state.

Bornman said such scandals do not suggest a need for another layer of oversight, but rather demand an overhaul of DHS’s inspection practices.

“Generally, the licensing process involves coming in with a checklist and checking paperwork,” Bornman said. “They need to focus more on talking to the kids, looking at performance and safety measures, rather than being focused on ‘Did the trash can have a lid?’ and ‘Was the refrigerator labeled?’”

One thing Bornman and McEvoy agree on: Kids with complex needs who rely on multiple state systems are not getting the cohesive responses they need.

One is Jaylah Adams, 17, whose diagnoses include generalized anxiety and depression with psychotic features. She has spent six years waiting for an appropriate placement — bouncing between treatment facilities and her parents’ home near Easton, where they feel unable to safely manage her care.

Stuck in an ER, she wrote a letter in crayon. Her mother took a photo and emailed it to everyone on her case. McEvoy was the only one who responded.

“I don’t think they realize it’s been a whole good six years,” Jaylah wrote to McEvoy afterward, adding she was grateful at least one person was trying to help. Her conclusion: “These higher-ups don’t care about me.”

Legislation to appoint a child advocate was first introduced 25 years ago — and the call has been renewed in the wake of several horrific incidents.

A grand jury convened after the 2006 starvation death of Danieal Kelly, a 14-year-old Philadelphia girl with cerebral palsy, urged lawmakers to install an advocate or ombudsman and empower that person to pierce confidentiality for the purpose of oversight.

Rep. Christina Sappey, a Chester County Democrat who sponsored the bill in the last legislative session, was haunted by yet another tragedy: the 2014 death of Scotty McMillan, a 3-year-old West Chester boy. His kindergarten-age brother had missed school for weeks as Scotty was tortured.

When McEvoy took the post under Wolf’s executive order, that history weighed on her.

She started by attempting to visit each of the state’s 3,800 licensed facilities, meeting with children and trying to wrap her head around the complexity of the system.

She found a complicated picture, particularly in residential institutions.

Statistically, institutionalizing kids leads to worse outcomes. “But,” she said, “there were also children who told me, ‘No one had ever sang me ‘Happy Birthday’ before. [In the facility] was first time I ever had a birthday cake.’”

But as she began to receive complaints, she recognized the limitations of her post.

She tried to develop a complaint-review process — but, she said, state agencies and private providers told her confidentiality rules prevented her from accessing the information needed to generate findings.

The state and local governments also did not allow her to conduct unannounced visits. And they determined she could not access video of reported incidents, interview children about allegations, view in-house investigation reports, or even see unredacted fatality reports.

“I really tried to get access in every way you could imagine,” she said, “and I was stopped by lawyers at every step of the way.”

Stymied, she tried to shift her focus to systemic issues.

For instance, some youth advocacy groups were alarmed to learn that the organization providing ChildLine mandatory reporter training to the Amish community in Lancaster County — where there have been numerous allegations of secret abuse — was not using the state-authorized curriculum.

McEvoy said she could not get answers from education and human services officials about whether the curriculum met state standards.

As staffers left the Office of Advocacy and Reform, McEvoy said, she had no budget or authority to replace them. By late last year, McEvoy was the only employee.

Along the way, a work group she was part of, studying infants born with substance exposure, recommended expanding the reporting criteria beyond physical withdrawal symptoms. In a 2023 email to the group members, the Shapiro administration rejected that proposal and announced it was “sunsetting” the working group, effective immediately.

The team she was part of that analyzed trends in abuse- and neglect-related child deaths and near fatalities also stopped meeting in 2023, she said.

That team was tasked with combing through incident reports that are required to be filed by each county and posted publicly, pursuant to a 2008 state law called Act 33.

But nearly 40% of those reports are missing from the public database. Close to one-third of the missing reports have been suppressed — in some cases for the better part of a decade — at the request of local prosecutors citing ongoing criminal investigations.

A DHS spokesperson acknowledged the team had not met in over a year, but said it is “reassessing” how its work can prevent future crises, such as a recent increase in deaths of children with no previous system involvement. DHS is also working to get Act 33 reports posted more promptly, the spokesperson said.

“We should just scrap the entire Act 33 process because we’re not learning a darn thing,” said Cathy Palm, who leads the nonprofit Center for Children’s Justice. “This is why we want a child advocate. The public is so far removed from being able to track anything about the child welfare system.”

Palm pointed out that Pennsylvania has an ombudsman’s office for adults in long-term care.

“We are not giving to children and families what we give to older Pennsylvanians,” she said. “There is not an independent check or balance on this system that is so consequential in terms of money, and in terms of human consequences, like child safety, like parental rights.”

For families who run into obstacles navigating the child-welfare system, the need for an advocate is all too apparent.

Deborah Willett, 68, the adoptive mother of 13 kids and leader of a program for grandparents raising children, has accumulated years of expertise helping other families — but even she found herself at a loss a few years ago, and reached out to McEvoy for help.

The Coatesville resident had taken in a toddler whose parents were in addiction. Then, as she was working toward adoption, she learned the boy had a half-sister in Philadelphia foster care.

Willett had previously adopted three siblings, and saw how they drew strength and comfort from one another. Keeping siblings together is described as a “top priority” for Pennsylvania DHS and for Philadelphia.

She offered to foster the sister, as long as the plan was for a permanent placement.

She said the caseworkers were initially enthusiastic — but as the case dragged on they seemed noncommittal. Frustrated, Willett skipped a court date, and the case was terminated, she said.

That’s when Willett contacted the advocate. She felt relieved to have someone on her side — but soon learned McEvoy could not even access information about the case, let alone intercede.

“We have all sorts of families that need help,” Willett said. “They have not just mental health, or children-and-youth, or juvenile probation or special education, but they are involved in multiple systems. To be able to make one call to the office of the child advocate, and have someone with some authority put things together, is what these families need.”

Cheryl Adams, whose daughter Jaylah wrote to McEvoy last year, reached out to McEvoy out of a similar sense of desperation.

Her daughter had been turned away by more than 40 treatment facilities over six years. A complex-case team handling the matter had made little progress.

Adams said McEvoy sat in on the meeting, and reached out afterward with resources. It didn’t solve Adams’ problem, but the willingness to engage felt like a refreshing change.

“These entities are described as family-focused and child-centered,” Adams said. “That has not been our experience. … These experiences are just stacking trauma on top of what [families] have already been through.”

By last year, Sappey was convinced that the role needed to be made permanent, independently funded, and insulated from politics and agency interference.

She saw victory on the horizon. The House passed the bill, with unanimous Democratic support plus nine Republican votes.

But in June, the organizations representing county commissioners and children-and-youth agencies circulated a letter opposing the bill’s passage in the state Senate, unless the role was reimagined as something altogether different: the convener of a “children and youth cabinet” with no oversight role.

With that, the legislation stalled.

McEvoy began to feel she could no longer justify her position.

“I hung on for as long as I could,” she said.

With the new legislative session that began in January, Sappey and her colleagues had to start over with the bill.

This time, Sappey gets the sense there is less support. The Shapiro administration, she said, told her its focus is reforms to the Child Protective Services Law.

Sappey agrees those reforms are overdue.

But, she said, “I’m an ‘and’ person, not an ‘or’ person. I don’t think it’s one thing or the other. I think we can do both of these things, I’m hoping at the same time, and arrive at a place that works for kids.”

This article was supported in part by funding from the Stoneleigh Foundation, a philanthropic organization seeking to improve the life outcomes of young people. Inquirer articles are created independently of donor support.