Part 3 of the Pocono Review’s investigation into Wayne County Children and Youth Services. Part 1 covered the agency’s provisional license. Part 2 covered the workforce collapse.
HONESDALE, PA — Every quarter, Commissioners Brian Smith, Jocelyn Cramer, and James Shook sign a document called an Act 148 certification statement. It goes to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. It tells DHS that Wayne County spent its child welfare dollars properly — that expenditures were legitimate, services were delivered, the numbers reconcile.
Every quarter, DHS accepted that certification. And every quarter, DHS was also receiving corrective action plans from the same three commissioners, acknowledging that the work those dollars were paying for wasn’t getting done.
Both documents went to the same agency. The commissioners signed both. For at least three years, nobody on either end treated that as a problem.
The Auditor General Says the Math Is Fine
In March 2026, the Pennsylvania Auditor General released amended fiscal reports for Wayne County CYS covering fiscal years 2021-22 and 2022-23. The state paid the county $3,776,472 in the first year and $4,054,791 in the second — $7.83 million combined. Total child welfare expenditures across both years: $13.6 million.
The AG found no adjustments needed. The money was counted correctly. Every dollar reconciled.
That finding is worse than it sounds. It means the financial oversight system worked exactly as designed and caught nothing — because it’s not designed to catch anything. An Act 148 fiscal review checks whether the county reported what it spent. It does not check whether children were visited. It does not check whether risk assessments were completed. It does not check whether a baby was shaken to death three months after caseworkers investigated his household and failed to evaluate who was living there.
The money moved correctly through the system. The system has nothing to say about what happened to the children it was supposed to protect.
Forty-Two Cents on the Dollar to Outside Providers
The expenditure reports show where the money went. Purchased services — payments to residential programs, foster agencies, counseling providers, placement facilities — ate $2.79 million in FY22 and $2.80 million in FY23. That’s 42 percent of total spending, both years, sent to outside contractors.
Wages and salaries for the entire CYS staff: $1.88 million and $1.92 million. That’s the line that paid for every caseworker, every supervisor, every intake screener responsible for actually showing up at homes, interviewing children, filing risk assessments, and submitting case outcomes to the state.
How much were those caseworkers making? The January 2025 commissioner meeting agenda lists a CYS hire at $19.02 an hour for a 37.5-hour work week. That’s about $37,000 a year. In Blair County, caseworkers told their commissioners in 2022 they were averaging $30,000 and watching fifty colleagues walk out. Fayette County advertised its starting rate in 2023 at $42,978.
Wayne County was paying outside providers $2.8 million a year. It was paying the people who decide whether a child is safe $19 an hour. When DHS inspectors kept finding that risk assessments weren’t done, that children weren’t being seen monthly, that case outcomes were submitted weeks or months late — this is part of the reason. You get what you pay for.
Two Documents, Same Signature, Same Quarter
The commissioner meeting minutes make the certification pattern visible. February 8, 2024: “CYS Act 148 4th Qtr. Certification Statement.” November 27, 2024: approval of the “4th Quarter Act 148 Report.” February 12, 2026: “First Quarter CYS Act 148 report and certification statement.” Every one voted unanimous.
Now line those dates up against the inspection record.
The March-April 2023 inspection found violations. The commissioners submitted a corrective plan. Then they signed the next Act 148 certification.
The April 1, 2024 fatality inspection — connected to the death of Jasper Cole Sheppard-DeGroot — found CYS had failed to assess household members and failed to contact a prior agency about terminated parental rights. The commissioners submitted a corrective plan in May 2024. Then they signed the next Act 148 certification.
The November-December 2025 complaint inspection found 92 percent of GPS case outcomes were submitted late. Children had gone unvisited for a month or more. The commissioners submitted a corrective plan. Then, in February 2026, they signed the First Quarter Act 148 certification.
Each corrective plan said: we know the work isn’t being done right. Each certification said: the money was spent right. Both went to DHS. DHS kept sending checks.
The Act 148 certifications don’t require the commissioners to attest that services were actually delivered — only that expenditures were properly reported. But when you’re signing one document acknowledging systemic failures and another certifying proper expenditure of the same funds in the same quarter, the distinction stops being technical and starts being convenient.
The Contract They Won’t Price
On October 2, 2025, the commissioners voted unanimously to hire SAM Inc. — Service Access and Management — for a nine-month CYS consulting contract effective October 1.
The motion as recorded in the public minutes: “at the rate listed in the agreement.”
That’s it. No dollar amount. No scope of work. No description of services. The public record of a contract to consult on an agency responsible for child safety contains one financial detail: that a rate exists, somewhere, in a document that isn’t part of the minutes.
For comparison: when Bradford County hired SAM to run its entire CYS operation, the contract was $400,000 for a partial year and $2.1 million per year after that. That number was stated publicly at the commissioner meeting and reported by the Daily Review.
Wayne County put the rate in a separate agreement and voted without naming a figure.
SAM’s track record with county CYS agencies isn’t uniformly positive. Jefferson County contracted SAM to administer most of its CYS operations in 2018. The county terminated the deal in January 2021 and asked Auditor General DeFoor to investigate. His review found the CYS director had been moved onto SAM’s payroll, leaving no county employee in charge. The AG identified conflicts of interest, gaps in service, and noncompliance with DHS regulations. The AG confirmed that ending the contract was the right call.
Wayne County’s arrangement is different — SAM is consulting, not operating. But the commissioners hired a company with a documented history of CYS management problems in another Pennsylvania county, to consult on an agency already failing state inspections, and didn’t put the price in the public record.
A Federal Review Nobody Mentioned
The January 23, 2026 Human Services Governing Board agenda includes this, buried in the ratifications at item 11: “Received a letter from the PA Department of Human Services presenting the results of the Title IV-E Quality Assurance Compliance Review conducted on December 16, 2025.”
Title IV-E is federal foster care money. A QA compliance review checks whether children the county claimed federal reimbursement for actually met eligibility requirements.
December 16, 2025. The complaint inspection that triggered the provisional license had started November 19. Two separate oversight actions — one state, one federal — hit the same agency in the same month. The agenda notes receipt of the letter. It does not describe the results. The letter has not been made public.
At the same governing board meeting, the ratifications included the resignation of Casework Supervisor Ellen Corbett, effective December 24, and the resignation of Caseworker 2 Emma Marvin, effective December 30. Two more departures from an agency already gutted by turnover, in the same month DHS was conducting both a complaint investigation and a federal compliance review.
The Defense That Proves the Point
Commissioner Cramer told WVIA on June 2, 2026 that the problems were “largely clerical.” At the June 11 commissioner meeting, she went further: some of the citations were “from well over a year ago.”
She meant that as reassurance. It’s the opposite.
If the citations are from well over a year ago, that means the commissioners have known about them for well over a year. They signed corrective plans for well over a year. They signed Act 148 certifications for well over a year. They hired a director with no child welfare experience, watched nine employees leave in fourteen months, contracted an outside consultant at an undisclosed rate, and collected $7.83 million in state funds — all while knowing the agency was failing.
Cramer said she expects the agency to regain full licensure within six months. “I certainly don’t expect another one,” she told WVIA.
The provisional license expires November 27, 2026. Pennsylvania law allows up to four consecutive provisional licenses before revocation.
Wayne County CYS is on its first.
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