"I am shocked" says no one who's been following this story.

Possible translation:

"I have informed Kate that I felt the time was right for her to step down," Haslam said. "I was concerned that she had become a distraction from our more important work of outsourcing public schools and prisons."

It is a thankless but necessary and important task of state and local governments to care for the neglected, abused, and unwanted children that are brought into this world by people who struggle to care for themselves, let alone care for a child.

The process of protecting and providing for these children is broken and has become extremely expensive with the system unfortunately operating in excess of capacity.

If mental health is the first thing cut come budget time, DCS is a close second.

There are no easy nor inexpensive answers as the responsibilities of DCS have only increased (not decreased as their budget has).

If mental health is the first thing cut come budget time, DCS is a close second.

I'd say the blowback on this would be terrible, but it already is.

If mental health and child development got as much attention as guns do on Fox, conservative radio and Facebook, there would not be a reason to spend so much time on the gun argument. We just hear about the kids that die in DCS care. I wonder what kind of citizens many of the ones making it out alive are becoming?