I-Team Investigation: Fostered or Failed?

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Calif. (KESQ) - The Turpin torture case shocked the nation. Thirteen children were rescued from horrific abuse inside a Riverside County home in 2018.

But after some of the siblings entered the foster care system, allegations surfaced that they were mistreated again, raising serious questions about the very system meant to protect them.

The case forced Riverside County leaders to order sweeping reforms to the county’s child welfare system. Five years later, News Channel 3 I-Team Investigator Karen Devine examined the numbers, the reforms and what families and social workers say is happening now.

In response to the Turpin case, Riverside County commissioned an independent review known as the Larson Report. Its conclusion was blunt: the county’s child welfare system had failed the Turpin children. The report mandated sweeping reforms including stronger oversight, tighter monitoring of foster placements and new internal accountability measures. The changes affect not only the children entering the system but also the social workers responsible for protecting them.

The scale of the system in Riverside County is significant. Children are removed from homes nearly every day. Over the past five years, more than 8,400 children entered foster care roughly four to five children each day. In 2023 alone, the county received more than 42,000 abuse and neglect referrals. Some of those reports become investigations and hundreds result in children being removed from their homes.

County leaders say the reforms are making a difference. They point to lower caseloads for investigative social workers as one sign of progress.

“With the changes, we have reduced our case-loads in the front end, or investigations, as we call it. We've seen about a 27% decrease in our caseloads for investigative workers,” said Bridgette Hernandez, Assistant Director of Children's Services for Riverside County.

But the Larson Report also identified failures in how children were placed into foster homes  raising questions about how the county ensures those homes are safe.

“It's not just about a bed for a child. It's about, does this family meet the need of this child in this moment, in the way that they need somebody to show up for them?” Hernandez said.

County officials say several changes have been implemented since the Larson Report, including expanding specialized foster homes, prioritizing placements with relatives or trusted family members and creating a licensed short-term shelter for children waiting for long-term homes. Officials say those steps are intended to provide more safe placement options and stronger oversight when children enter the system.

“It takes a certain kind of someone to be able to provide them that care and supervision and support that they need to help work through the trauma that they’ve experienced,” Hernandez said.

In the Coachella Valley, county leaders say one of the biggest challenges remains placing teenagers in safe homes.

“We try to look into the family, find out, is there relatives, aunts, uncles, and what we try to do, we try to pull them in to see what we can do for assistance, prior to us having to take children into care,” said Letty Serrato, Regional Manager for the Department of Public Social Services Children’s Services Division in the Coachella Valley.

But Serrato says resources for teens remain limited in the region.

“There are, but not as many out in the Coachella Valley. So I think that would be a need for us here,” she said.

Behind the policies and data are social workers who handle some of the most difficult cases imaginable, working long hours to protect vulnerable children.

“Sometimes it's hard when you hear stories of children being hurt, but for the most part we have to look at what can we do to assist, what can we do to help,” Serrato said.

March is Social Worker Month, recognizing the people tasked with protecting children who may be facing abuse or neglect. County leaders say one of the most meaningful moments each year is Adoption Day, when foster children officially find permanent homes with adoptive families.

For Megan Makula, the system that once took her children away ultimately helped bring her family back together. A few years ago, Makula was homeless and struggling with addiction while living in a car with her two young sons. When Child Protective Services removed the boys, she says the moment was devastating.

“Oh, I felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest,” Makula said.

But she now credits the intervention with helping change the course of her life.

“My prayers were answered, maybe not in the way anyone else would want, but for me CPS is a blessing. It saved my life,” she said.

Today Makula is sober, working as a drug and alcohol counselor and raising her sons again. She says support services including help from nonprofit partner Olive Crest, which works with Riverside County to provide family counseling and prevention programs  helped reunite her family.

“Words can't explain really how I feel about the system, the Olive Crest, and getting to be a mother again and sober,” Makula said.

More than 1,600 children still enter foster care in Riverside County each year. Oversight may be stronger and caseloads may be lower, but the system remains massive and the stakes remain high.

The question isn’t simply whether the system has changed.

The question is whether the next child will be safer because of it.