Wayne County Commissioners Chairman Brian Smith, Vice Chair Jocelyn Cramer, and Commissioner James Shook. All three are named on the agency’s provisional license.
This is Part 2 of the Pocono Review’s investigation into Wayne County Children and Youth Services. Part 1 covered the agency’s provisional license.
HONESDALE, PA — Wayne County Children and Youth Services didn’t start failing in 2023. State records show four fatality and near-fatality cases involving the agency between 2018 and 2024 — two child deaths and two near-deaths. Three involved families already known to child welfare. One fatality, the September 2019 death of Willow Tompkins, wasn’t formally founded until February 2022 — more than two years after the child died.
But the spring of 2023 is when the commissioners were put on formal notice. State inspectors found violations during a March-April 2023 inspection. The commissioners accepted a plan of correction at their May 25 meeting. A few months later, CYS investigated a family in Lake Ariel and failed to properly assess who was living in the home. Three months after that, a baby in that household was shaken to death. DHS came back with a fatality inspection and found two specific failures. The commissioners accepted another corrective plan.
Then the director left. The commissioners’ response to an agency they knew was failing inspections and had just been tied to an infant death: they hired someone with no child welfare experience.
What happened next is documented in their own meeting minutes.
The hire
Jeannine Latsch took over as director in October 2024. The agency she inherited wasn’t empty — most units were staffed, with only the intake unit short-staffed since COVID.
Latsch came from the Wayne County Heroin Prevention Task Force, a substance abuse prevention nonprofit with $34,142 in total revenue in 2018, categorized by the IRS under “Alcohol, Drug Abuse, Prevention Only.” There’s nothing in her public record connecting her to child protective services, dependency court, risk assessment methodology, or foster care licensing.
Her supervisor, Human Services Administrator Michelle Valinski, came from behavioral health — she previously served as Wayne County’s Behavioral Health Program Director before being promoted to oversee a portfolio that includes mental health, early intervention, developmental programs, and CYS. Neither Latsch nor Valinski came from child welfare. The commissioners hired them both knowing the agency was under DHS scrutiny.
At the October 2, 2025 commissioner meeting marking Latsch’s one-year anniversary, Commissioner Brian Smith said she’d “walked into a situation that was not an easy one” and that “a lot of historic knowledge was lost prior to her coming in.” Commissioner James Shook acknowledged “a learning curve and certain growing pains.” Commissioner Jocelyn Cramer praised her “strong leadership.” Latsch thanked “her staff that has stuck through this transition.” By then, the ones who hadn’t were piling up.
The departure record
Every hire, resignation, and termination at CYS goes through the commissioners for approval. The record from Latsch’s first fourteen months:
November 29, 2024 — Crystal Angueira resigned. Latsch had been director for six weeks. The commissioner minutes listed her position as Social Services Aide. After publication, Angueira reached out to the Pocono Review to correct the record — she was a Clerk Typist II.
December 28, 2024 — Kathryn Meagher, Clerical Worker, resigned.
January 21, 2025 — Kimberly DeGraw, Social Services Aide, terminated. At the same January 30 meeting that processed this, Christina Alfrey, another Social Services Aide, resigned effective February 10. Two CYS departures handled at a single commissioner meeting.
May 2, 2025 — Dominique Bayly, Intake Screening Supervisor, resigned. Bayly ran the unit responsible for receiving and assessing every report of suspected child abuse coming into the agency. According to multiple accounts, caseworkers in that unit were working 13 to 15 hour days. Bayly’s departure left intake without its supervisor heading into the fall.
August 27, 2025 — Kelly Cousins, Social Services Aide, resigned.
August–September 2025 — Letevia Rossetto, Clerk/Typist 2, terminated.
October 2025 — The Human Services Governing Board ratified the transfer of Sarah Nahman, a County Program Specialist, out of CYS entirely, effective November 3.
November 17, 2025 — Stephanie Bryant, Casework Manager, resigned. Bryant had appeared at the October 2 commissioner meeting just six weeks earlier, describing veteran caseworker Bob Neumann as “that consistent presence in our agency.” She’d been with the agency for years. Then she was gone.
At the same November 20 commissioner meeting that accepted Bryant’s resignation, the commissioners rescinded a job offer to Jennifer Detweiler, who had been hired as a Social Services Aide at CYS. The DHS complaint inspection had started the day before.
The consultant next door
One day before the meeting where commissioners praised Latsch, Wayne County entered a nine-month contract with Service Access & Management, Inc. SAM Inc. already operates as the CYS agency in neighboring Pike County and runs CYS services in Bradford and Lackawanna counties — matching the “Contracted Consultant Service Provider” referenced throughout the provisional license inspection reports. The contract runs through approximately July 2026. The provisional license runs through November 27, 2026.
What the employees say
The Pocono Review spoke with multiple current and former Wayne County CYS employees. The accounts were provided independently but overlap on several points.
One account says at least 12 employees brought complaints to Stacey Welsh, the county’s Head of Human Resources. The response, every time: the concerns had been “investigated” and found to lack validity. Multiple accounts describe commissioner meetings about wages where the response amounted to what one source called “insultingly trivial solutions like pizza parties.” Two accounts, independently, describe Commissioner Shook suggesting that underpaid employees move in with friends to split the cost of living.
Three accounts describe what happened on November 14, 2025. County leadership held a mandatory meeting with CYS staff — attendance required under threat of termination. Commissioner Smith told employees that complaints about leadership would no longer be tolerated and called them “personality differences.” One account says the commissioners called the complaints “petty.” The county attorney read a prepared statement. Staff were not allowed to speak.
Three days later, Stephanie Bryant resigned.
What inspectors found
As the Pocono Review reported in Part 1, CYS investigated a family on Tannery Road in Lake Ariel in August 2023 — the same month Michael Alexander Crowl moved into the household. Three months later, three-month-old Jasper Cole Sheppard-DeGroot was shaken to death. Crowl was sentenced to 20 to 40 years. The fatality inspection found CYS had failed to rate household members on the risk assessment and failed to contact the prior county agency regarding terminated parental rights. CYS was in that home the same month Crowl arrived. They were required to assess every person in the household. They didn’t.
The corrective action was accepted. Training was promised. Two years later, the March 2026 inspection found the same failure — ratings copied and pasted, rationale listed as “none detected,” household members left off entirely. Five of 10 CPS intakes had improperly rated risk assessments. In 6 of 10 GPS intakes, staff hadn’t interviewed the child, parents, or anyone with relevant information. In one CPS case, the outcome was submitted so late that an indicated finding of abuse came back unfounded. Two children were in unlicensed foster homes. Children in ongoing cases weren’t being seen every 30 days.
What the commissioners certified
Throughout this entire period, the commissioners signed Act 148 compliance certifications for CYS — quarterly reports certifying the county’s operations in child welfare. Every inspection cycle. Every departure. Every corrective plan.
Commissioner Cramer told WVIA the problems were “largely clerical.”
Children weren’t interviewed. Risk assessments weren’t done in a home where a baby later died. A founded abuse finding was lost to a missed deadline. Kids were placed in unlicensed foster homes. None of that is clerical. And all of it happened under a director with no child welfare background — hired by the same commissioners who signed every corrective plan along the way.
Cramer said she expects the agency to regain its full license. “I certainly don’t expect another one,” she said.
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.
The Pocono Review is an independent investigative news outlet covering northeastern Pennsylvania.
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