Western Wayne Today

In spite of a darker past, Michigan's child welfare system has consistently shown improvements over the last decade, but now its top two leaders are leaving their positions.

"Rather than protecting children, too often the system pulled them from homes, only to allow them to languish in a bureaucracy, bouncing from foster home to foster home," a Bridge Michigan report said. "In the worst cases, children were abused and neglected again. Some disappeared. By one report, 78 children had died in the agency’s custody between 2004 and 2008."

Huge improvements began to come for the child welfare system when Robert Gordon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), and JooYeun Chang, who headed the department’s Children Services Agency, helped change the system.

Stacie Bladen, MDHHS | LinkedIn

The drastic improvement had actually allowed for Michigan to "finally become extricated from more than a decade of federal court oversight of its foster care system," Bridge Michigan reported. In November, overseeing U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Edmunds said that Michigan still had work to do but noted the progress. 

“I’m going to retire pretty soon, so I’d like... to have this wrapped up if possible," Edmunds said, as reported by Bridge Michigan. 

Abruptly, Gordon left his position in January and Chang left in February, despite both being important to the state’s progress on foster care, according to lawyers and advocates for children's rights.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has repeatedly declined to clarify why Gorden left his position. Chang left MDHHS after being appointed to a position with the Biden administration. 

Elizabeth Hertel has been appointed the new MDHHS director. Stacie Bladen has been named as Chang's interim replacement, after being a long-time employee of MDHHS and having held a variety of roles in the child welfare system. She told Bridge Michigan that her focus will be on maintaining the momentum for overhauling the system, and this will be her biggest challenge. 

"Bladen, Chang’s replacement, credits Chang and Gordon with helping shift the department’s focus from immediately separating children from their parents to intervening earlier to offer services that help struggling families stabilize their circumstances and stay together," Bridge Michigan reported.

Chang told Bridge Michigan that the improvement made by Children's Services that helped the most was the system contacting family members to act as foster parents until families could be united, which increased protection for vulnerable children.

Gordon spoke last November about the agency’s overall progress. “So we are on a path, we are making progress,” he said, according to Bridge Michigan. “And I look forward to continuing that progress together with Director Chang and the whole team at the Children’s Services Agency."

MDHHS hopes to continue this progress, despite challenges they have faced in the past, and in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic and administrative changes.