State Rep. Luke Meerman (R-Coopersville) presided over a committee hearing on Tuesday about a report issued by the Office of Auditor General (OAG) in April that found that Michigan’s Office of Family Advocate recently neglected to check 150 child deaths to see if they merited further review. The House Oversight Subcommittee on Child Welfare, which Meerman chairs, heard testimony on the April audit from both the OAG’s office and Demetrius Starling, the senior deputy director at the Michigan health department in charge of overseeing the state’s child welfare system.

“We have a duty to act on inefficiencies and failures involving the care of children,” Meerman said. “When the child welfare system fails, the consequences are catastrophic. If we do not scrutinize every instance of a child death when the state has already been involved in that child’s life, we are not upholding our due diligence to the children of this state.”

The OAG’s report from April also found that among 143 reported child deaths that met the criteria for further review, the Office of Family Advocate only investigated 35 cases. The audit also detailed how the Office of Family Advocate has not reported applicable data in the child fatality registry or updated the registry’s historical information for known discrepancies since January 2023.

“It’s clear that like all aspects of government, oversight of the child welfare system is necessary to ensure the system is functioning as it should, improving when it needs to, and reconciling its failures,” Meerman said. “The shortcomings of the state’s Family Advocate Office definitely need to be addressed, and my hope is that our committee meeting prompts them to move in the right direction going forward.”