Protecting children in the modern age: DCF gets needed reforms
Frontline social workers get a say in Department’s revamping
Confusing and outdated policies, underfunding and excessive caseloads have severely limited the Department of Children and Families’ ability to protect vulnerable children.
Monday, Governor Charlie Baker unrolled plans for updating DCF policies that have not been seriously reexamined in nearly a decade, along with plans for boosting hiring and retention. The announcement comes on the heels of recent tragedies, such as the death of two-year-old Bella Bond, allegedly at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend, and the hospitalization of seven-year-old Jack Losielle following starvation and further abuse by his father.
Social workers are well-aware of these issues after years struggling with them and now have a voice in revamping the Department. The Service Employees International Union is working with the governors’ office to ensure the new intiatives recognize and respond to the experiences of social workers in the field.
Peter MacKinnon, president of SEIU Local 509, called it an “unprecedented collaboration between frontline social workers and the administration to bring about deep systemic change.”
Reforms also are guided by recommendations from the Child Welfare League of America’s May 2014 report.
Accompanying Baker at Monday’s press conference were Karyn Polito, lieutenant governor; Marylou Sudders, secretary of Health and Human Services; Linda Spears, commissioner for the DCF and author of the CWLA report; and MacKinnon.
Caseload crisis
The number one issue social workers face, said Rob Bullock, a social worker with 13 years primarily serving Dorchester, is having to spread their time among too many cases. Each social worker handled 20-21 cases on average last July, according to the governor’s office and Department of Health and Human Services.
“We don’t have the time or resources available to do what we really want to do,” said Bullock, who spoke with the Banner.
The constant state of strained resources has meant that, increasingly, workers start their days picking up children at 6 a.m. and stay up working on placement, sometimes until as late as 11 p.m., said Bullock. This practice has become especially common in the last few years.
Despite these intense workdays, many tasks fall to the wayside because there simply is no time for them. Bullock said that for the past year and a half, he and his coworkers have not been able to visit communities to recruit new foster parents.
The governor said they will keep hiring to ensure caseloads drop to 18 per worker. Since last fall, over 300 new social workers were brought on, Baker said, while 100 left or retired.
The reduced caseload is expected to improve employee retention. Likewise, an initiative to reinstate social work technicians, who handle non-clinical support services, could reduce workload stress and free licensed workers for other duties.
The technician position was removed in 2009 due to budget cuts, but the DCF received a $35.5 million increase for the 2016 Fiscal Year.
Confusing policies
No cohesive changes have been made in years. According to MacKinnon and Bullock, over the past decades administrations reacted to child tragedies by forging hasty and haphazard rules that either lacked clear guides for implementation or created more problems.
“DCF pursued patchworks attempts that did little more than create a spate of misguided directives [and] confusing memos,” said MacKinnon.
In some cases, policy lacked clear explanations, resulting in each office interpreting the rules in their own way. This could be jarring to families who have cases transferred between offices, Bullock said.
Often, MacKinnon said, policy went halfway: you might be told to examine a family’s history when opening a case, but not told what to do based on that information — for instance, what kind of history called for involving a supervisor.
Other policies were created without proper vetting or good understanding of their effects.
In response to the disappearance and death of five-year-old Jeremiah Oliver, a new “Zero to Five” directive was implemented that prioritized 51A filings involving children five or under. Typically, when social workers receive a call, they evaluate it to see if their help is needed. Under this new directive, they were not allowed to need-assess calls involving that age group. Workers’ caseloads shot up, because along with serious cases they now had to investigate any allegations involving young children, said Bullock. For instance, he said, a child might say at school that he heard his brother crying last night and is concerned the brother is sad; this does not strongly indicate abuse or neglect, but under the new directive, workers would be deployed to investigate.
“We were involved in cases where we didn’t need to be involved,” said Bullock. “The agency is still dealing with some of the fallout of that [directive].”
In contrast, Baker said the new reforms take a holistic approach and aim to reduce confusion by reminding of the overarching goal — protect the kids — and building out policy from there.
“The [department’s] mission statement has been confusing and in the absence of an overall playbook concerning all aspects of cases, very hard to deliver on,” said Baker. “We are simplifying and clarifying the mission: keep kids safe. Our efforts are aligned around this primary objective.”
Starting off right
It is key to start out with a detailed and cohesive analysis of the situation, emphasized Baker.
“Intake policy is the front door to every decision that gets made going forward,” he said.
The policy has not been updated in 12 years, when it was a momentous task to ask someone to sift through years’ worth of paperwork to find background data on a family. Digital records simplify the records search.
New intake reforms will require CORI checks in all cases, standardized risk assessment tools for social workers’ use, review of families’ previous or current involvements with DCF and of 911 calls to their home as well as assessment of the parents’ capabilities.
Voices from the field
Bullock said past administrations had failed to follow through on reform promises, but that now, for the first time, the promises feel genuine.
Frontline social workers are being called to the table to help develop policy in the area they focus on.
“That hasn’t happened that way before,” he said. “To have frontline workers be pulled in — to have our opinions be taken seriously — is huge.”
Timeline
The collaboration aims to ensure reform is quick and kept on track.
- Intake policy – updated by November 17, 2015.
- New supervisor policy – implemented by November 17, 2015.
- Desk review of complex cases – implemented by mid-November.
- DCF Central Regional Office – reinstated by January 1, 2016.
- Foster home applicant backlog – reduce to zero by January 10, 2016.
- New practice model – implemented and developed by March 2016.
- New policies on ongoing casework, family assessment and service planning, case closing and coordination with service partners, data integration and foster homes – developed and implemented by March 2016.
Bullock stressed that the need for prompt and effective change was clear in the minds of DCF workers.
“We have children’s lives at stake,” said Bullock.
