Connecticut lawmakers on Thursday questioned Gov. Ned Lamont’s nominee, Susan Hamilton, about her plans to run the Department of Children and Families as the legislative approval process for her appointment begins. Hamilton, the interim DCF commissioner, appeared before the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee for a public hearing that drew criticism aimed largely at the department’s performance and oversight of vulnerable children.
Lawmakers asked Hamilton about staffing and service issues inside DCF, including concerns about caseworker turnover and whether children receive appropriate mental health support after entering the foster system. Hamilton said in opening remarks that she wants to focus on outcomes—how the state sets goals and measures whether conditions improve—as well as other steps she described as necessary for better foster care.
Hamilton also said she wants to prioritize placing foster children with family when possible and to improve both the foster care system and transparency at the agency. She told the committee, “It’s about outcomes. We need to be able to measure what we’re all doing, what are we collectively setting as the goal for all of us. When we’re saying we want to see things improve, we need to have ways of measuring that, and that’s something that’s really important to me,” according to the hearing transcript coverage.
Sen. Ceci Maher, D-Wilton, questioned whether Hamilton is too entrenched in DCF to identify what needs to change. Maher said she has felt that the interim commissioner lacks a sense of vision for the agency, and she pointed to Hamilton’s remarks about her experience at the Office of Policy and Management, including Hamilton’s references to how that work helped her understand the budget process and use data for spending decisions.
Maher said she was not seeing the kind of forward-looking vision that she believes is needed, adding, “I’m not seeing the passion or the vision for what you see the future could be. And that, to me, is very, very concerning.” Maher also said that understanding procedures can amount to accepting them rather than pressing for changes through the governor’s budget or legislative action, telling the committee, “I would say that understanding them often is tantamount to accepting them as opposed to pushing for what you might need from the governor’s budget or from the legislature,” before returning to what she described as concerns about Hamilton’s vision.
Other lawmakers raised questions about mental health care for children, including treatment at Specialized, Trauma-Informed, Treatment, Assessment and Reunification, or STTAR, homes, which Maher said have faced challenges as children with more complex needs enter them. Maher also said the rollout of a new casework management system had been mismanaged and that, even though it occurred before Hamilton’s tenure as leader, it remained a concern. She further told the committee that DCF needs to improve transparency and report out more data markers, saying promised changes have not come through.
Hamilton said that her prior experiences would help her advocate for what DCF needs to help children, according to coverage of the hearing. She said the agency is working on more training related to the case management system and that transparency is among her top priorities.
Committee members also returned to two high-profile cases that have drawn scrutiny of DCF involvement, including the death of Jaquelyn “Mimi” Torres-García, whose body was found in New Britain last year. In both of the cases lawmakers described, the victims were pulled out of the public school system to be homeschooled, while the alleged abuse, as described in lawmakers’ questions, was not discovered by DCF despite the department’s previous involvement with the families.
Coverage of the hearing also described a separate allegation connected to Torres-García’s case: months after the girl had died, a DCF worker investigating a complaint related to her younger sister was deceived during a video chat, according to the agency, after the children’s mother allegedly impersonated a person she had asked to represent the child.
Concern about DCF’s performance was expressed across party lines, according to coverage of the hearing. Dave Yaccarino, R-North Haven, said there needed to be “something specific, like targeted” to explain why the incidents happened, and he said he was concerned about caseworker turnover. Hamilton responded that the turnover number can be as high as 50% in a worker’s first two years on the job, and she said she believes lawmakers should look at the totality of DCF’s work, noting that many cases involve neglect and do not result in deaths.
Hamilton said, “I wish all adverse outcomes on child protection cases could be prevented,” adding that such outcomes are addressed by reviewing cases to determine what went wrong and what might have prevented a given result. The committee will next vote on Hamilton’s nomination before it can move forward in the approval process.