Grand Jury >> E.M.
Forster begins Chapter 6 of his novel Howards End with an appalling pair of
sentences: “We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and
only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.”--Only an Edwardian
Englishman who hung out with Virginia Woolf & Co. could publish those
sentences, perhaps Thank God! Yet I believe it likely enough that many well-off
Americans think the same thing from time to time and in the privacy of
whatever’s still private.
I remembered >>
Forster’s sentences as I read the Grand Jury’s report, titled “Children at
Risk,” which evaluates the performance of our county’s Family and Child
Services Agency. Almost all the catastrophes the agency deals with have some
connection to poverty, actual and emotional. The GJ’s report (Google ‘Mendocino
County Grand Jury’) is heart-wrenching, since it focuses on the failure of a
costly system to help those it’s supposed to help. Here’s the Summary,
paragraph 1: “The Mendocino County Family and Children’s Services Agency is one
of the lowest-scoring child protective agencies in the State of California . .
. . In spite of a dedicated, caring, hard-working staff, the agency appears to
be falling further behind. Every performance indicator points to understaffing
as the main culprit. The understaffing has many causes: noncompetitive
compensation, work overload, poor management, and low morale. Senior management
is aware of the issues and their consequences, but has failed to address
them.”--Whew!
What to do? >> When an
entire agency fails, as CFS appears to have done, our Board of Supervisors must
act. I’m not now headed for a familiar rag on the BoS. This crisis is not a
business-as-usual crisis. Our Supes need to person up & recreate the
agency. Task calls for a certain amount of drama: fire some higher-ups &
let the Why be said or leaked. Then, make clear in the job postings that the
County wants to give replacements the back-breaking excitement of rebuilding
CFS into an agency which values its line people & their supervisors. From
the ground-up work. Make clear that—within a reasonable time frame (5yrs,
say)—the new leadership can work without fear of firing, so long as they meet
performance benchmarks developed and agreed on with the CEO and BoS. Let us
citizens know what the plan & benchmarks are. Give progress reports. Be
foolish enough to hope! We’ve got nothing to lose but disgrace.
The GJ >> identified
noncompetitive pay as a major problem. At the line level, in the trenches, low
pay may not be a major matter. Mendocino pays better entry salaries than other
poor counties: Lake, Shasta, Humboldt, Colusa, Glenn. Our HR should play some
Billy Ball—people don’t choose social work (in the public sector) to get rich.
Find the unexpected great ones.--Yes, some will train & trot (memorable
phrase!), but they’re not likely to be the best fit for our community. Just
keep recruiting. Eventually one builds a team. It’s a matter of morale &
leadership. And youth.
June
18, 2015
Ukiah
Daily Journal
Column by Jonathan
Middlebrook
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