LANSING, Mich. (WZMQ) –Marquette County’s Chief Assistant County Prosecutor, Jill Bable, told state lawmakers this week that Michigan’s Child Protective Services (CPS) is failing children across the Upper Peninsula.
Bable testified before the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, describing repeated cases where children were left in unsafe homes, placed back with abusers, or stranded without foster care options.
“I’ve been entrenched in this docket for nine years,” she told lawmakers. “I’m starting to go after people for child abuse and neglect that were children I once removed. There’s no accountability for what’s being done, or not being done.”
She cited examples of children living in drug houses, exposed to weapons and sexual violence, and recalled state police troopers who were forced to babysit an infant overnight because CPS never showed up.
In one case, she said a child called 911 during his mother’s heroin overdose. “By the time I reached the local office the next day, they said it was screened out,” she testified. “That’s false. I had a 911 call that proved the child was there.”
Placement options in the U.P. are shrinking, she added, with foster families dropping out due to low pay, sometimes as little as $12 a day. Secure facilities have closed, and in one case, she was notified only a day before a facility shut down, forcing a rushed placement that ended with a runaway child nearly trafficked downstate.
The prosecutor urged lawmakers to pay foster families more, give police a direct emergency line for CPS support, and create internal accountability so complaints don’t disappear.
“As there are several quotes about, you can judge a society by how they treat their children,” she said. “I’d like to see our society do a little better.”
