The head of the Arizona's child-welfare agency wants to scrap laws requiring caseworkers to do a full investigation of every complaint of child neglect. Director Greg McKay told a legislative oversight committee Thursday the Department of Child Safety is overwhelmed.
“So basically the number of Hotline reports that we're receiving every month is greater than the number of reports existing staff can close. Hence, things are backlogging,” McKay said.
He said the best option would be to alter agency rules to allow some cases to be closed with minimal work.
“But by the current rule in the books, we have to do A to Z, in every case, with no discretion. What that causes is each investigation takes an immense amount of time — which causes people not to be able to get out on the ones we know we need to get out on,” McKay said.
The department currently has over 14,000 cases that haven’t been looked at for at least 60 days.