By admin 
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The director of Arizona’s child welfare agency is responding to three new reports released by the state’s auditor general. The agency has been under scrutiny following the murders of three children known to the system.
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Arizona’s Family Investigates spoke with Department of Child Safety (DCS) Director Kathryn Ptak about the findings.
Ptak said the agency has had a challenging year but said she is proud of the work the department has done. The reports do not examine the state of the agency overall but instead focus on specific issues.
Noncriminal investigations report
One report was a follow-up audit from a review conducted last year. It found DCS is not always informing people under noncriminal investigation in writing of their rights and the specific allegations against them. The audit also found DCS is taking longer than the 45 days mandated by statute to close out cases, which could negatively impact families.
“I will always say if you need 50 days to a really good, complete, thorough investigation, and you need to get that last interview in, I say take that additional five days and do a really good investigation,” Ptak said.
Ptak addressed why three of the 15 recommendations identified in last year’s audit have not been implemented.
“Those require other steps to be implemented first,” Ptak said. “So a lot of it has to do with tracking of the first steps. We have to do the first step first to see if it’s working.”
Ptak said those recommendations will be implemented.
The Legislature passed a number of bills last session aimed at reforming DCS. Ptak said she supports the bills and believes they will make a difference.
Group home staff investigations report
Onneka Ryan was supposed to protect kids at a Glendale group home. She is accused of grooming a 15-year-old boy she was supposed to help care for. Authorities say she helped him leave the facility and sexually assaulted him at her apartment in October 2025.
Cases involving group home staff accused of child abuse and how DCS handles those employees are the subject of a separate auditor general’s report.
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“For homes where we are contracted and we have child placed there, we can investigate the group home workers that way the workers can’t pop from home to home,” Ptak said.
Ptak said her agency only received the authority to investigate these cases in 2024. The report found DCS is not doing enough to protect children from group home staff under investigation for abuse. Ptak said the issue arises when an employee under investigation cannot have contact with the child involved but could still continue working.
“We always want to interview the child victim first when we’re making that safety assessment before we ask for a staff to be removed,” Ptak said. “What the auditor general found is we could have a little tighter process, and some states do it differently.”
The report recommended DCS develop policies and procedures for when to remove group home staff under investigation. It also urged the agency to consider pursuing statutory changes to clarify its authority in this area.
Overall, Ptak said the agency is “doing a very good job” at investigating these cases.
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