Monterey County gets a new child welfare director.

County social workers routinely knock on the doors of people's homes, looking for signs of whether or not there's abuse happening behind those doors. 

They log their findings, then evaluate what they know. They sometimes collect enough evidence to prove in court that kids are unsafe, and should be removed from the care of their parents or guardians. Sometimes they don't, and the kids stay where they are.

In a tragic and high-profile case in Salinas last year, two kids who stayed ended up dead. Their second cousin, Tami Joy Huntsman, and her teenage companion Gonzalo Curiel are set to go to trial next year to face charges of murdering 3-year-old Delylah Tara and 7-year-old Shaun Tara and abusing a 9-year-old girl also in Huntsman's care. 

Those deaths came after multiple visits from Monterey County social services officials. When children who are on the radar of county social workers die, it triggers a grim review process of what happened in those interactions, and an analysis by state officials of what could've gone better. 

That analysis, completed in February, showed a system that worked in many ways and failed—treacherously—in others.

What's clear is that there's a lot of work to be done in the department's Family and Children's Services Branch, and a new deputy director is at the helm.

Lori Medina started the job last week on April 18, and her work will likely include a process already underway of expanding social workers' powers to serve warrants, giving them the ability to continue investigating cases even without parents' or guardians' cooperation. 

Even before news of the children's murders broke last year, the former director, Robert Taniguchi, had announced his intention to retire.

A months-long national recruitment to replace him ended up leading back home to a Marina native and 14-year Seaside resident, Medina.

Medina began her career as a social worker in 1992, and moved up through the ranks with social services positions in Los Angeles County and Santa Clara County, where she served as director of Family and Children's Services since 2009, where she managed a department of more than 600 employees. 

The search to replace Taniguchi, included a national recruitment beginning last December, and interviews by an 11-person panel including caregivers, representatives of nonprofit service providers and foster youth. 

"Through that process, Lori Medina stood out as the candidate who would best meet our local needs," Social Services Director Elliott Robinson wrote in a report to the County Board of Supervisors. 

Medina's starting salary is $151,000, a pay cut of almost $25,000 from her previous position in Santa Clara County.