Share This Article
In Marion County, mandated reporters told the state about a 10-year-old girl living in dangerous conditions on County Road 8054. The Department of Human Services knew. The child was sexually abused.
In Baxter County, 29 reports to the child abuse hotline over 11 years described a boy being locked in a bathroom, starved and tortured. DHS closed every one of them as unsubstantiated.
Two cases. Two children. The same broken system.
Steven M. Manson Jr., 35, and his co-defendants face felony charges in Marion County Circuit Court after prosecutors allege the girl was sexually abused in a home that neighbors had long described as a nightmare. The case numbers are 45CR-25-117 and 45CR-25-118. All defendants pleaded not guilty at their March 31 arraignment. They return to court June 23.
In the Baxter County case, Daniel Wright, 41, and Jaclyn Barnett, 42, face 112 counts each of first-degree false imprisonment, endangering the welfare of a minor and permitting child abuse. A pretrial hearing is set for April 13. A jury trial is scheduled for May 18 before Judge Andrew Bailey.
Both cases share the same underlying failure: reports went in, and nothing came out. The Arkansas legislature had a chance to fix that in 2025. The House said no.
A bill built on failure
Senate Bill 326, filed by Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, would have overhauled how Arkansas screens reports of child maltreatment, makes custody decisions and determines when the state should intervene to protect a child.
The bill passed the Senate 30-3. It cleared the House Judiciary Committee with a “do pass” recommendation. It had no organized opposition.
On April 16, 2025, the House killed it 51-15.
Twenty members did not vote. Fourteen voted “present,” a legislative maneuver that counts as neither a yes nor a no but avoids putting a name on the record against a child protection bill.
The bill died on the House calendar at sine die adjournment May 5.
What SB326 would have done
SB326 targeted five areas of Arkansas child welfare law. Each addressed a documented gap in how the state identifies, investigates and responds to child maltreatment.
Hotline screening. The bill would have required the Child Abuse Hotline to use a standardized assessment tool when deciding whether to accept a report of child maltreatment. The tool would have evaluated family history, the age of the child, the reporter’s relationship to the child and the level of risk posed. The hotline would have been required to collect data from the tool and use it to evaluate the consistency of its own screening decisions.
Under current law, no such standardized tool is required. That means two callers reporting similar facts about similar children can get different outcomes depending on who answers the phone. In the Barnett and Wright case, 29 reports over 11 years were all closed as unsubstantiated.
Best-interest standards. The bill would have rewritten how Arkansas defines the best interest of a child in juvenile court proceedings and DHS recommendations. It would have added seven findings to the legislative declaration in both the Juvenile Code and the Child Maltreatment Act, including that children are defenseless, that the child welfare system needs strengthening, that children who can safely remain with their families should do so, that government intervention after a single act should be temporary and that children should return home when it is safe.
Best-interest determinations would have been required to consider family integrity, the health and safety of the child, timely permanency decisions and the likelihood a child will become a self-sufficient adult.
Who can file petitions. Under current law, any adult can file a dependency-neglect or family-in-need-of-services petition. SB326 would have narrowed that to law enforcement, prosecutors, DHS or its designees, dependency-neglect attorneys ad litem, relatives and individuals in a familial relationship with the child.
The change was designed to prevent the system from being used as a weapon in custody disputes or personal conflicts while preserving access for family members with legitimate concerns.
FINS emergency holds. The bill would have created a 72-hour judicial hold in Families in Need of Services cases when a circuit court judge finds an immediate danger to a child’s health and safety. Under the hold, the court would automatically appoint a dependency-neglect attorney ad litem to review all relevant information from the juvenile proceeding and file any pleadings necessary to protect the child.
This provision addressed a gap in existing law: FINS cases historically lacked the emergency tools available in dependency-neglect proceedings, meaning a judge who identified danger during a FINS hearing had limited options to act immediately.
Protective custody limits. SB326 set clear boundaries on when children can be removed from their homes. A child could not be placed in protective custody if the maltreatment allegation was for neglect and there was no immediate danger to the child’s health or physical well-being. Removal was also barred when risk could be reduced through services and supports.
The bill explicitly prohibited removal when the sole basis was poor school attendance, a parent’s financial inability to provide food, clothing or shelter, or the need for behavioral health or developmental disability services.
The provision also expanded who could initiate protective custody during active juvenile proceedings. It added circuit court judges to the list of officials who can take a child into custody without parental consent during proceedings concerning the child or a sibling, alongside police officers, law enforcement and designated DHS employees.
Neglect definition. SB326 refined the statutory definition of neglect in both the Juvenile Code and the Child Maltreatment Act. Among other cleanup, it added emotional needs to the list of essential needs a caregiver must provide, alongside physical and mental needs. It also clarified that a failure to take reasonable action to protect a child from abuse or neglect must cause serious bodily injury before it qualifies as neglect, a change intended to focus the definition on cases involving actual harm rather than speculative risk.
A companion bill died with it
Clark filed SB325 alongside SB326. Where SB326 addressed how the system identifies and responds to abuse, SB325 targeted what happens after the system intervenes, specifically the barriers families face when trying to reunify.
Parental rights reinstatement. Under current law, a parent whose rights have been terminated must wait three years before a motion can be filed to resume services. SB325 would have cut that to two years. The waiting period could still be waived entirely if the court found it in the best interest of the child.
More significantly, the bill would have allowed parents themselves to file the motion. Under current law, only DHS or an attorney ad litem can initiate the process. A parent who has addressed the issues that led to termination has no independent mechanism to ask the court to reconsider.
Faster path to reunification. Once a court granted a motion to resume services, current law requires the parent to comply with court orders and a case plan for at least 180 days before anyone can petition to reinstate parental rights. SB325 would have halved that to 90 days.
The bill would have also allowed courts to grant custody to a parent during the reunification process even before formally reinstating parental rights, and even without a completed home study, if the court found it in the child’s best interest. A home evaluation would have been conducted after placement in lieu of a traditional home study.
The bill added a new pathway for young adults aged 18 to 21 who were still in foster care. If a child aged out of the system without achieving permanency, parental rights could be reinstated if the young adult was still under the court’s jurisdiction, regardless of whether the parent demonstrated a material change in circumstances.
Child Maltreatment Central Registry reform. SB325 would have narrowed what goes on the registry. Under the bill, the registry would have contained records only for true findings of abuse, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and neglect committed by individuals in professional or caretaking roles, including teachers, foster parents, hospital employees, social workers and others who work directly with vulnerable populations.
Neglect findings against biological or adoptive parents would not have been placed on the registry. The bill would have removed abandonment from the registry entirely.
The change was designed to address a practical problem: parents who successfully reunify with their children still carry a registry finding that can prevent them from passing background checks for employment, housing and volunteer work. The registry, intended as a child safety tool, becomes a permanent barrier to the stability the family needs to stay together.
SB325 also passed the Senate and cleared House Judiciary. It also died on the House floor.
The votes
The Senate passed SB326 on March 31 by a vote of 30-3. Only Sens. Flowers, Love and Tucker voted against it. Sen. Murdock voted present. Sen. Irvin was excused.
Sen. Scott Flippo of Bull Shoals, who chairs the Child Maltreatment Investigations Oversight Committee, voted yes.
Flippo is the same lawmaker who led a joint legislative hearing on the Jaclyn Barnett and Daniel Wright child abuse case in Baxter County, where 29 reports to the child abuse hotline over 11 years were closed as unsubstantiated, while a boy was locked in a bathroom, starved and tortured.
“Human error is to be expected from time to time, but with human error comes accountability,” Flippo said at that hearing. “We can’t get this young man the 10 years that he’s essentially lost of his life back. But we can be working together to make sure that we’re holding ourselves accountable and that we’re actually working together to come up with real world solutions that are viable.”
SB326’s hotline screening reforms were one of those real-world solutions. Flippo voted for it.
The House killed it 16 days later, 51-15. Twenty members did not vote. Fourteen voted “present,” a legislative maneuver that counts as neither a yes nor a no but avoids putting a name on the record against a child protection bill.
Among the 51 “nay” votes was Rep. Stetson Painter. Painter has been publicly involved in legislative discussions around the same Barnett and Wright case. He told the Mountain Home Observer earlier this year that a second hearing on the DHS failures in that case is expected later in 2026, after the legislature completes its work on the state budget.
The first hearing Flippo promised before the end of 2025 never happened. No DHS employee has been publicly disciplined in connection with the agency’s failure to act on 29 abuse reports spanning more than a decade. DHS identified 341 other cases statewide with a similar profile. No public report on the outcome of that review has been released.
Painter voted against the bill that would have required the hotline to use a standardized screening tool and collect data on whether screening decisions were being made consistently.
The 15 members who voted yes were Reps. Achor, Barnett, Beck, Bentley, Breaux, Brooks, A. Collins, Furman, L. Johnson, B. McKenzie, J. Moore, Pearce, Pilkington, Ray and Rose.
The cost of inaction
Arkansas child welfare data paints a picture of a system that is getting worse, not better.
Only 41% of children in foster care achieve permanent placements within 12 months. Five years ago, that number was closer to 50%.
The average child who remains in the system for approximately three years is moved more than five times. The state’s ratio of licensed foster home beds to children in care stands at 0.75, meaning there are more children than available placements.
Family service worker turnover, while improving, reached 46% in state fiscal year 2025. The year before it was 55%.
The only child welfare measure that became law during the 2025 session was HB1921, which codified previously implemented reductions in foster parent training hours and directed the Division of Children and Family Services to develop a streamlined process for relative placements.
Clark’s record
Clark is not new to this fight. He sponsored the legislation that created the Child Maltreatment Investigations Oversight Committee in 2017, Arkansas’s only closed-door legislative body, which was established after negotiations with media outlets that understood the sensitivity of cases involving children.
At the October 2025 joint hearing on the Barnett and Wright case, the committee voted unanimously to refer the closed cases to Clark’s oversight committee for deeper investigation. Clark noted during the hearing that the public session had revealed little of substance because confidentiality laws prevented officials from discussing case specifics openly. He told fellow lawmakers they could individually contact DCFS for confidential details but could not share what they learned.
Six months later, Clark filed SB325 and SB326, translating what he learned from the Barnett case and the hearing into legislation. The hotline screening reforms, the standardized assessment tool, the data collection requirements were not abstract policy ideas. They were direct responses to documented failures.
The Senate passed both bills overwhelmingly. The House killed them both.
Clark represents Senate District 7, based in Garland County. He is running for reelection in 2026.
What comes next
The 2025 regular session ended without the comprehensive reforms Clark and child welfare advocates sought. The Arkansas legislature convened its 2026 fiscal session on April 8, but fiscal sessions are limited to budget and appropriation bills. Non-appropriation legislation requires a two-thirds vote to be introduced. Comprehensive child welfare reform bills like SB325 and SB326 cannot realistically advance until the next regular session in 2027.
In the meantime, both cases continue to move through the courts. In Marion County, Manson and his co-defendants return to court June 23, represented by Eugene Clifford of Zenith Law. In Baxter County, Wright and Barnett face a May 18 jury trial.
And the children at the center of both cases remain what they always were: children the system was designed to save and did not.
