Ohio works to improve child welfare system
Report calls for an overhaul of agency protecting 16K children.
COLUMBUS — A top to bottom review of Ohio’s child welfare system identified scores of problems, complaints and suggested improvements, according to an initial report released Wednesday by the DeWine administration.
Over four months last year, the Office of Children Services Transformation held listening sessions across Ohio on the problems embedded in the system that is supposed to protect 16,000 vulnerable children. Officials got an ear-full. Suggestions included: Reducing caseloads for social workers who face high rates of burnout and turnover; reducing bureaucratic red tape; establishing a statewide review for all child
fatalities; hiring a statewide ombudsman; giving more financial and legal help to those providing kinship care; providing housing resources to youths who age-out of foster care; streamline training and licensing for foster parents; and expanding adoption recruitment efforts.
In Ohio, 16,000 children are in foster care, an increase of 30% since 2011. Roughly 27% of those kids are in kinship care — placed with family members. Within the foster care system, 3,000 children are awaiting adoption, including 1,200 teens.
The public input is expected to be incorporated in recommendations due to be delivered to Gov. Mike DeWine in May.
“Ohio’s most vulnerable are in need of change now more than ever,” DeWine said in a written statement. “I look forward to seeing the collaboration, sense of urgency, and compassion this council will provide.”
Scott Britton, assistant director of the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, applauded DeWine for increasing state funds for children services and creating the statewide advisory council. “The governor has been one of the biggest leaders on children services transformation we have ever seen in Ohio, and it’s very exciting,” he said.
Britton said that noncompetitive pay and a working environment that leaves many employees with post-traumatic stress disorder have created a statewide caseworker shortage.
Caseworkers are handling cases made increasingly complex by the opioid crisis, which leaves children more traumatized than many other types of cases and can be a harder addiction for a parent to break, he said.
“What we hear from our agencies is they are having trouble recruiting people who are qualified to be caseworkers on the front end, and when they do recruit them and hire them they’re having a hard time retaining them,” he said. “How do you compete with better paying, less stressful jobs?”
Ohio was selected in 2018 to participate in a national research project aimed at decreasing workforce turnover at child welfare agencies.
The research will take place over the next four years in Clark, Champaign, Hamilton, Knox, Montgomery, Summit, Trumbull and Wayne counties. It’s being conducted by the Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QIC-WD), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Children’s Bureau.
Turnover at child welfare agencies is typically up to six times the national average turnover rate for all industries, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
Overworked caseworkers was cited as a contributing cause of child deaths from abuse and neglect in a 2017 investigation by this newspaper. That probe found hundreds of children have died in Ohio while on the radar of a child welfare agencies.
In at least 19 cases, children had been initially removed from their homes because of an unsafe living situation and then returned — sometimes just days before their deaths.
Officials and lawmakers responding to that report said Ohio’s child welfare system needs better funding, and the overburdening of caseworkers needs to be addressed.
“Ultimately, a stronger workforce with less turnover and more supportive organizational environments should improve the outcomes of the vulnerable families and children served by the child welfare system,” said Dr. Michelle Graef, QIC-WD director.