FAIRFIELD — The Solano County Child Welfare Services Agency “underperforms and does not meet its expected outcomes,” according to a report by the 2019-20 civil grand jury.
“Maintaining full staffing has been challenging
due to burnout and stress. Remaining employees become overburdened with a
shared workload. Cross-training, full staffing and additional management
training may help alleviate some of the issues the grand jury observed,” the
report released June 5 states.
The Child Welfare division has 11 vacancies out
of 84 social worker positions, a 15% vacancy rate, the county Department of
Health and Social Services reported Wednesday.
Gerald Huber, director of the department, said
there is a brief hiring freeze in place to see how state budgeting, and specifically
key realignment funding, shakes out.
The grand jury made two findings with three
corresponding recommendations.
The first two recommendations address the
turnover rate in the department and what the grand jury report describes as the
resulting negative effect on the agency’s performance and outcomes.
The recommendations are to “fill allocated
social worker positions and employ additional support staff for Child Welfare
Services,” and to “provide cross-training to staff members to maintain all
services at all times.”
The third recommendation is to “provide time and
replacement staff for managers and supervisors to receive area-specific
management training to improve staff emotional and procedural support.”
That recommendation is focused on retaining
staff.
Huber said retaining Child Welfare staff has
been more difficult than recruiting staff.
Huber said most of his 33 years in social
services has been linked to child welfare, and it is always going to be difficult
and stressful when a worker sees the results of abuse – and especially, in his
personal experience, sexual abuse. Having to make a decision to remove a child
from the home, he said, is always difficult.
But the workload related to filing reports and
doing follow-ups with additional reporting can be equally stressful.
Moreover, Huber said, the system has become more
adversarial. He credits California, ahead of other states, for doing more to
keep children in the family home whenever possible, and if that is not an
option, then looking to extended family to serve as a resource family.
Huber said all of those challenges are going to
be even more difficult given the realignment funding cuts in the governor’s
budget. He said every county in the state will face that challenge.
That demand on resources could be heightened
even more in the fall when schools reopen.
Most referrals about child abuse come from
schools. So during the Covid-19 stay-at-home orders, reports of child abuse are
down 40% to 50%.
“So I am a little worried that we are going to
have an influx of referrals come the fall. But no one knows what is going to
happen,” Huber said.
While Huber did not disagree with the grand jury
in terms of the stresses in the work, and the turnover in staffing, he said he
wishes the report would have been more thorough in giving credit to what the
department has done.
Huber said he feels the county is competitive
when recruiting and “we have done a lot of work on employee retention,” he
said. He said “stay interviews” are conducted with staff to better identify
what would be needed to keep the employees working in Child Welfare and then to
identify available resources to meet those needs.
A lot of the workers who leave Child Welfare
actually land in different Health and Social Services divisions, such as
behavioral health or the older adult units. Even more important, Huber said,
are the efforts the county has made to get involved with families that fall
within certain risk areas, and often from different directions.
Huber said the department should be involved with families early as a preventive factor. He said that department priority has been backed by the Board of Supervisors.
Solano County Daily Republic
By Todd R. Hansen
June 17, 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment