Des Moines (Radio Iowa) — The new leader of the largest agency in state government vows to “improve morale” among “front-line” social workers and conduct a “bottom-to-the-top” review of Iowa’s child welfare system. Yesterday (Thursday) was Jerry Foxhoven’s first day as director of the Iowa Department of Human Services.  “Part of my challenge will be to work with the people in that system right now and for all of us to step back and say: ‘What are we doing that’s working? What we doing that’s not working?’ And if it’s not working, we need to change it.”

An outside consultant has already begun a review of cases involving two teenage girls who died after being adopted by their foster families. After just a few hours as the agency’s director, Foxhoven says what he knows about the cases is what he’s learned from media reports. “These are terrible tragedies. They’re awful. It sickens me and shocks me,” Foxhoven says, “but I certainly know if kids have come to our attention and they end up the way these kids ended up, that we need to look and say: ‘How did this happen and what do we need to change it so that it doesn’t happen again?'”

Foxhoven is a 64-year-old attorney and Drake Law School professor who has spent his career as a child advocate. He led several groups that advised the department on the foster care system and juvenile detention. Foxhoven says after a conversation with Governor Kim Reynolds, he got “fired him up” about taking the reins at D-H-S. “I felt like going to the Kentucky Derby and being one of the horses behind that gate, saying: ‘Open that gate. I want to run!'” Foxhoven says. “And so I’m excited about it.”

Reynolds told reporters earlier this month she was looking for a D-H-S director who wasn’t “afraid…to do things differently.” Foxhoven says he’s a “mission-driven” person and the governor gave him a pretty simple mission. “What she didn’t say was: ‘Keep me out of the newspaper. We’re looking bad. Help me look good.” She never said that,” Foxhoven says. “What she did say to me is: ‘Tell us whatever it is we need to do to make it safer for kids in Iowa,’ and so that made it really easy to say: ‘I want to do this.'”

Foxhoven grew up in Yankton, South Dakota, in what he describes as a “working-class family.” Foxhoven got a degree from Morningside College in Sioux City, majoring in history and political science. After earning a law degree from Drake University, he stayed to work in central Iowa.