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Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, The (GA) September 28, 2003
Susan Katz knows how to fix
Georgia's child protection agency.
She knows it from firsthand experience as a caseworker. She lasted
only six months in the job.
"I can truly say it is the worst job I have ever had," Katz said.
"I was poorly trained, overworked and underpaid."
Her job training consisted mostly of sitting in an office for days
reading a policy manual, she said. Once she was on the job, her caseload
quickly grew to more than 40, more than double the national
recommendation.
"I was scared a child was going to die on my caseload," said Katz,
29, who resigned from the job in Hall County in March 2002. "I had to get
out."
For years, caseworkers and child welfare advocates have been
shouting out solutions to problems at the Division of Family and Children
Services: lower the caseload burden, stop the exodus of unhappy
caseworkers, improve training and supervision.
Over time, reforms have been announced and agency heads have been
replaced, but caseworkers have continued to make mistakes, and children
have continued to die in the care of DFCS.
Now, though, even tough critics of the system see opportunity for
change.
The deaths this summer of 2-year-olds Kyshawn Punter and Caleb
Woods, both of whom had a history with DFCS, prompted Gov. Sonny Perdue to
oust the two top officials in the state child protection system.
A sense of guarded optimism pervades the child welfare community as
people wait for the governor to replace the officials, wait to hear what
they have to say, wait for real change.
Don Keenan, an Atlanta attorney and child welfare advocate, said,
"There's an opportunity I've never seen in 25 years." He cited the blank
slate of leadership, a governor not tied to the mistakes of the past, and
a new and involved board overseeing the state Department of Human
Resources, which oversees DFCS.
Within about 45 days, the governor hopes to put in place a new DFCS
director and commissioner of DHR. Last week he appointed Janet Oliva,
formerly coordinator of the GBI's child abuse investigations program, to
serve as a special assistant to the DHR commissioner to focus on DFCS.
Simply changing the faces at the top won't be enough, said Dee
Simms, head of the state's Office of the Child Advocate, which was created
by the Legislature after the brutal death of 5-year-old Terrell Peterson
in 1998. Change must also come to the front lines, the caseworkers, Simms
said. The agency must not only regain the trust of the public, but also
the trust of its own work force, she said.
"From the top down, there really does need to be a whole cultural
change," she said. "And I think the workers really need to feel the
support from the top."
Caseworkers report they are overworked, underpaid, undertrained and
underappreciated. Pam Rossman, a caseworker for more than 10 years, said,
"Nobody hears about the differences that we do make, and the children that
we save."
New caseworkers are the most vulnerable to quitting. Last year, 45
percent of entry-level caseworkers statewide left their job, according to
DFCS records. Turnover rates are so high, children can be assigned to a
half dozen or more caseworkers within a year.
"There's really not a lot of incentive to stay with the state,"
said Rossman, 37, who works in Cobb County and earns about $32,000 a year.
Georgia caseworkers' salaries start at about $28,500. But low pay is only
part of the problem, she said.
"If somebody leaves, somebody's got to pick up those cases," said
Rossman, who manages up to 25 cases at a time and, like other caseworkers,
regularly puts in more than 40 hours a week.
Many agree real change starts with good leadership. Perdue said he
has initiated a nationwide search for a new DHR commissioner and strongly
prefers someone with experience in child welfare issues.
Keenan, whose lawsuit three years ago over the death of Terrell
Peterson helped jump-start some state reform efforts, said, "A good leader
will summon the troops and give them rights."
Keenan called for a "Caseworkers Bill of Rights" stipulating that
caseworkers have a reasonable amount of work and that their supervisors
have adequate experience.
Perdue said he is beginning a performance review of DFCS.
State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D-Decatur) said the new leadership
must account for the approximately $70 million in additional funds given
to DFCS over the past three years, intended in part to boost the ranks of
caseworkers.
"Are there more caseworkers in the field than three years ago? Are
there lower caseloads?" said Oliver, a leading figure on child welfare
issues in Georgia. "The Legislature has to have a more aggressive role in
accounting for the taxpayers' money."
Action should come quickly, she said, without the need for yet
another task force.
"I've been on those task forces; I've chaired some of them," she
said. "They know what to do."
Georgia child welfare officials say much already is being done.
They point to higher caseworker salaries, new caseworkers, improved
training and decreases in staff turnover.
For instance, the overall rate of turnover for social service
workers has dropped from 33 percent in 2000 to 25 percent this year,
according to DFCS records.
In addition, the state has hired 300 additional caseworkers in the
past three years, officials said.
Yet DFCS officials say implementing reforms can be challenging
while keeping up with a rapid increase in caseloads. The number of active
child protection cases has risen from 12,366 in 2000 to 22,420 in June of
this year, DFCS officials said.
Ralph Williams, president of the union that represents DFCS
caseworkers, criticized the agency's training and professional
development. "Training and education is obviously a big component" of
fixing the system, he said.
Geraldine Jackson-White, DFCS director of professional development,
said new caseworkers are required to go through nine weeks of intensive
classroom and on-the-job training before going out on their first case.
"There is a prescribed curriculum," she said. "So everybody should be
going to training."
Jackson-White said she was puzzled by ex-caseworker Katz's apparent
lack of training but added: "Caseloads being the size that they are, you
just never know how things pan out in each individual county."
Georgia's failure to adequately protect its children has led to a
lawsuit by the New York-based advocacy group Children's Rights Inc. The
suit, filed in May 2002, maintains that Georgia's child protective
services are ineffective and dangerous to children.
The group's leaders have a slew of complaints and suggestions.
First off, DFCS needs more central control over its county offices, said
Marcia Lowry, the group's executive director. Now, each county office
stands as its own fiefdom, largely doing things its own way, she said.
"This is a chaotic system. There's no real state control," said
Lowry.
In addition, too many children are taken out of their home and
placed in foster care far from their family. More local foster homes are
needed, especially in Fulton and DeKalb, she said.
Beyond that, greater efforts are needed to get kids adopted, which
would help cut down caseloads, she said.
Caseloads now average from 25 to 35 a caseworker -- too high, Lowry
said, "to expect anyone to do a decent job."
Other major child welfare systems have turned around, say child
welfare advocates.
For years, Alabama had backlogs of uninvestigated reports of abuse
and neglect, and children languished in foster care.
"The system was set up so that everyone fails," said Ira Burnim,
legal director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington.
The center sued Alabama to get it to improve its system. A 1991
court decree prompted widespread retraining of caseworkers, who were also
given more tools. For example, Alabama caseworkers can now spend "flexible
funds" for individual families' pressing needs.
The number of Alabama children taken from their homes into foster
care has dropped dramatically, as has the re-abuse rate of children who've
been returned to their homes, said Ivor Groves, a court-appointed monitor
of Alabama's system.
Meanwhile, turnover at Alabama's child welfare agency has
plummeted, a sign of increased morale, he said.
Illinois has also turned its system around without significantly
increasing its budget, said Tom Morton of the Child Welfare Institute. The
state put 4,000 caseworkers through six weeks of retraining. A new state
law declared that every caseworker must pass a test on assessing
children's safety, he said.
Georgia is actually slipping in several important areas of child
safety, said Andrew Barclay, founder of the Barton Child Law and Policy
Clinic in Atlanta.
For instance, he said the percentage of children who are abused
again after being returned by DFCS to their home is rising.
In 1999, a total of 469 children were abused again; in 2002 a total
of 1,155 were abused again, said Barclay, who analyzes DFCS statistics for
an ongoing federal review of the state system. The rate rose from 4.2
percent to 5.6 percent, he said.
"This is our most important safety indicator," said Barclay.
"Children are being re-abused at a much higher rate. We never, ever want
to see that."
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