The Arizona Department of Child Safety continues to struggle with increasing numbers of children entering state care. The agency announced plans to get the situation under control at a hearing Thursday, which included turning to former employees.
The Department of Child Safety sent out an email earlier this week to community partners and previous staffers asking them to temporarily come back to the agency to help agency deal with the backlog of nearly 16,000 investigations.
The letter said:
“These people would work within teams to review cases, facilitate documentation, identify tasks that must be completed before case closure ... Given the complexity of the work and the lack of time to train, I am looking for former employees who have sound knowledge of our Child Safety and Risk Assessment model and our investigation policies.”
Director Greg McKay has plans to cut the backlog by 25 percent by next July.
“Many of the people we talked to have other jobs,” McKay said. He said many former caseworkers now work for contracting agencies.
“Some are willing to come back in because they see the direction of leadership, they see the changes and they want to come back in," said McKay.
Data he presented to the committee shows the department is still struggling with high rates of attrition. In the last year, the department hired more than 500 caseworkers, but the agency only saw a net increase of 104 caseworkers.
McKay said DCS is turning to these temporary workers because state law doesn’t allow him to contract with private agencies to complete these investigations. Child Safety Oversight Committee Chairman Nancy Barto challenged him and pointed to a provision of child safety law that specifically allows the agency to contract out this work.
“I applaud the department’s movement to address the backlog and focus on it,” Barto said. “I am concerned that we don’t have specific measures on when and how that’s going to be done so that we can know that they’re making progress.”
Barto said committee members are split on whether current leadership is making progress fast enough.
