Baby girl died of fentanyl overdose after California lawmakers interfered with social workers’ decision to take her away from her drug-abusing father

Soft-spoken California lawmakers boasted of their success in reducing child removals just days before a newborn baby died of a fentanyl and methamphetamine overdose in the care of her drug-addicted father.

Baby Phoenix was too young to eat solid food when she was poisoned in May by drugs found next to her bottle at David Castro’s San Jose home, despite repeated warnings from neighbors.

Older children had previously been removed from a man with eight prior drug convictions, but Santa Clara County had recently changed the “threshold” for removal, citing a commitment to “racial justice.”

Officials insisted they were not aware of “a single example where a child was determined to be ‘unsafe’ and subsequently left in the care of the offending parent.”

Two weeks later Phoenix was dead.

“There’s no reason why this baby had to die,” neighbor Nancy Wetherington said Mercury news.

“The CPS, the police or someone else should have stepped in and taken this baby away. How did this baby skate through, beautiful girl?

“The baby should be alive.”

Castro had met the child’s mother, Emily De La Cerda, 39, at a recovery program for addicts.

She was undergoing drug treatment after experiencing withdrawal symptoms during birth at the time of Phoenix’s death and was dead three months after her child, also from a fentanyl overdose.

The number of children removed from their families had dropped from more than 60 in August 2020 to less than 20 in February 2022 as the new Orthodoxy took hold in Santa Clara.

By the time Phoenix was born, the county was under investigation after concerned social workers raised the alarm about progressive attorneys overruling child welfare decisions.

State social services demanded answers after whistleblowers in the county noted multiple cases of children being removed by law enforcement and then quickly returning.

Those children would be “immediately returned to the care of the unsafe parent by the provincial Department of Family and Children Services, following intervention by the Office of the Provincial Counsel,” it was alleged.

Steve Baron, who worked on hundreds of child abuse and neglect cases in the province, called the findings a “scandal.”

“It appears that the provincial counsel is making decisions that really concern the safety of the child,” he told police East Bay Times.

‘And they’re not qualified for that. That’s not their role.’

The county told the state that its change in approach was “based on increasingly clear evidence demonstrating the significant and lasting trauma that children experience even during short periods of removal from their families.”

Dan Little, the director of the provincial Department of Family and Children Services, had told his social workers in 2021 that they were now expected to commit to racial justice and to healing the historical wounds underlying the disproportionate representation of children of color in the child welfare system. ‘.

County Executive James Williams, who served as chief counsel until July, admitted Saturday that “the county has dropped the ball.”

“My opinion is that baby Phoenix should not have been in the father’s care – period.”

He admitted that the county botched its assessment of Castro’s fitness to care for Phoenix, but declined to say whether counsel had overruled social workers in the case.

“There’s an extraordinary passion, I think, on all sides,” he added.

‘What can you best do to care for children and their families?

‘We want to improve, we want to learn, we are in deep trouble. There is not a single person I have spoken to who is not incredibly affected by the death of a three-month-old baby.”

Baron, a member of the Santa Clara County Child Abuse Prevention Council, said keeping families together is an “idealistic goal,” but social services are “throwing the gamble on the child’s safety.”

Police who found Phoenix unconscious also found fentanyl, broken glass pipes and aluminum foil next to her bottle in the kitchen of the home on Spinnaker Way.

Castro, 38, was charged with child neglect and possession of a controlled substance. His case is still pending.

“He was open about it,” said neighbor Sandra Mack, who also alerted authorities. “He informed me that he was addicted to fentanyl and had been doing it for a long time.

‘If you can’t take good care of one child, how can you take good care of anyone else?

“I just thought that was absurd.”

Wetherington warned that other children could fall victim to the progressive policies.

“For every child that is dead, how many children are in very dangerous or high-risk situations?” she asked.