“When a child’s life is at risk, responding in 10 days is absolutely unacceptable.”

Those are the words of Gov. Christine Gregoire, who appeared Thursday at a press conference with her new secretary of Social and Health Services to announce tighter deadlines for following up on referrals about possible child abuse. Some educators at Lake Spokane Elementary School would probably agree. That’s where 6-year-old Tyler DeLeon showed up on Jan. 4 with suspicious bruises, prompting a call to Child Protective Services and triggering a 10-day period in which, under existing policies, a caseworker was expected to follow up. On the ninth day, which was Tyler’s 7th birthday, he died, severely dehydrated and weighing only 33 pounds.

The cause of death has yet to be announced and a criminal investigation is ongoing.

No one can say whether it would have made a difference in Tyler’s case, but Gregoire and DSHS boss Robin Arnold Williams have ordered that follow-up visits must be made within 72 hours – 24 hours if it’s believed that a child’s life is in danger. Caseworkers must make home visits with their clients every 30 days instead of 90.

The new expectations are long overdue. However, they pose a challenge to a superagency with a long list of problems, not the least of which is a $12 million budget overrun in the Children’s Administration division. That, coupled with a notoriously overloaded staff of caseworkers, makes it especially difficult to address the back-to-basics demand that Gregoire and Arnold-Williams have made. Other priorities for agency reform will have to wait their turn, according to Gregoire, herself a one-time caseworker. Arnold-Williams will redeploy 25 headquarters staff to the field to help manage caseloads.

The new approach is consistent with the findings of Mary Meinig, director of the Office of the Family and Children’s Ombudsman, who issued a report earlier this month that was harshly critical of the agency over the deaths of two other children, 16-month-old Justice Robinson and 6-week-old Raiden Robinson, of malnutrition and dehydration. Conceding that CPS workers’ caseloads are well above national standards, Meinig said that’s no excuse for failing to respond promptly to referrals.

Changes at Children’s Administration are starting at the top with the removal of assistant secretary Uma Ahluwalia, who had headed the division since September 2003.

It is encouraging to see the urgency that Gregoire and Arnold-Williams appear to attach to the challenge they face. What’s said in the governor’s press conference doesn’t matter at all, though, if it isn’t matched by results in the field.