Dragon Info While DCFS Burns Parenting Classes
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UnSafe
Staffing
Negotiations between Los Angeles County social workers and management have broken down after 11 months at the table. The union has been attempting to get management to address the issues of unsafe staffing and worker overload, which are placing both clients and workers at risk. Management has refused to address the caseload issue and instead is attempting to restructure the Department of Children and Family Services, dividing it into two bureaus, creating even more of a bureaucracy. The situation in LA is so desperate that one night only one worker out of 40 showed up for work at the LA emergency response command post; the rest of the workers reported sick. Workers at the command post have reported regularly working 12-hour shifts. “I’ve seen workers crying at their desk from exhaustion after staying up all night driving kids around trying to find a placement,” one social worker reported.
Similar sick-outs have occurred at other offices. Only 10 workers out of a shift of 250 reported for work at the Belvedere office. These were spontaneous actions that were unplanned by the union, Los Angeles County Chapter President Paula Gamboa states. Gamboa, who is a supervisor at the command post, was the one worker who reported to work during the sick-out. Department director Anita Bock has called for restructuring the department by creating a separate bureau to investigate child abuse. According to the negotiating committee, her position is that there will be no reduction in the workload/caseload unless the union signs off on her reorganization plan.
Bargaining team member and social worker Randy Gracia states that Bock’s plan makes no sense. “Instead of CSWs [children social workers] working hand in hand, you’ll have two bureaus and two sets of administrators. If two workers have a problem, you’ll have to go through two sets of supervisors and administrators. The only problem we had before was not enough social workers to handle the cases. Our question is why change the department at this point? Give us more workers and bring everybody down to a reasonable caseload, so everybody isn’t burnt out and frustrated and leaving the department. Once things stabilize, then if you want to consider restructuring, there would be some foundation. Her concept is, ‘No, I’m going to change everything first. You’re just going to have to bear the high workload, but in five years you’ll see the difference.” Moreover, according to Gracia, Bock has given few details or explanations about how the plan will improve anything. “Her attitude is ‘just trust me,’” Gracia says. Gracia is not the only one who can’t make sense of Bock’s plan. Union field representative Wren Bradley, a former social worker, is on the advisory board of the California Social Work Education Center, which develops the curriculum for social work schools. She has studied Bock’s plan and finds it very upsetting. “Creating a separate child abuse investigation bureau goes against the core values of social work. It is the opposite of the direction the rest of the profession is going, which involves a more community-based approach.” Bargaining team member Gregg Fritchle has been an LA social worker for eight years and has seen the pattern repeat itself over and over again. “Every time the board of supervisors finds there is a problem in the department our response has been the same: ‘You are not hiring enough staff to do the work.’ Their response is, ‘We have to change the way we do the work.’ So they are constantly reinventing the wheel. It doesn’t do any good to reinvent the wheel when you only have three wheels. They will hire people, but who do they hire? They hire more managers. Management is bigger than it has ever been. When I first came to this department there was only one regional administrator for the whole department. Now each office has a regional administrator. There was only one building housing management, now there are two.” Running the Department to Look Good in the LA Times Child deaths make the news. And according to Gamboa, Bock has become obsessed with child deaths for that reason. “Social workers are told to treat every investigation and every case ‘as though it is going to be on the front page of the LA Times the next morning.’” Every time a child dies, Bock responds by telling the media that she will find the worker responsible and make the worker pay. Every child death is a tragedy, but it hardly seems like child deaths should be a litmus test of the system or result in a blanket condemnation of social workers. Gamboa points out that the causes of child deaths are very complex and there is no reason to assume that a worker is always at fault. Ironically, when there is concern about any other type of crime, the response of public officials is to hire more police officers, yet the same standard is not applied to those charged with protecting children. Workers are constantly pleading that they lack the resources to protect children, and every objective study backs them up. Yet, instead of hiring more workers, management responds by requiring workers to fill out more documentation and assigning more tasks. Union negotiating team member Mike Jeffries has studied the federal and state regulations and compared them to the service activities required of Los Angeles child social workers. He found that the county has overloaded social workers with tasks way beyond those required by state and federal regulations. For example, out of a total of 90 activities for which Los Angeles emergency response workers are responsible, Jeffries has identified 42 that are not required by state or federal regulations.
Workers don’t object to doing more to assure child safety, but they need the time to do it. “We are responsible for more than the state standards, but they won’t give us enough staff to do even the minimal amount of work,” states social worker Geoff Stephen. “It is a dangerous equation: too much work, not enough staff. What it does is shift the responsibility from management to the workers and allows the director to blame social workers for anything that goes wrong,” Gamboa states. Why won’t management hire more workers? The answer most people give is money. However, money is not the only answer. Last year the county did not even draw down all the money available from the state to hire more workers.
The union is demanding that the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors instruct the director of DCFS to hold back on her reorganization plan and deal with the staffing issue. The union has launched a campaign to educate the public about the positive aspects of social work. “If DCFS management and the board of supervisors will work with us on the caseload issue and safe staffing, then we will work with them to educate the public and state legislators to increase funding,” states Gamboa. “But they need to work with us and take our input seriously. After all, we are the ones out there doing the work.”
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