The recent report from the
Mendocino County Grand Jury on our county’s Child and Family Services should
alarm everyone in the community. A systematic reduction in staffing, lax
educational standards, and dominating managers tasked almost exclusively with
saving money has resulted in a system that is failing to catch abuse and
neglect in time to prevent it.
Unfortunately, the grand jury
reports are almost uniformly ignored by county government, especially when the
solutions to major problems appear to be hiring more staff and paying them
better. But there are other considerations.
The county lost a lot of its
experienced social workers when the 10 percent pay cut for county employees
went into effect. But perhaps more important, the grand jury notes that more
recent changes in workload and policies made by county managers without
consulting the social work staff led to an exodus.
The county’s Heath and Human
Services Agency, we think, is led by people who are far more concerned about
saving the county money and keeping staff low, than they are about using the
resources we have to their best advantage.
Study after study shows that
workers do not move from job to job simply for wages and benefits. They move
because they are unhappy in their work and don’t feel they’re able to do a good
job.
Social work is a really tough
road. These workers see the worst of society and working to stop abuse and
neglect of children is a huge challenge. Imagine how you would feel if you were
tasked with that challenge and failed even once.
This county has leaned on “the
economy” as a crutch to refuse to move forward on many fronts, while slyly
giving top managers raises and claiming we can’t compete with the salaries in
neighboring counties.
We think the problem with this
county is a management structure disinterested in wholesale change and
innovation in its programs, preferring cozy contracts with outside agencies and
keeping employees quiet by overloading them.
It’s time for this county to
wake up to new ideas and motivate staff with realistic goals and help achieving
them. The other constant refrain from county managers is that it’s all state
requirements and paperwork that’s unworkable.
Other counties in California
are experimenting with new notions of giving social workers more access to
things like probation reports and mental health reports within at-risk
families, or simplifying the risk assessment based on documented factors that point
to likely neglect or abuse to come - teenage parents, parents from abusive
family backgrounds, drug users.
Over and
over we see this county abrogating its responsibilities, shrugging them off
with “We don’t have the money.” Well, that just won’t wash any more. It’s time
for this county to start acting like it really cares and do the hard work of
engaging its employees, finding managers who define change as a good thing, and
make working for Mendocino County something to be proud of.
June 6, 2015
Ukiah
Daily Journal
Editorial
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