Pennsylvania DHS issued a provisional license to Wayne County Children and Youth Services on May 27, 2026, the first in the agency’s recent history. The Wayne County Commissioners are the legal authority responsible for the agency. They’ve received state inspection findings, are the named party on corrective filings, and were warned in public meetings that CYS was in trouble. The failures stretch back at least three years.
HONESDALE, PA — The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services has placed Wayne County Children and Youth Services on a provisional license. The designation means the agency has failed to meet state standards and its full operating license is at risk.
The provisional certificate, issued May 27, 2026, runs through November 27, 2026. Under Pennsylvania law, DHS can issue up to four consecutive provisional certificates before moving to revoke a license entirely. Wayne County CYS is on its first.
Look at who’s named on that certificate. Not an administrator. Not a director. Not a state official. The legal entity is the Wayne County Commissioners: Chairman Brian Smith, Vice Chair Jocelyn Cramer, and James Shook. They hold legal accountability for the agency’s compliance with state child welfare law. Cramer also serves as the board’s representative on Wayne County Human Services, the department that oversees CYS.
Primary source documents obtained by Pocono Review from the PA DHS Human Services Provider Directory show the provisional license was triggered by a complaint investigation in November and December 2025, and the agency’s annual inspection in March 2026. Those records include licensing inspection summaries, corrective filings, and compliance certificates dating to 2022. They tell a story of repeated failures that the commissioners were warned about, submitted paperwork acknowledging, and didn’t resolve.
What Inspectors Found
The November 2025 complaint inspection examined 40 case files. Of the 37 General Protective Services intakes reviewed, 34 had outcomes submitted late to the state’s child welfare information system. That’s 92 percent. All three Childline Protection Services cases reviewed were late too. DHS noted in the inspection summary that this same violation had been cited before. The board had already approved a corrective filing for that earlier citation.
The problems went well past timeliness. Children had gone without required home visits for a month or more. Risk assessments were missing, outdated, or copy-pasted from earlier entries with no new evaluation. One in-home case had no case notes for an extended period. The inspection summary described it as having gone “unaccounted for” before eventual closure.
The March 2026 annual inspection made it a third consecutive citation for untimely case outcomes. Inspectors also found children placed in unlicensed foster homes past the legally permitted 60-day limit, in two separate cases. One involved multiple improperly issued license extensions and a child left in an unlicensed home without a court order. The other involved a kinship placement that moved to a different county without proper reassessment.
One child, rated high risk, had no documented contact for a full month. Another had no record of being seen at all during that period.
The Commissioners Knew
Smith, Cramer, and Shook didn’t learn about these problems from Pocono Review. They’ve been receiving inspection findings from DHS since at least 2023. Every corrective filing submitted to the state during this period went out under their authority. Every one was reviewed and approved by DHS. And in each inspection cycle that followed, the same problems came back.
The March 2024 annual inspection cited failures across supervisory reviews, service planning, foster home documentation, and Indian Child Welfare Act requirements. That inspection took place roughly four months after a three-month-old boy in the county had already died. It still found the same categories of systemic breakdown.
Two weeks later, on April 1, 2024, DHS came back for a separate inspection triggered by that child’s death. It found the agency had mishandled an earlier investigation connected to the case. The corrective filing went out under the commissioners’ authority.
By October 2025, the county’s own Human Services Director, Michelle Valinski, was telling the board in a public meeting that the past year at CYS had been “rough.” Commissioner Smith told incoming CYS director Jeannine Latsch she’d “walked into a situation that was not an easy one” and acknowledged that “a lot of historic knowledge was lost prior to her coming in.”
Those statements were made one month before DHS conducted the complaint inspection that directly triggered the provisional license.
A Death, a Trial, and What the Agency Was Supposed to Do
On November 10, 2023, a three-month-old boy named Jasper Cole Sheppard-DeGroot arrived by ambulance at Wayne Memorial Hospital in Honesdale. Unresponsive. Pale. Gray lips, blotchy skin. He was life-flighted to Geisinger’s pediatric intensive care unit. He died three days later.
Michael Alexander Crowl had been living in the household since August 2023 and was babysitting Jasper. He was charged with third-degree murder and pleaded guilty in August 2024. Court records show Crowl admitted to shaking the infant because he was frustrated and the baby wouldn’t sleep. Geisinger child abuse pediatrician Dr. Pat Bruno determined the injuries were consistent with abusive head trauma: subdural bleeds, retinal bleeds, spinal bleeds, neck ligament damage.
The DHS fatality inspection, conducted April 1, 2024, reviewed the agency’s handling of an August 2023 investigation connected to this case. That’s the same month Crowl moved into the household. The inspection found two regulatory violations: the agency didn’t rate household members on the risk assessment, and didn’t contact a prior agency where a parent was known to have lost parental rights.
The corrective response was submitted to DHS in May 2024, under the commissioners’ authority. The fatality inspection and its findings hadn’t been reported publicly before now. Pocono Review obtained the documents through the PA DHS provider directory.
Staffing Collapse
Rozalyn Burke served as CYS director for multiple years. She resigned effective October 4, 2024. The commissioners accepted her resignation at their August 22, 2024 meeting, after the fatality inspection had already been completed and the corrective response signed.
Her replacement, Jeannine Latsch, inherited an agency already under active compliance obligations. By October 2025, Smith was publicly describing what Latsch walked into as unusually difficult, saying institutional knowledge had been lost.
One month later, casework manager Stephanie Bryant resigned effective November 17, 2025. That was the same week DHS was conducting the complaint inspection that would become the basis for the provisional license. At the November 20 commissioner meeting where Bryant’s resignation was accepted, the board also rescinded a previously extended job offer for a Social Services Aide at CYS. Losing staff and pulling back job offers, during an active state inspection.
The commissioners voted on every one of those personnel actions.
What Comes Next
DHS will evaluate compliance at the end of the provisional period, November 27, 2026. If things have improved enough, full licensure could be restored. If not, a second provisional gets issued and the clock moves closer to revocation. The question is whether the three commissioners who are the named legal authority on this agency’s license, who’ve received inspection findings and submitted corrective filings for three years running, who sat in meetings where their own staff called the situation rough, are going to be the ones who fix it. Or whether they’re the reason it hasn’t been fixed already.
Source Documents: All records obtained from the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Human Services Provider Directory, provider ID 214671, Wayne County Children and Youth Services. Documents include licensing inspection summaries, plans of correction, certificates of compliance, and the provisional certificate issued May 27, 2026. Commissioner meeting minutes referenced are publicly available through the Wayne County AgendaCenter at waynecountypa.gov.
Pocono Review is an independent investigative news outlet covering the Pocono region of northeastern Pennsylvania.
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