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Unsafe Staffing Hurts Clients

“We have children who are severely emotionally
disturbed and developmentally delayed with multiple school problems. We can’t get them services,” Linda Hamilton

by Richard Bermack

March 2001

Child Abuse Hotline Breaking Down

“We are averaging 275 to 350 abandoned or lost calls out of 750 to 850 calls each day,” states child abuse hotline supervisor Carol Walker. “We don’t know what the lost calls are for. They are probably from community people and neighbors who aren’t able to hold for a half-hour to an hour. I know of supervisors who are losing sleep at night because they are so concerned. Even one child being seriously hurt or dying is too much as far as we are concerned. We have quite a few workers out on stress leave. Management needs to ask for more staffing. Instead they come up with new proposals, and when they don’t work they blame the supervisors. They don’t ask us or the workers for feedback, when we are the ones who actually do the work.”

Management’s response to the crisis at the hotline was to hire a consultant, who suggested that one worker answer the phone and take down the number. Then another worker would return the call and take down the information. According to workers, this would double the work. However, it does accomplish one thing: stats are kept on how quickly calls are answered.

Clients Are Being Seen Minimally

Gary Angel works at the Lancaster office, where the union took the department to arbitration over the caseload issue. An arbitrator issued a ruling against management two years ago, and the office is still understaffed. “The cap is supposed to be 30 to 37, and workers pretty consistently have double that amount. We have workers who have over 100 kids on their case count.

“Clients are being seen minimally, which means we aren’t able to provide the services that are absolutely needed by those clients. A child may need a tutor, but if we don’t have the time to follow up getting a school report back, it is hard for us to give the child the assistance they need before the end of the semester. If we find a child is suffering from some sort of condition and we need court approval for a doctor to prescribe psychotropic meds, it may be difficult to get the approval in a reasonable time frame. Meanwhile the child can’t get the psychotropic meds. I think families could get their children back a lot sooner if we had the capabilities to provide services sooner. The point of DCFS was to help correct any deficiencies that might be present within a family and reunify the children as quickly as possible. If we don’t have the things needed to help these families, we can’t do it.”

Can't Find Solutions that Could Keep Children Out of The system

Lori Nelson has been an emergency response worker for eight years. She went on light duty after developing back problems. Before going on light duty, she regularly worked from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. and would then write up reports on her day off. ER workers respond to reports of child abuse, and then work with the parents to attempt to find a solution that allows the child to remain in the home.

“We used to go out on one case a night. Now we do two or more. Some workers do four cases in one night. The clients are suffering because we don’t have the time to spend with them that they need. I’m one of those who hates to take kids into placement. If necessary, I’ll take them in a heart beat, but if it is not I will try to be extremely creative. But if you are too tired you cannot be creative.”

In the last six months Jose Ybarra has had twice the number of cases specified by the caseload cap. Last night he didn’t get home until 10 p.m., which is not uncommon. “Kids are suffering,” he says. “I think that because we are over the caseload cap, we have to take kids who, if we had the time, we could work out a plan involving relatives.”

Once in the System, Children Continue to Suffer

Linda Hamilton, supervisor, West LA Family Maintenance and Family Reunification: “We have children who are severely emotionally disturbed and developmentally delayed with multiple school problems. We can’t get them services, and workers get upset, because they can’t do an adequate job. The child may need an individualized educational plan through the school district. Most districts don’t want to do that because it costs them money, so you have to advocate for the child. If you don’t have time to do that, the district won’t do it, and the child continues to fail.

“People can’t do the work. Even though caseloads are not as high as they used to be, the workload has tripled because of Kin Gap. Under Kin Gap, children placed with relatives who have become the children’s legal guardians are exited out of the system. Most of those children were pretty easy to manage without too many problems. So now the caseloads are concentrated with really, really difficult children. Before you had a caseload of 40 and maybe you had five serious problem children. Now you have a caseload of 35 to 40 and you have 15 very serious problem children.

“We have two administrators who have been with the department 30 years. They are both retiring because of Bock’s reorganization plan. They can’t stand the system anymore. We had three new workers, who were MSW students, quit. And that means they have to pay back $19,000 [a grant awarded to students for working at a county child welfare office]. They didn’t feel good when they went home at night, because they could never finish everything.”