What are the child welfare worker turnover rates and other key data from child welfare monthly report to the Governor?

Written by Wenonoa Spivak, CASA of Jackson County

Interesting info from DHS/CW Child Safety Plan report to the Governor Feb 2019 (full report in File Library):

Turnover rates for the SSS1 (caseworker) position by years:

• • 2013       18%
  • 2014       22%
  • 2015       16%
  • 2016       16%
  • 2017       19%
  • 2018       26%

On February 13th, the Ombudsman’s office, the CW leadership along with the Director of DHS had a private evening meeting with Foster Parents who needed to have a safe place to discuss their concerns and their interaction with DHS. We still have so much more work to do, to acknowledge their feelings of distrust and work diligently to start the repair process.

Assessments:
Since 2015 Child Protective Service assessments went up by 60% and our staffing levels went up 15%. Today is the last day on the Blitz project. Although we would like to continue, we have to get back to consulting in the field and work on our Critical Incident Response Team “root cause analysis” and implementation. In April we had over 13,000 overdues, in August 9,000 and today 4,459. The team of 10 consultants focused on many of our districts staying there for a week at a time sometimes having to return more than once. While helping reduce the overdues, they taught practice, clinical supervision and left each district not only in much better shape but with a sustainability plan to keep them focused on the work.

Re-Abuse:
As of today, recurrence of maltreatment is at 10.5%. While we are not where need to be, we are inching closer to our goal of 9.1%. We anticipate improvement in this measurement with the focus on Clinical Supervision for caseworkers around the state. The Child Safety Team is developing a targeted plan for districts that have consistently had high recurrence rates across the state. Domestic violence continues to be an area where further training and coaching needs to occur as this continues to impact our overall recurrence rates across the state. Program consultants will have an exciting opportunity to be certified in David Mandel’s Safe and Together Model this spring which focuses on holding batterers accountable in these complex cases.

Kids in foster care:
We currently have 7,511 children in foster care which is 398 less children in care since May. With our new managers in Treatment, and Foster Care and Youth Transition along with Every Child we have a trifecta. This team is focused on building a continuum of care that starts with leaving children in their homes whenever possible and wrapping services around the entire family, to Psychiatric Residential Treatment and everything in between. The goal is to focus on the child’s need, identify the level of care for that child and serve that child holistically. This will give us the ability to have shorter stays for our youth and get them to the lowest level of care quickly and successfully. By partnering with community resources like, Mental Health, CCO’s, Behavioral Health, and Physical Health our nurses are making sure our families know what resource they can access immediately before they are in crisis. Child Welfare is also utilizing our nurses who have helped approximately 600 children return home with full assessments and supports for the parents so that the youths return home is successful.

Reasons children enter Foster Care:

*see table on page 10 of the report — table wouldn’t upload

It is clear that our DHS system is burdened and CWs are stressed and traumatized. CASAs can be even more important but they certainly cannot pick up the slack. It is a balancing act and we will continue to be proactive in reaching out to our CASAs to make sure they are receiving the communication they need with regard to urgent situations from DHS. If not, we need to expeditiously escalate through the chain of command.