Arthur C. Evans offers the following story as evidence of how far the city agency responsible for abused and neglected children has come in just a few months.

A social worker had little reason to suspect anything was amiss with one of her charges. Bandages on the child's bedsores were clean. She didn't complain of pain. But recent changes had led the troubled agency to hire two nurses for the first time.

So the social worker asked one to come along on a home visit. The nurse peeled away a white bandage and peered at a bedsore. The wound was deep.

"She said this child needs to see a doctor now," said Evans, the acting commissioner of human services. "She saved a life."

The hiring of four nurses - two are in place, two more are coming soon - is just one part of what Evans described as a sweeping overhaul undertaken by the Department of Human Services since an Inquirer investigation last fall raised questions about the deaths of 25 children in its care over three years.

What will eventually emerge, he said, is a tighter, more efficient agency that does a better job deciding who it can help and how it can keep children safe.

Workers, he said, will respond immediately to the youngest, most vulnerable children. Field workers, for the first time, will get a practice guide to help them interpret what they see and hear in a home. More powerful computer hardware and software will help manage cases.

"We have not been sitting on our hands," Evans said in an interview Tuesday, as workers began training on a new safety assessment form that helps them decide whether a child is in danger.

The training marks the beginning of the second phase of the agency's reform plan: two dozen initiatives ranging from developing an e-mail system to alert DHS when an independent field worker learns that the parent of an abused child is pregnant again, to computers that keep on top of court orders.

Meanwhile, the state is beefing up its own oversight in Southeastern Pennsylvania, adding eight staff members and stiffening the licensing process for contractors.

"We're really working hard to support DHS and keep children safe," said Roberta Trombetta, regional director for the state Department of Public Welfare.

A self-assessment by the city agency found many of the same problems detailed in Inquirer articles, including shortcomings in how the agency investigates neglect and abuse complaints, oversees contractors and handles parents and children with disabilities.

One case highlighted by the paper was that of Danieal Kelly, a 14-year-old girl bedridden with cerebral palsy who died in August from heat exhaustion in her Mantua home. Paramedics found maggots in her bedsores.

Upon learning of the case, Mayor Street forced out Commissioner Cheryl Ransom-Garner and her deputy, John McGee. That same day, Street said he would appoint a panel to overhaul the agency and placed Evans, the director of the city's Department of Behavioral Health and Mental Retardation Services, in charge of DHS.

Although the outside panel is looking at how to restructure the agency, Evans is moving ahead on changes now - with the panel's blessing, he said.

Most of his reforms are based on two sets of findings: 36 recommendations, largely ignored, that internal child-fatality review teams had made over the last six years, and home visits in the last six months to all 6,728 children who fell under child protective services.

On each home visit, workers gathered information from clients about how well independent contractors were protecting children and how agency staff performed in each case.

As a result, DHS has begun legal proceedings to remove 142 children from 80 families. And it is moving to close the cases of 283 families whose homes are believed to be safe.

Along the way, Evans said, the agency discovered new needs - including having nurses available to identify health issues such as the ones that killed Danieal Kelly.

The two new nurses may already have saved two lives, he said. Besides the bedsore case, a nurse spotted an infant who was not getting a daily dose of anti-rejection medication for an organ transplant, placing the child in severe danger.