I will try to give a little information on DHS so there's better understanding. First, let me say that sometimes there are bad workers and this is not to say that all workers are good.
hipmamajen ~ You asked about what good DHS does. I know, the stories that make it in the news and the ones people talk about are the bad ones. To give you an idea, the county I work for has 60 foster care workers. Each worker carries a caseload of 20-40 children. That's 1200-1400 children in just one county! The percentage of bad cases you hear is very small when compared to how many children/families are in the system. No child should ever fall through the cracks, but for various reasons, it does happen. There are a lot of sucess stories. Sometimes the papers will write a little paragraph on it, but usually nothing is mentioned because that's not "news". Make sense?
In regards to DHS being at the home a number of times and "not doing anything", a lot of times workers hands are tied by laws and other things. The goal of foster care is to return the child(ren) to the parent. DHS is supposed to bend over backwards and do everything in their power to a) not have to remove the child(ren) to begin with or b) return the child(ren) home as soon as possible. There are services that are offered and checks that are made. If someone goes out to a home and does not see a health risk, there is legally nothing they can do. Workers must PROVE allegations to a court in order to become involved. In order to keep a child in care, a worker must continue to prove a risk of harm. If parents do everything that is asked of them, there is no legal way to keep the children from going home. Workers can have "gut feelings", but those don't fly in court. You must have hard evidence. Sometimes that's a really good thing, other times it ends up creating bad situations. Also, the court has the final say. Workers give their recommendations, but the court decides if they want to follow those recommendations.
With all that said, I don't know the details of the case on here other than what I've read. I just wanted to give a little background and let people know that sometimes the media doesn't give, or know, the whole story.