Before Jaxon Juarez died, 4 Santa Clara County workers approved foster mother despite disqualifying felony, records show

In her handwritten application to become a foster mother to Jaxon Juarez who would die in her care, the San Jose woman disclosed a troubling piece of her criminal past: “2014 DUI with kid being in car.”

The note, obtained by the Bay Area News Group through a Public Records Act request, is the clearest sign yet that social workers had information about the woman’s felony child endangerment conviction, which should have disqualified her from caring for Jaxon, her 2-year-old cousin, under longstanding child welfare policy. They approved the placement anyway, records show, a decision now at the center of another tragedy that has rocked Santa Clara County’s child welfare agency.

Jaxon had been living with his cousin for several days in late February before the approval was signed off in early March, according to the documents. The toddler was found unresponsive in the home a month after that, on April 5, and died April 9. Two weeks later, the head of the county’s child welfare agency sent a memo reminding staff of the policy barring emergency placements with people convicted of non-exemptible crimes, including crimes against children. By then, the 17-year-old foster brother was charged with murder, six counts of sexual assault and assault with a hair tie that left a cut around the toddler’s neck.

The Bay Area News Group is not identifying the foster mother to protect the identity of her son, a minor whose case is in juvenile court. He turned 18 two days after Jaxon’s death and prosecutors plan to argue at a hearing set for June 25 that he should be tried as an adult.

The documents also show that the social worker recommending the woman as a foster mother omitted any reference to the 2014 felony in her narrative above the signatures, instead focusing on a less serious 2019 drunken driving conviction from another county that didn’t involve a child in the car. The social worker also noted that the woman had a “severe neglect” case against her in 2019, and that she was undergoing a “voluntary family maintenance” plan with social workers to become a better parent.

The placement paperwork also said the foster mother, who has at least three children of her own, had been the subject of “additional CPS referrals” — reports to child protective services alleging child abuse or neglect — “but none have been substantiated.” The documents did not provide details about where or when they occurred. Child welfare experts say even unsubstantiated referrals should have been considered red flags.

Jaxon’s death has renewed scrutiny on the county’s Department of Family and Children’s Services, which has been under state oversight since the 2023 fentanyl overdose death of baby Phoenix Castro who was sent home with her drug-abusing father over objections by a concerned social worker.

Within days of Jaxon’s death last month, the county agency placed 10 social workers, supervisors and managers on paid leave. At least some of those who signed the exemption are out on leave, sources say.

In a statement Wednesday, Wendy Kinnear-Rausch, who took over as director of the Department of Family and Children’s Services last year after the previous director resigned, did not address questions about whether workers knew the 2014 conviction was non-exemptible, why they certified the placement and why it was approved after Jaxon already had been moved into the home. Instead, she said that what happened to Jaxon is “truly devastating” and that both the county and the state Department of Social Services are conducting investigations to determine what went wrong.

“The case file provides important information but does not present the complete picture of what occurred in this case,” Kinnear-Rausch said in the statement. “We remain committed to sharing the findings of these investigations as they become available, to the extent permitted by law, and to doing everything in our power to protect children throughout the County from harm.”

Two days after Jaxon’s foster brother was charged with murder, Kinnear-Rausch wrote the memo to staff about the tragedy, saying that after an initial investigation it was important to remind staff of longstanding policy: that social workers are prohibited from placing a child on an emergency basis with anyone who has a conviction for a “non-exemptible crime.” Those include any felony involving “child abuse, crimes against a child or willful injury to a child.” In 2014, the woman pleaded no contest to “willful cruelty to a child,” part of the felony child endangerment statute, according to Santa Clara County court records reviewed by this news organization.

In signing the document, however, the four county workers were certifying that the caregiver “has not been convicted of a non-exemptible crime” — even though the 36 pages of paperwork contained the 2014 conviction.

The woman’s criminal record is also listed in the packet, but it was blacked out before it was released, so it’s unclear what social workers reviewed other than the woman’s own handwritten acknowledgement of the crime.

A police narrative of the 2014 incident in Santa Clara said that the woman had run out of gas after dark with her 1-year-old daughter in the back seat and was trying to wave down help when police arrived. She was drunk and had vomited in the car, and the stranded vehicle without emergency lights was in danger of being rammed from behind, the report said.

Steve Baron, a member of the county’s Child Abuse Prevention Council, said it appears that the social workers who allowed the woman to become a foster mother despite her felony conviction either didn’t know that the 2014 conviction was a non-exemptible crime for placing children with relatives on an emergency basis, as occurred with Jaxon, or they ignored it.

According to county policy, the only time a felony child endangerment conviction could be considered for exemption is if the potential foster parent goes through a much more rigorous review by a separate team of social workers — the kind that all non-relatives who want to be foster parents go through. It can take months and involves fingerprinting and more in-depth assessments. On March 25, 11 days before Jaxon was found unresponsive, the social worker noted that process had begun and the social worker had spoken to the foster mother about completing additional paperwork “given some information in her background.”

“In recent years, the county agency has “de-prioritized safety and minimized and discounted a number of red flags in order to place a child,” said Baron, who emphasized he was speaking for himself, not the council. “The pressure is that they overlook problems, sometimes, that they should pay more attention to because they’ve got to put this kid somewhere.”

After baby Phoenix’s death, investigations by the Bay Area News Group found that the agency focused more on family preservation than children’s safety — an issue that numerous reforms over the past 18 months have sought to address. Social workers also have complained about the pressure to quickly place children with relatives after they are removed from their parents, and the lack of non-related foster families available to take them otherwise.

In making the case that the cousin should be approved as a foster mother to Jaxon, the social worker did not reference the 2014 child endangerment felony, instead focusing on the 2019 DUI from Stanislaus County that didn’t involve children in the vehicle. The woman “reported that she no longer drinks and has been sober for five years,” the social worker wrote. She attended a DUI program from 2019 to 2022 and completed a 52-week parenting course. She “gave herself to god.”

Jaxon, who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and was later diagnosed with autism, was initially removed from the home of his father and grandmother in July 2025. His father had serious health issues and his mother died a week later from liver and kidney problems.

His maternal grandfather took him in as a foster parent for six months until he said the child’s needs became too great. Arizona relatives said they wanted to adopt him, but that social workers told them they lived too far for the father’s weekly visits with his son as he tried to earn back custody.

The classification of Jaxon’s move to his cousin’s house raises other questions: the grandfather had alerted social workers months earlier he planned to relinquish custody in February, yet workers still treated the cousin’s home as an “emergency family placement.”

In the narrative recommending the woman as a foster mother, the social worker wrote, “she is willing to provide a safe and loving home.”