Children Living In A Tent Dominates Hertel's Hearing

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 09/09/2025) The House Oversight Committee’s questioning Tuesday of Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Director Elizabeth Hertel centered around child welfare and the case of two children found living in a tent in 2023.

Rep. Angela Rigas (R-Caledonia), who sits on the House Oversight Subcommittee on Child Welfare, asked Hertel about the case of Daisy and Donald Arthur, two children that were living in a tent, sleeping on a mattress that was later deemed by Child Protective Services (CPS) to not constitute abuse or neglect under current CPS law. A transcript of the April committee hearing can be found here.

Michigan’s child protection statute defines neglect as harm or threatened harm to a child's health or welfare by a parent or guardian by negligent treatment, such as a lack of food, clothing, shelter or medical care if they are financially able to do so, or if there is a failure to seek financial or other support to provide those things.

Hertel said CPS’s job is not to prevent abuse or neglect, instead it is to investigate allegations based on child protection law.

In her opening comments, Hertel said the four priorities she identified for the department included expanding behavioral health access for children, implementing policies to keep families together whenever it can be safely done, improving the way business is done and ensuring staff feel supported.

“It’s incredibly important to us that we make sure, again, families are able to stay together

safely. So while the children and the family may not have been subject to neglect, the children’s welfare was fine. They had access to food and water,” Hertel said.

Hertel said in cases where abuse or neglect isn’t apparent, but conditions are not ideal, CPS wants to be able to bring somebody with them who can try to connect the family to services, called Family Resource Specialists (FRS). She said 1,000 families had been connected to services in the first five months of the practice.

“We know that providing those preventive services for families who are living in poverty – and we know poverty is not neglect – is going to help keep them together,” Hertel said.

Rigas then asked Hertel if she would allow her children to sleep in those living conditions with a space heater, mattress on the ground, no plumbing, no running water and no clean clothes. For over two minutes, Rigas pressed her to answer yes or no, and Hertel said those were not her children, she wasn’t interested in telling another family how to live, and she was not there to talk about herself as a mother.

Hertel said if they want the department to be able to take action in these situations, the statute needs to be changed.

Chair Jay DeBoyer (R-Clay) asked Hertel if she’s saying that, in a department with a $34 billion budget, that it’s the Legislature’s fault that a tent could be deemed a safe home.

Later in committee testimony, when asking about vaccination policies, Rep. Jaime Greene (R-Richmond) made the point that the department has rulemaking authority that it has used to expand requirements past what has been passed into law.

“The role of the department is to protect children, which, frankly, is not being done right there. Those children are not protected. There is no way that you can interpret that as a safe, secure and protected dwelling for a child,” DeBoyer said. “We write tickets to people who let their dogs live in that condition in the wintertime.”

The children were living in a tent in 2023 and were not removed from their mother until they were found living in a car with a case of lice so severe that the sheriff’s office had to be decontaminated.

Rep. William Bruck (R-Erie) asked if CPS would intervene if those children were in a foster family that was living in a tent. Hertel said they wouldn’t have been licensed to foster.

Bruck tried again. What if they had been licensed already, and then they decided to move into a tent? Hertel said they have different standards for licensing foster families.

After one more question, Hertel said a foster family housing children in a tent would no longer be able to be foster parents.

Rigas had asked if Hertel believed DHHS protected those children.

“If this is what protection looks like under your leadership, then what exactly does failure look like?” Rigas asked.

“Unfortunately, we cannot remove children because somebody is poor,” Hertel responded.

“This is beyond that, director,” Rigas said.

Hertel said with wrap-around and preventative services, DHHS can help families live their lives. However, she said in Monroe County, where this case occurred, DHHS does not have the resources or staff to continue following up.

“We don’t have the staff to continue ongoing for families who do not meet the level of child abuse or neglect,” Hertel said.

Later during the hearing, DeBoyer recited that when Hertel became DHHS director, there were 51 employees making a salary of greater than $100,000 per year, and now there are over 1,000.

“When government employees with wonderful salaries and benefits are saying that they need more money, while children are living in tents with lice on a mattress on the ground, there's not an ounce of sympathy for that, Director,” DeBoyer said.

The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Hertel to appear before the committee today on July 22.